UC Berkeley

This dissertation concerns the ways in which the ritualized materials and ritualized practice of the Neo-Assyrian temple, through their culturally valued and prioritized visual and experiential characteristics, created and marked the special status and divine aspect of the house of a god, differentiating this built environment within the Neo-Assyrian landscape and making it fit for a god.

In the study ritual is not approached as a distinct entity, but rather as a characteristic of contrasting practice, that is, as a strategic mode of acting that inflects the practice itself and the associated materials, drawing on Catherine Bell's notions of ritualization. Contributing further to the discussion are such concepts as materiality, agency, phenomenology, visuality, and performance. In order to reconstruct ritualized practice and material interaction in the temples, the physical, aesthetic, and sensory features of the architectural, non-portable, and portable works of art stand at the forefront of the discussion. This study also reinserts active agents into the discussion of material culture and practice in Neo-Assyria, and brings the temple itself, as well as the vast collection of materials housed therein, into this discussion. Complementing the material culture is a study of the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions and correspondence, administrative records, ritual instructions, and omen collections. These texts were written in Akkadian, the official language of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, on an assortment of material culture, ranging from clay tablets and prisms to stone statues and wall reliefs.

This comprehensive, analytical, and interdisciplinary approach to the Neo-Assyrian temple built environment offers a means of accessing previously unrecognized and under appreciated characteristics of the Neo-Assyrian imperial elite that produced and used these spaces, reevaluating notions of culturally meaningful practice, the role of material and architecture in such acts, culturally valued sensorial experiences, social relations, and the place of ritualized performance within the larger social network. The experiential dimensions of the raw materials and crafted works of art from the temple manifest a prioritization by the Neo-Assyrian elite for what was seen: the brilliance, texture, and polychromatic qualities of this built environment acted as both sign and substance; yet the stimulation of additional senses, such as touch and smell, was also of import. The material and textual evidence from the temple also demonstrates the ways in which this built environment controlled and isolated spheres of practice that served critical functions in the dynamics of the Neo-Assyrian royal court, in particular in the relationships between the king and the scholarly elite. The temple served as a mediating point between the king and the ummânus—scholarly experts and skilled craftsmen—and both with the gods. The variability of these relationships materialized in the developments of the temple during the Neo-Assyrian period, the attitudes and preferences of particular kings toward scholarly knowledge and the gods finding expression in their temple work and practice. Moreover, the king's relationship with the temple differentiated this space from the Neo-Assyrian royal palace. Though constructed using the same raw materials and personnel as part of royal building projects, the palace's prioritization of the king—in both material culture and practice—illustrates a different inflection of ritualization for a royal dwelling place of Neo-Assyria.

The outcomes of this study of the Neo-Assyrian temple make an important contribution to the ongoing dialogues in art historical, material culture, post-colonial and globalization studies regarding the role of material worlds and ritualizing activity in social and political arenas. The textual and material evidence from the Neo-Assyrian temple makes an argument for recognizing degrees of ritualization as an element of ritual theory and practice; for acknowledging meaningful variations in the individual's experience; and for appreciating the variability that results from discrete preferences and attitudes, as characteristics of ritualized practice alongside culturally-grounded traditions and rules. The ritualizing power of the materials and practices explored in this study acted to constitute the divine nature of the temple, a sign of its status as the house of a god in Neo-Assyria. The outcomes of this study therefore also lend themselves to the larger discussion of the house-owner relationship—in Neo-Assyria and beyond—and the formative role of the latter in conferring and displaying status.