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Gods, rulers, and death. Nonverbal expressions and group identity in Syro-Anatolian and Assyrian monumental art
Ludovico Portuese
2025, Mortals, Deities and Divine Symbols. Rethinking Ancient Imagery from the Levant to Mesopotamia. Studies offered to Tallay Ornan.
October 13, 2025
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Abstract
From a sociological perspective, nonverbal expressions can communicate much, ranging from political to religious sentiments. At the same time, nonverbal expressions can take on even greater significance in different contexts: they may galvanize a sense of group identity because they imply sharing and collaboration among individuals, who evolve the capacity to demarcate group membership through symbolic markers, such as gestures, body movements, proxemic, and the like. Hence, nonverbal expressions can play a role in maintaining social and psychological order and can become a clear marker of collective identity. Cultural contact between Syro-Anatolian states and the Assyrian empire during the earlier first millennium BCE is known to be notoriously intensive, involving many aspects and affecting material culture, social practices, and social structures to varying degrees. Different kinds of cultural contact may have initiated processes of self-reflection within the collective, or they may have had the potential to induce cultural change. On the material level, this encounter can bring about different effects, ranging from spontaneous rejection to acceptance of specific visual motifs. This article provides an examination and comparison of visual representations of submission and drinking gestures in Syro- Anatolian and Assyrian monumental art, in order to highlight the ways in which these visual motifs were rejected or were appropriated and re-instrumentalized by both parties. It is concluded that the interaction between Syro-Anatolian and Assyrian art reveals: 1) a dialectic between the acceptance and rejection of specific visual motifs, and 2) a conscious formation and protection of nonverbal expressions as signs of collective identity.
Key takeaways
AI
Nonverbal expressions significantly convey political and cultural identity in Syro-Anatolian and Assyrian art.
Cultural appropriation and protection dynamics are evident between the Assyrian empire and Syro-Anatolian states.
The raising-fist gesture symbolizes reverence and authority recognition in both cultures.
Drinking gestures reflect distinct social values in Assyrian and Syro-Anatolian contexts.
Nonverbal communication plays a crucial role in defining and expressing group identity through cultural encounters.
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MORTALS,
DEITIES
AND DIVINE
SYMBOLS
RETHINKING ANCIENT IMAGERY
FROM THE LEVANT TO
MESOPOTAMIA
Studies offered to Tallay Ornan

Edited by

Benjamin Sass
and Laura Battini

Archaeopress Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology 12

MORTALS, DEITIES
AND DIVINE SYMBOLS
RETHINKING ANCIENT IMAGERY
FROM THE LEVANT TO MESOPOTAMIA
Studies offered to Tallay Ornan

Edited by

Benjamin Sass and Laura Battini

Archaeopress Archaeology

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
13-14 Market Square
Bicester
Oxfordshire
OX26 6AD
United Kingdom
www.archaeopress.com

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE FOR THIS VOLUME:
Vanessa Boschloos
Eckart Frahm
Holly Pittman
Ursula Seidl
Diana Stein
Chikako Watanabe
ISBN 978-1-80327-293-1
ISBN 978-1-80327-294-8 (e-Pdf)
© the individual authors and Archaeopress 2025

Front cover: Hazor, enthroned Baʿal. Photo Gabi Laron.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter
to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.
This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com.

2013. Eye to eye with Hammurabi at the Louvre.

Contents

List of Figures ��v
List of Tables ��xix
Preface ��xxi
Acknowledgments ��xxiii
Introduction �� xxv
Photographic Souvenirs of Tali’s Career ��xxxi
Tallay Ornan’s Publications through May 2024 �� xxxvii

FIRST PART: NEW MATERIALS AND APPROACHES
Chapter 1: Closed case: An Iron Age trove of jewellery from the Israel Museum collection and the
identification of its provenance at Tel ‘Ira (Israel) ��1
Eran Arie
Chapter 2: Articulating foundation myths in Milesian festivals: A diachronic perspective �� 17
Mary R. Bachvarova
Chapter 3: Ancient images in Mesopotamia: Ancient gaze and present observation between visual
sources and textual sources� Questions and limitations �� 29
Rita Dolce
Chapter 4: Naturalism, photography, and empire in the Old Akkadian period �� 39
Marian H. Feldman
Chapter 5: A reassesment: Is the cone-shaped object held by the genii in Aššurnaṣirpal II’s palace at
Kalḫu a citron? �� 49
Norma Franklin
Chapter 6: The reception of the Law Code stele of Hammurabi in Spain: From a treatise on
ophthalmology to a white plaster cast�� 61
Agnès Garcia-Ventura
Chapter 7: New gleanings at the Temples of Sidon, Tyre and Jerusalem (Decoding Phoenician Art – II)��71
Eric Gubel
Chapter 8: The imagery of the Neo-Assyrian seals belonging to the palace� An interpretation of the scene
on a stamp seal formerly kept in the Southesk Collection�� 87
Zoltán Niederreiter
Chapter 9: Gods, rulers, and death� Nonverbal expressions and group identity in Syro-Anatolian and
Assyrian monumental art �� 111
Ludovico Portuese
Chapter 10: Inscribed bullae from the Samaria excavations forgotten for ninety years �� 127
Benjamin Sass and Eythan Levy
Chapter 11: The impact of models and prototypes in carving and sculpturing� How craftspeople referred
to prototypes and conventions� Two various examples �� 135
Silvia Schroer
Chapter 12: How meaning evolves� Proto-cuneiform signs: considerations on their origins at the
intersection of visual and oral communication �� 147
Gebhard J. Selz

SECOND PART: THE HUMAN WORLD
Chapter 13: The threat of the women warriors: From the Arab women to the Amazons �� 167
Débora V. Ben-Ami
Chapter 14: Ideological differences between representations of the pharaoh during the 18th and 19th
Dynasties reflected on scarabs and stamp-seals�� 177
Daphna Ben-Tor and Othmar Keel
Chapter 15: In a masked world: On the physiognomy of Assyrian faces�� 189
Dominik Bonatz
Chapter 16: The “Lady at the Window” from Arslan Tash �� 199
Annie Caubet
Chapter 17: Revisiting the seated figure on wall painting no� 9 from Kuntillet Ajrud … Once again�� 213
Izak Cornelius
Chapter 18: Sennacherib’s open-air sanctuary at Khinis/Bavian: Quarries, quarry workers, recarved
panels, and polylithic bulls�� 221
Stephanie Dalley
Chapter 19: Akhenaten’s divine crop �� 239
Arlette David
Chapter 20: Two Iron Age female figurines from Tel Rekhesh �� 249
Shuichi Hasegawa and Shizuka Mito
Chapter 21: In the sign of the scorpion: The administrative seals of the Neo-Assyrian queen and the
queen’s household�� 257
Suzanne Herbordt
Chapter 22: The image of the city as a symbol and scene in Assyrian representation �� 273
Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault
Chapter 23: Whose head is hanging from the tree? �� 313
Natalie Naomi May
Chapter 24: Back to life� On a lifelike female statue head from Assur �� 331
Astrid Nunn, Heinrich Piening, and Becca Saladin Segovia
Chapter 25: On goats, mountains and the elusive Babylonian royal seal �� 339
Rocío Da Riva
Chapter 26: A preliminary survey of the documentation from Dilbat and several other places in Central
and Northern Babylonia chiefly during the long 6th century BCE �� 349
Ran Zadok

THIRD PART:THE DIVINE WORLD
Chapter 27: The meaning and sense of the Ugaritic Baal–Mot conflict narrative �� 401
Tzvi Abusch and David P. Wright
Chapter 28: A confidential message: Divine combat and death in a forgotten Akkadian seal from Ur �� 407
Laura Battini
Chapter 29: Three Kassite seals in the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem �� 419
Yigal Bloch
Chapter 30: “I have set My bow in the cloud”: Symbolism and myth �� 425
Ruhama Bonfil and Robert Bonfil
Chapter 31: The symbol of the triumph �� 433
Baruch Brandl

Chapter 32: The soldier and the exorcist: A cylinder seal in the Ashmolean Museum �� 439
Paul Collins
Chapter 33: Birds and gods in ancient Mesopotamia �� 451
Uri Gabbay
Chapter 34: For whom the bell tolls: Horse harnesses at Megiddo and beyond �� 465
Yosef Garfinkel
Chapter 35: The Late Babylonian worship scene at Persepolis �� 477
Mark B. Garrison
Chapter 36: A new look at the Hittite silver vessel in the shape of a fist �� 537
Clement Hazan
Chapter 37: The tale of “Nergal and Ereškigal” revisited �� 551
Dina Katz
Chapter 38: In his image: God or ruler? A stone relief from the Iron IIA cultic precinct at Tel Moẓa �� 563
Shua Kisilevitz, Amotz Agnon, Nuphar Gedulter, and Oded Lipschits
Chapter 39: The Sanctuary of Ataroth and its inscriptions �� 575
Nadav Na’aman
Chapter 40: Beyond the visible� Feeling the divine presence in ancient Mesopotamia�� 583
Anne-Caroline Rendu Loisel
Chapter 41: The Hunters’ Palette� A guide to weapons used in Egypt in the late Predynastic Period �� 593
Michael Sebbane
Chapter 42: The repertoire of motifs and their composition on ivory furniture from Samaria� An updated
inventory and reflections on Egyptianizing trends in ancient Israel�� 611
Claudia E. Suter
Chapter 43: An unprovenanced inscribed stone macehead �� 625
Nathan Wasserman
Chapter 44: Topographic imagery in pictorial art �� 631
Irit Ziffer

Index �� 656

iii

Chapter 9:
Gods, rulers, and death�
Nonverbal expressions and group identity in Syro-Anatolian
and Assyrian monumental art1
Ludovico Portuese
Università degli Studi di Messina, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract. From a sociological perspective, nonverbal expressions can communicate much, ranging from political to religious
sentiments. At the same time, nonverbal expressions can take on even greater significance in different contexts: they may
galvanize a sense of group identity because they imply sharing and collaboration among individuals, who evolve the capacity
to demarcate group membership through symbolic markers, such as gestures, body movements, proxemic, and the like. Hence,
nonverbal expressions can play a role in maintaining social and psychological order and can become a clear marker of collective
identity.
Cultural contact between Syro-Anatolian states and the Assyrian empire during the earlier first millennium BCE is known to be
notoriously intensive, involving many aspects and affecting material culture, social practices, and social structures to varying
degrees. Different kinds of cultural contact may have initiated processes of self-reflection within the collective, or they may have
had the potential to induce cultural change. On the material level, this encounter can bring about different effects, ranging from
spontaneous rejection to acceptance of specific visual motifs.
This article provides an examination and comparison of visual representations of submission and drinking gestures in SyroAnatolian and Assyrian monumental art, in order to highlight the ways in which these visual motifs were rejected or were
appropriated and re-instrumentalized by both parties. It is concluded that the interaction between Syro-Anatolian and Assyrian
art reveals: 1) a dialectic between the acceptance and rejection of specific visual motifs, and 2) a conscious formation and
protection of nonverbal expressions as signs of collective identity.
Keywords: Nonverbal expressions, Gestures, Social identity theory, Cultural appropriation, Syro-Anatolian states, Assyrian
empire.

Communication experts have observed that less
than a third of the meaning transferred during a
personal conversation between individuals comes
from the words that are spoken (Gyasi et al. 2015: 51).
Nonverbal communication, which makes up the rest,
is defined as ‘the transfer and exchange of messages
in any and all modalities that do not involve words’
(Matsumoto et al. 2013: 4). In fact, no discussion of
communication is complete without the inclusion of
nonverbal behaviors (e.g., facial expressions, gestures,
loudness or tone of voice, body language, proxemics
or personal space, eye gaze, haptics, appearance), that
is often hard to be aware of in daily life. Although
ineffable in many ways, nonverbal communication is
omnipresent and influential to the point that people
can meet strangers and glean, without any apparent
effort, a wealth of important and valid information
about them, such as their feelings, emotions,
This paper is part of the project GALATEO – Good Attitudes for Life
in Assyrian Times: Etiquette and Observance of Norms in Male and
Female Groups, which has received funding from the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under
the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101027543. The
information contained in this article reflects only the author’s view.
An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the Rencontre
Assyriologique Internationale 66 (Frankfurt, Mainz, July 26, 2022).

thoughts, personality, identity, sociodemographic
characteristics, conversational intentions, and much
besides (Hall and Knapp 2013: 3). Yet, even though
nonverbal expressions can be reliable parameters for
understanding different aspects of an individual or a
group of individuals, scholars have hardly recognized
nonverbal communicative acts as an essential means
of contact between different worlds – the divine, the
human, and the netherworld.2 Above all, studies seem
to have neglected the fundamental contribution that
sociology may offer to this area of research. Nonverbal
expressions have recently been evaluated by sociologists
as purveyors of identity, in the same way as symbols,
rituals, dresses, costumes, behaviors. This aspect
Seminal in this field is the volume by Mayer I. Gruber (1980), who
carried out a resolutely comparative approach to nonverbal language
in textual sources, seeking functional and semantic cognates in
Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Hebrew (see also Gruber 1975). Later scholars,
also relying on iconographic evidence, have similarly focused on
specific contexts in which nonverbal communication took place, such
as the approach to the divine (Ornan 2005; Frechette 2012; Strawn
2015; Portuese 2024) and the audience with the king (Gabelmann
1984; Cifarelli 1998; Zgoll 2003; Portuese 2020; see Goldman 1990 for a
very general and descriptive analysis of Assyrian gestures). Work on
hand gestures in particular, with a focus on the Northwestern Semitic
literature and the Hebrew Bible, has also been carried out by Calabro
2013, 2014a, and 2014b.

Mortals, Deities and Divine Symbols (Archaeopress 2025) : 111–126

Mortals, Deities and Divine Symbols
Spanish. Manners thus identified classes and grounded
the distinction between a peasant and a nobleman.5 The
second set of examples is contemporary. The fingers
held together in a vertical orientation, often referred
to as the Italian hand gesture ‘cosa vuoi?’ (what do
you want?) and which is used to express disagreement,
frustration, or disbelief, is nowadays synonymous
with Italian identity and anyone can make this gesture
as a way of pretending to be Italian. Another recent
example is the Trump fist pump: not only do Trump
supporters share a common identity by their support
of Donald Trump, but they have a nonverbal gesture as
an outward sign of their group identity (Garcia 2021).

should not only stimulate researchers to approach
evidence which hints at nonverbal expressions, but also
invites one to reconsider the possible ways through
which nonverbal communication was fundamental in
linking, dividing, or distinguishing groups and cultures
in the ancient Western Asia. Such an approach raises
the following new questions for further research:
• Were nonverbal expressions used to convey
group identity?
• Could nonverbal language be transmitted from
one culture to another? If so, for what reasons?
• Were dominant nonverbal expressions (e.g.
gestures) always produced by the dominant
power?

These examples show that a particular set of nonverbal
signs can communicate identity or the belonging to
a group. Further, the simultaneous communication
of a nonverbal group expression can unify and blend
its members by putting everyone on the same page,
in the same moment, at the same time. The reason
why there is a clear interdependency between group
identity and nonverbal communication is closely
linked to what identity is and how it can be expressed.
In this regard, as a scholar of the ancient Western Asia,
I find myself pleasantly bewildered by the incredible
and fascinating, yet intricate web of works populating
sociological studies when it comes to searching for
an answer to these questions. The theoretical notions
that I consider appropriate for this essay date back to
the 1970s, having their roots in Henri Tajfel’s Social
Identity Theory. According to Tajfel, social identity
is more important than personal identity and, since
groups give us a sense of social identity, a sense of
belonging to the social world, the theory describes the
belonging one has to a group as an important source of
pride and self-esteem (Hogg 2016; Trepte and Loy 2017).
This perceived difference between social and personal
identity, and the superior pull of the latter, was later
emphasized by means of the self-categorization theory
which asserted that, although the two work together
to drive an individual’s behavior, an individual within
a group becomes depersonalized because he/she is
seen through and categorized according to the defining
attributes of the in-group, describing and prescribing
group-appropriate ways to think, feel, and behave
(Turner et al. 1987; Hogg 2016: 8–9; Trepte and Loy
2017). These two theories offer an explanation of the

I happily dedicate the present essay to Tallay Ornan
– who has contributed so much to our understanding
of ancient Western Asia imagery. It is my intention to
pursue here the value(s) associated with submission
and with drinking gestures depicted in Syro-Anatolian
and Assyrian visual representations.3 I shall argue that
the nonverbal expressions which are portrayed on
these representations show the identity of the culture
which has produced them, and are understandable only
when one given culture met or clashed with another.
By relying on a sociological theoretical background
elaborated within social identity theory, I shall further
suggest that nonverbal language may have been
conceived as an intangible commodity that could be
appropriated for political reasons in the context of
power imbalances.
Cultural appropriation and cultural protection
To begin with, I would like to recall two practical
examples from different historical and cultural
perspectives that may help the reader to see the
close and undeniable connection between identity
and nonverbal communication. The first comes from
the courtesy books that bloomed in the 16th century
and that were mostly written for an aristocratic
audience.4 Through instructions on manners, such
books established gestures as the most visible sign
of difference between the nobility and the common
population and created the conditions for separating
identities not only between social classes but also
between aristocracies, such as the French and the

This notion was eminently described by Mikolaj Rej, a seventeenth
century Polish writer of noble origins, who wrote: ‘You can tell
the attitudes and inclinations of people from their comportment.
Because when a rustic or cowardly person wants to say something
seriously, what do you see? He squirms, picks his fingers, strokes his
beard, pulls faces, makes eyes and splits every word in three. A noble
man, on the contrary, has a clear mind and a gentle posture; he has
nothing to be ashamed of. Therefore, in appearance, in his words,
and in comportment he is like an eagle which without any fear looks
straight at the sun, or like a commander-in-chief who by his noble
posture and proud bearing inspires his soldiers and subordinates to
courageous acts’ (quoted in Bogucka 1991: 191).

Here I follow Osborne 2012. Other well-known terms are LateHittite/Späthethitisch (Orthmann 1971), Neo-Hittite (Bryce 2009),
Syro-Hittite (Gilibert 2011; Bonatz 2016), or Levantine–Anatolian
(Cornelius 2019).
For a list of courtesy books, see Portuese and Scalisi 2021: 129–130
and, especially, Paternoster 2022: 34–38. Courtesy books were
basically part of a general effort to ‘civilize’ the upper classes, who
were the first to be influenced by a new ethic of transforming human
behavior, in order to subordinate the lower classes at a later stage.
For the reasons of the so-called ‘civilizing process’, see Elias 1978 and
Muir 2005: 125–134.

112

Ludovico Portuese | Chapter 9: Gods, rulers, and death. Nonverbal expressions and group identity
object through commodification, and sells it back to the
original culture.7

above-mentioned examples by showing how social
structural elements not only impact the individual’s
behavior but also the ways in which behaviors occur.
The consequences one must draw are that social
identity and its categorization has the potential to
affect the functions of communication (Yilmaz 2020:
213; see also Chen and Bargh 1997; Gyasi et al. 2015).

The second phenomenon is what social psychologists
refer to as a form of protecting the integrity of a group
identity when a social identity is alleged to be under
threat. According to this assumption, people are more
likely to retreat into their group identity when the group
is under threat or in conflict with other groups. In these
circumstances, to quote the social psychologist Russell
Spears (2021: 380), ‘group members are likely to selfstereotype and conform more to the prototypical ingroup position, to close ranks and perceive greater ingroup as well as out-group homogeneity, and generally
to show more group loyalty, avoiding individual
mobility to escape the group even when possible and
individually advantageous.’ My understanding of this
notion is that group identity and its attributes may
become stronger and more evident if it is threatened in
some way. In the struggle of affirming itself, the group
attempts to conform more notably to the prototypes,
meaning the fuzzy sets of interrelated attributes
(attitudes, behaviors, customs, dress and even
nonverbal expressions) that capture overall similarities
within the group and overall differences from other
groups (Hogg 2016: 8).

But, to return to the examples of courtesy books and
their social impact on distinguishing classes, and the
contemporary gestures of being Italian or Trumpist to
indicate nationality and political orientation, it appears
clear to me that these identities are constructed with
reference to the, or an, ‘other’, an ‘outsider.’ This
aspect has been particularly noted by the sociologist
Stuart Hall, who asserted that identities are constantly
subject to processes of change and transformation,
and, above all, that they are constructed through
difference. To quote Hall (2000: 18), ‘[t]he unity, the
internal homogeneity, which the term identity treats as
foundational, is not a natural, but a constructed form of
closure, every identity naming as its necessary, even if
silenced and unspoken other, that which it ‘lacks’.’
Now, what happens when two different identities meet,
or clash, is unpredictable, and the potential social,
cultural, political, or economic consequences require
specific analyses. It is in this context that I propose to
examine two phenomena that may have taken place
when the Assyrian empire and the Syro-Anatolian
culture met.

Having set out these theoretical premises, what I want
to underscore in the case-studies that follow is, first, the
necessity of a methodological approach to nonverbal
communication in visual representations from the
ancient Western Asia; and, second, an insistence upon
the social phenomena of adopting specific nonverbal
expressions by dominant and powerful cultures in the
ancient Western Asia.

The first phenomenon, which has been the subject of
increased interest in recent years, is commonly called
‘cultural appropriation.’ Without delving into the issue
of the concept of culture (in this regard, see Arya 2021),
in its basic meaning ‘cultural appropriation’ refers to
the taking, or appropriating, tangible or intangible
items of a culture or group from the members of
another culture. The acts of cultural appropriation
are quite diverse and may include artistic styles and
representations, stories, poems, lands, artefacts,
intellectual property, or religious symbols. What is
essential to the definition of cultural appropriation is the
existence of an asymmetrical relation of power between
the two cultures, such that the dominant culture takes
from the subordinate culture, with the consequence
that the appropriated artefact or idea is used by the
former (Young 2008: 5; Arya 2021). Integral to cultural
appropriation is the process of commodification, which
denotes the means by which cultural goods or ideas
are transformed into commodities or objects of trade.6
One effect of this phenomenon is the so-called pizzaeffect, which is seen when a dominant culture takes
from a less powerful culture, repackages the cultural

Raising the fist(s)
The famous façade of the Northwest Palace of
Ashurnasirpal II at Kalhu shows two lines of tributebearers and Assyrian officials. The foreigners have
been unanimously interpreted as westerners coming
from Patina or the Syrian coast, and the gesture they
perform has been the subject of extensive discussion by
scholars (Figure 1).8 Megan Cifarelli (1998: 216) noted
that this gesture recalls the one which is often enacted
by Assyrian kings before the symbols of gods and is
known as labān appi – literally ‘to touch the nose’ – which
consists in raising one’s hand in front of one’s face with
the thumb fully extended. Although I have previously
expressed support for Cifarelli’s idea (Portuese 2020:
118), I must slightly diverge from this reading of the
gesture or, at least, correct it in some way. For, in fact,

The term was coined by Bharati (1970) with reference to the reevaluation of the Indian cultural forms in India (e.g., Sanskrit
religious and poetic literature) after being appreciated in the West.
See also Arya 2021: 5–6.
See Portuese 2020: 69–70 and related past bibliography.

For an exploration of cultural appropriation and commodification
especially in art, see Root 1996.

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Figure 1. Tribute-bearers (slab 7), from the throne room’s façade of the Northwest Palace at
Kalhu (© British Museum 124562).

the labān appi gesture was introduced in Assyria later,
during the reign of Sennacherib, and was probably a
Babylonian gesture in origin, as Tallay Ornan (2005: 83,
86, 118–119) has observed. Thus, I find myself persuaded
to look to the West as the source used by Ashurnasirpal
II’s sculptors to depict these foreigners. In particular, it
seems that raising the right fist is a reverence gesture
performed in the Syro-Anatolian region already in the
11th century BCE and is found as performed by Taita,
king of Palistin, in front of the storm god on a relief
from Aleppo (Figure 2; Hawkins 2011: 40–45). The same
gesture is also later performed by Warpalawa, king of
Tuwana, to worship the god Tarhunza (Hawkins 2000:
516–518, pls. 292–295). In much a similar way, I believe
that the two fists raised by the deities in procession
and by the humans in an audience scene from Karatepe
(Figure 3) represent the same gesture (Çambel and
Özyar 2003: pls. 84–91, 94, 146–147). Finally, the scribe
standing in front of the king Barrakib on his orthostat
relief performs Taita’s gesture (Orthmann 1971: pl. 63,
Zincirli F/1a). Therefore, what we see is a peculiarity of

Syro-Anatolian art which features in monuments from
the 11th to the 8th century BCE. The gesture might
have already been introduced in Assyria in the 11th
century as it seems to appear on the White Obelisk, and
was later adopted by Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser
III (Börker-Klähn 1982: pl. 132b, fifth register form
the top). In fact, both kings ventured to the West, and
Shalmaneser even reports that he visited Aleppo to
make sacrifices in front of the god Adad in 853 BCE
(RIMA 3 A.0.102.2: ii86b–87).9 There, Shalmaneser III
probably even had the chance to come across Taita’s
monument, and possibly to repeat and emulate the
gesture to honor the deity. However, while Shalmaneser
III indiscriminately used this gesture to represent any
subject on his monuments,10 Ashurnasirpal II seems to
have adopted it to represent only foreigners from the

For the targets of the western campaign of Ashurnasirpal II, see
Liverani 1992: 73–80, 95–96.
10
Marcus 1987: pl. 20; Bär 1996: 219–220; Schachner 2007: 152.
However, Israelites and Patineans on the Black Obelisk perform the
same gesture (Börker-Klähn 1982: 152 D2-152 D5).

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Figure 2. Taita, king of Palistin, in front of the Storm-God of Aleppo (reliefs ALEPPO 5 and ALEPPO 6), from
the Temple of the Storm-God of Aleppo, Aleppo citadel (https://www.wmf.org/project/
temple-storm-god-citadel-aleppo).

West, since individuals who raise their fists before the
face have the same attire and bring similar goods.11
Thus, my feeling is that sculptors recognized this as
a nonverbal gesture that was typically performed
by westerners: Assyrians saw the groups of people
populating what we today commonly refer to as the
Syro-Anatolian states as a distinct and clearly defined
entity through fuzzy sets of interrelated attributes,
such as attitudes, behaviors, customs, dress, and
especially gestures.12

Now, without attempting to define the identity of these
states, which is a complex matter and to which other
studies have already contributed,13 I suggest that the
raising-fist(s) gesture was the most easily perceivable
form of nonverbal language which identified a group
of people living in the West. Following Izak Cornelius
(2019) in his essay on material imagery of Sam’al
monuments and the issue of Aramaean identity, I
would add that, when it comes to the question of
what constitutes the identity of a group, nonverbal
expressions must be taken into account as a means used
by others (Assyrians) to see and define another group
(westerners or Syro-Anatolian states). Nevertheless, it
would be misleading to believe that a similar gesture
was appropriated by Assyrians and displayed through
their monumental art out of a naïve interest towards
the other and otherness. Rather, I believe that Assyrians
fully grasped the significance of the Syro-Anatolian
gesture, which was accordingly not deprived of its
symbolic meanings.

11
The gesture was performed by similarly clad foreigners depicted
on reliefs, which once might have decorated the West Wing of the
Northwest Palace (WFL–21 lower register, and perhaps WFL–27;
Barnett and Falkner 1962: 25, pls. 119, 124; Paley and Sobolewski 1987:
78–79, pl. 5) and whose context suggests that the events depicted
were related to the Mediterranean campaign (Portuese 2020: 169). In
much a similar way, some of the foreigners depicted on the Rassam
Obelisk probably come from the West according to the nature of the
goods they are bringing (Reade 1980). Another group of foreigners
performing the same gesture was depicted on the Balawat gates and
probably come from the West too (Curtis and Tallis 2008: 43, figs.
33–34).
12
This assumption was already touched upon by Wäfler (1975: 85),
with reference to the 8th-century monument at Ivriz, but later
rejected by Bär (1996: 219–220). However, both authors had no
knowledge of the monument of Taita, discovered in 2003, which
suggests that a similar gesture was already known in the SyroAnatolian region back in the 11th century. Further support for this
thesis comes from the stele of the governor of Mari and Suhu Shamshresh-uṣur (second quarter of the 8th century). Here, notwithstanding
the several Assyrian features, scholars have highlighted a number of
formal and religious aspects which may lead one to define the stele
as ‘aramäische Kunst’ (Magen 1986: 50–51; Mayer-Opificius 1995; for

The gesture of raising the fist(s) before the face in
Syro-Anatolian monumental art has been described
the inscription on the stele, see RIMB 2 S.0.1001). This makes it clear
how the image of the governor replicates exactly the image of Taita
on his relief from Aleppo, which shows the governor standing in front
of deities, raising his right fist before mouth and nose.
13
E.g. Bunnens 2016; the Foreword and numerous papers in
Berlejung et al. 2017.

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Mortals, Deities and Divine Symbols
104–105, pls. 146–147). As to the height at which
the fist(s) is held, this can vary according to
representation: on the Aleppo and Ivriz reliefs,
as well as on the Barrakib relief, the performer
raises his fist(s) to the height of the nose and
mouth, whereas on the Karatepe reliefs the
performers extend forward their fist and raise
their right hand at the chest level.
• Sequence of acts. We are not informed about the
acts that preceded or followed the gesture. One
can only speculate that the raising of the fist(s)
was the first, or at least the most prominent and
symbolic gesture performed by a subordinate
towards the authority, and could be the last one
before proffering words, either in the form of a
report or a prayer.
• Context. As to the iconographic context, the
gesture was performed during what we may call
an audience scene or a meeting. More complex
meetings can be seen at Karatepe, where, in one
instance, perhaps an authority together with
a group of men move towards the divine triad
(Çambel and Özyar 2003: 83, pls. 90–91), and in
another example the meeting may involve more
than one authority, perhaps a group of leaders
(Figure 3). As to the archaeological context,
it seems that audience scenes were not placed
in hidden or inaccessible locations; gateways
(Karatepe) and sacred places (Aleppo temple
and Ivriz relief) are the most common.16
• Individual or group gesture. It seems that the
gesture is usually performed by an important
figure, such as a king. However, when a group of
individuals is involved, the multiple members are
shown performing the gesture simultaneously,
as in the audience scene of Karatepe (Figure 3).

by various interpreters as a gesture of adoration or
reverence.14 However, cracking the original meaning
of past nonverbal expressions is not an easy task. A
gesture cannot easily convey its exact meaning outside
of the context in which it is performed and without an
awareness of the identity of the individuals involved. In
this sense, I align myself with Mayer I. Gruber (1980: 289
footnote 1) who, in reference to gestures and postures
denoting obeisance, states that ‘[c]onnotations such as
reverence or astonishment are supplied by the context
rather than by the gesture itself.’ On the importance
of context, David M. Calabro (2013) has more recently
offered a theoretical approach which evaluates
particularly the hand gesture semiotically, meaning its
referential (symbolic or iconic) and indexical properties.
Referential properties may include the shape, motion,
and pose of the hand, the body including the gesturing
hand, and the physical setting in which the gesture
takes place. Indexical properties may include the aspect
of the context that is indexed, such as the physical
states of participants and of objects, the social roles
of participants, the ritual progression or the setting.
In light of this, the Syro-Anatolian gesture can be said
to be characterized by specific dynamics and features
which can be analyzed and categorized as follows:
• Social status of participants. The gesture is usually
performed by a subordinate (performer)
towards an authority (beneficiary), either a king
or a deity (Figure 2). However, at Karatepe both
humans in an audience scene and the deities
in a procession towards a divine triad perform
the same gesture (Çambel and Özyar 2003: 83,
pls. 84–87 and 91), and in the audience scene a
man reciprocates the gesture performed by the
group of men he faces (Figure 3).15 Therefore,
the performers of the gesture are always highranking individuals, such as leaders, kings, and
minor deities.
• Distance, position, and position of the fists. There
seems to be no great physical distance between
the subordinate and the authority and no
physical form of separation between the
two. Subordinates usually face the authority.
However, on a relief from Karatepe which
portrays a divine figure standing on a bull, the
subordinate, who is smaller in stature, turns
his back to the deity (Çambel and Özyar 2003:

To sum up so far, some preliminary observations can
be drawn. First, the gesture probably identified the
social status of the participants, since it was performed
by rulers, leaders, and perhaps minor deities. On
the available visual evidence, when an individual
performing the gesture faces an authority, there is no
object or boundary, but an empty space, which suggests
that no object was associated with one participant,
either symbolically or through physical contact, nor
did the gesture serve to focus attention on the object.
In addition, the distance between the individuals facing
each other does not vary according to the relative
social status of the participants and both subordinates
and authorities face each other. However, in only one
example from Karatepe does the subordinate perform
the gesture without facing the deity but with his back
turned to it (Çambel and Özyar 2003: pls. 146–147). As

‘Adorationsszenen’ or ‘Adorationsgestus’ (Orthmann 1971;
similarly Çambel and Özyar 2003: 83, who define the gesture also as a
greeting gesture); ‘Ehrfurchtgestus’ or ‘gesture of reverence’ (Magen
1986: 51; see also Mayer-Opificius 1995: 335; Hawkins 2000: 312, 516,
and similarly Bär 1996: 219–220 and Schachner 2007: 152).
15
Çambel and Özyar (2003: 81) cautiously hypothesized that the
scene might be connected with a historical event, in particular the
alliance between the Cilician Sanduarri and Abdi-Milkutti, king of
Sidon (see also Winter 1979). Viewed in this light, the scene might
represent a peaceful meeting like the one depicted on Shalmanerser
III’s throne base.

For the archaeological context, see Çambel and Özyar 2003
(Karatepe), Kohlmeyer 2009; Hawkins 2011: fig. 1 (Aleppo); Harmanşah
2014 (Ivriz).

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same authority was mutually recognized. This suggests
that the gesture was basically a gesture of respect,
and perhaps also conceived as a reverential greeting
gesture. In addition, I would point out that the Karatepe
relief, where the gesture is addressed in the opposite
direction to the deity, suggests that directionality was
perhaps not fundamental to the meaning of the gesture
and that the performance of the raising-fist(s) gesture
itself in proximity to the authority indicated not only
the implicit subordination of the performer, but also
the protection which the performer received from the
beneficiary. In sum, the Syro-Anatolian raising-fist(s)
gesture indicated 1) respect, perhaps in the form of a
reverential greeting gesture, and 2) subordination and
protection to the beneficiary of the gesture. All these
meanings, I believe, were grasped by the Assyrian king,
his scribes, and sculptors, which were then manifested
and conveyed through the palace façade. In this way
western leaders respected and reverentially greeted
Ashurnasirpal II, recognized his authority, and came
under his power and protection.
But there is more. Ashurnasirpal II did not limit himself
to adopting the Syro-Anatolian gesture but also to
appropriating another motif which was not at home
in the Assyrian iconographic repertoire: the long staff.
No Assyrian king before Ashurnasirpal II is portrayed
holding a long staff, and Ashurnasirpal II’s successors
up to Sargon II are all depicted with this royal emblem,
with the consequence that the long staff became a
symbol of Assyrian kingship (Portuese 2014; 2017).
However, its origin is, in my view, western. Beginning
with the 10th century stele of the ruler Laramas
(Figure 4) from Maraş up to the late 8th century reliefs
of Zincirli, all the rulers hold a long staff.17 In this
regard, Luwian inscriptions show that the logogram
LIGNUM, meaning ‘wood; ruler’s staff ’, is used to
determine objects made of wood and words denoting
‘authority’ (Hawkins 2000: 99). This shows that the long
staff was originally held by authorities ruling SyroAnatolian states and was an identity symbol not only
of power but also of a group. Being appropriated by the
Assyrian empire and represented as being held by the
Assyrian king, especially on the so-called Banquet Stele
(Portuese 2014: figs. 1–2) located next to the exit of the
throne room from which visitors left the room, the
long staff turned the Assyrian king into a western ruler
towards whom the same western foreigners now move
as though he was their new ruler.18 What the Assyrian
sculptors did can be described as a pizza-effect, because
a dominant culture – the Assyrian empire – took this

Figure 3. Audience scene (reliefs 3s–5s), from the
North Gate, Right Room, of Karatepe-Aslantaş
(courtesy of Tayfun Bilgin).

to the position of the fists, I am inclined to believe that
the position did not affect the meaning or value of the
gesture. Finally, although the gesture is apparently not
included in a sequence of acts, one can only speculate
whether it was enacted once one was near the authority
and just before words were proffered; perhaps, after
performing the gesture, a report, a request, or a prayer
was proffered.
Considering these elements resulting from a semiotic
analysis of the visual evidence, I would like to infer
some conclusions on the meaning of the Syro-Anatolian
gesture. The raising-fist(s) gesture was an essential
nonverbal expression used to identify the social status
of the performer(s) as powerful individuals, and to
publicly recognize the identity and power of the
beneficiary as an authority. In its basic meaning, it was
a nonverbal way to establish the role and relationships
between the two. If the gesture was performed by a
single individual towards a beneficiary, the gesture
highlighted a power imbalance. In contrast, if the
gesture was reciprocated, the two were equal, and the

For the date of Laramas’ stele, see Hawkins 2000: 251–255. Rulers
holding the long staff are also attested on reliefs dating to the 10th,
9th, and 8th centuries BCE from Arslantepe (e.g. Bonatz 2000: pl. 1, A
4), Karkemish (e.g. Hawkins 2000: 123–124), Çapalı (Bonatz 2000: pls.
16, C 43) and Tuleil (Hawkins 2000: 382).
18
On the use of Luwian artistic practices in the Banquet Stele of
Ashurnasirpal II, see Bunnens 2005.
17

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Mortals, Deities and Divine Symbols

Figure 4. Stele of king Laramas, from Maraş (courtesy of
Tayfun Bilgin).

Figure 5. Funerary stele from Maraş (courtesy of
Tayfun Bilgin).

iconographic motif from a subject culture, repackaged
the identity object through commodification, and sold
it back to the original culture by representing it. This
pizza-effect involved a process of re-enculturation
because the cultural and identity product needed to be
re-established in the culture from which it originated,
as it has been dislocated.

the 48 drinking scenes I have collected, for some reason
only seven represent an exception to the rule, where
individuals hold the cup or bowl with their fingertips.20
Now, if we compare these scenes with the famous
drinking gestures depicted on Assyrian reliefs,
from Ashurnasirpal II through Sargon II and up to
Assurbanipal (Figures 8–9), we will note that both the
king and the banqueters balance a bowl or beaker in
one hand, making use of all the fingertips. As far as I

Drinking gestures
The second case study takes as its focus the drinking
scene depicted on Syro-Anatolian monuments, which
we can reasonably acknowledge to be one of the most
peculiar representations of Syro-Anatolian art (e.g.
Figures 5–6). In this scene, statues, orthostat reliefs, and
funerary steles show an individual, a man or a woman,
holding a cup or bowl in his or her hand. The element
common to the whole iconographic repertoire is not
only the presence of a drinking container but the way
in which the object is held: it usually rests on the palm
of the hand and is held firm by all fingers in a kind of
V-shaped grip. The way in which the container is held
may slightly vary, as in the Barrakib and Katumuwa
steles (Figure 7), but the main feature remains, that is
to say that the object is firmly held by the hand.19 Of

pious gesture performed by Assyrian kings as a consequence of the
increasing Neo-Assyrian influence in the region.
20
Orthmann 1971: pl. 42, Malatya B/3; pl. 56, Zincirli A/6; pl. 57,
Zincirli B/3; pl. 67, Zincirli K/11; Bonatz 2000: pl. 3, A9–A10; pl. 4, A 13;
pl. 5, B1–B2, B4–B5; pl. 6, B6, B10; pl. 7, B12; pl. 10, C13–C15; pl. 11, C16–
C17, C19; pl. 12, C22, C25; pl. 13, C26–C28, C30; pl. 14, C31–C33; pl. 15,
C35; pl. 16, C40–C42, C43; pl. 17, C44, C46; pl. 18, C48; pl. 21, C62; Çambel
and Özyar 2003: pls. 110–111, 134–135, 204–207. The exceptions come
from Darende (early 11th–10th century BCE; Orthmann 1971: pl. 6,
Darende 1; Hawkins 2000: 304–305) and Elbistan (late 9th–late 8th
century BCE; Orthmann 1971: pl. 7, Elbistan 1), Karatepe (end of
8th–beginning of 7th century BCE; Çambel and Özyar 2003: 141–144;
pls. 142–143, 166–167), Karkemish (late 10th–early 9th century BCE;
Orthmann 1971: pl. 21, Karkemis Ab/4), Maraş (875–800 BCE and 825–
700 BCE; Bonatz 2000; pl. 19, C 53, pl. 21, C 61). It seems to me that
there is no rule underlying these exceptions, since the change in the
drinking manner occurs in the same sites (e.g. Karatepe, Karkemish,
Maraş) where the customary drinking manner is the one typical of
the Syro-Anatolian art. In this context, I would point out that the
shape of the container does not affect the drinking manner. Whether
large or small, the hand tends to firmly grip the container.

Struble and Herrmann (2009: 23) suspect that the gesture of the
extended index finger may have been an indirect artistic echo of the

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Figure 6. Banquet scene from Arslantepe (courtesy of Tayfun Bilgin).

know, the only description of such a mode of drinkconsumption comes from Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, in the
context of an imaginary discussion between the young
Cyrus the Great and his grandfather Astyages, King of
the Medes. This passage reads as follows: ‘And Astyages
replied with a jest: ‘Do you not see,’ said he, ‘how nicely
and gracefully he pours the wine?’ Now the cupbearers
of those kings perform their office with fine airs; they
pour in the wine with neatness and then present the
goblet, conveying it with three fingers, and offer it
in such a way as to place it most conveniently in the
grasp of the one who is to drink’ (Xen. Cyr. 1.3.8). The
description refers to a particularly elegant practice in
the Achaemenid court but, as Margaret Miller (2011)
notes, the practice of holding a drinking bowl on fingers
was an Achaemenid Persian refinement of an older
Assyrian manner of drinking, which was transferred
from the Persian court across an impressive geographic
range from Georgia to Egypt and even Italy.
Grasping a container or balancing it on one’s fingertips
can be seen simply as the result of an artistic rendering
of two different formal ways of drinking in the Assyrian
and Syro-Anatolian cultures. However, I believe that
such a difference was less formal than it may first
appear and that two different reasons can be proposed:
the representation of the ‘Assyrian drinking etiquette’
was strictly linked to the social value of drinking, the

Figure 7. Katumuwa stele from Zincirli-Sam’al. (https://
warehouse-13-artifact-database.fandom.com/wiki/
Kuttamuwa’s_Stele).

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Mortals, Deities and Divine Symbols

Figure 8. Banquet scene from room 2 (slab 17) of Sargon II’s royal palace at Dur-Sharrukin (Botta and
Flandin 1849: pl. 64).

meaning of the drink, and the material the container
was made of, whereas the representation of the ‘SyroAnatolian drinking etiquette’ had its roots in the
funerary practices and the provision of food and drink
to the deceased year by year.

20 21: 13–14),21 used in the purification and anointment
of the body and prescribed to heal the king (SAA 10
2; SAA 10 196). Finally, the importance of wine was
highlighted by the containers in which it was poured
and consumed: these were mostly luxury items made
of gold, silver, bronze, or were animal-headed beakers
made of silver (Figure 8; Stronach 1996: 194–196; Gaspa
2014: 25–33; 56–58; Hunt 2015: 186–191). Considering
all these aspects together, the Assyrian visual evidence
primarily presents the drinking as a social act which
is governed by cultural rules and expectations, such
as the organization of banqueters, the type of drink
used, the time and setting where the drinking event
takes place, the partakers and their social roles. The
representation of drinking also appears to be intimately
associated with the institution of hospitality, placing
the host (king) in a position of superiority and the
guest in a position of subordination. The proffering of
drink can highlight the king’s capacity for agricultural
production and determines his ability to host great
social events and to gain the prestige necessary to
become an influential member of the community. This
suggests that if, on the one hand, drinking functions
to facilitate social interaction, on the other it can
promote social differentiation and inequality, tensions

If we look at the visual evidence, we may notice some
important differences between the idea of depicting
drinking in the Assyrian society and in the SyroAnatolian region. Within the Assyrian imagery, drinking
always appears as a shared moment, in which several
individuals partake, either as servants or banqueters.
The king, although missing in some instances, is
usually present and actively participates in the event
as commensal and donor at the same time (Portuese
2020: 81–86). The king is seated at a distance and his
role is often emphasized by the chair on which he sits
(Figure 9). Nevertheless, both king and banqueters are
all equated by the same gesture, that is to say the rising
of the beaker or cup. The drink consumed is probably
wine, which was greatly appreciated as an emblem of
power and prosperity at the Assyrian court (Stronach
1996) and this may have been one of the reasons why
sharing the drink was a particular social act. As is well
known, wine was also connected to the divine world
(SAA 3 7: 15), included among the substances used in
rituals performed in temples as a drink to be poured
into censers or libated (SAA 20 1: 24; SAA 20 3: r 10; SAA

21
Wine is also poured over the killed lions on Assurbanipal’s relief,
where the king holds the bowl on his fingertips (RINAP 5/1 58; Collins
2008: 134–135).

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Figure 9. Detail of an Assyrian ivory plaque showing a royal banquet scene (Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York 59.107.22).

of social conflict and contradiction. In this sense, the
representation of drinking can be used to remind and
mark the status of a group and differentiate individuals
or groups on the basis of role and prestige (Dietler 1990:
360–372).

into a social act with the dead rather than with the
living. Wine is offered, according to the texts carved on
the Katumuwa stele, and is considered as an important
product in the economy of south-eastern Anatolia
and thus a prestigious regional symbol (Pardee 2009:
53–54; 2014: 47; Bonatz 2014: 40; 2016: 181). However,
here wine and its possession/reception does not need
to be flaunted but is simply received by the deceased,
whose soul lives in the stele (Pardee 2009: 59, 69).22
The independent soul could only outlive the physical
body when offered food and drink. This suggests how
the container held by the deceased on the stele was
essential for the survival of the soul’s afterlife and
the integrity and continuity of the immediate family.
This is emphasized not only in the iconography of the
funerary monuments, but also through the depiction
of the heir serving the mother or father with offerings,
and/or through the demonstration of the relationship
of the person who had the monument erected to the
deceased (Bonatz 2016: 182). These notions indicate
that the ‘drinking etiquette’ which we see in SyroAnatolian funerary monuments, and which was then
extended to other monuments, was not part of a set
of formalities, belonging to the external trappings of
life, or the result of an artistic representation, but a
substantial gesture born from an afterlife belief which
aimed at highlighting the strict connection between
the holding of the cup and the receiving of offerings. In
these depictions a connection between body and object
was made, which was visually translated into a specific

In sum, in the Assyrian society wine was promptly and
duly flaunted through its depiction as a drink shared and
consumed through luxury items (Stronach 1996: 198).
In this regard, I believe that the best and most natural
way to flaunt this will was to physically exhibit the
container by holding it on one’s fingertips. This elegant
mannerism was the corresponding physical way to
display the access to wine and its social consequences.
None of these aspects can be applied to the SyroAnatolian imagery since, with very few exceptions,
drinking is presented as an individualistic event: a
person grabs a container, sometimes being served by
another person depicted in the relief. The consequence is
that drinking scenes focus on the individual who grasps
a cup or bowl rather than on a group of individuals.
Drinking is here apparently deprived of its social value,
cancelling or obscuring any reference to the social roles
of the donor and the guest, and the implications linked
to the notion of hospitality accordingly. However, the
drinking is simply reframed in a new context, since it
is mostly shown on funerary monuments which, in the
first millennium BCE, emerge as a particular class of
artwork in the region from south-eastern Anatolia to
the northern and western parts of modern Syria. Here,
the guest corresponds to the deceased, receiving an
offering of food and wine from the heir, who in turn
becomes the donor (Bonatz 2016). Drinking is turned

As noted by Bonatz (2014: 40), ‘[t]he manner in which they hold
the vessel in front of their faces underlines the active role the
deceased play in the ritual.’

121

Mortals, Deities and Divine Symbols

gesture to preserve the integrity of the ancestors of a
group through offerings after death. In other words,
holding the cup meant holding on to eternity.23

Assyrian and the Syro-Anatolian cultures that allows us
to see which nonverbal expressions can be considered
properly Assyrian and which Syro-Anatolian. Yet,
the possibility of distinguishing different nonverbal
expressions is not the only consequence of the cultural
contact we can detect. If there is a power imbalance
between the two group identities, this can have many
kinds of repercussions and involve deprivations of
various kinds. In this context, what I have tried to
show is that the inherent power asymmetry between
the Assyrian and the Syro-Anatolian cultures may have
caused 1) the majority/dominant culture (the Assyrian
empire) to appropriate elements from the relatively
less powerful culture (the Syro-Anatolian states), and
2) the less powerful culture to strengthen and protect
its most significant identifiers. Therefore, there is
always, I would argue, a transmission and assimilation
of nonverbal language from one culture to another, but
this can become cultural appropriation in the negative
sense, when there is an evident power imbalance or an
overt and perhaps unconscious protection of one’s own
identity.

Considering these substantial differences between
Assyrian and Syro-Anatolian imageries of drinking, I feel
justified to refer to the practice of grasping a drinking
bowl or cup on Syro-Anatolian monuments as examples
of drinking etiquette which, despite the Assyrianizing
elements that feature in some western monuments, did
not change at all throughout four centuries.24 Rather, it
seems to me that Syro-Anatolian states in some respects
retreated into their group identity and thus trusted ingroup features when they were under threat and in
conflict with the Assyrian empire. In other words, this
was a gesture that galvanized the group, protected its
identity and that in no way could be appropriated by
the Assyrian empire.
Conclusions
In circling back to the first questions which I have
asked at the beginning of this essay, I will attempt to
offer some adequate answers for understanding to
what extent nonverbal communication contributes to
building and expressing a group identity.

The reason for these phenomena lies in the fact that
some elements were fully understood by the dominant
culture and thus appropriated for the purposes of
manipulation, whereas other nonverbal identifiers
were probably less understood or there was no interest
in appropriating them by the dominant culture. These
notions exclude the possibility that a specific dominant
set of nonverbal expressions, such as gestures, was
always produced by the dominant power. It is rather
more likely that the dominant power adopted and
appropriated a foreign identifier (such as with the
raising-fist gesture and the long staff), repackaged it
through commodification and re-established it in the
culture form which it originated. This new ‘sold’ object
ended up being believed to have belonged originally to
the dominant culture. Such a mechanism reinforced
the power dynamic between the two cultures, where
the Assyrian empire exerted its cultural imperialism
by shaping the values of the cultural commodity
which then became internalized or at least shared by
the culture of the lesser power. However, on the other
side, some nonverbal expressions such as the drinking
manner were protected and in no way appropriated by
the Assyrian empire. This aspect, I believe, falls within
what Virginia R. Herrmann (2018: 519–520) has called
the cultural ‘response’ in the Levant against the process
of Assyrianization, which was adopted to protect and
define the integrity of a distinctive ‘national’ culture.
In other words, if the Assyrian empire attempted to
control the West by means of punishments and rewards,
so did the Syro-Anatolian local cultures try to protect,
perhaps unconsciously, their shared identity elements
through the elevation and segregation of their high
identifiers, especially those which were aimed at

Hall’s theory has shown that group identities constantly
change and transform, and, especially, that they are
constructed through difference, through one’s relating
to the ‘other.’ This shows how in some cases a group of
individuals may build, strengthen, or overtly display its
own identity when it comes into contact with another
group. The two distinct identities are paradoxically built
on this contact, which triggers cultural, social, political,
and economic consequences. These can be reflected in
various aspects of life, including communication. The
Assyrian culture and the mix of local cultures commonly
identified under the name of Syro-Anatolian culture at
some point met during the first millennium and their
encounter led to spontaneous and forced choices at all
levels of life. The art which survives from this period
shows that some elements were the direct aftermath of
this meeting. In particular, the changes that occurred at
the level of gestures show how nonverbal expressions
could be used to convey group identity and, as
nonverbal signifiers, to send out certain messages which
represented the kind of values the group intended to
transmit. Moreover, it is the encounter between the
23
Such an eternal physical connection between the receptacle and
the individual is also evident from some burial examples from the
lower town of Tell Chuera, in North Central Syria, where the skeleton
of a girl has been found holding a bowl in front of her mouth while
drinking (Orthmann et al. 1986: 48–61, fig. 27), or from the Iron Age
cemetery at Kamid el-Loz, where drinking vessels were mainly placed
near the dead person’s head, sometimes also in his right hand (Poppa
1978: pl. 33 grave 51). For other similar examples, see Bonatz 2000: 91.
24
On ‘Assyrianized’ western monuments, see Gerlach 2000; Brown
2008; Aro 2009 and 2014; Herrmann 2018; Lovejoy 2022.

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Ludovico Portuese | Chapter 9: Gods, rulers, and death. Nonverbal expressions and group identity
preserving the past. In a sense, I agree with Herrmann’s
suggestion, with reference to the Katumuwa stele, that
the persistence of alternative local traditions should be
understood as subversive and as a form of resistance
to the monopolization of power by the king. Thus,
the details that we see in art, especially the ones that
highlight the contacts between the Assyrian empire
and the Syro-Anatolian culture, can be understood as
the result of the cultural interplay between the two
identity groups. This cultural interplay gave rise to a
careful blend of imperial and local choices which were
consciously adopted for the sake of compliance and
autonomy.

Abbreviations used
RIMA 3
RIMB 2
RINAP 5/1
SAA 3
SAA 10
SAA 20

Grayson 1996.
Frame 1995.
Novotny and Jeffers 2018.
Livingstone 1989.
Parpola 1993.
Parpola 2017.

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Ludovico Portuese
Università Di Messina, Faculty Member
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Appropriation and Re-Instrumentalization of Visual Motifs in Syro-Hittite and Assyrian Monumental Art: Nonverbal Expressions as Signs of Collective Identity. RAI 66, 2022, “Cultural Contact – Cultures of Contact” (Kultur–Kontakt–Kultur).
Ludovico Portuese
2022
From a sociological perspective, nonverbal expressions can communicate a lot, from political to religious sentiments. At the same time, nonverbal expressions can take on even greater meaning: they may galvanize group identity because they imply a sharing and a collaboration among individuals, who evolve the capacity to demarcate group membership through symbolic markers, such as gestures, body movements, proxemic, and the like. This implies that nonverbal expressions can play a role in maintaining social and psychological order and can become a clear marker of collective identity. Cultural contact between Syro-Hittite states and the Assyrian empire during the first millennium BCE have been notoriously intensive, and it involved many aspects and affected material culture, social practices, and social structures to varying extents. Situations of cultural contact may have initiated a process of self-reflection, within the collective group, or may have had the potential to induce cultural change. On the material level, this encounter may have had different effects, ranging from spontaneous rejection to acceptance of specific visual motifs. This article provides an examination and comparison of visual representations of submission gestures and of drinking acts in Syro-Hittite and Assyrian monumental art, in order to highlight the ways through which these visual motifs were rejected, or were appropriated and re-instrumentalized by both parties. It is concluded that the interaction between Syro-Hittite and Assyrian art reveals 1) a dialectic between the embrace and rejection of specific visual motifs, and 2) a conscious consequent creation of nonverbal expressions as signs of collective identity.
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“The eyes have it and the benign smile”. The Iconography of Emotions in the Ancient Near East: From Gestures to Facial Expressions?” in: S. Kipfer, S. (ed.) 2018, Visualizing Emotions in the Ancient Near East (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis). Fribourg: University Press, 121-146
Izak (Sakkie) Cornelius
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Emblems of Power: Ideology and Identity in Late Old Assyrian Glyptic
Oya Topcuoglu
As markers of identity, social status, and administrative rank, seals and their designs functioned as one of the most important non-verbal identifiers for their owners in the ancient Near East. Consequently, the selection of seal imagery was a carefully made decision (either by the seal owner or a central institution), that turned seals into a means of communication. This dissertation studies the imagery of early second millennium glyptic in northern Mesopotamia to understand the political mechanisms and ideologies underlying the choice of motifs in seal design, and the effects of political change on material culture. Rather than a traditional text-oriented viewpoint, this project adopts an interdisciplinary approach to study identity from a visual perspective. By integrating methods and evidence from archaeology, art history, and textual studies, it seeks to provide insights into the socio-political aspects of northern Mesopotamia in this period and understand their reflection on the glyptic traditions of the region. The study focuses specifically on a period of ca. 75 years, covering the reign of Šamši-Adad I (ca. 1847-1776 B.C.) and ending with the destruction of Šeḫna by Samsu-iluna in 1728 B.C. The dataset consists of seals and seal impressions from official contexts at Tell Bi'a, Tell Leilan, Tell al-Rimah, and Mari, which were important administrative centers of Šamši-Adad's kingdom, as well as Acemhöyük in Anatolia, which had close diplomatic and economic ties with this polity. Textual evidence shows that Šamši-Adad successfully created a politically unified entity across Upper Mesopotamia by combining the preexisting political and ideological infrastructures of the region with the cultural memory and traditions of the Akkadian, Ur III, Old Assyrian, and Old Babylonian worlds. The visual manifestation of this unifying ideology is the standardized
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Winter, I. J. (1997). Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology. Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting (eds.). Helsinki, Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project: 359-381.
Irene Winter
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Enmity, Alienation and Assyrianization: The role of cultural difference in the visual and verbal expression of Assyrian ideology in the reign of Assurnasirpal II (883–859 B.C.)
megan cifarelli
1995
Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, New York, NY, Department of Art History and Archaeology
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Communicating and Assimilating Foreign Ideologies Through Art: The Diffusion of Egyptian Iconography from the Middle Bronze Age Levant to Achaemenid Persia
Chana Algarvio
Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, 2023
This article focuses on pharaonic Egypt’s cultural impact in Western Asia through royal and divine iconography seen within various modes of art. From the first noted appearance in the Middle Bronze Age to just before the spread of Hellenism, four case studies will be put forth regarding when and how Egyptian iconography is best exemplified in ancient Near Eastern art. The first part of each case study will briefly examine the sociopolitical history of the time period to explain Egypt’s foreign relations. The second part will look at iconography and semiotics, in which foreign art examples will be compared to contemporary or pre-existing Egyptian examples to further analyze and solidify their semblances. The four case studies ultimately illustrate the mass impact and influence Egyptian culture had on the ancient Mediterranean world for over 1,500 years, as its iconography was continuously acculturated and readapted by foreign cultures to serve and express foreign beliefs.
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Davide Nadali and Ludovico Portuese, 2018, Archaeology of Images: Context and Intericonicity in Neo-Assyrian Art
Ludovico Portuese
Davide Nadali
The mutual dialogue(s) between Archaeology and Bildwissenschaften has often been avoided as an issue in the discussion of Ancient Mesopotamian Art. In particular, pictures have too often been analysed out of their original context with biased results and judgments on the aesthetic, meaning and exploitation of images within the ancient societies. This paper brings to the fore such dialogue by using some case studies from Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs of first millennium BCE according to a twofold topic. Archaeology in Bildwissenschaften: this topic uses the architectural tradition of the royal palace throne room as a case study for illustrating some principles of the way reliefs were arranged along the walls of the room. The analysis will disclose that the arrangement of each image can only be fully understood in its architectural context and specifically in the light of a ‘bipolarity’ of the throne room, namely reliefs sparking negative emotions were confined at some distance from the royal throne while those evoking positive emotions were set close to the throne as well as the doubling of the body of the king. Bildwissenschaften in Archaeology: in dealing with hunt rituals ‒ specifically the scene of the king pouring libations over dead lion or bull ‒ this topic focuses on its emergence as a strong Assyrian tradition in the times of Assurnasirpal II (883–859 BCE) and Assurbanipal (668–631 BCE). Since there are no hunt rituals recorded on palace wall panels between the reigns of these two kings, it seems that Assurbanipal, as a known antiquarian, consciously adopted an antique iconographic motif. This phenomenon, which can be interpreted as an imitation, quotation, allusion, and perhaps homage, will be evaluated according to the modern notion of linguistic intertextuality applied to the realm of visual arts, namely intericonicity (or Interbildlichkeit).
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Davide Nadali and Ludovico Portuese, 2020, Archaeology of Images: Context and Intericonicity in Neo-Assyrian Art
Ludovico Portuese
Davide Nadali
The mutual dialogue(s) between Archaeology and Bildwissenschaften has often been avoided as an issue in the discussion of Ancient Mesopotamian Art. In particular, pictures have too often been analysed out of their original context with biased results and judgments on the aesthetic, meaning and exploitation of images within the ancient societies. This paper brings to the fore such dialogue by using some case studies from Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs of first millennium BCE according to a twofold topic. Archaeology in Bildwissenschaften: this topic uses the architectural tradition of the royal palace throne room as a case study for illustrating some principles of the way reliefs were arranged along the walls of the room. The analysis will disclose that the arrangement of each image can only be fully understood in its architectural context and specifically in the light of a ‘bipolarity’ of the throne room, namely reliefs sparking negative emotions were confined at some distance from the royal throne while those evoking positive emotions were set close to the throne as well as the doubling of the body of the king. Bildwissenschaften in Archaeology: in dealing with hunt rituals ‒ specifically the scene of the king pouring libations over dead lion or bull ‒ this topic focuses on its emergence as a strong Assyrian tradition in the times of Assurnasirpal II (883–859 BCE) and Assurbanipal (668–631 BCE). Since there are no hunt rituals recorded on palace wall panels between the reigns of these two kings, it seems that Assurbanipal, as a known antiquarian, consciously adopted an antique iconographic motif. This phenomenon, which can be interpreted as an imitation, quotation, allusion, and perhaps homage, will be evaluated according to the modern notion of linguistic intertextuality applied to the realm of visual arts, namely intericonicity (or Interbildlichkeit).
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Figurines as social markers: the Neo-Assyrian impact on the Northern Levant as seen from the material culture
Barbara Bolognani
in Gavagnin K., Palermo R. (eds), Imperial Connections. Interactions and Expansions from Assyria to the Roman Period. Proceedings of the 5th "Broadening Horizons" Conference, Udine 5-8 June 2017 (West & East Monografie 3), University of Udine, Udine, pp.43-57, 2020
This paper aims to analyse some social dynamics which occurred during the late Iron Age in the Syro-Anatolian region from a particular point of view, i.e. that of clay figurine finds. The coroplastic production under consideration is a uniform corpus composed of two main subjects: the Handmade Syrian Horse and Riders (HSHR’s) and the Syrian Pillar Figurines (SPF’s). These figurines are inscribed within the Middle Euphrates coroplastic tradition with Karkemish as the primary productive centre. They are attested since the mid-eighth century BC, reaching a peak during the seventh century BC, a historical period corresponding to the Neo-Assyrian expansion in the Northern Levant. The close relationship among these figurines with social changes which took place with the Neo-Assyrian political and military influence is here presented through different aspects. On one hand, throughout the contextual study both in productive and widespread regions, contexts provide interesting data on the use of these artefacts and the involvement of the local populations in activities supporting the Neo-Assyrian Empire. On the other hand, the gradual acculturation of the Assyrian reality to local traditions is further attested through the iconographic analysis of figurines. A remarkable “Assyrianization” is observable in their costumes and decorations both on human and animal subjects.
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Just Say No: Iconography, context, and meaning of a gesture, BULLETIN OF THE EGYPTOLOGICAL SEMINAR The Art and Culture of Ancient Egypt: Studies in Honor of Dorothea Arnold
Betsy Bryan
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