Mimesis is the process by which a representation functions as a
record of the perception of reality, corresponding to that reality and matching
it—whether successfully or unsuccessfully. (Zainab Bahrani, The Graven
Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria [Philadelphia: University
Pennsylvania Press, 2003], 87-88)
ṣalmu is the Akkadian
word used in Assyrian and Babylonian texts to refer to that in our view is a
representation. Traditionally, philologists have translated this word variously
as statue, relief, monument, painting, and image. More recently, it has been argue
that the term image is a more accurate translation of ṣalmu than
one that assumes the word defines a particular type of monument. Irene Winter
has further argued against the use of portrait when referring to ṣalmu
as a representation of a person. In discussing the image of the ruler, she
points out that the image is not a natural replica of the king but a conventionally
coded, culturally mediated, idealized representation and is therefore not a
portrait in the later Western sense. IN this discussion I would like to define
the function of ṣalmu as part of a pluridimensional system of
representation. While ṣalmu was never meant to be a mimetic visual portrayal
of the person, it was at the same time certainly a natural representation.
If this seems contradictory, it is only because we continue to approach ṣalmu
from the point of view of the opposition of person/image. ṣalmu is no doubt an image that is
culturally mediated and conventionally coded, but it is not in this
characteristic that it differs as a mode of representation from its later
Western counterpart, the portrait. . . . ṣalmu
is thus clearly part of a configuration that enables presence through
reproduction. It is necessary for a valid representation. It is not a statue or
a relief or a painting; in other words, it is not a work of art. Nor is it an
image that is mediated or otherwise encoded as a direct propagandistic
declaration of power. Encoding the body here, if such a word should indeed be
used, serves to validate the body double as a substitute for the king for purposes
that were considered very real. ṣalmu
becomes a real manifestation of the king in this case. Another indication that ṣalmu
is part of a multifaceted mode of representation is the fact that in texts on
monuments—for example, on the Great Monolith of Ashurnasirpal—the monument is
referred to as ṣalmu in the inscription though it is an object composed
of both an image and a text. It is certainly not a portrait as the Random
House Dictionary defines it: “a likeness of a person, especially of the face,
as a painting, sculpture, or photograph.” Yet it relates to an identity in much
closer ways than a portrait. . . .Royal texts often contain a similar phrase when
making reference to the setting up of a royal image. The following is anexample:
“šiṭir šumiya u ṣalam šarrutiya mahar šamaš
u Aja ukin.”
This is generally translated as “I set up, before šamaš and Aja, an inscription with
my name and an image of me as king.” The royal texts are written in the first
person in the voice of the king as narrator, and phrases similar to this are
always translated as “I fashioned a statue (or stela) showing me as king or “I
set up (before the gods) a statue of me as king” (CAD vol. S:81). It has
already been pointed out that the translation of the word ṣalmu as
statue, sculpture, relief is incorrect because it means image and should not be
used to refer to particular art forms or media. But its mistranslations have
been rather heavily influenced by modern notions of art. Thus the statement “I
set up a statue of me as . . .” implies that ṣalmu as an image portrays
a particular being with a separable identity as a king. Whereas the Akkadian
text states that he set up “šiṭir šumiya u ṣalam šarrutiya,” which I
believe is better translated as “the written [characters] of my name and
[visual] image of my kingship,” thereby implying an extension that is natural
and organic.
ṣalam šarrutiya,
as I translate it, “image or physical manifestation of my kingship,” is an
analogous reading to the common phrase ṣalam pagrišu: “the shape of his
body” The contiguous link formed by the use of the possessive construction is
important here, as it has quite different connotations from the standard reading
of “me as king,” which works through displacement rather than extension. There
is a reason for my insistence on clarifying and stressing the choice of a
particular grammatical construction here, Such a use of the possessive
construction is of the utmost importance in magical incantations. Similar
modern translations have been made in this genre of texts that I find to be
equally misleading, and conversely their clarification can shed some light on
the process of representations that I wish to define. Take, for example, the
following incantation:
šiptum šipat Marduk
ašipu ṣalam Marduk
In my reading this translates into:
The conjuration (is) Marduk’s conjuration.
The conjurer (is) Marduk’s presence/manifestation/substitute.
This reading his different connotations form the standard
translation:
The conjuration recited is the conjuration of Marduk.
The conjurer is the very image of Marduk.
The Akkadian original is deliberately a repetitive performative
utterance that transubstantiates the conjuration into one that Marduk himself
is making in his manifestation as organic ṣalmu (body double). For the
Assyrians and Babylonians, tautology is certainly part of the performative
function of speech acts. šiṭir šumita u ṣalam šarrutiya has similar
repetitive quality in its reference to those signifiers, written name and imaged
kingship, which links them directly to the person, as if kingship were as
natural a manifestation of the person as his name. And there is little doubt
that kingship was a natural manifestation. [6]
In Assyro-Babylonian ontology, omens are written into the real.
Omens could be solicited from the livers of sacrificial animals by priests, for
example, but they were also inscribed by the gods into the common, everyday
world. An observant person could read these messages at any time or place
.Catalogs of omens were made, listing vast amounts of possibilities of patterns
of flights of birds, of birth deformities, of chance occurrences in cities, and
also aspects of the physiognomy of human beings. By the seventh century B.C. at
least one hundred tablets, listing ten thousand omens had been catalogued.
Thus, hair-growth patterns, moles, and other such physical characteristics were
not considered to be accidental but were linked to the fate of the individual.
Semantic codes in physiognomy are in the real. They are not in any way
metaphoric or allegorical references. The difference between material reality
and semiosis, which is based on scientific reason in the modern view, was an
intertwined area in Assyro-Babylonian thought. This is not even to be explained
as a blurring of the real and the imaginary. The real contains what we might
call the imaginary within it. A physical body is inscribed as a text with signs
from the gods. All bodies are therefore encoded by the gods, not simply the
royal body. But the king’s body bears the omens of kingship. The king’s image
could thus be encoded not just in a metaphoric allegorical way, be read as the
divine destiny of kingship, literally written into the body-text. Destiny was
inscribed into the real. I do not use that expression in the postmodern rhetorical
sense of inscription but as a literal translation of the Akkadian word šaṭaru,
to inscribe, a verb used in describing omens as they appear in the natural world.
Thus, it is more than a matter of the ideal body when the king’s body is
represented. It is a matter of divine destiny.
ṣalmu is not an
objective representation of reality. It is not a represented truth about the
person, nor is it a representational lie about the person, as in propaganda. ṣalmu, as mimetic representation,
may relate to the object as an excess in that it can act as a repetition, a
replacement. But it is not an element that represents the whole. It cannot give
access to a referent or signified, the Ding-an-sich—at least not
uniquely—because the referent can be encountered in many phainomena. ṣalmu
is therefore a mode of presencing. The thing or person is accessed through the
structuration of difference, which I have described in relation to the
logic of the cuneiform script. It is one of several modes and part of a system
of circulating presence. In the cuneiform sign the trace or arch-écriture is
never totally effaced—the difference and deferment always remains present,
making any one stable meaning impossible. Not only in the case of the pictogram
but in all words, there was a great concern with the constant trace in any
manifestation. Substitution through images—which is not only ṣalmu but
requires ṣalmu—is a doubling or multiplication (as a phainomenon), but
it is not a copy in the sense of mimetic resemblance; rather, it is a
repetition, another way that the person or entity could be encountered. (Ibid.,
123, 131, 135-137)
[6] Irene Winter has translated ṣalam šarrutiya as image “in
the office of my kingship.” She adds that by this inscription “we are told
literally that this is not a personal, but an official image” (her
image). But the word official occurs nowhere in the text. Šarrum in
Akkadian means king. Šarrutu means kingship royalty. The suffix -iya
is the suffix applied for creating any possessive construction. I therefore find
the translation “official image” or even the posited “personal image” as its
opposite unconvincing, and if such a distinction is to be made for Mesopotamian
representation, it needs to be done on the basis of other information from
antiquity and not on this statement. However, Winter’s argument against the use
of portrait should be heeded, and her description of the image of the king as “coded
for ideal qualities and attributes of a ruler” is important in any discussion
of images (Art in Empire The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology.
In Assyria 1995, ed. S. Parpola and R.M. Whiting. [1997]:374). (Ibid., 215
n. 6)
Further Reading
"ṣalmu" (image) in The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute
