Hybridity, Metamorphosis, and Monstrosity: Defining Identity in Mesopotamia’s First Cities

Karen Sonik (UCLA)

It is rarely possible to speak monolithically of ancient Mesopotamia, which saw, over the millennia succeeding the appearance of the first cities in its southern plains, the rise and fall of great empires, ephemeral against long periods of more localized rule; interaction with great polities both on its borders and beyond; and the continual influx of new peoples, which formed ruling dynasties such as those of the Amorites and Kassites or blended quietly into the existing population. Against this backdrop of near constant change, however, the inhabitants of the land between the rivers yet maintained something of a common worldview, a shared perception of the overarching principles that shaped and defined their cosmos – and their own place within this, rooted and developing out of the events of the late fourth through the third millennium BCE as the landscape became an increasingly urban one: south Mesopotamia, following on the heels of the late Uruk expansion and contraction, came to be dominated by a network of city-states, each comprising one or more walled urban settlements, within which resided the city’s patron god and ruler, and the surrounding agricultural hinterland. The developing individual and collective identity in Mesopotamia, and the definition of what exactly it meant to be human, is here explored through the various threats posed to it in a discussion that draws upon both the visual and the textual sources.

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