"Image, Identity and agency in Mesopotamia” - Paul Collins, British Museum

"Image, Identity and agency in Mesopotamia”
Dr Paul Collins, British Museum
Friday, 10th of May 2024
16.00 CEST (Rome, Paris, Berlin / GMT+2)
15:00 BST (London, GMT+1)
17.00 (İstanbul, Athens / GMT+3)
10.00 (New York / GMT-4)
Since at least the tenth millennium BC, carved images probably held symbolic and amuletic value that could evoke the agency of the supernatural world. This became especially meaningful when such images were impressed in clay as sealings. With the emergence of urbanism and associated social hierarchies and institutions, temples emerged as a focus for ritual. By the early third millennium BCE visual images of essentially timeless rituals were combined with writing to record contractual transactions involving land, property, and people. Text and images were thus brought together on stone objects in order to preserve memories of ephemeral historical transactions and events, the details recorded in writing, and the agreement made eternal through the ritual act depicted in carved images. Such an understanding allows us to interpret images as active participants in rituals, ultimately acting as a kind of conduit to the divine.