The (im)materiality of the Netherworld and its (re)presentation in ancient Mesopotamia: an interpretation of the iconographic repertoire and documentary sources
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Abstract
In the present article, we will propose a rereading of the images referring to the Netherworld in ancient Mesopotamia from a broad theoretical discussion, especially the one is called “iconic turn”, whose objective is to deconstruct the hegemonic power granted to the written sources by Western tradition and, in addition, the Studies of Material Culture, which have opened the debate on the core importance of “objects”/“things” as participating agents of social relations. The Netherworld was presented as a geographical/topographical space, called kur and/or ki in literary and lexical texts from the second millennium BCE, depending on its horizontal (in the Eastern mountains) and/or vertical (as antithesis of heaven) location for the imaginary of the moment. To that end, we propose a narrative of the images corresponding to a corpus of cylinder seals of Early Dynastic, Sargonic, and Old Babylonian periods, which together with oral stories and ritual practices, served to cement a vision about the world of dead in literary texts. In this way, the projection of a posthumous universe had already begun to take shape in the iconography of the middle of the third millennium BCE, next to the evidence of a mortuary cult, also accredited by the burials of the ruling elite.
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