Giacomo Benati
I apply an interdisciplinary approach, bridging archaeology and economics, to the analysis of ancient societies, with particular focus on the development of political institutions in Bronze Age Mesopotamia and on the nexus between cooperation, violence and state formation in the ancient world
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Although the temple-state model, built during the 1950s on the basis of temple archives from Tello – the so-called archive of the é-mi – and often applied top-down to the whole Mesopotamian society, has been variously challenged and discredited; evidence at disposal suggests that temples were important power-nodes in Mesopotamian society.
Beside being methodologically flawed, the model lacks material applicability: if tested against archaeological evidence, the model very rarely checks out.
Today, I take the Temple of the Moon-god Nanna, at Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, as a case study in the attempt to: 1) contextualize these general considerations; 2) observe the development of an important religious institution through time.
The evidence at disposal to do so is twofold: 1) the temple of Nanna is mentioned several times in the archaic texts from Ur, dating to the first part of the ED period (ED I-II; 2900-2650 ca); 2) the excavations in the Ziqqurrat Terrace at Ur revealed the remains of a series of superimposed 3rd millennium (and perhaps 4th millennium) sanctuaries.
Therefore, I start this presentation discussing the role of the Nanna temple in Ur socio-economic and political fabric at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, as gleaned from written sources. Then I will explore the archaeological remains unearthed in the Ziqqurrat Terrace Area, focusing mainly on the structures that can be ascribed to the late 3rd millennium BC (ED III period and Ur III period).
Today’s presentation is based on a fresh analysis of excavation archives and original objects kept in the museums of London and Philadelphia, that I have carried out within the frame of a doctoral project at the University of Turin and Bologna. Also, the work on the archaic texts draws upon a collaborative research I am presently conducting together with Assyriologist Camille Lecompte, (CNRS-Nanterre), on the contextualization of the archaic texts from Ur.