1. Demarcating ekphrasis in Mesopotamia

Abstract

: In its original Graeco-Roman context, the term ekphrasis ( ex- ‘out’ + phrazein ‘to explain’) was quickly narrowed down to its usual present-day definition, as “a vivid description of a work of art,” 1 but in this contribution I argue that older definitions involving vividness and emotional involvement with the object of description are ideally suited for an extension of the concept to Mesopotamian literary practice. Vividness can already be identified, obliquely, in Irene Winter’s contrast between Western “representation” as opposed to Mesopotamian “manifestation,” where manifestation necessarily involves direct interaction between a worshiper or ritual specialist and the statue that acts in the stead of the king. I argue here that this kind of vividness can be redefined, in largely formal terms, as a rhetorical practice in which a typically third person description (aka “representation”) is altered so as to give the impression of first or second person direct partici-pation (aka “manifestation”). In Mesopotamia this rhetorical phenomenon is most clearly visible in the so-called Tigi Hymns, particularly when a votive object is directly addressed in the second person (and the ritual contextualization of these acts of direct address in well-defined sections of the hymnic genre). catalogue of ekphrastic descriptions in Classical Sumerian literature. … through a process of ritual transformation the material form was animated, the representation not standing for but actually manifesting the presence of the subject represented. The image was then indeed empowered to speak, or to see, or to act, through various culturally-subscribed channels. … The rituals of consecration, installation, and maintenance that differentiate Mesopotamian (and other) “manifestations” from European (and other) “representations” further intensify three simul-taneous representational identities cited above, and underscore the absolute aspect of the image. 8