Dance in Textual Sources from Ancient Mesopotamia

From: Near Eastern Archaeology | Date: September 1, 2003| Author: | Copyright information

The textual sources from Mesopotamia portray dance both as a private act of spontaneous joy and play and as a cultic act performed in religious rituals. Its connection with sexuality can be seen in a few passages where the dance of girls and women is mentioned in a sexual context and in passages describing the cult dances performed by the cross-dressing personnel of the goddess Ishtar.

The joy and vitality associated with dancing is illustrated in a letter to King Assurbanipal (seventh century BCE) in which the Assyrian scholar Adad-shumu-usur describes the reign of his king as a golden era:

...

Read all of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research

Related newspaper, magazine, and trade journal articles from HighBeam Research

(Including press releases, facts, information, and biographies)

The emergence of the Tagar culture.(Research)
; ...Steppe from the beginning of the first millennium BCE. The Scythian culture is well known...development in that region during the first millennium BCE, continuing changes that began in the...steppe that occurred about the first millennium BCE probably became widespread. This has...
Dancers in the Louvre: The Iranian and Cypriot Collections
; ...Garfinkel 2003). During the third millennium BCE, banquet scenes are the most common...decorated with relief motives in the second millennium BCE. A fragment of a Middle Elamite vase...dating from the beginning of the second millennium BCE, is decorated with a pair of wrestlers...
ECONOMY, ENVIRONMENT AND THE BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION IN SOUTHEASTERN IRAN
; ...fourth and the beginning of the third millennium BCE, a number of complex societies emerged...homogeneous cultural entity during the third millennium BCE. Hemmed in between deserts and mountains...during the first centuries of the second millennium BCE. In such marginal areas, there ...
The Earliest Dancing Scenes in the Near East
; ...seventh and beginning of the sixth millennium BCE in northern and central Mesopotamia...southeastern Europe. By the end of the sixth millennium BCE, potters at sites as far north as the...textile. Nevertheless, by the third millennium BCE the dancing motif is confined to sites...
Die Vorgeschichte Israels: Von den Anfangen bis zum Ausgang des 13. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.
; ...forth before the middle of the first millennium BCE. On the basis of written sources and...of Syria and Palestine in the second millennium BCE. As part of this history, he affirms...East in the second half of the second millennium BCE. There are indices of names, subjects...
The Jews invent vowels
; ...The Sumerians, as early as the beginning of the fourth millennium BCE, created a third possible way of writing words. They recorded...the alphabet. THE CONSONANTS Sometime during the second millennium BCE, a language commonly called "proto-Canaanite" - that is...
Images as Media: Sources for the Cultural History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean (1st Millennium BCE). (Brief Reviews of Books).(Book Review)
; Images as Media: Sources for the Cultural History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean (1st Millennium BCE). Edited by CHRISTOPH UEHLINGER. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, vol. 175. Fribourg, Switzerland: UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2000. Pp. xxxii...
African Connections: Archaeological Perspectives on Africa and the Wider World.(Book review)
; ...equatorial forest of southern Cameroon in the middle of the first millennium BCE. The agro-ecological systems developed vary considerably...chiefdoms that were united at the very end of the fourth millennium BCE (ca 3100 BC). Nubia, sometimes in the shadow of the Pharaohs...
Picturing Ancient Nabada
; ...Beydar, reached its peak of prosperity around the mid-third millennium BCE. During this time, political and economic power in the region...and southern Mesopotamia. In the first half of the third millennium BCE, Nabadas earliest inhabitants constructed a circular settlement...
Communities in Conflict: Death and the Contest for Social Order in the Euphrates River Valley
; ...is hasty or rudimentary1 and it is certainly so in third millennium BCE Syria, where archaeological and textual data both indicate...conflicting, information. Such is the case at the third millennium BCE settlement complex of Tell Banat, where a variety of burial...