ARCH 0351 / AWAS 0800 Introduction to the Ancient Near EastBrown University ~ Fall 2009

Colonialism, mapmaking and the Middle EastSeptember 22, 2009

The torch of civilizationTympanum over the entrance to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago

what is colonialism, imperialism, empire?(and what does it have to do with mapmaking?)

Destruction

Savage State The Arcadian or Pastoral State

The Consummation of Empire

The Course of Empire – (Thomas Cole, 1836, Oil)

The Course of Empire – Desolation (Thomas Cole, 1836, Oil)

The Achaemenid Persian Empire (ca 560-330 BC).

British Empire 1897

Ottoman Empire 1683

Mehmet IIenters ConstantinopleFausto Zonaro, (1854-1929)

what is colonialism, imperialism, empire?(and what does it have to do with mapmaking?)

J.L. Borges, Exactitude in Science(tragic uselessness of the perfectly accurate map)

or: “Map is Not the Territory” (Alfred Korzybski)

Pietro della Valle Italian traveller in Asia, 1586-1652.

Pietro della Valle’s diary (Vatican)

Map of the Middle East 1607. Mercator, Gerhard (1512-1594)-Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612)

Carsten Niebuhr German Traveller, surveyer, geographer 1733-1815.“the scientific exploration of Egypt, Arabia and Syria” sponsored by Frederick V of Denmark.

Travels through Arabia (google book)

Description de l’Egypt Napoleon Bonaparte’s “scientific” expedition.

ARCH 0351 / AWAS 0800 Introduction to the Ancient Near EastBrown University ~ Fall 2009

Colonialism, mapmaking and the Middle East IISeptember 24, 2009

Pietro della Valle -Italian traveller in Asia, 1586-1652.The first to identify the site of Babylon. Picked up some tablets at Ur (Tell al Muqayyar)

Pietro della Valle’s diary (Vatican)

Map of the Middle East 1607. Mercator, Gerhard (1512-1594)-Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612)

Carsten Niebuhr German Traveller, surveyer, geographer 1733-1815.“the scientific exploration of Egypt, Arabia and Syria” sponsored by Frederick V of Denmark.

Travels through Arabia (google book)

Description de l’Egypt Napoleon Bonaparte’s “scientific” expeditionto Egypt (1798-1801). Recording of natural history, flora and fauna, archaeology, physical geography,technology, weights and measures, hydrography, meteorology, medicine,

Orientalism an episode in Western humanitistic thought

• representations of the East in the literary and pictorial works of mainly Western or Western educatedauthors- work of art, architecture, novels and travel writing, antiquarianism...

• idea of the travel to the East, and meeting with the stereotypical “other”. Associated with romanticism and classicism

• East appears in these narratives (literary and pictorial) as exotic, sensual, colorful, decaying, often violent, place of inertia: people are lazy, a ridiculous excess of sexuality and eroticism, despotism as the main political tendency among the eastern monarchs

• an aspect of European imperialist project

Automatic Turk the chess playing automatonbuilt by the miraculous Hungarian Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1769 to impress the Empress Maria Theresa

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904) Snake Charmer (1870) Oil on canvas

Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904) Moorish Bath (1870) Oil on canvas

Death of Sardanapalus (1827), Eugène Delacroix.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569) Tower of Babel (1563), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Other orientalismsPhotographs of an Armenian–Iranian photographer: Antoin Sevruguin (1840-1933)

Birth of Near Eastern archaeology

• Rediscovery (early travellers, antiquarians)

• Early archaeological work (mid 19th c. excavations)

• International phase

• Large scale excavations

• Scientific archaeology.

Deciphering cuneiform writingHenry Rawlinson (1810-1895): cadet in British East India Company

Many languagesPersian king Darius I’s monumental tri-lingualinscription at the site of Bisutun, Iranin Old Persian, Elamite, Akkadian

The most famous cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia The so-called ”Flood Tablet”, relating part of the Epic of Gilgamesh

This Assyrian version of the Old Testament flood story

identified in 1872 by George Smith, an assistant in The British Museum.

On reading the text he... jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself.'

Austin Henry Layard (1817-1894) Excavations at the site of Nimrud

(ancient Kalhu), in Northern Iraq.

Austin Henry Layard’s travels (1839-41)

Paul Emile Bottaappointed as French consul in Mosul (1842)

Excavations on the mound of Khorsabad (1843-1845)on the behalf of the Louvre museum

a former botanist

Drawings of E. Flandin

Hormuzd Rassam (1826-1910), a Chaldean catholic

Excavations at Nineveh, Nimrud, Balawat, Toprakkale, TellSheikh Hamad, and others...

A 19th century bestseller

From Assyrian Nimrud to British Crystal Palace: whose architecture? Layard’s architect Ferguson’s reconstruction of Nimrud citadel (Publ. 1849) + Crystal palace of the Great exhibition of 1851, at Hyde Park, London.

The first encounters: the arrival of Assyrian sculpture in European museums

German excavations at Babylon (new archaeological field techniques)Director architect/archaeologist Robert Koldewey feeds cats1899-1917.