Nancy Highcock is a postdoctoral research associate for the ‘Memories for Life: Materiality and Memory of Ancient Near Eastern Inscribed Private Objects’ project at Uppsala and Cambridge Universities. The project analyses the dedicatory practices of private individuals from the 3rd–1st millennia in ancient Mesopotamia to better understand how people constructed their identities through religious practice. The commission and dedication of commemorative objects sought to establish an ongoing dialogue between the human individual and the deity and the inscription (if present), material, object type, and dedication context all worked together to emphasise the personal aspect of these relationships and crystallised the individual’s presence across in both the present and future.
This seminar will present a case-study on how long-distance traders from Old Assyrian period Aššur balanced their professional identity as merchants with their civic identity as citizens of Aššur, both negotiating and maintaining various aspects of their collective character as a community working and living abroad in Anatolia. Religious belief and practice were an integral part of this collective identity and the commemorative and dedicatory practices of the Old Assyrian merchants will be contextualised within a diachronic and cross-regional study on the religious lives of both merchants and other identity categories in the ancient Near East.
Issue 66, December 2023
Turkey’s Centenary Issue
