“The Dignity of the Dead. The Case of Ancient Urkesh and Modern Tell Mozan, Syria (2000-1600 BC),”
Paléorient 43.2, pp. 165-175.
Dignity in death was indeed well perceived by ancient civilizations: this paper analyses the ‘dignity of the dead’ as it was thought at Urkesh.
Focusing on graves of the Middle Bronze Age, signs of bone manipulation have been detected, probably linked to ritual gestures.
Reopening of burials can be supposed on the base of the taphonomy of burials: what it is strange, it the lack of any reference to these practices in ancient Middle Bronze Age written sources.
After a discussion of the concept of ‘ancient perception‘, i.e. the way through which ancient people perceived and considered themselves and their life experiences, the topic moves directly on graves, which are described as a “rather unique typological characteristic, in that its purpose and function are self-declared and immediately apparent” (p. 166). Of course, the ancient perspective can only be inferred: e.g., was there a difference in the perception of an infant vs. an adult burial? This is just a specimen of questions that can be arisen.
Tell Mozan’s graves also carried ‘feathery material’, which directly links these burials with a passage of a Mesopotamian myth, Ishtar’s Descent to the Netherworld (7-10): “[…] the houses where those who enter are deprived of light, / where dust is their bare nourishment and mud their food, / where they see no light but dwell in darkness, / are clothed like birds with feather for garments” (p. 166). The ancient Mesopotamian perspective was indeed not so pleasant!
Anyhow, what about Urkesh? The only way to tackle this question is that we approach ourselves within an ‘emic’ perspective [a topic very often discussed by G. Buccellati, for which see e.g. Buccellati 2014, chapter 5 or Kelly-Buccellati 1977].
Human burials are considered within a ‘territorial legacy’, i.e., also today, when excavating a tomb, archaeologists have to face the problem of been dealing with human remains (i.e. men or women) of people who settled at Urkesh many centuries ago.
A link with the modern population of Mozan can therefore be established: “A new inner outlook had developed, which we like to define as territorial legacy. What the local stakeholders of Mozan have in common with the ancient inhabitants of Urkesh is not culture in the form of language, religion, customs, let alone biology. It is the territory [Italic by M. De Pietri]. This is as important a legacy as those other factors, and all the local people today are the guardians of the territory. The commonality they experience in the phenomenon of death and of the interment in the same soil, seemed to bring this out more forcefully than anything else” (p. 168).
The analysis of burials at Urkesh led important results: in an area of about 1860m2 (sector A of the Palace, called ‘the funerary space of the upper town‘), a group of 120 tombs has been uncovered, including skeletons of 82 non-adults and of 69 adults, comprising 15 females and 15 males; this sector presents two phases of occupation: 1) Early Khabur phase (Isin-Larsa culture), 2000-1900 BC and 2) Late Khabur phase (Old Babylonian culture), 1900-1600 BC.
The disposition of the deceases in the graves is described, together with their funerary assemblage. Manipulations of bones and secondary (post-burial) activities sometimes occurred: “The goal is to examine those burials by reconstructing the process of the bone manipulation and understanding the ancient Mesopotamian ideology of death” (p. 168).
The results underlines many factors: 1) the intention to bury new individuals within a specific old grave (as for grave A7.526/530); 2) the intention to empty a pit in order to move the bones to re-bury them elsewhere (as for grave A6F206); 3) the recovery of certain bones as relics or memorials (as for graves A16.78 and A15.51) [for stratigraphic information about these graves, see UGR/AA].
A final discussion deals with the comparison between archaeological and anthropological observations and ‘funeral’ texts from second- and first-millennium Mesopotamia.
In conclusion, the “archeothanatological approach and interpretations provide additional evidence of mortuary practices in the Middle Bronze Age in Northern Syria, which is not fully in accordance with the textual records” (p. 173).
[About this topic, see also a poster presented at the 8thICAANE, in 2012].