Melammu Workshop 2024: Big and Small, High and Low, Proud and Humble: Constructing Significance in Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean Cultures

12–15 September 2024
Tartu, Estonia

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Prof. Reinhard Müller (Göttingen, Germany)
Prof. em. Gebhard J. Selz (Wien, Austria)
Prof. Christoph Ulf (Innsbruck, Austria)

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME

Friday, 13 September

9.00 Keynote: Gebhard Selz (University of Vienna), On Mesopotamian strategies obtaining prestige. Value assessment as a cultural, social and economic phenomenon

9.50 Vladimir Sazonov (University of Tartu), Character assassination in Assyria. Tukultī-Ninurta I versus Kaštiliaš IV of Babylonia, Sennecherib versus Šūzubu. Reputation of good and bad king. Hero versus villain

10.30 Coffee

10.45 Zozan Tarhan (University of Sofia), The Assyrian King, Chosen by the Great Gods: Structural and Comparative Analysis of the Textual Sources

11.25 Marco Ferrario (University of Trento / Universität Augsburg), My Lord Vahuvaḫšu: On Administrative Hierarchies and Social Power in Achaemenid Baktria

12.05 Lunch

14.00 Keynote: Christoph Ulf (University of Innsbruck), Cultures of competition – frameworks for attaining social and/or political recognition

14.50 Alexandros Drosinakis (University of Tartu), Divergent power building strategies in Early Iron Age and Archaic Aegean: Andros, Paros, Naxos

15.30 Mait Kõiv (University of Tartu), The wealth of early Greek elites

16.10 Coffee

16.25 Aaron Irvin (Murray State University), Between Subjects and Masters: Gallic Aristocracy in a Gallo-Roman Dominion

17.05 Kristian Kanstrup Christensen (University of St Andrews), Diversity in Status Displays from the Mediterranean Hinterlands

19.00 Reception

Saturday, 14 September

9.00 Keynote: Prof. Reinhard Müller (University of Göttingen), High and Low, Proud and Humble in Ancient Hebrew Poetry: Symbols of Power and Faithfulness

9.50 Urmas Nõmmik (University of Tartu), High and Low in the Book of Isaiah

10.30 Coffee

10.45 Elo-Mall Toomet (University of Tartu), Goddess cults and the prestige of local communities in early Greece: the cases of Demeter and Hera

11.25 Sujatha Chandrasekaran (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Elite Women in Ancient Pergamon – Statues, Dedications and Status

12.05 Lunch

14.00 Beatriz Freitas (University of Lisbon), Neo-Assyrian Seals: Constructed Meaning

14.40 Jasmine Spencer (Utah Tech University), “Light is like water”: Alchemy as animacy in The Epic of Gilgamesh

15.20 Beatrice Veidenberg (University of Tartu), Circular structures creating significance in Aeschylus’ Supplices

16.00 Coffee

16.15 Sebastian Fink (University of Innsbruck), Sumerian as a Language of Prestige

16.55 Neeme Näripä (University of Tartu), The Prestige and the Violence of Attic Greek in Lucian’s „Consonants at Law”

17.35 Krzysztof Ulanowski (University of Gdansk), Being right. The Opposition Between Right and Left in Mesopotamian and Pomeranian Magic: A Comparative Study

Sunday, 15 September

Bus trip to Tallinn

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION

The conference is dedicated to discussing social and cultural prestige in the ancient world. Reputation can be of local significance, global importance or both. Global trends and fashions in the modern world have their precursors in ancient times when communication took more time because the information circulated mainly by word of mouth. Accordingly, social or cultural prestige usually took much more time to develop. Much of the communication between peoples and civilisations – both on the local and global levels – was concerned with the reputations of people, ideas, things, technologies etc. Significance implies a relationship: something is essential for somebody, a group or a culture. Cultural meaning is usually a hierarchical construct, indicating that a person or phenomenon is deemed more important, better and more influential than others. These hierarchies can be created, maintained and manifested in various ways, highlighting the social, economic and political relations and cultural codes of the given societies. The conference calls for papers that study the strategies for acquiring reputation and will discuss the general questions of (inter)cultural prestige in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world.

An individual’s reputation can be related to age and gender or personal qualities like appearance, wisdom, skills or physical strength. On the social level, significance usually involves wealth, pedigree and power, and consequently, the strategies of wealth acquisition, claims of illustrious ancestry and power building. Power building plays a prominent role in the relations between political communities, making some polities, or rulers, more powerful and respectable, thus more significant, compared to others. Often, though not always, reputation directly relates to power, even if reflecting the social or political hierarchies or contributing to their establishment. Good examples are spiritual authority and artistic fame. In the religious domain, the divinities, rites, festivals, and cult places can have variable reputations for different population groups, which can make the estimation of their significance a matter of dispute. In a similar way, it might be challenging to establish the degrees of significance in art and literature, although certain artefacts and literary works, genres and authors surely outweighed others in public esteem. Literature, either oral or written, has been, however, the principal means to convey and articulate reputation to all kinds of things and people and serves for us as a crucial source for discussing the subject.

We plan the workshop to discuss the ways of establishing, maintaining, manifesting and losing significance in all these and possibly other fields. We expect papers considering the related questions in the cultures evolving from Iran, Mesopotamia and Egypt to the western Mediterranean, from the emergence of civilisations to the fall of the Roman Empire. The questions to be asked could be the following: What made some persons, social groups, communities, religious phenomena, artworks, genres or authors more significant than others in various societies and cultures? How did the strategies of attaining significance relate to the character of the given society or culture? To what extent were the variable ways of attaining significance conditioned by the societal and cultural variabilities, or how did cultural diversity contribute to the different manifestations of significance in the Ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world?

***

The conference is planned to take place onsite in Tartu, Estonia, but sessions will also be streamed via Zoom, to give access to a wider audience.