Transcript Colonialism, mapmaking and the Middle East

ARCH 0351 / AWAS 0800 Introduction to the Ancient Near East
Brown University ~ Fall 2009
Colonialism, mapmaking and the Middle East
September 22, 2009
The torch of civilization
Tympanum over the entrance to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago
what is colonialism, imperialism, empire?
(and what does it have to do with mapmaking?)
The Course of Empire – (Thomas Cole, 1836, Oil)
Savage State
The Consummation of Empire
The Arcadian or Pastoral State
Destruction
The Course of Empire – Desolation (Thomas Cole, 1836, Oil)
The Achaemenid Persian Empire (ca 560-330 BC).
British Empire 1897
Mehmet II
enters Constantinople
Fausto Zonaro,
(1854-1929)
Ottoman Empire
1683
what is colonialism, imperialism, empire?
(and what does it have to do with mapmaking?)
or: “Map is Not the Territory” (Alfred Korzybski)
J.L. Borges, Exactitude in Science
(tragic uselessness of the perfectly accurate map)
Pietro della Valle’s diary (Vatican)
Pietro della Valle
Italian traveller in Asia, 1586-1652.
Map of the Middle East
1607. Mercator, Gerhard (1512-1594)Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612)
Carsten Niebuhr
German Traveller, surveyer, geographer 1733-1815.
“the scientific exploration of Egypt, Arabia and Syria”
sponsored by Frederick V
of Denmark.
Travels through Arabia (google book)
Description de l’Egypt
Napoleon Bonaparte’s “scientific” expedition.
ARCH 0351 / AWAS 0800 Introduction to the Ancient Near East
Brown University ~ Fall 2009
Colonialism, mapmaking and the Middle East II
September 24, 2009
Pietro della Valle’s diary (Vatican)
Pietro della Valle Italian traveller in Asia, 1586-1652.
The first to identify the site of Babylon.
Picked up some tablets at Ur (Tell al Muqayyar)
Map of the Middle East
1607. Mercator, Gerhard (1512-1594)Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612)
Carsten Niebuhr
German Traveller, surveyer, geographer 1733-1815.
“the scientific exploration of Egypt, Arabia and Syria”
sponsored by Frederick V
of Denmark.
Travels through Arabia (google book)
Description de l’Egypt
Napoleon Bonaparte’s “scientific” expedition
to Egypt (1798-1801).
Recording of natural history, flora and fauna,
archaeology, physical geography,
technology, weights and measures,
hydrography, meteorology, medicine,
Orientalism an episode in Western humanitistic thought
• representations of the East in the literary and
pictorial works of mainly Western or Western educated
authors- work of art, architecture, novels and travel writing,
antiquarianism...
• idea of the travel to the East, and meeting with the
stereotypical “other”. Associated with romanticism and classicism
• East appears in these narratives (literary and pictorial) as
exotic, sensual, colorful, decaying, often violent, place of inertia:
people are lazy, a ridiculous excess of sexuality and eroticism,
despotism as the main political tendency among the eastern
monarchs
• an aspect of European imperialist project
Automatic Turk the chess playing automaton
built by the miraculous Hungarian Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen
in 1769 to impress the Empress Maria Theresa
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904) Snake Charmer (1870) Oil on canvas
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 – 1904) Moorish Bath (1870) Oil on canvas
Death of Sardanapalus (1827), Eugène Delacroix.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525 - 1569)
Tower of Babel (1563), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Other orientalisms
Photographs of an Armenian–Iranian photographer: Antoin Sevruguin (1840-1933)
Birth of Near Eastern archaeology
•
Rediscovery (early travellers, antiquarians)
•
Early archaeological work (mid 19th c. excavations)
•
International phase
•
Large scale excavations
•
Scientific archaeology.
Many languages
Persian king Darius I’s monumental tri-lingual
inscription at the site of Bisutun, Iran
in Old Persian, Elamite, Akkadian
Deciphering cuneiform writing
Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895): cadet in British East India Company
This Assyrian version of the Old
Testament flood story
identified in 1872 by George
Smith, an assistant in The British
Museum.
On reading the text he
... jumped up and rushed about
the room in a great state of
excitement, and, to the
astonishment of those present,
began to undress himself.'
The most famous cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia
The so-called ”Flood Tablet”, relating part of the Epic of Gilgamesh
Austin Henry Layard (1817-1894)
Excavations at the site of Nimrud
(ancient Kalhu), in Northern Iraq.
Austin Henry Layard’s travels (1839-41)
a former botanist
Paul Emile Botta
appointed as French consul in Mosul (1842)
Excavations on the mound of Khorsabad (1843-1845)
on the behalf of the Louvre museum
Drawings of E. Flandin
Hormuzd Rassam (1826-1910), a Chaldean catholic
Excavations at Nineveh, Nimrud, Balawat, Toprakkale, Tell
Sheikh Hamad, and others...
A 19th century bestseller
From Assyrian Nimrud to British Crystal Palace: whose architecture?
Layard’s architect Ferguson’s reconstruction of Nimrud citadel (Publ. 1849) + Crystal
palace of the Great exhibition of 1851, at Hyde Park, London.
The first encounters:
the arrival of Assyrian sculpture
in European museums
German excavations at Babylon (new archaeological field techniques)
Director architect/archaeologist Robert Koldewey feeds cats
1899-1917.