Art in War

The assigned reading this week included Chapter Six, “The Art of War,” from Zainab Bahrani’s Rituals of War. In this chapter the role of art in war and how art was considered in military strategy was discussed. A military tactic in the Ancient Near East concerned the battering and seizure of monuments in wars (159). The author mentions that sometimes wars were fought specifically to acquire the statue of a god or to recover a divine statue that had been captured by an enemy previously (160). As an example, Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king, mutilated statues of Elamite kings and then showed them off in their ruined condition after the statues had been carried off as spoils of war from the Elamite capital. Because cult images of gods and statues of kings carried so much power, the removal of any of these monuments was believed to have drastic repercussions for the state (165). Bahrani tells us that divine power and protection were removed from the city when the statue of a god was removed from it. Ancient poets would often write lamentations when their respective deities were removed from their cities. The chapter goes on to chronicle the various captures and recaptures of the cult statue of Marduk.

I found it interesting that wars were fought over cult statues and public monuments, and that the departure of such monuments negatively affected cities and states. Bahrani goes on to mention how conquered people were subject to mass deportations, the most famous being the movement of a subjugated Israelite population from Judaea to Mesopotamia (178). Conquered people were considered property of the king, just like the rest of the loot from the campaign (178). These people were used as warriors, laborers, and they were subject to the same taxes as the local population (180).