The Melammu Project
Encyclopedia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
n culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
throughout the ancient world
Ancient history
Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...
from the second millennium BC until Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic times. A central objective of the project is to create an electronic database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
collecting the relevant textual, art-historical
Art history
Art history has historically been understood as the academic study of objects of art in their historical development and stylistic contexts, i.e. genre, design, format, and style...
, archaeological
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
, ethnographic
Ethnography
Ethnography is a qualitative method aimed to learn and understand cultural phenomena which reflect the knowledge and system of meanings guiding the life of a cultural group...
and linguistic
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
evidence and making it easily accessible on the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. In addition, the project organizes annual symposia
Symposium
In ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
focusing on different aspects of cultural continuity and evolution in the ancient world.
The Melammu Project: The Intellectual Heritage of Assyria and Babylonia in East and West
The AssyriaAssyria
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the mid–23rd century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
n and Babylonia
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
n Intellectual Heritage Project (Melammu) investigates the continuity, transformation and diffusion of Mesopotamian culture throughout the ancient world from the second millennium BC until Islamic times. A central objective of the project is to create an electronic database collecting the relevant textual, art-historical, archaeological, ethnographic and linguistic evidence and making it easily accessible on the Internet. In addition, the project organizes annual symposia focusing on different aspects of cultural continuity and evolution in the ancient world.
Each symposium of the Melammu Project has a central theme, selected by the members of the Project at the previous symposium. The purpose of the Melammu Symposia is to promote interdisciplinary research
Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....
and cross-cultural studies
Cross-cultural studies
Cross-cultural studies, sometimes called Holocultural Studies, is a specialization in anthropology and sister sciences that uses field data from many societies to examine the scope of human behavior and test hypotheses about human behavior and culture. Cross-cultural studies is the third form of...
by providing a forum in which cultural continuity, diffusion and transformation in the ancient world can be assessed systematically on a long-term basis. The emphasis is on continued interchange of ideas between specialists in different disciplines, with the goal of gradually but steadily increasing the number of participants and thus breaking down the walls separating the individual disciplines. Although each symposium focuses on a different theme, since the primary purpose of the symposia is to encourage interdisciplinary cooperation per se, papers not necessarily related to a specific theme but contributing to the overall scope of the project are welcome at every meeting.
The Melammu Database
The Melammu Database contains documented links between the civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia Assyria and Babylonia, both of which were the intellectual heirs of more ancient SumerSumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....
) and later civilizations that show the continuity of religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
, political system
Political system
A political system is a system of politics and government. It is usually compared to the legal system, economic system, cultural system, and other social systems...
s, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
and iconography
Iconography
Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...
, literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, and other cultural and social phenomena as a result of both direct influence and of cultural diffusion.
There are two principal types of entries in the database. The first consists of citation
Citation
Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source . More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated...
from ancient texts. These entries are primary sources and consist of the ancient author's comments. Such entries have a "source" line which points to the ancient text and the Text-field contains a translation of the ancient source. There may be bibliographical citations as well if the passage has been discussed or commented on by other scholars. Wherever possible, there will be a hypertext link to the actual text of the ancient source.
The second type of entry consists of modern comparisons between features or phenomena in the ancient world that may show the effects of cultural contact or cultural diffusion. Entries of this type generally have a "bibliography
Bibliography
Bibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology...
" line that points to the scholarly assessment of this connection rather than a "source" line. However, if ancient sources are important for this connection, there may be a "source" line as well, sometimes including longer quotations, as in the first type. The Text-field will contain an outline of the argument connecting the features or phenomena.
The Name and logo of the Melammu Project
The name Melammu and its logo were chosen to illustrate essential aspects of the cross-cultural processes that the Project investigates. The word melammu, which means "divine radiance, splendour, nimbus, aura," is an AkkadianAkkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
from Sumerian
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...
. It thus concretely attests to the transfer and continuity of a centrally important doctrinal
Doctrine
Doctrine is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the body of teachings in a branch of knowledge or belief system...
concept from an ideological
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
system to a later one. In Mesopotamia alone, this concept has a documented continuity of over 4500 years, from the earliest cuneiform
Cuneiform script
Cuneiform script )) is one of the earliest known forms of written expression. Emerging in Sumer around the 30th century BC, with predecessors reaching into the late 4th millennium , cuneiform writing began as a system of pictographs...
religious and historical documents (ca. 2600 BC) till the present day. The iconography of the concept has gone a long way from the radiance surrounding Mesopotamian gods to the halos surrounding the heads of Byzantine
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
angel
Angel
Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...
s and saint
Saint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...
s and the loops hovering over the heads of Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
angels, but the concept itself has survived amazingly well and spread far beyond its original home.
The spread of the concept of "divine radiance" can be traced by observing the diffusion and transformations of the relevant iconographic motif. The logo of Melammu is taken from an Achaemenid seal
Seal (device)
A seal can be a figure impressed in wax, clay, or some other medium, or embossed on paper, with the purpose of authenticating a document ; but the term can also mean the device for making such impressions, being essentially a mould with the mirror image of the design carved in sunken- relief or...
discovered on the northeast coast of the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
and represents the goddess Anahita
Anahita
Anahita is the Old Persian form of the name of an Iranian goddess and appears in complete and earlier form as ' ; the Avestan language name of an Indo-Iranian cosmological figure venerated as the divinity of 'the Waters' and hence associated with fertility, healing and wisdom...
, mounted on a lion
Lion
The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...
and surrounded by the divine radiance, appearing to a Persian king
King
- Centers of population :* King, Ontario, CanadaIn USA:* King, Indiana* King, North Carolina* King, Lincoln County, Wisconsin* King, Waupaca County, Wisconsin* King County, Washington- Moving-image works :Television:...
. The details of the king's and the goddess's dress and crown
Crown (headgear)
A crown is the traditional symbolic form of headgear worn by a monarch or by a deity, for whom the crown traditionally represents power, legitimacy, immortality, righteousness, victory, triumph, resurrection, honour and glory of life after death. In art, the crown may be shown being offered to...
are Persian, but in all other respects the seal is a faithful reproduction of centuries older Assyrian seals depicting appearances of the goddess Ishtar
Ishtar
Ishtar is the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. She is the counterpart to the Sumerian Inanna and to the cognate north-west Semitic goddess Astarte.-Characteristics:...
to members of the imperial
Empire
The term empire derives from the Latin imperium . Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
ruling class
Ruling class
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society....
. It thus illustrates not only the adoption of the Mesopotamian concept of "divine radiance" by the Persians, but also the assimilation of an important Iranian deity to a Mesopotamian one with the concomitant adoption of a whole system of religious beliefs, cultic practices, ideological doctrines, and artistic conventions. The fact that the seal was found outside the area controlled by the Assyrian Empire and possibly carved by a Greek
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, illustrates the dynamic diffusion of these ideas (through imperial propaganda) across geographical and cultural boundaries.
The radiance emitted by the goddess symbolizes to the Project the powerful impact of Mesopotamian culture on the surrounding world and later cultures, while the king symbolizes the crucial role of imperial courts in the preservation, transformation and diffusion of this cultural heritage.
The Melammu Website
The website of the Melammu Project provides information about all of its aspects. It includes the Melammu Database, a bibliography with Melammu-related references, both searchable in various ways, a digital library of Melammu-related articles (including all of those that appeared in the Melammu proceedings), an outline of its history, information about the proceedings and their contents, and lists of links to relevant websites. Additionally, as the Melammu Project is envisioned as a 'community project', it is possible to submit information, to enlarge and improve the database, bibliographies and lists of links.The Melammu Symposia
So far, the following symposia have taken place:- Melammu Symposia 1: The Heirs of Assyria. Tvärminne, FinlandFinlandFinland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, October 8–11, 1998. - Melammu Symposia 2: Mythology and Mythologies. ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, October 4–7, 1999. - Melammu Symposia 3: Ideologies as Cultural Phenomena. ChicagoChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, USAUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, October 27–31, 2000. - Melammu Symposia 4: Schools of Oriental Studies and the Development of Modern Historiography. RavennaRavennaRavenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the second largest comune in Italy by land area, although, at , it is little more than half the size of the largest comune, Rome...
, ItalyItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, October 13–17, 2001. - Melammu Symposia 5: Commerce and Monetary Systems in the Ancient World. InnsbruckInnsbruck- Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus...
, AustriaAustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, October 3–8, 2002. - Melammu Symposia 6: Globalisation in the First Millennium. SofiaSofiaSofia is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria and the 12th largest city in the European Union with a population of 1.27 million people. It is located in western Bulgaria, at the foot of Mount Vitosha and approximately at the centre of the Balkan Peninsula.Prehistoric settlements were excavated...
, BulgariaBulgariaBulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, September 1–3, 2008.
Melammu Symposia 7 is planned to be held in 2011.
The Proceedings of the Melammu Symposia
- Sanna Aro and R. M. Whiting (edd.). Melammu Symposia 1. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2000. (ISBN 951-45-9043-0)
- R.M. Whiting (ed.). Melammu Symposia 2. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001. (ISBN 951-45-9049-X)
- A. Panaino and G. Pettinato (edd.). Melammu Symposia 3. Milan: Universita di Bologna & IsIAO 2002. (ISBN 88-8483-107-5)
- A. Panaino and A. Piras (edd.). Melammu Symposia 4. Milan: Università di Bologna & IsIao 2004. (ISBN 88-8483-206-3)
- Robert Rollinger, Christoph Ulf and Kordula Schnegg (edd.). Melammu Symposia 5. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2004. (ISBN 3-515-08379-0)