Social Power in the ANE: NESR1B 002, Spring '11
A group blog for NESR1B 002, "Social Power in the Ancient Near East", Spring 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Diagnostic Essay
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Diagnostic
In comparison to my writing today, I can tell that I have definitely changed as a writer.
One thing that I noticed was that there weren’t any pieces of evidence to back up my claims. I can see now after writing my research paper how importance backed up claims are with evidences from scholarly sources such as jstor, google books, and google scholars, as well as printed texts. I realize now that there is little credibility to making a claim without a reliable source, and how stupid personal stories and anecdotes are in an essay, because they provide no evidence or textual support.
I feel like I have also learned how to make a stronger thesis. Instead of just writing about a fact, I have learned to make more controversial statements and learned how to back them up with evidence in the essay. This clearly makes the essay more personal and more unique in that it offers the reader something to think about and a new point of view, instead of just stating the obvious.
There is definitely more room for improvement. I have not done very well in this class, but I feel like I have learned to think more critically about the readings and about how to analyze texts, instead of just writing about the plot line.
My Writing
Looking back at Power
As I reflect on my first writing assignment and this last semester a few things come to mind. First, I had no idea how complex the concept of power was. I wrote about power as a one-dimensional issue, but after this class I realize that there are many ways to view power. I did not think to view power as Michael Mann did in his book The Sources of Social Power. In this first assignment discussed how power could be wielded, and did not mention how society is affected by such power. I also didn’t have a strong introduction or conclusion, and started my paper with a dictionary definition which was not a good move. My evidence wasn’t concrete either, and I could have done better analysis. Overall I was making statements that could have used some research to bolster their arguments. I know now that ideological power, economic power, military power, and political power are all aspects that comprise power in societies.
Diag Essay
After learning writing techniques and learning about power in this class, I noticed that my writing was not as much different than now. There were a few changes I would want to make to my diagnostic now, but overall I don’t think I have developed significantly as a writer.
One of the first things I noticed which made me wince was my introduction quote, which started out with a very unreliable source. Although I liked the quote when I used it, it didn’t add much to my two-page paper. I should have used more reliable sources in order to add a base to my statements. Most of my arguments did not have back-up evidence.
In my paper, I talked about how power is gained even though it has a bad connotation. I mention ideological and political power, but in class, through reading Mann’s article, we learned about political, ideological, military, economic power. If I were to write this essay again I would know to add military and economic power.
Changing Thoughts on Power
If I had the option of writing this paper again, I would take the Michael Mann approach and analyze the different types of power that are available to people. This time around, I would actually cite real examples of people who have ascended to positions of power, and how their influential qualities led them to their respective positions. Throughout the semester, I feel that I have greatly improved the structure of my writing and I have made sure to relate my analysis back to my original thesis, something I failed to do in this diagnostic essay. If I was to write this paper at the end of the semester, I would utilize the knowledge I have gained through the different articles we have read to create an argument about the true meaning of power. With these knew resources at hand, I could argue a much better case about the definition of the various aspects of power.
Reflections
In the period of four months, one can learn a lot of information and skills, and this course is by all means, no exception. Reflecting back on the things that we learned and our knowledge of power before the readings provided to us during this course, I can personally say that I have a more concrete and standardized way of viewing power and its sources. I had written in my diagnostic paper that “power can be defined primarily as the measure of one’s ability to control something”, and while that was true, there was more to it than that. Power only really exists when there is a social environment involved, like a community, a kingdom, or any group of people. In society, there are many sources of these powers, and they are largely outlined by Michael Mann’s article regarding “Societies as organized power networks”. One of the most important things that Mann has taught us about power is that it can easily be broken down into four main sources, some more influential and “stronger” than the rest: political power, ideological power, military power, and economic power. Those are further broken down into practices and how they work, but essentially, we could compare and point out many of the components of power that was involved through each civilization.
Throughout the course of the semester, we built upon the “power” idea, utilizing and putting a perspective on it for many of the ancient civilizations that we have read and discussed. Throughout this semester, we have looked at Uruk, Mesopotamia, Babylon, Assyria, and many other places and civilizations as well. Reflecting back on this course and what we have learned, it is easy to pinpoint the instances each source of power came into play, from the economic power of barley, to the political and military power of Hammurabi. We also talked about the ideological powers of the priests and the temples and how they were able to influence people beyond the political (and sometimes geological) borders.
Getting back to the reflection of the diagnostic paper, I still agree with a lot of things that I said in the beginning, how everyone has some sort of power, because if you influence someone in any way, shape, or form, that is a form of power, even if it is not forced onto the other person. I am actually surprised how I had listed some types of power in my diagnostic paper, and even though the names for them differ from Mann’s view of power, some of them are right on the money. I had written that there was personal, influential, financial, and positional power, and financial and positional power could be directly translated to economic and political power, respectively (albeit political power is a bit more specific). Influential power seems to describe some types of power, like ideological power, but it really isn’t a source of power as Mann had described. However, even now, I still believe that there is a form of personal power (Mann probably didn’t bring it up since it was talking about power within a general society and not within oneself) because one’s decisions to do something may have been influenced by someone or something else, but I am sure that you have the conscious decision-making skills to make such a choice. And so, I believe that can fall within its own category of personal power.
Finally, in my diagnostic paper, I had talked about change and control as functions of power, and to some extent, that is still true after learning about everything in this course. People want power because they can control and can make influential decisions over some or a large group of people, and no matter who is in control, there is bound to be some form of change, no matter how small. No person is ever going to run or do something that is bound to be exactly the same as someone else’s, and so, change and control are still very important elements to power and why so many people want it. We have learned so much over this course of this semester about power, ancient civilizations, and writing, and I feel like it has improved my overall general skills and knowledge in this field, and I would like to thank the professor for that. It was a great semester.
Reflecting Back to 1/24/11
Importance of Evidence for Claims, Stylistic Preferences and Diction
Diagnostic Reflection
After reading my diagnostic essay, it made me realize how important outside resources are in order to strengthen my argument. I honestly don’t think that my diagnostic was necessarily bad, but rather not as strong as it could have been to support my thesis since I did not incorporate outside resources. I guess after reflecting on strengths and weaknesses of the diagnostic and comparing it to writing the final research paper, I realized that finding resources that are reliable and worth citing help strengthen my argument.
For my diagnostic, I relied on a few outside resources from websites as well as my own memory. But without any hardcore evidence supporting what I included in the essay, I realized that while reading the essay, it may have easily just been information pulled out of no where.
As far as improvement goes, I feel like I learned a lot about how to write a stronger essay but I still have a lot of room to improve even more. I still feel as though the essays I wrote following the diagnostic were not as strong as they could have been, probably due to lack of including strong supporting evidence from outside resources.
I am hoping that after writing my research paper and after getting back the critiques from my first draft, I learn more about what I lack in my essay and what are my strengths in order to write better essays in the future.
Reflection on the Diagnostic Essay
It may be irrelevant to try to compare the diagnostic essay that we turned in at the beginning of the class with the research paper. Whereas the diagnosis paper relied on intuition and use of structure, the research paper employs many strategies learned throughout the course. Perhaps, both the diagnostic and the research paper can be used to see the progress made throughout the semester. Even though I had a pretty solid foundation on writing due to the fact that I took college writing in my first semester, this class has improved my ability to build an argumentation and made use of outside resources.
The diagnostic essay tried to define the meaning of the word power but it was a bit difficult to define it because it is a broad term to define. In that case, I tried to limit the essay into two different discussions; economic and political power. After reading Michael Mann’s chapter on the word power, we all know that it is impossible to gather all the concepts in two pages. After having two aspects of the word power, I approached the discussion. While I tried to follow an organized structure, there were some problems that were evident in the essay. First of all, some arguments out of the place meaning that they did not following a logical sequence that supported the thesis. In addition, I just gave summaries as an examples but that was because I did not have outside sources.
While the diagnosis essay served as an indication of the writing level, the research paper incorporates the techniques that we have learned throughout the course. One of the big improvement is the use of outside resources. I became more critical in analyzing outside resources. It is very essential that the research needs to be carefully evaluated and used properly. This includes the use of citations, and bibliography. Another technique that is critical is that the topic sentences of each paragraph needs to be linked to the thesis. It is clear that I am more confident in deploying these techniques in my writing.
Lastly, this class has contributed to my knowledge about the ancient Near East. Before taking this class, I did not know anything about ancient Near East, except the fact that it is considered one of the first civilizations. Learning is an endless process and surely, I have learned about Mesopotamia.
Diagnostic Essay Response
While I can't per say notice a change in my writing, I have noticed something about myself. I realized that I fair much better in creative writing than I do with research papers. I can be more persuasive through the mean of my own words than through those of others, no matter how good their works. I also realize that, although fascinating, I am not one to enjoy reading and thinking about the past. I would much rather converse about a topic that affects me directly and currently.
All in all, even though I don't feel like I've changed as a writer, I do realize that I've learned more about myself in the past semester through my writing and this English class than I ever expected to do.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Reflection on Diagnostic Essay
Individual Power
The paper was also a very micro perspective that focused on the individual and not the world as a whole. The readings from this class definitely points to a broader perspective that individuals as part of a system are at times able to exploit others for personal advantage. It looks at how groups of people can be manipulated to do things that might otherwise seem illogical.
In conclusion, a look back is always helpful to understand where we have come from and what we have learned. This semester's study of power in the Ancient Middle East have definitely broadened my view of the world around me, and has specifically given me a greater understanding of military power and its role in the world, both past and present.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Voodoo
The treatment of the statues and how they abduct and damage them reminds me of voodoo dolls. Whatever it is that they do to the statues is like an exact representation of what will happen in real life. With the voodoo dolls, whoever has possession of it is in control of it. So they could do whatever they want and whoever the doll represents is under that person’s control. The same idea I think applies to the war strategy of taking monuments and ruining royal images. To the Assyrians and having possession of the booty (including the people) it allowed them feel control over the land they had conquered it was as Bahrani had put it “physical evidence” or “proof”. By having that proof it was an assurance that they full control and unless someone took that away there was no way of someone else getting that. This could explain why wars were created over the taking of a monument because if the enemy could take back what was stolen from them then they would get control back.
Another advantage of this war strategy that I do not think Bahanri mentioned was that it was a good propaganda for the king. As they bring the booty, king’s head and/monument to their city it communicates to everyone of what they have done. Soon people will take of this and word will get around reaching other cities. And even by the armies that are jut leaving from battle as they pass by cities on the way back they probably ranted to others of their success and showed off their booty, the monument or the king’s head.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Bahrani on Omens
In chapters 7 and 8 of Rituals of War by Zainab Bahrani, the author discusses the relationship between religious rituals and war, and explores the relationship between war and the arts. In Chapter Seven, “Omens of Terror,” Bahrani claims that Assyrians believed that military decisions and strategies were handed down to oracles from the gods. Divination was often used in wars, and the diviners would address detailed questions to the gods concerning battle plans. Bahrani describes the format in which the queries were written on tablets, claiming that the repetition of the tablets revealed the anxiety of the Assyrians in certain situations. The author continues by explaining the interpretations behind certain liver readings, with meanings such as “the army will return empty-handed” and “the dynasty of Akkad is terminated”. Other omens described involved eagles, crows, and severed heads. I thought it was interesting that by consulting a god the Assyrians actually just presented their battle strategy to the cult statue of the god, and the god’s decision was determined from the entrails of a sacrificed animal. Also Bahrani describes how some weapons were deified and given names such as “That which Slays a Multitude”, “Fifty-headed Weapon”, and “Relentless Storm”. Bahrani also details the process of having substitute kings.
Battle Omens
When reading the liver, the omens presented are mainly bad luck, such as that of the downfall of the army or death of a diviner. It is of importance to notice that the signals that predict bad luck are more likely to occur that those which predict good luck. For example, when reading the liver, of all the examples Baharani gives, only “if the view is like a sceptor: the weapon of Sargon. (victory)” shows a good sign (187). The other ones such as “if the presence is seized tightly by red filaments” are more likely to occur, however, they fortell a misfortune, such as for the example given before, “the fall of my principle diviner in battle” (187).
Also for tertums, in which “chance occurances or terrestrial omens” predicted future events in battle, most of events have a bad result. The only example of a good result coming towards the army is “if a severed head laughs” (187). This is an impossible event, so by analyzing the other events, it can be shown that priests were wary about the answers they gave. Priests would most likely show that an event meant a bad telling, so the military would just avoid any situation that would occur, rather than tell of a good fortune.
Baharani states over and over again that reading omens and establishing a sense of the future were done with a sense of anxiety. This shows why the priests may show that bad results would occur more often than good results. However, they were saved by the kings blaming them for a misreading of omens by the justifying the gods for what occurs.
Maintaining Faith
The Instruments of the gods
Omens and Propaganda
On page 200 we seem to have an example of a king trying to impose his will on this process, or at least of advisors to the king attempting to impose some influence. There seems to have been some confusion over the process of bringing a substitute king to the thrown. There is a concern over wether the substitute king should actually be enthroned and wether he should actually be dressed as the king. The question is brought before the scribes to decide, and it is decided that it is indeed required to actually place the substitute king on the throne. This example seems to point to a little less absolute control then what is being claimed by the author.
Image of the King
It is interesting to see how the winning king, or the conqueror, the commander in chief, shifts in view of how he wants to be represented in war. In previous chapters, we saw that having the head of a beheaded king symbolized that the king and army had defeated the city/state/kingdom, and it makes sense because it shows that they were able to take “the head” of the kingdom, rendering the conquered region helpless and open for control by the winning king and army. Sure, in this case, why wouldn’t the king want to be associated with the defeat of the losing king? It would show that this king is powerful and he is in control of his kingdom and that he is not to be messed with. However, according to Bahrani, later on, even the king didn’t perform the final blow to the head to the other king (you would think that it would be “head on head”), or demonstrating his ability to determine the life or death of the other. Apparently, it was up to the king’s army to do so instead of the king himself, and the author tries to mitigate our puzzlement by explaining it in terms that we may be able to understand.
The author plays into our puzzlement, posing the same question that we had above- wouldn’t it seem better that the king be portrayed as someone who personally defeats his enemy? The author mentions that while it SEEMS true that portraying the king as someone who personally decides the fate of his enemies, it is actually counterintuitive because the real image that the king wants to present is “expressing his prowess and virility by hunting lions or wild horses, not by torturing or executing prisoners of war” (Bahrani 213). In an effort to build a kingdom, the king must not be presented to be one of oppressive rule, violence, and total bloodshed because that would not demonstrate any type of good leadership. Instead, a good alternative to that was to have the army do it and to have the army dish out the torture, the violence, and the executions.
However, the king still had the ultimate rule, of course. He was the one who commanded the army to do it, but the king was just not personally involved with the actual killing and torturing any longer to help boost his popularity and his image. Therefore, the king had incredible military power, and it conjures up memories of what Mann defined as the main sources of power, and military power is one of them. Like said by Bahrani, “the military had become a weapon in the hand of the king. Yet the weapons of the war machine are both destructive and productive. They destroy, obviously, but they also produce victory and absolute power” (Bahrani 213). This is definitely true, and in this sense, it really promoted the king’s image of overall power and leadership and less of the bloodshed and fear that would have been conveyed if he was personally deciding the fates of the lives of enemies.
Erra and Leviathan
Last Thoughts on Rituals of war
After reading chapters seven and eight of Rituals of war, I came upon several questions that relate to other texts. Chapter eight makes note of the number seven as being the number of creatures created by Anu that brought destruction to the land ( Bahrani 208). These seven creatures represent seven different plagues or types of destruction. As someone in the class said that it might be dangerous to draw comparisons to the bible but I particularly find number seven to be linked in the bible. According to the bible, seven are the days that took god to create the world (Genesis). In the seventh day, God finished creating the world (Genesis). In relation to the destruction afflicted by the seven mythical creatures, there exists a passage in the bible that tells about seven seals of the apocalypse; they brought destruction and catastrophes. It just seems that number seven is associated with destruction. In addition, the number seven is also mentioned in the epic of Gilgamesh several times. One example is on tablet number two when Enkidu fornicates with Shamhat for seven days and seven nights. It appears that the number seven represents a cycle; a cycle that the ancient ideology established.
There are instances where Bahrani’s arguments seem to be acceptable. However, on page 201, the author makes a big deal about the head but as we discussed in class, the head does not stands out, and is treated as a single component of the entire relief. In addition, Bahrani also argues that the images of war in reliefs and art did not serve for propaganda rather it was part of a religious ideology (197). On page 204, Bahrani brings out an interesting point that might support her argument. She affirms: The Assyrian palace reliefs that depict wars do not glorify the king as an individual in any obvious way.” Furthermore, she argues that there exists a difference of art reliefs and written accounts. On page 204 she argues that the written accounts in which the king takes a first person narrative and takes the credit for the main events. In my opinion, both the written accounts and the images were used for propaganda. The images portrayed the religious ideology that justified the violence and war. The written accounts as Bahrani has pointed out, served a tool for glorification. Although reading Bahrani’s raises the question to what extend her arguments are credible, Rituals of war has presented a critical view of the ways we can look at art in the ancient context.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Gods Relation with Man in War
According to Bahrani, through the relentless repetition of inquiries to the gods and oracular readings, we see a profound anxiety and seriousness that reveals that these religious ideologies were not propagandistic acts for repression or coercion (Bahrani 197). However, looking at the evidence provided, I believe that their is some aggrandizement of the king and justification of his decisions given by these ideologies that were imposed upon the people. The Assyrians had so much contact with their gods leaving very little distinction between god and man. Texts depict gods' chariots accompanying the king into battle and cult statues were transported by land (Bahrani 193-197). Also, Bahrani writes that Hammurabi controlled and directed law on behalf of the gods, almost as a divine king (Bahrani 204). Although, the Mesopotamians worshiped their gods and the kings submitted themselves to the gods, the amount of interactions depicted by reliefs and other archaeological evidence points to a blurred line between god and man.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Why Fight?
Wars are commonly fought for various reasons. Based on what we have read in class, we have found that power struggle can lead to war, such as with Hammurabi and his desire to take over Northern Mesopotamia. He had to fight with Zimri Lim and many other Northern Mesopotamian leaders in order to gain control of the land he wanted. Another reason can be in the way that Endiku didn’t like Gilgamesh’s total power and misuse of his subjects.
In this novel, the omens tend to be reasons for war. The omens, such as the eye and lip infection before the war on Teumman as well as eventually getting beheaded, become so real, that we tend to believe that the omens are the right reasons to go to war. Additionally the precursor of an eclipse also call for the start of a war, without any particular reason, but just because of it being an evil omen of some sort. There are various reasons that wars can be started. But this novel shows us that there does not need to always be a struggle for power between two individuals or parties or states, but can actually be about omens, practices, and traditions held within a group of individuals.
The Truths of War
In “The Art of War”, Bahrani turns to analyzing the effectiveness of military tactics geared towards the obtainment of sculptures and monuments. In an age where religion and Godly figures ruled superior to every human-being, the abduction of religious monuments resulted in catastrophic consequences for the citizens of an invaded state. Bahrani says that these tactics were most influential in terms of reordering space and dislocating the people of a state. These strategies were so effective because they led to a feeling of abandonment by the people due to the lack of protection from the Gods, who were embodied in these taken statues. As we read in a claim by Joannes, the only interaction some people had with the Gods was through these statues, so we can speculate the mental toll that was felt by these people as these lasting symbols of religion were stripped away from them.
Religion adn Conflicts
Johannes mentioned how foreign religions or just gods to Babylonia and other near by cities and empires did not spread as much as the Babylonian religion did. She said that the neighboring foreign communities were probably able to preserve their religion and way of practice but the Babylonian religion was the more dominant religion. What I have always wondered if there has ever been religious wars or any sort of conflict. Probably there was not as many between foreign religions if all were able to freely practice their own religion.
Another question is if there was any religious conflicts between cities with the same religion since different cities had different main gods. Like Marduk is for Babylon and Ishtar is for Uruk I find it hard that there was no conflict at all, at least I assume this because I have not found a statement by Johannes that has implied that. Or was everyone okay and understand that they believe in similar religions and everyone excepted each city’s preference. There is the mention of Nabonidus trying to make Sin the dominant god but it seemed to have been resolved over. Many kings started wars to take over more land and expand their empire and power but did kings make war over the gods? Could the have tried to make their god become the dominant in more cities. Or where there cities with rival gods and so conflict erupted? I find it hard to believe that there was hardly any religious conflict if there wasn’t in the Middle East.