This paper attempts to approach Urartian concepts of subjectivity and identity through material remains and imagery. “Identity” is in this case examined analytically, moving from the singular to the collective, from the self as person to the self as a group. I explore whether archaeological evidence can reveal aspects of Urartian ideas about personhood. The world of imagery is of prime importance for such an undertaking. I focus on two dimensions. The first is a striking dearth of images of kings, especially when compared to contemporary Assyria, whose culture was certainly known to Urartians. Equally rarely depicted is the main god of the Urartian pantheon, Haldi. A second focus is on conceptualizations that underlie what I call an Urartian “body template”. A close consideration of Urartian toreutics, especially finely decorated bronze belts, reveals a bewildering multitude of hybrid beings composed of parts of lions, fish, birds, bulls and other animals. The abstract concept behind these beings was likely a tacit knowledge about body and self that differed from our unquestioned understanding of the self as an “individual”. If we are confronted with a culture that thought of people as partible, as “dividuals”(M. Strathern), what are the implications for our understanding of their “identities”?
Talk
Partibilities in the Iron Age Polity of Urartu
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Bernbeck