Images in Society

Chapter seven “Religion and culture in Babylonia in the first millennium” focuses mainly on the religion and culture aspect of Babylonia. When reading this chapter, one can make several connections to other texts such as Rituals of War. In chapter seven there are several instances where Joannes supports Zainab Bahrani’s discussion about the performative images. Performative images as Bahrani argues, dictate the existence of both narrative and representation of (Bahrani 51).

The first instance where Joannes brings interesting points about the importance of images is on page 178. He asserts that the gods were represented as symbols. “Their figured representation often made them appear in a symbolic form” (178). Another example is on section “How religion was organized.” Joannes talks about the importance of the statue that represented the gods. “When it was enthroned as an object of worship, especial ceremonies took place…which enabled the divine spirit to enter its representation” (181). These two arguments coincide with Bahrani’s discussion of images as being more than just a figure. As we read in chapter six of Rituals of war, the statues of the gods were of great importance and often military campaigns were undertaken to obtain these statues (Bahrani 163).

It may seem very irrational to see a statue or an image as a substitution of the real these days, or that we will go to war to obtain a statue. It is important to note that these statues not only were seen as representation, but also they demonstrated both the religious ideology and the nation’s identity (Bahrani 156). As of today, we can still point out to military actions against representations of a leader or ideology. One example is the USA army taking down the statue of Saddam Hussein during the invasion of Iraq. I particularly found this observation to be very relevant to Bahrani’s discussion about the destruction of the enemy’s venerated images. The destruction of this statue marked the end of his ruling period. Another example that comes to mind is found in the religion context. Images are being still venerated and respected. One example is the catholic religion. The most famous example is Christ being crucified. Both Christ and the cross are symbols that represent and identify the Catholic Church. One may think that the Babylonian were the only ones to treat images/statues as important. That is not the case since other cultures have their own images.