Commemorating Art in the Old Babylonian Period

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This volume by Benjamin R. Foster represents a significant contribution to the study of ancient Mesopotamian art and cultural history, offering a fresh and text-based approach to a subject long shaped by the limited survival of physical objects. While few material objects from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2003–1595 BCE) have survived, in this volume Benjamin R. Foster explores a largely overlooked yet wealthy source for the study of Old Babylonian art: the royal year names that commemorated the commissioning and dedication of artworks. These texts offer unique insights into the role of artistic production in the religious, political, and cultural life of Mesopotamia. This book reveals how the royal year names can illuminate the scope, function, and perception of art in the first half of the second millennium BCE.

Royal year names, short formulaic statements used to identify the years of a king's reign, are typically studied for their chronological value or for their political content. In this work, however, Foster turns our attention to their potential as records of artistic patronage. Over 300 year names from at least thirteen Old Babylonian dynasties commemorate the commissioning of statues, ritual furniture, musical instruments, architectural features, temple artifacts, and other objects made of precious materials such as gold, lapis lazuli, ivory, and imported wood. Many year names refer not only to the existence of such works, but also to their size, material, craftsmanship, and intended emotional effect—terms like masterpiece, magnificent, or for wonderment evoke how ancient viewers perceived these works. Foster places this documentation in a broader historical and cultural context.

Drawing upon decades of expertise in Assyriology, Foster presents this corpus not as a mere supplement to archaeology but as a standalone archive capable of revealing trends in regional artistic preferences, dynastic self-representation, and evolving aesthetic values. The regional distribution of these commemorations, analysed in the study, also reveals differences in artistic priorities: rulers of Ešnunna, for example, showed a greater interest in sculpture than their contemporaries in Larsa or Isin. Foster revisits Hallo's and Frayne's thesis of a tripartite commemorative program (year names, monumental inscriptions, and poetic hymns), showing both its significance and its limitations, and situates the year names within a larger historical continuum of royal expression and state-sponsored memory.

Importantly, Foster's approach also challenges prevailing assumptions about the conservatism of Mesopotamian art, suggesting that the strong emphasis on tradition visible in surviving objects may reflect the fragmentary nature of the archaeological record more than the realities of artistic practice. The textual evidence reveals innovation, diversity of form, and shifts in both subject matter and symbolic emphasis over time. [Publisher's text]

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