Bulls, Swords, and the Acrobatic Body in the Ancient Near East

ABSTRACT

WEBBERMAN, RACHEL JOHANNA. Performing Danger: Bulls, Swords, and the Acrobatic Body in the Ancient Near East. (Under the direction of Dr. Tate Paulette).

The body functions as both the primary medium for human experience and a powerful semiotic instrument. These two dimensions of the human body intersect with particular clarity in the realm of acrobatic performance. In this thesis, I argue that acrobatic performance, which is explicitly devoted to exploring the limits of human physical ability in the presence of an audience, offers a distinctive vantage point from which to observe the role of the body in the ancient world. I argue that acrobatic performance provided a unique arena in which the kinesthetic experience and the semiotic potential of the body were particularly and inextricably intertwined. As a case study, I draw together a range of artistic and written evidence for two types of acrobatic performance, bull-leaping and sword-tumbling, in the Bronze Age Near East and Eastern Mediterranean.

In Chapter 1 I articulate both a theoretical lens and a methodology for analyzing acrobatic performance in the ancient world. Grounded in both archaeological theory and modern circus studies, my theoretical approach seeks to integrate the experiential (e.g., kinetic and kinesthetic) and the semiotic dimensions of acrobatic performance. My analytical methodology highlights four key variables that are essential to characterizing any particular example of acrobatic performance: extreme movement, setting, audience, and performer. Chapter 2 introduces my

Bronze Age case study and provides some key background context. Chapter 3 explores the evidence for bull-leaping in Crete, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia and demonstrates a radically different understanding and experience of bull-leaping across the three regions. Chapter 4 considers the less-known evidence for sword-tumbling in Anatolia and Mesopotamia. Here I argue that the evidence indicates a similar practice in Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Chapter 5 then highlights the main conclusions from my case study and considers the broader implications of my argument, emphasizing again that acrobatic performance offers a unique perspective on ancient attitudes towards the body.

by Rachel Johanna Webberman

A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

Public History

Raleigh, North Carolina 2021

APPROVED BY:

______Tate Paulette Kathryn Grossman Committee Chair

______Frederico Freitas

BIOGRAPHY

Rachel Webberman was born and raised in Austin, Texas. She graduated from Oberlin

College in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in religion and classics. Following her undergraduate degree, she moved to Chicago, Illinois where she worked teaching and performing aerial acrobatics. She enrolled in North Carolina State’s master’s program in public history in fall

2019.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply grateful to the many individuals who made this thesis, and the completion of this degree, possible. I would particularly like to thank Dr. Frederico Freitas, whose help as I began to navigate the world of digital history was invaluable. I am also incredibly grateful to Dr.

Kathryn Grossman who I have learned so much from, and whose advice and encouragement as I completed this thesis and graduate school applications has given me confidence.

I also owe an immense debt of gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Tate Paulette, whose guidance on this project and throughout this program has made me a better writer and a better thinker. I am so thankful for his unending patience, many insightful comments, and all of our conversations. If I ever have my own students to advise, I will be better at it for having had his example.

Lastly, to my parents, Amy and Jerry Webberman, and to my brother Avi, you all got me here, and I can never thank you enough.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abbreviations ...... v

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter I: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches...... 5 Introduction ...... 5 1. Modern context: acrobatic performance as site of inquiry ...... 8 2. Definition and variables of acrobatic performance ...... 11 3. Introduction to theoretical perspectives and analytical method ...... 15 4. Kinesthetic phenomenology of embodied experience ...... 18 5. Semiotic approaches ...... 24 Conclusions ...... 28

Chapter II: Background and Context ...... 29 Introduction ...... 29 Crete ...... 29 Mesopotamia ...... 31 Anatolia ...... 34

Chapter III: Bull-Leaping ...... 38 Introduction ...... 38 Crete: Evidence ...... 39 Crete: Interpretations ...... 43 Mesopotamia: Evidence ...... 50 Mesopotamia: Interpretations ...... 52 Anatolia: Evidence ...... 56 Anatolia: Interpretations ...... 58 Conclusions ...... 63

Chapter IV: Sword-Tumbling ...... 64 Introduction ...... 64 ḪÚB/ḫuppû: Acrobats in textual and visual sources ...... 64 Analysis of performance ...... 76 Conclusions ...... 83

Conclusion ...... 85

Bibliography ...... 88

Appendix ...... 97

ABBREVIATIONS

ARM Archives Royales de Mari CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. CHD The Hittite Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago FM Florilegium Marianum KBo Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi, Leipzig, Berlin KUB Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi, Berlin PM The Palace of Minos, Arthur Evans (vol. 1-4, 1921-1936)

Introduction

Enter any art museum and you will find acrobats. You will find them on walls and in sculptures; they will appear as wire walkers, tumblers, and aerialists, often with the audience softly rendered in the background and the outline of a circus tent overhead.1 But they will also appear abstractly –– a lone, contorted figure that can only clearly be identified as an acrobat by their title.2 These figures are symbolic. They encourage us to project our ideas about acrobats onto the artists’ abstract creations. Acrobats are a flexible category for us in this way. They are both an actual class of specialist, and a metaphor for a certain type of unusual figure. They hover between the real and the ideal, or else the real and the bizarre.3 Both as subjects of visual art and within the performances themselves, acrobats produce a particular tension — a pull between delight and anxiety.4 These contradictions and tensions are part of what makes acrobats distinct, and what gives them their appeal.

The interest in depicting acrobatic bodies is not new. Since prehistory people have transcribed performances of the body onto other media. What these performances meant to the people who witnessed them, acted in them, and inscribed them onto objects, is not always clear.

Meanings of performance are both gained and lost when they are recreated visually and written into texts. This thesis seeks to recover and translate some of these meanings.

In this thesis I explore the ways in which acrobatic performance can both construct and reflect social and cultural meaning. I first develop a theoretical and methodological framework,

1 E.g.: Degas, “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando,” 1879; Georges Seurat, “Le Cirque,” 1891; Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec, “The Rope Dancer,”; Marc Chagall, “couple au cirque,” 1981. 2 E.g.: Picasso’s “L’acrobat,” 1930 and “Bacchanal with an Acrobat,” 1959; Paul Klee, Carnival in the Snow,” 1923; Gerard Koch, “The Acrobats,” 1956. 3 Don Handelman notes these dichotomies: Don Handelman, “Symbolic Types, the Body, and Circus,” Semiotica 85.3/4 (1991): 205-225. 4 Peta Tait, Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance, (New York: Routledge, 2005), 142. 1

which I then apply to two case studies of acrobatic performance in the Bronze Age Near East and

Eastern Mediterranean. I argue that acrobatic performance, because it is an extreme bodily performance, is an ideal locus for identifying how bodies can construct and convey meaning.

Through my case studies I examine the various ways in which the performance of extreme bodily movement, particularly when it involves danger, might be experienced and read by observers. I argue that these performances played a role in the negotiation of social power in the

Bronze Age.

The aim of this thesis is threefold: (1) to formulate an analytical framework that can be used to evaluate the social role of acrobatic performance and its representation in ancient history,

(2) to explore the specific types of acrobatic performance that were occurring within early history (specifically in Bronze Age Crete, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia), and finally (3) to speculate about what these performances might tell us about attitudes towards movement and the body. I look particularly at two case studies of acrobatic performance — bull leaping and sword tumbling — both of which I argue can be identified in each region.

The first section of the thesis describes my theoretical and methodological approach and positions my approach with respect to the broader archaeological literature. I argue that acrobatic performance should be considered through two lenses: phenomenological and semiotic. I also discuss and define several components of acrobatic performance: extreme movement, setting, audience, and performer. I argue that each of these components can be interrogated to contextualize these figures within their particular settings and to get at both the embodied experience and semiotics of acrobatic performance. The approach I present raises specific questions that I later apply to my two case studies. In particular, I consider how embodied experience is fundamentally tied to cultural messaging and meaning making. This section also

aims to demonstrate that an analysis of performed movement, and particularly the extreme movement of acrobatics, provides unique access to the relationship between cultural norms and the body.

The second section situates my research temporally and geographically. Here, I broadly contextualize my case studies by providing background to the regions and source material I engage with. I situate these regions historically and discuss both the general evidence available in each (including archeological, textual, and art historical materials), as well as the particular evidence I draw on in my research.

The next two sections of my thesis present my two case studies, bull-leaping and sword- tumbling, both of which focus most heavily on the Near Eastern regions of Mesopotamia and

Anatolia. My first case study explores bull-leaping as it appears across all three regions. I begin with an examination of the evidence and scholarship from Crete, a region that is well known for its depictions of bull-leaping. I then use the evidence and scholarship from this region to explore the more limited evidence from Anatolia and Mesopotamia. I pay particular attention to how depictions of the body, and the objects these depictions appear on, might indicate the role of bull- leaping in their respective regions.

My second case study examine a lesser-known form of acrobatics in which performers tumble over upright swords. This form of acrobatics, sword-tumbling, is well known in the

Classical Greek and Hellenistic periods,5 but has not been considered as a form of acrobatics during the Bronze Age. In this section I argue that this type of acrobatics was performed by specialists in both Mesopotamia and Anatolia. I explore the context of these performances in feasts and festivals, and, drawing on kinesthetic and semiotic approaches, offer several

5 Jonathan R. Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body in Ancient Greek Society,” PhD diss., (University of Western Ontario, 2016), 192. 3

speculations regarding the social and cultural significance of these specialists.

Accompanying this paper is a database of ancient objects depicting acrobatic movement.6

The database catalogues objects depicting acrobatic movement from across the ancient

Mediterranean world from prehistory through the Roman Empire. The database functions as a public-facing standalone project that offers a broader look at ancient acrobatic performance. The aim of the database is not only to provide a space in which acrobatics are collected, but to encourage broader thinking about the ways in which extreme bodies functioned in ancient societies. Objects being discussed will be hyperlinked to their corresponding references in the database.

6 http://ancientacrobats.com 4

Chapter I: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches

Introduction

As a site of inquiry, the body is distinctive. It is present in physical remnants of the past, but is also a site of lived experience and a tool through which we craft and express identity.

Issues relating to the body are, as Dušan Borić and John Robb note, “tangible in the archaeological record in a way most other theoretical centralities never appear to be.”7 This tangibility is tied to the body’s omnipresence in the archaeological record. Dead bodies are themselves dealt with by archaeologists, but bodies are also found in visual representations and have an inherent role in the crafting of all material culture. Broadly, across the field of archaeology and ancient studies, the body has been discussed in many ways: as a physical archaeological object, a site of display, the model for artistic depictions, a locus for debates about gender, and a site of lived experiences, among others. Sarah Tarlow divides these approaches into two broad categories: 1) the body as “symbol, artefact, medium or metaphor” and 2) issues of embodiment focused on “lived, sensual experience.”8 Tarlow’s divisions are telling of two issues with archaeological perspectives on the body. First, archaeological discussions of embodiment and sensual experience often fail to fully investigate the dynamic and kinetic nature of the body. Second, archaeological discussions often fail to address the ways in which the body functions simultaneously as embodied space and an entity that conveys meaning through gesture, posture, and movement.

Early archaeological interest in the body focused primarily on using human remains to evaluate issues such as health, diet, and lifespan. In this context, the focus on the body was not

7 Dušan Borić and John Robb, eds., Past Bodies: Body-Centered Research in Archaeology, (Oxbow Books: Oxford, 2008), 1. 8 Yannis Hamilakis, Mark Pluciennik, and Sarah Tarlow, eds., Thinking through the Body: Archaeologies of Corporeality, (Plenum Publishers: New York, 2002), 1. 5

explicit but was a means of reconstructing and evaluating human behavior. The postprocessual shift of the 1980s, however, encouraged scholars to pay closer attention to questions of identity and agency, including how these were located in and around the body. The early 1990s saw a sharp rise in archaeological articles with an explicit focus on the body,9 though book-length treatments on the topic were not published until late in the decade.10 As archaeologists grappled with using the body to tease out identity and agency they began incorporating social theory into their scholarship, drawing especially on the work of theorists such as Judith Butler, Michael

Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.11 By employing these theorists, archaeologists were able to ask questions about the ways in which attitudes towards the body were socially and culturally mediated, disrupting essentialist assumptions about the body.

Theories of embodiment, or lived experience, were at the forefront of this shift and served to underline the ways in which the body was “historically contingent and in flux.”12 This approach critiqued the Cartesian division of mind and body, “re-situating the thinking subject in the world.”13

Acrobatic performance offers a unique lens for exploring both the kinetic dimension of embodiment and the semiotics of the body. It provides a vantage point for a specific embodied experience, as well as access to broader issues concerning the body and physical ability. In the first sense, acrobatics explores the embodied experience of a particular social subset within the

9 Rosemary Joyce, “Archaeology of the Body,” Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005): 139-158. 10 E.g.: Dominic Montserrat, ed., Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies the Human Body in Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1998); Alison E. Rautman, ed., Reading the Body: Representations and Remains in the Archaeological Record (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press., 1999); Joanna R. Sofaer, The Body as Material Culture: A Theoretical Osteoarchaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Hamilakis et al., Thinking through the Body, 2001; Lynn Meskell and Rosemary Joyce, Embodied Lives: Figuring Ancient Maya and Egyptian Experience (London: Routledge, 2003). 11 Borić and Robb, Past Bodies, 2. 12 Zoë Crossland, “Materiality and Embodiment,” in Material Culture Studies, ed. Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 388. 13 Crossland, “Materiality and Embodiment,” 289. 6

ancient world; this facet of acrobatic performance can be approached both through the experiences of the performers and through the effects (both visceral and atmospheric) encountered by the audience. However, acrobatic performance also functions more broadly as an explicit reflection on the limits of physical ability and movement. As a form of movement, acrobatics is designed to explore these limits, and as performance, that is, as spectacle, entertainment, and interactive event, it has the potential to reinforce, comment on, and/or subvert cultural norms regarding bodily limits.

In the following sections I provide an interpretive framework for acrobatic performance in the ancient world. I also aim to demonstrate that acrobatics is a particularly worthwhile site of inquiry that allows access to a variety of dimensions within ancient studies, including embodied experience and the production of meaning. This chapter is divided into six parts. The first part demonstrates the ways in which the study of acrobatics can provide insight into cultural attitudes towards the body. In particular, it draws on research into modern acrobatic performance to demonstrate the potential social and cultural roles of extreme bodies in motion. The second section describes my methodology; it breaks down four key components of acrobatic performance, movement, setting, audience, and performer, and discuss the ways in which each of these components can be interrogated to better understand the specific role of acrobatics and attitudes towards the body more broadly. The third section introduces my own theoretical perspective and describe the scholarship that it builds on. In the fourth and fifth sections I describe the two main components of my theoretical perspective: the fourth section focuses on a phenomenological perspective, that is, a focus on embodied experience, and the fifth section discuss a semiotic approach to acrobatic performance. Through both my methodology and theoretical perspective I outline what questions can be asked of extreme and performing bodies

and how these bodies offer a distinctive perspective on the social roles of bodies in motion.

1. Modern Contexts: acrobatics performance as site of inquiry

Modern circus14 has been the subject of both historical and sociological studies. While historians have examined the rise of circus in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in

Europe and the United States,15 sociologists and performance theorists, such as Paul Bouissac,

Don Handelman, and Peta Tait, have explored the semiotic significance of these performances.

These theorists offer several key insights into how extreme bodies communicate cultural messages and how these messages are received during performances.

Historical scholarship on the modern circus has demonstrated the social significance of extreme and unusual bodies in entertainment: in particular, the ability of these performances to both reflect and disrupt social norms. Circus, the primary venue for acrobatic performance in the modern Western world, developed in a carnivalesque format in which marginal abilities and people were both literally and figuratively centered for the duration of a show. Janet Davis, a historian of early American circus, points out the contradiction here: on the one hand, early circus shows disrupted cultural assumptions by claiming to embrace racial, cultural, and gender differences. On the other hand, “the circus’s celebration of diversity was often illusionary, because the circus used normative ideologies of gender, racial hierarchy, and individual mobility to explain social transformations and human difference.”16 Even within this contradiction, both

14 Circus is generally understood to have begun in 1770 when Philip Astley began incorporating acrobats and other performers into his equestrian shows. While I use the phrase “modern circus” here to refer to all such shows following 1770, this should not be confused with the two styles of circus, often called traditional and modern. Here, traditional circus refers to the style of performance seen in older three-ring and traveling circuses which often incorporates animals (e.g. Ringling Brothers). Modern circus however references a style of show that incorporates more theatrical and dance elements, and generally does not include animals (e.g. Cirque du Soleil). 15 See in particular: Janet Davis, The Circus Age: Culture and Society under the American Big Top, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Brenda Assael, The Circus and Victorian Society (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005); Yoram Carmeli, “Lion on Display: Culture, Nature, and Totality in a Circus Performance,” Poetics Today 24, no. 1 (2003): 65-90. 16 Davis, The Circus Age, 10. 8

professing and undermining cultural acceptance, we see a reflection of American culture, one of the reasons the circus became “a powerful cultural icon of a new, modern nation-state.”17

Bouissac, echoes this notion: “[The circus] is a kind of mirror in which the culture is reflected, condensed and at the same time transcended; perhaps the circus seems to stand outside the culture only because it is at its very center.”

Peta Tait’s Circus Bodies: Cultural Identity in Aerial Performance, looks even more specifically at the cultural role of acrobats, particularly how changing ideas of gender appeared in aerial acts of the 19th and 20th centuries:

“While the earliest flying action seemed to give female performers masculine qualities, by the twentieth century aerial performance had become associated with femininity in popular perception. The reception of performances by an elite of male flyers confirms a broad cultural shift from the nineteenth century’s acknowledgement of femininity as a civilizing influence on manhood to anxiety about effeminacy by the mid-twentieth century.”18

While Tait’s book is primarily a historical investigation of the relationship between aerial acts and gender conventions, in her final chapter she also explores the relationship between audience and performers. She identifies the “embodied reception” of aerial acts, by which she means audience’s physical reactions such as holding their breath.19 She describes the experience of watching aerial acts as a jointly physical and emotional interaction between the body of the acrobat and that of the audience: “A spectator will 'catch' the aerial body with his or her senses in mimicry of flying, within a mesh of reversible-body-to-body (or -bodies) phenomenology. In this visceral catching, motion and emotion converge.”20 She further argues that this reception is filtered through the varied social experiences of the audience members and “is received with

17 Ibid. 18 Tait, Circus Bodies, 3. 19 Ibid., 141. 20 Ibid., 140. 9

bodily sensations linked to prior experiences combining physiological and psychological activity.”21 Tait’s description of the visceral and embodied experience of the audience is key to understanding why these performances should be approached as significant cultural actions.

Bouissac, whose work deals primarily with semiotics, proposes a method by which to read acts as texts. He identifies four categories of signifiers that might be used to analyze acrobatic acts in the circus: 1) the musical and physical progression of the act (particularly how the acrobat accentuates or downplays difficulty); 2) costumes and lighting; 3) linguistic elements such as the name of the performer, the act, or a particular trick; and 4) social behavior, meaning how the performer presents their act (smile, bow, ect.).22 For example, Bouissac notes that the costuming of a performance might signal either “biological superiority if the artist is dressed in a brightly colored leotard that classifies him as superhuman” or “ survival through change if the artist is dressed as a tramp.”23 As Bouissac’s discussion centers on modern circus, these signifiers cannot be imported directly when reading ancient performances. In the following section I discuss those elements that I consider most crucial when examining ancient acrobats.

Modern circus studies offers a useful framework not because ancient acrobats should be considered analogous to modern circus artists, but because it offers the clearest parallel for analyzing the performance of extreme bodily movement and audience reception of this movement. Though we should be careful not to overstate the parallels between modern and ancient acrobats, both are examples of figures extreme abilities responding to constructed (often dangerous) scenarios. Bouissac’s description of circus acts therefore functions as a description of acrobatic acts as well: “All circus acts are based on the artificial constructions of extreme

21 Ibid., 142. 22 Paul Bouissac, Circus and Culture, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976),, 46-47. 23 Ibid., 19. 10

situations, and on the corresponding acquired skills that are necessary to meet the challenges they offer.”24 By this he means that acrobatics are deliberately and consciously enacted feats through which performers showcase their training and skill. This facet of performance remains true in both the ancient and modern world.

2. Definition and Variables of Acrobatic Performance

For a clear account of acrobatic performance it is necessary to first discuss what is meant by acrobatics and how this term is used in this thesis. Vickers defines acrobatics in the Greek world as deliberate inversion; that is, the body turned purposefully upside-down, or “plunging headlong.”25 While this definition works in the context of his research, it excludes types of upright movement that could be considered acrobatics. As an alternate definition of acrobatics we might consider the definition given in the Encyclopedia of World Sport: “The practice of performing physically unusual feats with one’s body.”26 Though more inclusive than Vickers’ definition, I suggest that extremeness should be included in addition to unusualness, and movement of the body should be emphasized, as opposed to feats of the body. These changes allow for the exclusion of unusual feats such as fire-breathing and juggling, while better accounting for full-body practices such as contortion and wire-walking. I therefore define acrobatics for this thesis as the unusual movement of the body, requiring extreme physical ability. Acrobatic performance is then the performance of these movements int the presence of an audience.

This thesis does not assume that ancient people possessed a word or concept that is analogous to our understanding of acrobatics, though Vickers argues that this was the case in

24 Paul Bouissac, Semiotics at the Circus, (New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 2010), 178. 25 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 10. 26 John McClelland, “Acrobatics,” in Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present, ed. Karen Christensen and David Levinson (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1996), 3-5. 11

ancient Greece. He draws on the language used to describe these figures and demonstrates that the term thaumatopoiia (literally “wonder-making”) was used uniformly to describe various types of people who practice extreme movement involving inverting the body.27 While Vickers makes a compelling case for acrobatics as a meaningful category in ancient Greece, these conclusions cannot be extrapolated to the Bronze Age Near East. There is not sufficient evidence to argue that conceptually, acrobatics as we understand it would have meant anything to people in the ancient Near East. What I examine here is not whether this category would have been meaningful to those in the ancient Near East; instead I use acrobatic performance as an analytical category to search out and identify particular representations of, and understandings of the body.

I use four variables of acrobatic performance that are key components in contextualizing and analyze this practice: (1) extreme bodily movement, (2) executed in front of an audience, (3) most often in a particular setting, and (4) performed by a predetermined individual or set of individuals. Each of these elements raises particular questions about the nature of acrobatics and opens up specific lines of inquiry regarding acrobatic performances.

(1) Extreme movement is one method of exploring the limits of physical ability. As

Vickers notes: “To explore the utter limits of physicality is to explore the place of self in the world—and to offer the world a way to evaluate that self.”28 Extreme movement should be understood as distinct from extreme physical ability. Whereas a particularly fast runner may be extreme in how good they are at the movement, the type of movement itself is not unusual.

While “movement” is used here, there may be static elements as well— particularly moments of balance. These static moments can, in many cases, also be considered movement. Balance, for example, consists of a series of small adjustments made by the body to maintain equilibrium and

27 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 14. 28 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 1. 12

should, therefore, be considered, not stillness, but stasis.

A simple definition or list of what movements acrobatics entails cannot be given, as precisely where these limits lie, and how they might be explored, is culturally and socially specific. Indeed, this is precisely why the study of acrobatic performance offers a unique lens for studying bodily limits and the parameters of physical ability in specific historical contexts. As a general rule, though, acrobatics encompasses a variety of types of movement. Some common acrobatic practices include contortion, tumbling, hand balancing, and tight wire walking. These practices explore a range of different elements of physicality including: range of motion of the joints, the body’s ability to know where it is in space, balance, and bodily control.

(2) These movements are enacted in front of an audience, creating a deliberate performance (performance is used here to mean activities conducted in front of an audience). In these performances the body is the explicit focus, though the audience brings their own expectations regarding the body, physical ability, gender, etc. The audience is therefore both subject to, and participant in, the meaning-making of the performance; in this arena, bodily abilities and limits are explicitly explored and actively negotiated.29

Several variables regarding the audience might be considered. First, the composition of audiences is rarely uniform. It might include various social classes, ages, genders, as well as other performers such as musicians. In certain cases deities may be understood to be part of the audience as well. The roles of these various audience members relative to the performance may indicate particular relationships to the acrobats and to any connotations they carry. The

29 For more on the theory of performance see: Gary B. Palmer and William R. Jankowiak, “Performance and Imagination: Toward an Anthropology of the Spectacular and the Mundane,” Cultural Anthropology 11 no. 2, (1996): 225–258; Takeshi Inomata and Lawrence S. Coben, Archaeology of Performance: Theaters of Power, Community, and Politics (Oxford: Altamira Press, 2006); Judith Lynne Hanna, To Dance Is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal Communication (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987); Baz Kershaw, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention (London: Routledge, 1992); Paul Spencer, Society and the Dance: the Social Anthropology of Process and Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 13

messaging conveyed by these figures may likewise be interpreted differently by the various types of audience members. As Tait notes, “Bodily reactions might become differently qualified in subjective reflection and varied social experience.”30

Both the type and scale of the audience may indicate how messages from the performance are later disseminated. The inebriation, or other altered mindset, of the audience might also be considered. For instance, the audience of a Greek symposium (a relatively small number of inebriated men) may relate differently to bodies than that of early 20th century modern circus which would include a large audience of varied genders and complete families.

We might also consider the audiences for objects and texts recording these performances.

Who used, wore, or otherwise engaged with the objects depicting acrobatics? Particularly regarding visual depictions we might ask what practical purpose the object had and how the depictions relate to its use.

(3) The circumscribed setting of the performance also conveys specific meaning associated with the performances. This setting might involve temporal specifics (i.e. particular occasions and events that call for a performance), as well as physical specifics (i.e. the locations in which these performances occur).

Regarding space we might consider the location of the performance, as well as the physical construction of the performance space. Compare, for instance, the traditional three ring circus which occurs in the round, with the audience raised in bleachers around the performance.

This arrangement centers the performers, functioning as a “‘void’, within which ‘situations can be constructed in the best conditions possible for their efficient decoding.’”31 Other physical

30 Tait, Circus Bodies, 143 31 Handelman, “Symbolic Types, the Body, and Circus,” 213; referencing Bouissac, “Circus Performances as texts: a matter of poetic competence,” Poetics 5 (1976), 108. 14

considerations might also be taken into account, for example: whether the site of performance is higher or lower than the audience, whether the site itself carries particular meaning (such as ritual meaning), whether the space is permanent or constructed particularly for the event, and whether the space restricts who or how many people may witness the performance. We should also consider when the performance occurs. Is it part of a regular event (e.g., annual festivals)?32

Is it triggered by a specific, but irregular event (e.g., return from war)? Does it take place at night or during the day? Both occasion and space contribute to a particular atmosphere; the atmosphere of a given setting might affect how a performance is experienced, and the performance might also alter or contribute to this atmosphere.

(4) Finally, the performers themselves should be considered. For example, are the performers professionals or non-professionals? What is their age and gender? Are they local performers or imported from other areas? To what degree are these figures viewed as marginal?

Are they seen as comical? How well are they paid? The social position of these figures outside of the context of entertainment is also an indicator of what their bodies and abilities may have signaled when performing.

3. Introduction to Theoretical Perspectives and Analytical Method

My approach to the study of acrobatics employs two related theoretical perspectives: a kinesthetic phenomenology of bodily experience and a semiotics of the performing body. The first perspective, kinesthetic phenomenology, is intended to explore how the people of the ancient Near East felt and existed within their own bodies; it understands the processing of sensory phenomena to be mediated by the experiences and expectations people associate with

32 See for instance the Melanesian land diving ritual of Nagol, which is associated with seasonal yam cultivation. See: Marc Tabani, “The Carnival of Custom: Land Dives, Millenarian parades and Other Spectacular Ritualizations in Vanuatu,” Oceania 80, no. 3 (November 2010): 312. 15

their bodies. The second perspective, a semiotics of the performing body, examines the ways in which meaning is inscribed on the body and its movement. These two perspectives should be understood as intertwined. When viewed in conjunction, these two approaches address the body’s capacity to function simultaneously as both a site of lived experience and a producer of meaning. In both cases, inclusion of the audience as a key element of the performance allows for an investigation of the ways in which the body can produce an embodied experience for both the producers of the movement and the observers.

My approach draws heavily on Vickers’ dissertation “The Acrobatic Body in Ancient

Greek Society.” In this study Vickers examines acrobatics in Archaic and Classical Greek culture. He divides Greek acrobatics into two categories: 1) gymnastic tumbling that was competitive and exclusively practiced by men and 2) hand-balancing and contortion that was primarily for entertainment purposes and more often performed by women. He argues that these represent different ends of the spectrum of “normal” human movement. He views the (male) gymnastic performances, which often contain militaristic elements, as representing super-human acts. Conversely, those (often female) performers who stand on their hands and/or contort their body exist at the other end of the human spectrum and verge on the subhuman. Vickers sees the performers as literally inverting social norms and causing audiences to disassociate, as opposed to associate, with them.33

I will especially utilize three elements of Vickers’ theoretical framework. First, his examination of the semiotic meaning of bodies in motion. As Vickers’ suggests: “The extremeness [of acrobats] makes them a prime locus for the communication of social meaning; a body in utmost physical expression carries utmost symbolism for the culturally informed

33 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 137. 16

observer.”34 Second, Vickers’ analysis of the experience of the audience which examines

“kinesthetic empathy” to get at the embodied reaction of observers. Finally, I am interested in how acrobatics relates to larger ideas about movement and physical ability. Vickers addresses this as well, though briefly: “acrobatics offers not only an investigation of how one’s body can move, but how one can move one’s body in, among, and around a particular social and cultural milieu.”35 In addition to these perspectives, I also examine the embodied experience of the acrobats themselves.

Although I draw on Vickers’ perspective, I have adjusted my methodology to account for differences in source material. Vickers has available more art historical sources as well as textual sources that offer detailed descriptions of the performances and the perspective and reactions of audience members. This degree of detail is not present in the Bronze Age texts. Because of this, some of my conclusions take the form of tentative inferences that draw on the work of theorists within circus studies. Methodologically, I rely here on the elements consistent in acrobatics, such as the extremeness of movement, to extrapolate how these performances might have been experienced in the past. In my case studies, I indicate clearly when I am engaging in speculation and/or drawing insight from comparative cases.

In the following sections I discuss my two approaches, phenomenological and semiotic, in more detail. In each section I first ground my perspective in the archaeological literature and then supplement this with work in sociology and performance theory that more specifically addresses bodies, movement, and performance. Though issues of embodied experience and bodily semiotics have both been the subject of studies in ancient history and archaeology, acrobatic performance offers a unique locus for exploring these issues, because in acrobatics the

34 Ibid., 5-6. 35 Ibid., 1. 17

semiotics are fundamentally built on and into the embodied experience of the performers and audience.

4. Kinesthetic phenomenology of embodied experience

Acrobatic performance is a lived, physical experience. It explores the limits and possibilities of human movement and conducts that exploration in the presence of an audience.

The embodied experience of acrobatics can be examined in both performers and observers through a kinesthetic phenomenology, which aims to better understand how people’s awareness of the body affects their perception and experience. Kinesthetic here refers to a person’s internal sense of the position and movement of their body in and through space. A kinesthetic phenomenology then takes seriously the internal sense of how the body moves, where it is in space, and what its capabilities are — both in regards to the subjects’ experience of their own body, as well as how they perceive the bodies of others.

Within archaeology, phenomenological approaches have been foundational to exploring past peoples’ embodied, lived experience. These approaches are often grounded through engagement with the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, which began as the study of how embodied experience mediates, and is bound up in, our consciousness and perceptions. Within archaeology, phenomenological approaches have tended to focus on the five senses (sight, smell, touch, and taste), as ways in which people experience the world.36 However, other ways of knowing the world, including movement, have been explored extensively in the philosophical literature. For Merleau-Ponty, an early phenomenologist, “our kinesthetic consciousness of movement” was fundamental to how we interact with the world.37 Merleau-Ponty refers to

36 Hamilakis et al., Thinking through the Body, “introduction,” 1: phenomenology as a “sensual” experience; ibid., “The past as oral history: towards an archaeology of the senses,” 122: “The notion of embodiment is based on the idea that our subjectivity is defined by our sensory experiences”; Joyce, “Archaeology of the Body,” 147 37 Patricia Moya Cañas, “The Understanding Of the Body and Movement in Merleau-Ponty,” Trans/Form/Ação 42 18

movement as praktognosia,38 the “original” way of understanding the world.

Within archaeology, phenomenology’s focus on the five senses has undergone critique.

In particular, there are concerns that scholars have inaccurately projected a Western viewpoint by maintaining a focus on the traditional five senses. In non-Western cultures different understandings of the senses can be found. For instance, Gavin Macgregor points to the Hausa who “recognize only two senses: the ji-complex (all non-visual senses) and sight.”39 Similarly,

Hamilakis notes that, for the Anlo-Ewe-speaking people of Ghana “balancing and kinesthesia are considered key sensorial modalities.”40 Hamilakis goes on to conclude that the cultural specificity of the five senses scheme “finds very little empirical support, and its abandonment is long overdue.”41 Hamilakis and MacGregor also both critique the privileging of sight over other senses, an issue that MacGregor refers to as the “ocularcentric status within Western thinking.”42

In an effort to move away from privileging sight, MacGregor’s study of carved stone balls focuses on the haptic perception of objects, dealing with the way in which touch might be used to understand people’s relationship to these objects.

Several scholars have also used a phenomenological lens to examine how physical movement affects human experience. Rosemary Joyce deals with movement through an examination of the muscular experience of molding clay, tracing the ways in which clay figurines are instruments of embodied experience.43 Anthropologist Tim Ingold’s discussion of

(2019): 207, fn 11. 38 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1945), 162. 39 Gavin MacGregor, “Making sense of the past in the present: a sensory analysis of carved stone balls,” World Archaeology 31 (1999): 264. 40 Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 74. 41 Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 75. See also: Hamilakis, “The past as oral history,” 122: “[Phenomenology] seems to privilege what in western discourse are called, higher or distant senses such as sight… at the expense of close or so-called lower senses such as smell, taste, and touch.” 42 MacGregor, “Making sense of the past in the present,” 263. 43 Rosemary Joyce, “When the flesh is solid but the person is hollow inside: formal variation in hand-modeled 19

the physicality of walking and sawing serves as an example of how movement can be considered a facet of embodiment.44 Christopher Tilley’s work in landscape phenomenology has also examined the human relationship between the body and particular spaces. 45 In Body and Image:

Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology Tilley takes a “phenomenologically informed kinesthetic approach” in his examination of rock art.46 Here, he explores “what the rock and its carving were doing to me: their bodily or kinesthetic influence on the way I moved and what I perceived.”47

Even within the above studies, the perspective is somewhat limited. While most of this research attempts to move away from the Western focus on the five senses, these case studies focus on everyday understandings of the body. When it comes to movement in particular, these studies most frequently examine how the body might have felt completing a specific task or how it might engage with a particular landscape. This focus on the practical movement of the body can feel one-dimensional and raises several additional issues. First, the movements being examined are often productive; they are a means to an end that is external to the body. And they are often commonplace actions and thus limited in how they might help us understand the role of movement. This raises the second issue—even when addressing physical movement, archaeologists often fail to account for the semiotic element alongside the embodied experience.

Christine Morris and Alan Peatfield’s work on Bronze Age figurines from Crete, though,

figurines from Formative Mesoamerica,” in Past Bodies, 37-46. 44 Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (New York: Routledge, 2011), 33-50, 51-62. 45 Christopher Tilley, The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in landscape phenomenology 1, (Oxford: Berg, 2005); Tilley, Body and Image: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology 2, (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press, 2008); Tilley, Interpreting Landscapes: Geologies, Topographies, Identities; Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology 3 (Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press, 2010); Tilley, A phenomenology of landscape: places, paths, and monuments,” (Oxford: Berg, 2014). 46 Tilley, Body and Image, 16. 47 Ibid. 20

addresses both meaning and the experience of the body. They suggest that the postures of Cretan figurines do not represent prayer, as originally supposed, but instead indicate positions that would have induced altered states of consciousness. In their paper, Morris and Peatfield attempt to “feel through the body, by addressing the fundamental physicality of gesture.”48 Crucially, they note that actions take on both internal and external dimensions of meaning. They identify external actions as symbolic, “done for the sake of form and tradition,” while the internal component of actions “affects how you feel and what you experience.”49 This duality takes on particular meaning in their paper, as they argue that embodied actions affect significant changes to states of mind. However, this duality is key in any study relating to consciously performed movement.

Here we can turn to performance theory, which suggests that embodiment is a key element in understanding spectacle: “performance-centered research takes as both its subject matter and method the experiencing body situated in time, place, and history.”50 As performance, and particularly body-centered performance, acrobatics offers a particularly valuable site from which to examine embodied experience. The extreme movements of acrobats indicate an exceptional embodied physical experiences for the performers. These performers require especially strong kinesthetic awareness and skill. While textual and artistic evidence for such performers in the past usually references the moments of performance, the nature of the skills involved requires training and practice beyond the performances themselves. This training might be a part of daily life for specialist acrobats but might be practiced by non-specialists more

48 Christine Morris and Alan Peatfield, “Feeling through the body: gesture in Cretan Bronze Age Religion,” in Thinking through the Body, 105-120. 49 Morris and Peatfield, “Feeling through the body,” 106. 50 Dwight Conquergood, “Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics,” Communication Monographs 58, no. 2 (1991): 187. 21

infrequently during leisure time or as a part of more sporadic training.51 We can therefore examine particular types of acrobatic performance to better understand both the experience of performing and the training required to acquire the necessary skills. The training required for flexibility for instance, is different than what is needed to gain bodily awareness while tumbling.52 We might also imagine how having a distinct skillset separates and distinguishes these figures from the rest of the population— how (or does it?) mark them as other?

In addition to the performers, we can also examine the experiences of observers.

Acrobats not only experience particular phenomena but create phenomena as well. One contribution of phenomenology was the “undermining of the subject—object dichotomy.”53

Hamilakis gives the handshake as an example: “A performer as a subject is an experiencing entity; but as a performer they are also an object to be experienced. As in a handshake, the performer is both ‘acting and at the same time being acted on.’”54 We might imagine both performers and audience in a similar manner; in the context of performance both performer and audience create and experience kinesthetic phenomena. Most obviously, acrobatic performers create visual phenomena, but as Hamilakis points out, all phenomena are interlinked. The visual experience created by the acrobats cannot be wholly isolated from other, simultaneous, sensory experiences. This might include the music to which the acrobats perform or the physical movements of the audiences as they follow the performers with their eyes and body. In other words, the audience can be expected to (indeed, is often explicitly intended to) undergo a

51 We see for instance, evidence of acrobatic children’s games in Egypt (Wolfgang Decker, Sports and Games of Ancient Egypt, trans. Allen Guttmann (New York: Yale University Press, 1992), and later acrobatic practices such as India’s Mallakhamb grew out of wrestling training practices. (Jon Burtt, “Mallakhamb: an investigation into the Indian physical practice of rope and pole Mallakhamb,” International Journal of the Arts in Society 5, no. 3 (2010): 29-38.) 52 Here we might also consider practice theory such as Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. 53 Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 66. 54 Ibid. 22

visceral, multi-sensorial reaction to the kinesthetic displays of the acrobats.

Tait deals particularly clearly with the audience reaction to acrobatic bodies and describes a “reciprocating bodily awareness from spectators during live performance.”55 For Bouissac, this reaction is in part due to the audience’s association of acrobatic feats with challenges that they might encounter in their own lives such as recovering balance or maneuvering around obstacles.56 Both of these perspectives are foundational to Vickers theory of kinesthetic empathy, which he describes as “an unconscious recollection of ‘somatic memory’ – how our own body can move or has moved – and apply it to the circumstance at hand.”57

In Bouissac, Tait, and Vickers’ discussions of embodied reactions/kinesthetic empathy, the underlying cause of the audience reactions is a mixture of awe and a reaction to the dangerous nature of the performance. The element of danger, particularly when it is deliberately emphasized in performance, has a particular effect on the audience’s reaction. Tait for instance examines the embodied experience of the audience when observing modern acrobats. She points in particular to embodied reception such as holding the breath.58 These reactions can be viewed as both embodied experiences in themselves and reactions to the embodied experiences of others.

Here again the subject—object dichotomy is disrupted. This effect is a direct result of the extreme movement, and often danger, that characterizes acrobatic performance.

In the Near East in particular, as I will show, acrobatics were primarily included in feasts and rituals, we might consider the ways in which the nature of feasts was particularly suited to disrupt the subject-object dichotomy. Feasts, which are already disruptions to normal

55 Tait, Circus Bodies, 141. 56 Bouissac, Circus and Culture, 45: “The difference between waking on a sidewalk and balancing on one’s head on the bar of a trapeze is only a difference of degree; both can be defined as a series of compensations for loss of balance.” 57 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 23. 58 Ibid., 141. 23

temporality, are constructed to “produce synchronicity.” Hamilakis observes that at feasts “we do not simply eat together but we also eat and share substances, sensorial experiences, emotions, and feelings at the same time.”59 Indeed, the atmosphere and kinesthetic empathy that resulted from acrobatic performance might be considered a further contribution to the atmosphere of synchronicity. The feeling of connection created between the performer and audience (and perhaps including other participants such as musicians as well) might produce both collective audience reactions, as well as a connection between audience and performer. This framework might also be used to interrogate people’s understandings of their own bodies. What sorts of movements, ranges of motion, awarenesses, did people expect their bodies to be capable of? In this sense, attention to acrobatic performance might help to draw a perimeter around understandings of the limits of physical abilities.

5. Semiotic approaches

My second approach to bodies involves examining the ways in which social meaning is communicated through the body and incorporated into performance. I am interested in how semiotics, which “investigates sign systems and the modes of representation that humans use to convey their emotions, ideas, and life experiences,”60 can be used to understand the ways in which movement and performance encode cultural ideas into the body. I take a sociosemiotic approach that focuses on “the modes of production of signs and meanings as they enacted in social practice,” as opposed to “signs systems and their classification.”61

Within archaeology, there has long been an implicit interest in the semiotics of the body.

This is often seen in early archaeological interests in how the body’s surface is inscribed. This

59 Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 87. 60 Robert W. Preucel, Archaeological Semiotics, (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 5. 61 Ibid., 8. 24

research has included topics such as dress and ornamentation, as well as more permanent markers such as tattoos and bodily modifications.62 Other work has dealt with how various body parts were understood to convey specific meaning. Irene Winter for instance discusses the symbolism of the body of the king in a series of articles. While she does not explicitly refer to a semiotics of the body, she clearly indicates how various parts of the body, particularly musculature, signaled specific cultural meanings.63 Joyce likewise examines the semiotics of bodily representations, examining the varied symbolic meanings of gender found in figurines.64

When discussing objects, Joyce notes that “symbolic conventions vary in different times and places.”65 We might ask how this might this be extended to not just the body as it is represented, but also as it existed as a dynamic, moving entity.

Vickers’ describes the semiotics of bodily movement as “corporeal semiotics.”66 Vickers’ argument is rooted in the notion that all movement of the body is culturally mediated and that movement of the body therefore creates culturally decipherable symbols.67 This assertion is supported in archaeological and anthropological research. Hamilakis notes, citing Marcel Mauss, that “the techniques of the body… are not natural nor universal traits for humans, but rather context specific and highly meaningful, acquired bodily performances.”68 He gives as example

62 There is a wide variety of work concerning the body’s surface. For dress and costuming see: Mireille M. Lee “Deciphering Gender in Minoan Dress,” in Rautman, Reading the Body, 111-123. For ornamentation see: Michelle I. Marcus, “Incorporating the body: adornment, gender, and social identity in ancient Iran,” World Archaeology 31 (1999): 258-257. For tattooing practices see: Paul Rainbird, “Marking the body, marking the land: body as history, land as history: tattooing and engraving in Oceania,” in Hamilakis et al., Thinking through the Body, 233-248. 63 Irene Winter, “The body of the able ruler: towards an understanding of the statues of Gudea,” in Dumu-E-Dub- Ba-A: Studies in Honor of Are W. Sjöberg, eds. H. Behrenad et al. (Philadelphia: The University Museum, 1989), 573-583; Winter, “Sex, Rhetoric and the Public Monument: The Alluring Body of Naram-Sîn of Agade,” in Sex in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, eds. N.B. Kampen and B. Bergman (Cambridge and New York: New York University Press, 1996), 11-26. 64 Joyce, Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives: Sex, Gender, and Archaeology (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008), 9. 65 Ibid. 66 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 4. 67 Ibid., 3. Vickers frequently cites Bourdieu, particularly his assertion that “the properties and movements of the body are socially qualified.” 68 Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 73. 25

the Anlo-Ewe people of Ghana’s attitude towards balance: “Mothers would warn off daughters against marrying men who walk in a lugulugu way (in a swaying or dawdling matter, as if one was drunk) because of their unstable and irresponsible character.”69 Similarly, Vickers cites a style of walking known in ancient Greece in which the “swaying steps” of a women indicated that she was a prostitute.70 These semiotic associations of the body demonstrate the social implications and readings of particular movements, movements that are both embodied and connotative.

While all movement is socially qualified, this is particularly true of movement that functions as entertainment; in these cases physicality has been both encoded and reproduced for the consumption of others. Vickers notes: “Performance context guides the interpretation of bodies and actions, setting the cultural parameters by which they acquire and evoke semiotic

‘meaning.’”71 Performance study, which explicitly links bodily performance to symbolic meaning, offers an additional perspective.72 Semiotic work on dance indicates that various aspects of movement, from gestures, to foot beats, to patterns made by groups of moving bodies, all contain symbolic meanings.73 Sometimes, as in Indian classical dance, gestures and body positions carry intentional and specific meaning.74 In other forms of dance movement might be evocative but not specific. In both cases, the movement and physicality of the body carries social meaning that is often reinforced by other signifiers such as costume and music.

Acrobatics raises specific issues involving semiotics. This is in part because in these performances the body and the physical abilities of the body are the explicit focus. I follow

69 Ibid., 73-74. 70 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 2. 71 Ibid., 175. 72 Palmer, “Performance and Imagination.” 73 Nikoleta Popa Blanariu, “Towards a framework of a semiotics of dance,” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 15 no. 1 (2013): 74 Ibid., 2. 26

Vickers’ assertion that “acrobatics offers not only an investigation of how one’s body can move, but how one can move one’s body in, among, and around a particular social and cultural milieu.”75 When assessing the semiotic meaning of acrobatic acts we might pay particular attention to the obfuscation or accentuation of the effort required for various skills or of how dangerous an act is to complete. Acrobats make (or conventions dictate) specific choices about acrobatic acts, particularly when and how to exaggerate, expose, or conceal their exertion or the degree of danger. Movements such as hesitation, loss of balance, or muscular exertion all signal degrees of danger or effort. Often, a variety of different choices will be employed throughout an act to create a variety of feelings for spectators. The balance of these choices, particularly when encoded within an act that becomes standardized, produces and reproduces audience expectations and narratives about physical abilities. We might also note how various types of movement serve as signs. Vickers’ dissertation argues for instance that the Greek acrobatic body was seen as alternately sub- or super-human, depending on the type of movement being performed. He argues that acrobats performing contortion were seen as disassociated from their humanness, whereas performers exhibiting tumbling skills were read as exemplary humans. The quality and type of movement, therefore, allowed for the audience to overlay particular archetypal figures onto the performers.

Semiotic analysis is an especially useful tool because the evidence of acrobatic performance in the ancient Near East, both visual and textual, is limited. This approach allows for speculation about possible connotations that may have influenced how these performances were received, and what they represent. I will look particularly at how the semiotics of the body and performance might refer to ways in which parts of the body, shapes the body makes,

75 Ibid., 1. 27

particular types of movement, and props accompanying the performance, reflect and convey social/cultural messaging.

Conclusions

The body is a fundamental site of experience, meaning-making, communication, social encounter, and cultural reproduction. Particularly in the context of performance the body explicitly and deliberately communicates messages — “it is through performances, whether individual or collective, that humans project images of themselves and the world to their audiences.”76 The study of acrobatics, which by definition explores the limits of physical ability, offers a particularly advantageous vantage point from which to examine these messages and the embodied experience of both creating and observing them. As Vickers describes, citing Tait:

“The systems of kinesthetic empathy and body semiotics are mutually reinforcing… ‘a body’s kinetic action...contributes to cultural identity’.”77

76 Palmer and Jankowiak, “Performance and Imagination,” 226. 77 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 27, citing Tait, Circus Bodies, 146. 28

Chapter II: Background and Context

Introduction

There is scattered, yet consistent, evidence of acrobatic performance across the Bronze

Age. Because this evidence is relatively scarce (particularly compared to later Greek and Roman periods), this thesis draws from a range of regions and a broad span of time but is limited to the

Bronze Age Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. More specifically, this thesis focuses geographically on Crete, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia and chronologically on the Early and

Middle Bronze Ages. The following section provides broad background information to these regions, including the history of excavations and specific sites and periods within those regions that are most relevant to this study.

1. Crete

The island of Crete, situated just south of Greece in the Mediterranean Sea, is the largest of the Greek islands. The first preliminary excavations on Crete began in the late 19th century with the discovery of the palace of Knossos by Minos Kalokarinos. These excavations were later taken up by Sir Arthur Evans in the early 20th century who began the first large-scale excavations at Knossos which uncovered a large palace complex, a wide array of art, and the previously unknown writing system Linear A. It was these excavations that brought Crete and the people

Evans called the Minoans (after the mythological King Minos) into the global consciousness.78

Evans called the palace at Knossos the “Palace of Minos” and published his findings in four volumes, The Palace of Minos at Knossos, published between 1921 and 1935.

Since Evans’s excavations, fieldwork has continued across Crete and uncovered similar

78 I avoid the use of the common term “Minoan” to refer to the Bronze Age people of Crete as it misleading supports the narrative that Bronze Age Crete was the early foundation of Western civilization. For more see: Hamilakis, “The Colonial, the National, and the Local: Legacies of the ‘Minoan’ Past,” Creta Antica 7 (2006): 146-162. 29

palace complexes dating to the Middle Bronze Age across the island, the largest of these being:

Knossos, Malia, Phaistos, and Zakros.79 These complexes all featured a large central courtyard, with a series of similarly organized rooms around it. Initially these complexes were believed to be royal residences; however, later evidence shows that they more likely had a variety of uses including as regional ritual, administrative, and political centers. How these palaces related to each other is unclear. Some scholars have argued that they were each independent centers,80 though others claim that Knossos served as the primary seat of political power on the island.81 In addition to these palaces, large village-like settlements were also found throughout the island.82

The history of Bronze Age Crete is generally divided into the following periods:

Prepalatial (3100-1950 BCE), Protopalatial (1950-1750 BCE), Neopalatial (1700-1450 BCE), and Postpalatial/Monopalatial (1450-1375).83 Most of the evidence discussed in this thesis comes from the Neopalatial and Monopalatial periods. In 1730 BCE an earthquake ended the

Protopalatial period, destroying the existing palace structures. These complexes were rebuilt during the Neopalaial period, which also saw a change in material culture.84 There was a large increase in figural art, particularly in the representation of figures, many of which are shown engaged in sport, dance, or other ritual activity. This period also saw the introduction of Linear

79Ellen Adams, “Palaces and Their Context,” in Cultural Identity in Minoan Crete: Social Dynamics in the Neopalatial Period, ed. Ellen Adams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 35-69. 80 Katy Soar, “Sects and the city: factional ideologies in representations of performance from Bronze Age Crete,” World Archaeology 42 (2014): 224-241 81Adams, “Palaces and Their Context,” 107; John H. Betts, “New Light on Minoan Bureaucracy: A Re-examination of Some Cretan Sealings,” Kadmos 6, no. 1 (1967): 15-40. 82Adams, “Other Settlements and Regional Groupings,” in Cultural Identity in Minoan Crete, 70-107; Carl Knappett, "Beyond the palaces––views from the Minoan countryside,” Antiquity 72, no. 276 (1998): 447-451. 83 J. Lesley Fitton, Minoans (London: British Museum Press, 2002); Oliver Dickinson, The Aegean Bronze Age, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Jeremy Rutter, “Sport in the Aegean Bronze Age,” in A Companion to Sport and Spectacle in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Paul Christesen and Donald G. Kyle, eds. (West Sussex: Wiley Blackell, 2014), 40. 84 Sinclair Hood, The Arts in Prehistoric Greece (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1978); Rutter, “Sport in the Aegean Bronze Age,” 47. 30

A, an as-yet undeciphered script, most likely used primarily for administrative purposes.85 At the end of the Neopalatial period all of the palaces (with the exception of Knossos) and other settlements were destroyed. While there has been some speculation that this was due to

Mycenaean invasion from mainland Greece, there is no consensus on if this took place.86

Following this destruction, however, there seems to be a Mycenaean presence on the island, including the appearance of the Linear B script.87

2. Mesopotamia

The region of Mesopotamia, named for the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, includes modern day Iraq, as well as much of Syria, and southeastern Turkey. Excavations have taken place across

Mesopotamia since the early 19th century and, as such, the full history of the archaeology of this region is too vast to address here. Instead, I will focus on those sites that are particularly pertinent to my case studies: Nagar (modern Tell Brak), Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh), and Mari

(modern Tell Hariri). These sites produced a range of evidence which includes cuneiform texts in a variety of languages, buildings and other monumental architecture, human remains, and objects including cylinder seals, ceramics, and figurines.

Nagar (Tell Brak)

The modern site of Tell Brak lies in northern Syria and was a major regional center in northern Mesopotamia. Excavations at Tell Brak were first conducted by Max Mallowan in 1937 and 1938 and resumed in 1976 under David and Joan Oates.88 These excavations revealed

85 Massimo Perna, “The Birth of Administration and Writing in Minoan Crete: Some Thoughts on Hieroglyphics and Linear A,” in KE-RA-ME-JA: Studies Presented to Cynthia W. Shelmerdine, eds. Dimitri Nakassis, Joann Gulizio and Sara A. James (Havertown: Institute for Aegean Prehistory Academic Press, 2014), 251-260. 86 Malcolm Wiener, “The Mycenaean Conquest of Minoan Crete,” in The Great Islands: Studies of Crete and Cyprus presented to Gerald Cadogan, ed. Colin F. Macdonald, Eleni Hatzaki and Stelios Andreou (Kapon Editions, 2015), 131-142. 87 Paul Rehak, and John G. Younger, "Review of Aegean Prehistory VII: Neopalatial, Final Palatial, and Postpalatial Crete." American Journal of Archaeology 102, no. 1 (1998): 91-173. 88 For final reports see: David Oates, Joan Oates, and Helen McDonald, The Excavations at Tell Brak 1: The 31

occupation beginning in the late 5th millennium BCE and economic complexity and large population size from the early 4th millennium BCE onward. In this thesis I am most interested in the late Early Dynastic period (ED III) in the mid-late 3rd millennium, a time when Nagar was a large regional center and had close connection to other cities, particularly Ebla. This period also immediately precedes Akkadian control of the site.

Excavations from the 3rd millennium levels uncovered architectural structures which included residential, administrative, economic, and religious buildings. Finds from Brak, including skeletal remains and figurines, as well as texts from Ebla, all attest that Nagar was particularly well known for breeding equids. These were a major export to Ebla. While short cuneiform inscriptions have been found from this period at Brak, no complete tablets have been recovered from the site. Many cylinder seals dating to this period have also been recovered at

Tell Brak.89 I am particularly interested in a seal found in the area HP on the west side of the site.

This area yielded a brick structure with rooms which contained pottery and an inscribed piece of clay. Adjacent to this is a dump that contained hundreds of clay sealings and which has been dated using AMS90 to the 23rd century BCE. The scenes on the seals included banquets, chariots, contests, and both mythical and real animals.91

Ebla (Tell Mardikh)

Tell Mardikh is located in northwestern Syria, about 240 miles (nearly 400 km) west of

Mitanni and Old Babylonian Periods (London: McDonald Institute Monographs, 1997); David Oates, Joan Oates and Helen McDonald, The Excavations at Tell Brak 2: Nagar in the Third Millennium BC (London: Mcdonald Institute Monographs, 2001); Roger Matthews, ed., The Excavations at Tell Brak 4: Exploring an Upper Mesopotamian Regional Centre, 1994-96 (London :McDonald Institute Monographs, 2003); Preliminary reports on excavations regularly appeared in Iraq. 89 Donald M. Matthews, The Early Glyptic of Tell Brak (Fribourg, Switzerland: University Press, 1997). 90 AMS=Accelerator Mass Spectrometry; a type of radiocarbon dating 91 Harvey Weiss, “Archaeology in Syria,” American Journal of Archaeology 101, no. 1 (1997): 117-118.; Matthews, “Fourth and third millennia chronologies : the view from tell Brak, North-East Syria,” in From the Euphrates to the Caucasus: Chronologies for the 4th-3rd millennium B.C. (Istanbul : Institut Français d'Études Anatoliennes-Georges Dumézil, 2000), 65- 72. 32

Tell Brak. The site was excavated between 1960 and 2011 by Paolo Matthiae.92 Like Nagar, Ebla was a large regional power with complex economic and administrative capacity in the mid and late 3rd millennium BCE. Because of its western location, Ebla was also a geographic and cultural intersection between the Levant and the rest of Mesopotamia.

One of the most important contributions from Mardikh was the discovery in 1975 of palace administrative archives, found in Royal Palace G in the Administrative Quarter and the

Court of the Audience. Around 1800 complete tablets and over 15,000 fragments were recovered, indicating that 4000-5000 tablets made up the original archive.93 These archives are some of the first known cuneiform sources in northern Mesopotamia. The tablets span the reigns of three kings (Igrish-Khalam, Irkab-Damu, and Ishar-Damu). They contained primarily administrative texts but also letters from kings, as well as a few literary texts and bilingual lexical lists. These texts relay a particularly strong economic tie to Nagar; this connection included the export of equids from Nagar to Ebla, as well as a political marriage between a

Nagar prince and Eblaite princess.94 The archives were preserved when the city was burned in

2350 BCE. In this thesis I draw on several of the texts from these archives, particularly those discussing festivals and those recording trade between Ebla and Nagar.

Mari (Tell Hariri)

Tell Hariri in located in eastern Syria on the western bank of the Euphrates. It was first

92 For publications on Ebla see: Chaim Bermant and Michael Weitzman, Ebla: A Revelation in Archeology (New York: Times Books, 1979); Paolo Matthiae, Ebla: an Empire Rediscovered, trans. Christopher Holme (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981); Cyrus H. Gordon and Gary A Rendsburg, eds. Eblatica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and Eblaite Language, Volumes 1-4 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1987- 2002); Matthiae Ebla: Archaeology and History, (trans. Richard Bates, Mattia Bilardello, and Anita Weston) (New York: Routledge, 2021); Giovanni Pettinato, "The Royal Archives of Tell Mardikh-Ebla," The Biblical Archaeologist 39, no. 2 (1976): 44-52; 93 Matthiae, “The State Archives: Economy culture, and society,” in Ebla: Archaeology and History, 84-110. 94 For more on the export of equids see: Rita Dolce, “Equids as Luxury Gifts at the Center of Interregional Economic Dynamics in the Archaic Urban Cultures of the Ancient Near East,” Syria 91 (2014): 55-75. For the political union between Ebla and Nagar see: Alfonso Archi, “The Regional State of Nagar According to the Texts of Ebla,” Subartu IV (1998): 5. 33

excavated in 1933 by French archaeologist André Parrot.95 Excavations have continued under

French archaeologists, first directed by Jean-Claude Margueron between 1979 and 2004, then by

Pascal Butterlin from 2005 onward.96 The ancient city of Mari was rebuilt and destroyed three times. The first iteration of Mari, City I, was founded in the very early 3rd millennium; however, the evidence I draw on is from Mari’s City III period. This iteration of the city was initially rebuilt in the 23rd century by the new Shakkanakku dynasty, who were most likely installed by

Akkadian king Naram-Sin. This dynasty continued, and gained independence, following the collapse of the Akkadian empire.97 Following the Shakkanakku rulers were a series of Amorite kings, ending with Zimri-Lim who was ruling when the city was finally destroyed in 1760 by

Hammurabi. Until its destruction, Mari was the most important city in northern Mesopotamia.

Excavations of City III uncovered the reconstruction of an older palace and religious center as well as the construction of a new palace. Crucially, thousands of tablets were found from this period, most of which date to the final fifty years of the city. These texts, written in

Akkadian, were collected and stored in the palace by Mari’s final ruler, Zimri-Lim. The tablets include letters, administrative documentation, contracts, and cultic documentation.98 I use several of these texts, particularly those describing festival proceedings.

95 André Parrot, Mission archéologique à Mari II: le palais, vol. 1-3 (Paris, 1958-1959); Parrot, Mari, capitale fabuleuse (Paris, 1974); Yasin M. Al-Khalesi, The court of the palms: a functional interpretation of the Mari palace (Malibu: Undena Publications, 1978). 96 Jean-Claude Margeuron, Mari: Capital of Northern Mesopotamia in the Third Millennium: the Archaeology of Tell Hariri on the Euphrates (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2014). For further publications see: Margueron, Recherches sur les palais mésopotamiens de l’áge due bronze (Paris: Geuthner, 1982); Marie-Henriette Gates, “The Palace of Zimri-Lim at Mari,” The Biblical Archaeologist 47, no. 2 (1984): 70-87. 97 Margeuron, Mari, 32. 98 For more information on the archive see: Jack M. Sasson, From the Mari Archives: An Anthology of Old Babylonian Letters (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2015), 3; Dennis Pardee and Jonathan T. Glass, “Literary Sources for the History of Palestine and Syria: The Mari Archives,” The Biblical Archaeologist 47, no. 2 (1984): 88-99; G. Dossin, J.R. Kupper, J. Bottéro, M. Birot et al, Archives royales de Mari (ARM) volumes 1-32 (1946-2012); Florilegium marianum (FM) volumes 1-14 (1992-2014). 34

3. Anatolia

Anatolia, the large peninsula that today makes up Turkey, was controlled for a large portion of the Bronze Age by the Hittites.99 By the early 2nd millennium there is a definite Indo-

European presence in the region, though we know this only based on the names recorded by

Assyrian merchants. There are three groups of Indo-European people that can be identified in

Anatolia in the early 2nd millennium: a group in the north that spoke Palaic, a group that was dispersed throughout central, southern, and western Anatolia that spoke Luwian, and a final group in central Anatolia that spoke Nesite, the language we now call Hittite.100

Hittite history is generally divided into three periods. The colony age (19th-18th centuries), the Old Hittite Kingdom (17th-15th centuries), and the Hittite Empire (14th-12th centuries).101 The material used in this thesis is focused primarily on the period of the Old Hittite

Kingdom. This period saw the first real consolidation of power by Ḫattušili I who founded the

Hittite capital at Hattuša in north central Turkey — Hattuša would remain the Hittite capital until the collapse of the Hittite Empire. Though Ḫattušili I and his immediate successors undertook successful military expeditions in central Anatolia and into Mesopotamia, he wasn’t able to hold these territories and establish an empire. There was a series of struggles over Hittite kingship throughout the 16th century which were resolved in 1525 BCE by Telipinu, who drove out

Hurrian invaders and restored authority. It would not be until the 14th century that Tudhaliya was able to expand the Hittite kingdom into an empire.

99 David Hopkins ed., Across the Anatolian Plateau: Readings in the Archaeology of Ancient Turkey (Atlanta: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2001); Billie Jean Collins, Hittites and Their World (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007); Yener, K. Aslihan, Hoffner Jr., Harry A., and Dhesi, Simrit, eds. Recent Developments in Hittite Archaeology and History: Papers in Memory of Hans G. Guterbock (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2002); Claudia Glatz, The Making of Empire in Bronze Age Anatolia: Hittite Sovereign Practice, Resistance, and Negotiation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 100 Bryce, “The Hittite Empire,” in The Archaeology of Empire, 723; Collins, Hittites and their World, 31. 101 See: Collins, “The Political History of the Hitties,” in Hittites and their World, 21-90. 35

Across Hittite Anatolia, a variety of textual, archaeological, and art historical evidence has shed light on the Hittites. Texts, which adopted the Mesopotamian cuneiform system to write the Hittite language, were found at Hattuša and other important centers and included letters, treaties, economic and administrative texts, festival and ritual texts, mythological narratives, and laws. Hittite festival texts, which describe the order of ceremonies during particular events are particularly relevant to this study. These texts recount the specific elements of various festivals, as well as how particular rituals or entertainment were carried out. The Hittites incorporated the languages and religious practices of earlier Anatolian peoples, as well as Mesopotamian traditions, into their practices. When they borrowed religious practices, they often kept songs and other religious texts in languages such as Luwian, Hattic, and Hurrian. Hittite religion is then an amalgamation of various traditions, though it retained many Indo-European elements as well.

This included a prominent storm god, who is often associated with bulls, which featured prominently in Hittite religious iconography.102

Though the Hittites had their capital at Hattuša, there were many important cities and cultic centers in the region as well, and many of the festivals involved pilgrimages to these centers. I draw primarily from evidence from these cultic sites, particularly libation vessels from two sites: İnandık and Hüseyindede. Both sites are in north central Turkey, about 38 miles (60 kilometers) from each other. İnandık was excavated in 1996 by a Turkish team led by Raci

Temizer, who was at the time the director of the Ankara Museum.103 İnandıktepe is most notable for a temple found at the site, dating to the reign of Hattušili I (165-1620 BCE). The temple,

102 O.R. Gurney, Some Aspects of Hittite Religion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1977); Volkert Hass, Gerschit der Hethistischen Religion (Leiden: Brill, 1994). 103 Özgüç, İnandıktepe, Eski Hitit Çağında Önemli Bir Kült Merkez, An Important Cult Center in the Old Hittite Period. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basım Evi, 1988; Thomas Moore, “Old Hittite Polychrome Relief Vases and the Assertion of Kingship in 15th Century BCE Anatolia,” MA thesis, (İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University, 2015), 13. 36

possibly dedicated to the weather god, produced a series cultic objects including several terracotta bull statuettes, a number of ceramics, and a model of a shrine.104 The site of

Hüseyindede was the subject of a regional survey in 1996 under Tunç Sipahi and Tayfun

Yıldırım. Subsequent excavations, also under Sipahi and Yıldırım, began in 1997. The site is best known for a series of libation vessels that were discovered there in what was probably a cult building or temple.105

104 Özguc, Indandiktepe, 106-108. 105 Tayfun Yıldırım and Tunç Sipahi, “Yili Çorum Bölgesi Yüzey Arastirmalari 1997-1999” Arastirma Sonuçlari Toplantisi I. Cilt, (1999), 433-450; Yıldırım, “Hüseyindede: A Settlement in North-Central Anatolia – Contributions to Old Hittite Art,” in Franca Pecchioli Daddi, Guilia Torri, and Carlo Corti, eds., Central-North Anatolia in the Hittite Period. (Rome: Herder, 2009), 235-246. 37

Chapter III: Bull-Leaping

Introduction

Sir Arthur Evans’s excavations at Knossos on the island of Crete revealed, among numerous treasures, what would become the most famous acrobats from the ancient world.

Across a multitude of media a similar scene was repeatedly unearthed at Knossos and across the island: a bull charging forward and a human figure at some stage of vaulting over it. The scene was found on sculptures, reliefs, frescoes, and glyptic images and ranged in size from life-size

(and larger) frescoes to miniature scenes incised on seal stones and signet rings. The “bull- leaping” figures depicted in these scenes have been the subject of more scholarship than any other acrobatic performers from the ancient world. But there is surprisingly little consensus regarding who the bull-leapers were and what purpose they served.106

In this section I discuss the evidence for bull-leaping in Crete, Mesopotamia, and

Anatolia. For each region I examine the evidence available, review current scholarship, and offer my own interpretations. While the focus of this thesis is acrobatic performance in the ancient

Near East, in this section I discuss the material from Crete in some detail. Because this is the region in which bull-leaping was first identified and the region with the most extensive corpus of depictions, the majority of scholarship on bull-leaping has centered on Crete. Studies of bull- leaping from other regions frequently reference the Cretan material and draw their own conclusions from these depictions. My discussion follows the same general path; I use the material from Crete as an entry point into a number of key debates and discussions raised by bull-leaping.

106 Kathryn Soar, “Old Bulls, New Tricks: The Reinvention of a Minoan Tradition,” in The Past in the Past: The Significance of Memory and Tradition in the Transmission of Culture (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2009): 16: “Various viewpoints and perspectives have been offered on the phenomenon of bull- leaping, but as yet no single argument has been firmly accepted as to its function.” 38

While depictions of bull-leaping can be found in all three regions, they do not seem to indicate a single, uniform practice that spread throughout the greater Mediterranean. Instead, we find differing representations of the body, differing associations surrounding bulls, and differing contexts of depiction. Given this evidence for variability, I do not focus on the origins and spread of bull-leaping (as many other studies have) but instead on what these depictions indicate about the people who acted in and observed these performances.

1. Crete

Evidence

Crete has produced the most visual evidence of bull-leaping, but there is no textual evidence to supplement these images. Images of bulls are prominent in the iconography of Crete, particularly at Knossos. While images of humans and bulls appear throughout Crete’s history, the images of bull-leaping are not distributed evenly across time. There are far too many bull- leaping depictions to discuss each here individually. Instead, I offer a brief chronological overview of bull-leaping, highlighting a number of key objects.

Prepalatial: Bull-shaped rhytons

Two terracotta bull-shaped rhytons107 (figure 1) dating to the Prepalatial period (3100-

1950 BCE) are often considered the earliest representations of bull-leaping. These libation vessels were found in tholos tombs at Koumasa and Porti, in the south-central area of the island.

Attached to these vessels are small human figures hanging from the horns of the bulls.108 The human figures here are far smaller than the bulls to which they are attached, and on one of the rhytons multiple human figures are shown clinging to the horns. The bull-shaped rhytons

107 Terracotta Bull Rhyton, Prepalatial period, Koumasa and Porti, now in Heraklion Archaeological Museum (Y126). 108 Rutter, “Sport in the Aegean Bronze Age,” 38. 39

contrast with later depictions that show relatively larger human figures who leap the bulls individually and with what appear to be more deliberate movements. Though the bull-shaped rhytons of the Prepalatial period are often referenced as the earliest bull-leaping depictions, it is usually assumed that they depict a precursor to bull-leaping: likely bull-grappling or a bull hunt.

Soar views this version of bull-sports as “a rural, community-based activity – one in which bulls may have been emblematic of the agrarian sphere.”109 This assessment come from having found these vessels in tholos tombs, spaces that emphasized community, as well as the large size of the bull, which emphasized its wildness.110 The communal nature of the activity is further emphasized by the multiple figures clinging to a single bull.111 Following the appearance of the bull-shaped rhytons, there is a break of approximately four centuries before depictions of bull- related sports appear again in the Protopalatial period.112

Neopalatial: Boxer rhyton, glyptic objects, frescos

While there are no depictions of bull-leaping in the Protopalatial period (1950-1750

BCE), images of humans and bulls reappear en masse in Neopalatial Crete (1750-1450 BCE).

This period has produced the most bull-leaping depictions of Cretan origin.113 Indeed, around

80% of images showing sport from this period depict bull-leaping.114 They appear in many forms, including glyptic scenes, several fresco fragments, a vase relief, and depictions in the round (including both an ivory leaper115 and a bronze group of bull and leaper116). One

109 Soar, “Sects and the city,” 228. 110 Soar, “Old Bulls,” 18; Rutter suggests that these bulls may have been the now extinct Bos primigenius species: Rutter, “Sport in the Aegean Bronze Age,” 38. 111 Ibid., 36. 112 Both Rutter and Soar note this gap: Rutter (“Sport in the Bronze Age Aegean,” 38), argues there was likely no connection between the activity shown on the bull-shaped rhyton and later depictions of bull-leaping, Soar (“Old Bulls”) argues that there was a connection. 113 I am excluding from this study Mycenean depiction of bull-leaping which occurred mainland Crete. 114 Rutter, “Sports in the Aegean Bronze Age,” 39. 115 Ivory bull-leaping figure, ~1500 BCE, Knossos, now in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum (AE 3). 116 Bronze figurine of bull-leaper, 1600-1450 BCE, Knossos, now in British Museum (19660328.1) 40

particularly notable object from this period is the Boxer Rhyton117 (figure 2), a fragmentary vase dating to the 16th century BCE and was found at Hagia Triada, a non-palace settlement in southern Crete that was likely an elite villa. On the rhyton four registers of reliefs depict a series of physical competitions between youth. Three of the registers show youth boxing in pairs; in two of these the figures wear helmets. However, the third relief from the bottom shows an unusual bull-leaping scene: the leaping figure is tossed in the air, gored through the middle by a galloping bull. A reconstruction of the vase suggests that another leaper who successfully completed his leap was also depicted. This vessel is notable both for its depiction of the failed leap and for its contextualization of bull-leaping among other sport-like, physical activities conducted by young men.

Glyptic depictions from the Neopalatial period, particularly signet rings and clay impressions from these rings, are also notable: 30 bull-leaping impressions from at least five different rings have been found across the island at Hagia Triada, Zakro, Sklavokambos,

Gournia, and Knossos.118 However, it has long been suspected that these objects originated in workshops at Knossos and were the iconography of the Knossian elite.119 Some confirmation of this was found by a 2009 study that presented a mineralogical and chemical analysis of trace elements within several gold signet rings found across the island. Trace amounts of clay found in the rings placed their origin at Knossos.120 The expensive materials and high quality of objects on which bull-leapers are depicted also connect these figures to the elite class. The Knossian

117 Boxer Rhyton, 1550-1500 BCE, Hagia Triada, now in Heraklion Archaeological Museum (AE 498) 118 Birgitta P. Hallager and Erik Hallager, “The Knossian Bull — Political Propaganda in Neo-Palatial Crete?,” Politea 12 (1995), 549. 119 This was first proposed by in Betts, “New light on Minoan Bureaucracy”. It was later expanded on by Birgitta P. Hallager and Erik Hallager, “The Knossian Bull — Political Propaganda in Neo-Palatial Crete?,” Politea (1995): 547-556. 120 Yuval Goren and Diamantis Panagiotopoulos, “The ‘Lord of the Rings’ an analytical approach to the riddle of the ‘Knossian Replica Rings,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 52, no. 1 (2009): 257-258. 41

character of bull-leaping has become an important factor in evaluating the role, particularly the ideological role, of bull-leaping on Crete.

Finally, several frescos from the Knossos Palace date to this period. What was likely a bull-leaping fresco placed on the West Porch of the palace would have been the first image viewable to visitors. Fragments of other frescoes indicate that bull-leaping scenes may also have been found in the reception halls of the palace, the throne room, the hallway leading from the

Central Court to the Banquet Hall, and the East Hall.121 The placement of these frescoes at entrances and in official and ceremonial rooms –– areas that would have been the first place visitors saw, or that were associated with the palace’s authority –– underscores the connection of this iconography with the Knossian elite. No frescos are known from outside of Knossos.

Postpalatial/Monopalatial: Toreador Fresco, glyptic objects

In Monopalatial Crete (1450-1375 BCE)122 we find more glyptic depictions, as well as the Toreador Fresco123 (figure 3) from the palace of Knossos, the most famous depiction of bull- leaping. This fresco was placed in the East Hall, overlooking the Court of the Stone Spout.

Though the Toreador Fresco was a relatively late depiction, this area of the palace also featured earlier bull-leaping frescoes.124 The Toreador Fresco depicts three human figures and a bull. On the left a human figure, painted white, grasps the horns of a large bull stretched out in a “flying gallop.”125 A leaper, painted red, is inverted over the back of the bull, and a final figure in white stands behind the bull with his arms raised. Many early conclusions about both the physical technique of bull-leaping, as well as the identity of performers, were drawn from this fresco, and

121 Hallager and Hallager, “The Knossian Bull,” 547. 122 This final period coincides with the destruction of many of the palace structures on the island, apart from Knossos in the early 15th century BCE and the introduction of Mycenaean civilization. 123 Toreador Fresco, 1450-1400 BCE, Knossos, now in Heraklion Archaeological Museum 124 Hallager and Hallager, “The Knossian Bull,” 548. 125 John G. Younger, “Bronze Age Representations of Aegean Bull-Leaping,” American Journal of Archaeology 80, no. 2 (1976): 126. 42

it continues to be the most famous of the bull-leaping depictions. It is important for my study because it highlights some notable aspects of bull-leaping iconography, many of which are also applicable to the Neopalatial period. Particularly important are the presence of attendant figures and the “flying gallop” position of the bull.

Interpretations

Scholarship on bull-leaping has been heavily influenced by the early publications of Sir

Arthur Evans. In his first article on bull-leaping, published in 1921, he lays out both his views on the gender of performers and specifics regarding the manner of leaping.126 These views were expanded in the four volumes of his The Palace of Minos at Knossos, published between 1921 and 1935, particularly the third volume. Since these publications, scholars have continued to pursue many of the questions that Evans raised: in particular, regarding the precision with which bull-leaping was performed, the participants, and the setting. More recent debates have also considered the function of bull-leaping, whether it be ritual, rite of passage, competitive, or political (or some combination thereof).127

In the analysis that follows, I discuss the components of acrobatic performance laid out in section one: physical movement, performers, setting, and audience. I then offer an interpretation of bull-leaping on Crete that emphasizes the physicality and the semiotics of the performance. I take as a starting point Katherine Soars’ analysis of the political function of bull-leaping on

Crete.

Extreme movement

The techniques and movement involved in bull-leaping have been of particular interest to

126 Arthur Evans, “On a Minoan Bronze Group of a Galloping Bull and Acrobatic Figure from Crete. With Glyptic Comparisons and a Note on the Oxford Relief Showing the Taurokathapsia,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 41, no. 2 (1920): 247-259. 127 For a more complete list of recent approaches to bull-leaping on Crete, see: Soar, “Old Bulls,” 16. 43

scholars. This is especially significant as the types of leap identified in Crete have also been used as a template for the examination of bull-leaping in other regions. Initially, Evans sketched out a schema for analyzing how leaps were performed. According to what became known as “Evans’s

Schema,” the acrobat, beginning on the ground and facing the bull, would grab its horns and use the toss of the animal’s head to launch over its back. This reconstruction has since been expanded on, primarily by John Younger. Younger identifies three different schemata. The first follows Evans’s type and retains the name “Evans’s Schema.” In this sequence the acrobat vaults over the bull, landing first on the bull’s back and then on the ground behind the bull (see for example, the bronze group of bull and leaper128). The second type, most often called the “diving leaper schema,” involves leaping from a raised platform over the head of the bull straight onto its back.129 These depictions usually show the leaper landing with their arms on the back of the bull

(see: gold signet ring with diving leaper130). In the third set of depictions, called the “floating leaper schema,” the leaper holds the bull’s horns while seemingly floating over the bull’s back;

John Younger speculated that these depictions involved the leaper vaulting over the bull from one side to the other, as opposed to approaching the bull from the front (see: gold signet ring with floating leaper131).132 There has also been some suggestion that a fourth type involved passing under the bull, though depictions of this type have been alternately interpreted as an unfortunate leaper being trampled.133

The extremeness and danger of the performance is highlighted in the failed leap on the

128 Bronze figurine of bull-leaper, 1600-1450 BCE, Knossos, not at the British Museum (1966.0328.1) 129 Younger draws from Sakellariou in identifying the second schema; see Younger, “Bronze Age Representations,” 125. 130 Signet ring, 145-1375 BCE, Archanes, Ashmolean Museum (AN1896-1908.AE.2237) 131 Signet ring, 15th century BCE, National Archaeological Museum, Athens (NAM 19356) 132 Younger, “Bronze Age Representations,” 132. 133 Maria Shaw, “Bull Leaping Frescoes at Knossos and their Influence on the Tell el-Dabca Murals,” Egypt and the Levant V (1995): 95-96. 44

Boxer Rhyton. Though the actuality of a failed leap does not seem surprising, it is remarkable that this failure was transcribed and commemorated. Evangelos Kyriakidis suggests that this indicates that bull-leaping was more sport than ritual, since failure in ritual is unlikely to be advertised.134 Hallager and Hallager tentatively suggest that, if images of successful bull-leaping functioned as emblems of the Knossian elite at a time when power was becoming more centralized at Knossos, than the failed leap might represent symbolic resistance to Knossian control.135 While it is unclear which, if either, of these positions is more accurate, the extremeness of movement and subsequent danger is clearly emphasized by the depiction of failure. The danger is also emphasized by the “flying gallop” pose that the bulls often take, which highlights the bull’s movement and wildness.

It is important to note that while there has been some debate over whether these depictions reflect an actual performance of bull-leaping, or if they are mythological or otherwise imagined scenes, scholarship generally supports that this was an actual practice. This is due both to the variety in scenes and leaps, which suggests that a single myth was not being shown as well as a similarity to the modern bull-jumping that takes place in La Houge in southwestern France, proving that these leaps were physically possible.136

Performers

The social role of the performers has also been discussed extensively. Debates over the gender of performers have been the focus of much of this scholarship, though their age and social status have also been discussed. Evans identified many of the bull-leapers as female — a

134 Evangelos Kyriakidis, “The Dead Acrobat: Managing risk and Minoan iconography,” in Ritual Failure: Archaeological Perspectives eds. Vasiliki G. Koutrafouri and Jeff Sanders (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2013), 159- 160. 135 Hallager and Hallager, “The Knossian Bull,” 553. 136 Jeremy McInerny, “Bulls and Bull-leaping in the Minoan World,” Penn Museum, Expedition Magazine 53 (2010): 11. 45

claim that persisted in scholarship for some time, though the recent consensus is that all bull- leapers depicted in Crete were male.137 Because some figures in bull-leaping frescoes were painted white, Evans took this connection to mean that they must be women mimicking the clothing of men.138 This interpretation has since been rejected, and academic opinion now favors reading all of the leapers as male.139 Other theories for the difference of skin color include a demarcation of different time-phases within the leap and differences in social hierarchy,140 but the most common position seems to be that it indicates different roles in bull-leaping, mostly likely that some figures were attendants who held or controlled the bull, while others performed the actual leaps. The consensus that all depictions of bull-leapers are male, however, particularly given their prominence on Crete, allows us to draw some inferences about the association between physical ability and masculinity.

One point of agreement is the identification of the bull-leapers as aristocrats.141 This is indicated in part by the bracelets and necklaces often depicted on the bull-leapers. Similar hairstyles among the performers further suggest that they were in the same age group, perhaps an indication that bull-leaping was an initiation rite conducted at a religious event by youth of a particular status and age.142 While uncertain, both of these suggestions would imply that bull- leapers on Crete were not professional performers but were instead one-time or occasional participants in bull-leaping.

137 Evans made this claim because many of the frescos has bull-leapers painted with both white and red skin, and elsewhere at Knossos white skin indicated women. Evans was also following Egyptian conventions that depict women in white and men in red. 138 Evans, “On a Minoan Bronze Group,” 251. 139 For more on this, see S. Damiani Indelicato, “Were Cretan Girls Playing at Bull-Leaping,” Cretan Studies 1 (1988): 39-47 and Shaw, “Bull Leaping Frescos.” Nanno Marionatos also disagrees that female acrobats participated: Nanno Marinatos, “The Bull as an Adversary: Some Observations on Bull-Hunting and Bull-Leaping,” Ariadne 5 (1989): 24. 140 See Indelicato (ibid.) for the former, Marinatos (ibid.) for the latter. 141 PM III, 227, 232. 142 Robert B. Koehl, Aegean Bronze Age Rhyta, (Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press, 2006), 165. 46

Setting

As discussed above, the evidence indicates that depictions of bull-leaping were associated with Knossos, the palace complex, and the elite. It is difficult to determine how these images related to the actual practice of bull-leaping, though it’s worth noting that the only bull-leaping frescos on Crete were found at the Palace of Knossos, perhaps indicating that it was also the primary location of performances. Interpretations of setting are also made particularly difficult because the depictions of bull-leaping rarely include any background or non-participating figures. Some have proposed that bull-leaping took place in the large inner courtyard of the palace. This is possibly supported by Cretan-style depictions at the Egyptian site of Tell el-Dab’a that show bull-leapers against a maze-like background; it has been suggested that this backdrop was intended to represent the palace grounds.143 Soar, who accepts the Central Court as the place of performance, notes that the courts had a “semi-public status [with] restricted and controlled access.”144 She argues that the location of the performance sent a “message” of exclusion by the ruling faction, but one that (as discussed further below) was meant to be enticing.145

Audience

Like setting, the iconography offers very little contextual information about who observed these events. Though there is scarce evidence of audience, several fresco fragments from Knossos seem to show spectators watching these events. Rutter notes that, “[t]he stress on crowds of spectators witnessing these events… further suggests that the staging of these spectacles constituted an important ingredient in promoting societal cohesion.”146

143 Bietak, M., Marinatos, N. and Palyvou, C.,"The Maze Tableau from Tell el Dab‘a,” in Proceedings of the First International Symposium ‘The Wall Paintings of Thera’, ed. S. Sherratt (Athens, 2000) 81. 144 Soar, “Old Bulls,” 19 145 Ibid. 146 Rutter, “Sport in the Aegean Bronze Age,” 40. 47

The objects of bull-leaping themselves would have been viewed by various groups. The frescos at the palace would have been seen by those with access to those areas including palace workers, palace inhabitants, and any visitors. The signet rings would have likewise had varied audiences. Unlike the frescos, these objects were luxury items worn by individuals. The meaning they were likely associated with individuals and served to signal a particular identity. The ring itself, whose impression is small (measuring around 2.5x3.5cm), might have only be seen by the wearer and those standing close to them. The impressions however might have been seen by recipients of correspondence, or administrative officials.147 As Soar suggests regarding the location of performances themselves in the Central Court, these depictions likewise send a message of exclusivity.

The Function of Bull-Leaping

Kathryn Soar suggests that bull-leaping offers insight into the political organization of

Crete during the Protopalatial period. Soar argues that, instead of a single centralized power at

Knossos, the island was controlled by a series of competing factions spread across the island and that that one function of bull-leaping was to help the Knossos elite accrue followers: “Like feasting, performances take place before and are witnessed by followers, with the aim of gathering followers among commoners, and building alliances to gain adherents among other elites.”148 Soar argues that an elite faction at Knossos used both the actual practice and the imagery of bull-leaping to create (or recreate) an embodied reference to the communal memory of earlier bull-grappling traditions (such as on the terracotta rhytons from the Protopalatial period).149 Soar makes a compelling argument about the role of both the semiotic meaning of

147 John Betts argues that the seals would have been used for correspondence: Betts, “New Light on Minoan Bureaucracy,” 24. 148 Soar, “Old Bulls,” 21. 149 Ibid., 22. 48

bull-leapers and the significance of their physical, embodied nature. She suggests that this specific practice was employed by the elite of Knossos in order to deliberately appropriate a rural cultural practice. This would have served as a strategy to both accrue broader rural support around the Knossos elite and simultaneously concentrate the positive associations of bull-leaping

(bravery, physical prowess, etc.) within the elite class.150 She proposes that “bodily practice and performance are manipulated and utilized to imply continuity with the past, whether or not this is largely fictitious.”151

Crucial to Soar’s argument, and my own position, is that both the performative (and therefore semiotic) and the physical nature of bull-leaping were integral to the social and political role of this activity. Here she articulates a symbolic crafting of narrative that is inherently interwoven with embodied experience.

Whether Soar is correct that the Knossian elite are recalling the distant memory of bull- grappling, or if bull-leaping held meaning for other reasons (ones that, perhaps, have not come down through the archaeological record), her overarching point stands: the act of bull-leaping, and the depictions of this act, tapped into a visceral, embodied connection between the performers and the spectators. Because we know these images were used by the elite, or in

Soar’s view the “leading Neopalatial faction at Knossos,”152 we can infer that they not only communicated particular values, but asserted an association between those values and the

Knossian elite. Perhaps these values had to do with physical ability, or bravery, or control of nature. By claiming bull-leaping as theirs, both in iconography and practice, those at Knossos claimed particular access to these abilities as well.

150 Ibid. 151 Soar, Ibid., 22-23. 152 Ibid., 24. 49

2. Mesopotamia

Evidence

Several types of bull-leaping scenes can be found in Mesopotamia, though all known depictions are found on cylinder seals. These images show two types of scene. In one, performers ritually leap a domesticated bull, while the other focuses on the contest-like conquest of a wild bull.153

There are two known depictions of the first type. The first is a seal impression,154 (figure

4) was excavated by Leonard Wooley in 1983 at Alalakh (Tell Atchana), on a clay envelope in the Level VII archive of the palace.155 Collon suggests that the seal may have originated from a workshop in Aleppo and dates it to approximately 1700 BCE.156 On it, two nude, belted, male figures with long hair are shown balancing on their hands on a single bull; each acrobat has one leg bent towards their chest, while the other is extended straight in the air. Both of their backs are facing outward so that they give the appearance of mirroring one another. Between the two figures is an ankh symbol.157 Several other figures also appear on the seal, including a number of wild animals and one non-leaping human figure.

The second example is a hematite cylinder seal158 (figure 5) without provenance.159 It bears an almost identical acrobatic scene, though the ankh between the two figures is not present.

This seal may have been a slightly earlier product of the same Aleppo workshop as the seal

153 Joan Aruz, et al. Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008), 133. 154 Seal impression, Alalakh, Level VII of Palace, currently in Hatay Museum in Antak 155 Level VII is dated to before the destruction of Alalakh by the Hittites in 1650 BCE, giving the seal a date of no later than the mid 17th century. 156 Dominique Collon, “Bull-Leaping in Syria,” Ägypten und Levante 4 (1994): 81. 157 Ibid. 158 Cylinder seal, ~1700 BCE, private collection 159 Originally in the Erlenmeyer Collection, sold by Sotheby’s in 1992 (Collon, “Bull-leaping,” 81-82.) 50

described above.160 The image also includes an attendant figure who appears to be holding the bull’s head and stilling the bull. Attendant figures are also known from bull-leaping compositions in both the Aegean and Anatolia. This seal also depicts several animals and two non-leaping human figures who are shown larger than the leaping group and are rendered in a more traditional Mesopotamian style. Collon suggests that these figures are a king and a goddess.161

On both seals the figures’ lower bodies are especially muscular. This musculature and the general stylization of the figures is reminiscent of bull-leapers from Crete. Of the Mesopotamian bull-leapers, these two seals depict the most clearly acrobatic figures and bear the most resemblance to parallel scenes of performance from Crete and Anatolia.

Four other Mesopotamian seals have also been associated with bull-leaping, but several of these more likely depict some variation of the second type of scene involving a wild bull.

Compared to the leapers discussed above, the postures of these figures appear far less deliberate and elegant. The scenes are varied and do not belong to a single type. Various publications have categorized these scenes as bull-leaping, bull-games, or a bull hunt. One of the seals,162 which may also have originated at the Aleppo workshop, is divided into two registers with four figures interacting with a single bull on the top register. One figure is shown mid-leap, stretched airborne above the bull’s back in a position comparable to Younger’s “floating schema”; another is shown in a position over the horns (while Collon describes this as mid-leap, it could equally be understood as a failed leap that resulted in the leaper being gored); a third figure stands with an arm raised behind the bull as if having just landed; and a fourth lies beneath the bull. The bottom

160 Ibid., 82. 161 Ibid., 81. 162 Cylinder seal, Syria, Seyric collection 51

Another seal163 shows the same floating leaper schema, though here the leaper has wide hips and a navel that gives the appearance of a female figure.164 A kneeling archer is positioned in front of the bull and a standing figure behind it. Collon has dated this seal as slightly earlier than the others and placed it outside of the Aleppo group.165 The “floating leaper” figure, seen here and in the above seal, also appears on two unusual seals166 in which the bull has been replaced by a chariot. It is unclear if these are intentionally using bull-leaping iconography, though the scene on one of the seals (in the Yale Babylonian Collection) is described as a “two- horse chariot with acrobats above and below.”167

Another seal168 shows a figure on the horns of a bull, possibly grabbing the bull or else being gored while another figure standing above spears the bull. While Collon has identified the figure with the spear as a deity, she has also noted that the same seal depicts Gilgamesh and

Enkidu’s slaying of Humbaba.169 Given this, it seems worth considering that this scene represents the killing of the Bull of Heaven – an episode from the Epic of Gilgamesh – but has coopted some bull-leaping iconography for use in the depiction. It is also worth noting that the figure holding the spear resembles the Cretan-style bull-leaping figures on the other Syrian seals in terms of his headpiece, belt, and body proportions.

163 Cylinder seal, early 2nd millennium, currently in Munich 164 As Collon notes, a female leaper is in part notable as scholarship has moved away from interpreting the white- colored leapers in Minoan and Mycenean art as female. Collon, “Bull-Leaping,” 82. 165 Ibid. 166 Cylinder seal, currently in the Yale Peabody Museum (NBC 08931) 167 Briggs Buchanan references one of the seals in: Buchanan, “A Snake Goddess and Her Companions a Problem in the Iconography of the Early Second Millennium B.C.” Iraq 33 (1971): 1-18. These seals bear a particular resemblance to an Egyptian depiction of bull-leaping on a wooden box, see: Aruz, Beyond Babylon, 132. 168 Cylinder seal, Seyrig collection 169 Collon, “Bull-Leaping,” 83. 52

Interpretations

While these seals have been referenced by several authors (most often very briefly in publications about Cretan bull-leapers), the most detailed treatment of these Mesopotamian bull- leaping figures is by Dominique Collon who identifies Mesopotamian seals that may depict bull- leaping (the same as those described above) and suggests that Mesopotamia should be considered as a possible origin for the practice.170 Collon does not make any claims about these objects beyond their identification and their implications with respect to the origins of bull- leaping. In the following analysis I focus most closely on the first two seals, which most clearly represent bull-leaping. I suggest that the Mesopotamian depictions differ in key ways from those in Crete and Anatolia, are particularly difficult to interpret, and perhaps do not depict a practice that took place in Mesopotamia.

Movement

The physical movement shown on the two seals from Aleppo is unusual. No other depiction of bull-leaping shows two figures simultaneously leaping the same bull. Additionally, the body position of the figures, (split legs, with one leg bent and their back slightly arched), makes them appear almost balanced, almost as if in a handstand. This is at odds with the dynamic motion from the Cretan depictions. As either a dynamic leap or static skill, the movement being shown is physically improbable. Unlike other methods of bull-leaping, which find some analogy in modern bull games, there is no known instance of this method of leaping.171 The oddness of this style of leap, along with the clear elements of Cretan iconography, perhaps indicates that the artist had not witnessed bull-leaping themselves.

170 Dominique Collon, First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East (London: British Museum Publications, 1987); Collon, “Bull-Leaping.” 171 McInerny, “Bulls and Bull-leaping,” 11. 53

Audience

Though there are other human figures on the Mesopotamian bull-leaping seals, none of these figures appears to be an observer. All other figures are either participants or entirely separate from the bull-leaping scene.

Setting

Like the audience, the setting is unclear. The seals do not depict banquet scenes or any specific time or place. While the Hittite bull-leapers have a cultic connection (discussed below) and it is often proposed that Cretan depictions serve a religious function, the Mesopotamian seals show no association with specific festivals or spaces. Indeed, the scenes on the Syrian seals all appear to be removed from actual events and perhaps from time all together making it difficult to place the performances in the context of actual events.

Performer

The figures in the Aleppo seals are also unusual. The emphasis on musculature in their legs and the thinness of their waists recall bull-leapers from Crete. Other than this, there is no clear indication of who these figures might be.

Mesopotamia conclusions

Collon notes Harold Cohen’s conclusion that bull-games are the result of the domestication techniques involving the isolation of a bull from the herd. She concludes: “We can therefore expect bull-games to appear wherever the domestication of cattle was practiced.”172

However, this does little to explain how bull-leaping iconography would have been understood by Mesopotamians and does not address the unrealistic way bull-leaping is depicted on these seals. What I take to be the most pressing issues regarding the seals remain mostly unanswered:

172 Ibid. 54

first, the clear reference to Cretan iconography (despite predating the earliest depictions known from Crete) and, second, the visual context of the seals — particularly in the case of the two seals that most clearly depict a bull-leaping performance.

For several reasons we should consider that bull-leaping was not actually practiced in

Mesopotamia. First, the depiction of the leap, which has two figures simultaneously balanced on the bull, is physically unrealistic; more so than the depictions found in Crete or Anatolia. Second, there is no indication of audience or setting within the seals themselves so it is unclear when this might have been performed. While this could be due to conventions Syrian seals, there are also no texts placing bull-leaping in the context of festivals, feasts, or other events. Third are the foreign elements of the seals: the Cretan features of the leapers and the Egyptian ankh.

We also ought to consider that all of these depictions occurred on cylinder seals – personal objects that might have been worn by their owners and that were often marked with personalized inscriptions. Like the signet rings from Crete, these objects were both functional and markers of identity. Unlike the signet rings however, the foreign style of the bull-leapers in

Mesopotamia suggests that the owner of the seal might not have associated themselves with the performer as the elite from Knossos did. If, as I suggest above, the seals’ creators had not seen bull-leaping performed, the kinesthetic experience of seeing it depicted would also be less.

Regardless of whether bull-leaping was performed in Mesopotamia, the imagery itself conveyed meaning. Though the seals may not have imparted the same visceral experience as watching live performances, in other ways the physicality is intensified (it is literally doubled) by having two figures leaping at once. The human figures in these seals are also portrayed disproportionately large relative to the bull, again highlighting the physicality of the human figures. Perhaps we should read this extremeness, in conjunction with the foreign elements, as a

depiction of this type of physical ability as foreign, even exotic. If this is the case,

Mesopotamians encountering these objects might feel disassociated from the movement, as opposed to empathetic.

3. Anatolia

Evidence

The only known image of a bull-leaper from Anatolia was not discovered until 1997, almost 100 years after Evans’s discoveries at Crete made bull-leapers famous. This Hittite bull- leaper was found on a cultic vase at Hüseyindede in central Turkey. The vase, usually referred to in the academic literature as “Hüseyindede B,”173 (figure 6) offers the most complete picture of a bull-leaping practice of all the depictions discussed in this chapter. Additionally, there are several Hittite texts which possibly reference bull-leaping, further contextualizing their role in

Hittite society.

The Hüseyindede B vase is one of a series of four complete cultic vases dating to the 16th century BCE of the Old Hittite Kingdom.174 These vases, known as İnandık, Hüseyindede A,

Hüseyindede B (depicting the bull-leaper), and Bitik, all feature reliefs depicting human figures participating in ritual scenes. On two of these vases, Hüseyindede B and İnandık, the scenes include acrobatic figures. Though these two vases are the most relevant for this thesis, the similarities in style and decorative program among all four vases allow for comparisons between them — it has even been suggested that they originated in the same workshop.175 Crucially, the decorations on each vase clearly suggest that the depictions are religious and that the vases

173 Hüseyindede B Vase, 16th century BCE, Hüseyindede B, currently in Çorum Archaeological Museum 174 While there are four known complete vases (or near-complete), there are several fragments that have been recovered as well. 175 Piotr Taracha, “Bull-leaping on a Hittite Vase: new light on Anatolian and Minoan religion.” Archaeologic 53 (2002): 8. 56

themselves served a ritual purpose. Though the Hüseyindede B vase will be discussed here, the acrobatic depictions on the İnandık vase will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter.

While the other vases of this type are composed of four registers that encompass the entirety of the vase, the Hüseyindede B vase only features one register that wraps around the upper section of the vase. This single frieze contains 13 figures participating in a procession.

Moving from the left there are two female figures, three musicians, two dancing cymbal players squatting and facing each other, and a third cymbal player facing away. To the right of this the acrobatic scene begins. An upright jumping acrobat positioned with arms away from the body is followed by an acrobat leaping backwards. Next, a bull, facing right, is held by an attendant; on top of the bull is a figure in a backbend, both his hands and feet touching the bull. The stomach of the acrobat is pressed against the top of the register. To the right of this scene is another musician. The importance of the acrobat on the vase is clear, as all other figures on the vase are turned to face the acrobat and bull. Though this is usually referred to as a procession (particularly because the depiction circles the vase), the orientation of the participants seems to indicate figures surrounding and observing the bull-leaper and bull.

There are competing ideas regarding how many bull-leapers the artist intended to show.

Tunç Sipahi interprets all of the acrobatic figures as a single bull-leaper. He reads the scene as a

“comic book” in which the bull-leaper is shown performing on the ground, then mounting the bull, and then performing on its back.176 However, Piotr Taracha argues, and I agree, that the presence of a figure in a similar pose, but without the bull, on the İnandık vase indicates that not

176 Tunç Sipahi, “New Evidence from Anatolia Regarding Bull-Leaping Scene in the Art of the Aegean and the Near East,” Anatolica 27 (2001): 113. 57

all of the figures are bull-leapers.177 Also, the inverted figure at the back of the bull is facing the wrong direction if he is meant to be a bull-leaper completing a jump. Instead, it seems more likely that there is a single bull-leaper and the other figures are simply other performers. Taracha further attempts to connect this scene with the diving leaper schema.178 I am somewhat skeptical of this interpretation and of attempting to fit this depiction into one of the schemas known from

Crete. As I will discuss below, the many differences between this depiction and those on Crete seems to indicate vast differences in the two traditions.

As on Crete, the Hittites gave a prominent religious role to bulls; for example, the head of their pantheon, the storm god, was often depicted in bull form.179 The connection between the bull and ritual activity is particularly pronounced in this set of vases. On the İnandık vase we see a bull sacrifice taking place in front of a statue of the storm god as a bull.180 On the Bitik vase the bottom register includes the depiction of four bulls, which may represent the storm god as well.181 Around the rim of the Hüseyindede A vase are several bull heads designed to allow a libation to pour through them into the vase, connecting again the ritual action on these vases to the image of a bull. Additionally, both Hüseyindede vases were found in a building believed to be a temple.182

Interpretations

Though there is very limited evidence of bull-leaping from Anatolia, what is available

177 Taracha, “Bull-laping on a Hittie Vase,” 11. 178 Ibid. 179 Robert L Alexander, “The Storm-God an ‘Ain Dara,” in Recent Developments in Hittite Archaeology and History, 11-19; Collins, Hittites and their World, 174. 180 Yıldırım reads this as a sacrifice to the storm god: Tayfun Yıldırım, “New Scenes on the second relief vase from Huseyindede and their interpretation in the light of the Hittite representative art” Studi Micenei Ed Egedo-Anatolici vol. 50 (Rome, 2008), 843. 181 Moore, “Old Hittite Polychrome Relief Vases,” 182 Sipahi, “New Evidence from Anatolia,” fn 44. (Sipahi notes that at the time of the article’s publication in 2001, excavations were still ongoing). 58

offers a degree of contextual information not found in the other regions. In this section I analyze the components of the performance depicted on the Hüseyindede B vase, review some other discussions regarding this object (particularly the ways in which texts might be used to supplement the image), and then turn back to some of the questions raised by Soar in her work on Crete and my own framing through the lens of a kinesthetic phenomenology of embodied experience and a semiotics of the body.

Movement

On the Hüseyindede B vase, the movement of the performer on the bull is somewhat unusual. All four of the leaper’s limbs are in contact with the bull. The bull is also not in the

“flying gallop” position that we see on many of the Cretan seals but is instead standing still, perhaps due to the attendant at the bull’s head, who seems to be holding the bull. Both of these elements give the impression of a less dynamic, more controlled set of movements than is found in the other regions.

Setting

The full depiction on the vase, its cultic use, and its location within a temple, itself allow us to fairly securely situate Hittite bull-leaping within a religious or ceremonial context. A Hittite text, for example, offers a possible indication of the location in which bull-leaping occurred:

“And afterwards the boxers advance in the same way. And then they advance to the tarpa-. //

And [x] bulls next advance to the tarpa-.”183 While the precise meaning of the text is unclear, K.

Aslihan Yener has suggested that the tarpa is the location in which bull-leaping leaping took place.184 Amir Gilan, on the other hand, has suggested that the tarpa is a rotational movement

183 KBo 23.55. 184 Taracha, “Bull-Leaping on a Hittite Vase,” 16-17. 59

and is used to describe the leaping of the bull.185 Taracha takes the tarpa- setting to mean that bull-leaping took place in “some kind of theatrical setting or perhaps in an area surrounded with the crowds of spectators,” but does not offer reasoning for this beyond its association with bull- leaping and other physical activities.186

Audience

As discussed above, there is some Hittite evidence for spectators at bull-leaping performances. Given the other figures in the procession on the Hüseyindede B vase, at a minimum it seems likely that other participants would have watched the bull-leaping performance.

Athletic festivals are frequently mentioned in Hittite festival texts; games like fighting, weightlifting, and other unidentifiable sports would take place at various moments during processions.187 These activities were seen as entertainment for the gods; several cuneiform texts describe these activities as happening “in the presence of the deity.”188 Another text more explicitly states: “They entertain the deity, namely they fight and sling stones.”189 Some of these activities, particularly wrestling and boxing contests, were occasionally accompanied by drum music.190 Given this connection with the divine, we might imagine multiple audiences for the performance of bull-leaping, including both public spectators, other performers, deities, and possibly royal figures as well (stone reliefs at Alaca Höyük depict royalty participating in a

185 Ibid., 17. 186 Ibid. 187 Charles Carter, “Athletic Contests in Hittite Religious Festivals,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 47 (1988): 185-187 188 Carter, “Athletic Contests,” 186. 189 KUB 17.35 ii 26, translation from Ahmet Ünal, “Hittite Architect and A Rope-Climbing Ritual,” Belleten 52 (1988): 1489. 190 Monika Schuol, Hethitische Kultmusik: eine Untersuchung der Instrumental- und Vokalmusic anhand hethitischer Ritualtexte und von archäologischen Zeugnissen (Rahden, Westf: M. Leidorf, 2004). (cf. KBo 23, 55, Vs. I 2’.28’.30’) 60

festival).191

Performer

There are several visual aspects worth noting regarding the bull-leaper. First, unlike the acrobats from Crete, the leaping figure here does not seem to be wearing any jewelry or special adornment that indicates elite status. Second, the attendant at the head of the bull holds the bull still with one arm but has his other arm raised and is holding an object with this hand. This is notable in contrast to the depictions from Crete in which the assistants are usually shown gripping the bull’s horns with both hands. Sipahi assumes that the raised arm holds a baton or rattle that is being used to direct the musicians and performers.192 One other possibility is that this figure is the ALAN.ZU “ridiculing” the bull: “A performer (ALAN.ZU) ridicules (?) a hurla-bull of the god.”193

The possible presence of the ALAN.ZU indicates that this performance was likely meant to be entertaining. ALAN.ZU are enigmatic figures and have been translated in an array of ways: clowns, jesters, actors, performer, acrobats, etc. These figures frequently appear alongside entertainers, particularly those displaying physical skill, and perform an array of roles including chanting during rituals, playing instruments, dancing, and other entertainment.194 It seems possible that, given the variety of roles associated with these figures, they may also have participated in some way in bull-leaping.

We might also consider the bull a performer in this scenario; they are a necessary participant in the activity. One question that has been raised for both Hittite and Cretan bull-

191 Taracha, “The sculptures of Alaca Höyük: A Key to Religious Symbolism in Hittite Representational Art,” Near Eastern Archaeology 75, no 2 (2012): 108-115. 192 Sipahi, “New Evidence from Anatolia,” 114. 193 Taracha, “Bull-Leaping on a Hittite Vase,” 13-14. 194 Maddalena Rumor, “There’s no fool like an old fool: The Mesopotamian Aluzinnu and its relationship to the Greek Alazôn,” in Kaskal: Rivista di storia, ambienti e culture del Vicino Oriente Antico volume 14 (Firenze: LoGisma, 2017), 195-196. 61

leaping is whether the bull would later have been sacrificed during the festival. Taracha suggests that, while a bull was sacrificed, it would not have been this bull. Taracha’s argument draws on possible textual evidence for Hittite bull-leaping which reads: [A performer] first (with a bull).

The hurla-bull goes back to the p[e]n.”195 Given the bull’s return to the pen, Taracha argues that this is a specific, trained bull that is not sacrificed. If this is the case, that the bull is trained would make them an even more active participant as it would follow that they would repeat their role over multiple performances.

Conclusions

Whereas Rutter and Kyriakidis both argued that bull-leaping on Crete was a sport, that does not seem to be the case here. Instead, bull-leaping seems to be both ritual and entertainment; the visual and archaeological context place it within the cultic sphere, while the associations with ALAN.ZU and the presence of music (which we have no indication of from

Crete) speak to its role as entertainment.

The image of the body on the Hüseyindede B vase is vastly different from what we found on Crete and in Mesopotamia. In many ways the body is less extreme here. It is not airborne, and the figure has more connection points to the bull, giving a greater sense of stability. The bull itself is calmer, and the attendant figure is not shown struggling with the bull with both hands, as we see on Crete, but holding the bull with one arm, and in a relaxed posture. It is again difficult to say how the depiction of leaping might relate to the actual performance of leaping, and this is not to say that there would not still be a feeling of danger. During an actual performance both the performer and audience would most likely still have a visceral response; however the danger is less emphasized in this depiction than those of other regions.

195 Taracha, “Bull-Leaping on a Hittite Vase,” 13-14. 62

It is possible that given the ritual aspect of bull-leaping the emphasis was put on the successful completion of the ritual, rather than the danger (which might emphasize potential failure). It could be an auspicious sign to perform the leap with ease, or it could be a key component of successfully completing a ritual. Certainly however, the aim here is different than the Knossian propaganda found on Crete. Unlike Cete, which according to Soar, was dealing with competing factions, at the time of the Hüseyindede B vase’s use the Hittites would have relatively recently experienced the consolidation of Hittite power and the resettling of Hattuša under Ḫattušili I. Perhaps this relative lack of political anxiety accounts for the different form of the body and less emphasis on danger.

Conclusions

While all three regions explored in this section deal with acrobatic performances involving people and bulls, they also present very different experiences of this performance.

Cretan performances highlighted the high degree of risk (as seen on the Boxer Rhyton) as well as factional politics and ideologies of exclusion. Mesopotamian depictions, on the other hand, leave room for doubt regarding the actual performance of bull-leaping in Mesopotamia, possibly portraying the extreme abilities of the bull-leapers as foreign or exotic. The Hittites seem to have depicted, and probably practiced, a type of bull-leaping that put less emphasis on danger, perhaps instead seeing the body as a vehicle for entertainment and completing rituals. There is some precedent for this; the Hittites also performed a closure ritual for buildings in which the architect ritually climbed up and down a rope.196 Here we also see the body, and unusual movement, as a mechanism for completing ritual without placing extra emphasis on the danger.

196 Ünal, “Hittite Architect and a Rope-Climbing Ritual”. 63

Chapter IV: Sword-Tumbling

Introduction

Identifying acrobatic professionals in the Near East presents a problem. Though at least one probable word for acrobatic specialists is known from texts, there are no extensive descriptions of their performances, and acrobats appear only infrequently in visual sources.

Adding to the difficulty, the texts that do reference these specialists have not yet been securely identified with the extant visual representations. Though the evidence for acrobatic performance is limited, references to acrobatic professionals and depictions of acrobatic performances are found across the Bronze Age Mediterranean and Near East.

In the current chapter, I draw together textual and visual evidence for acrobatic performance, primarily from Mesopotamia and Anatolia, that suggests an as-yet-unconsidered acrobatic practice — tumbling among upright swords (hereafter, sword-tumbling). I first examine the Mesopotamian cuneiform evidence to argue broadly for the identification of acrobatic specialists within the texts. I then discuss several visual sources, as well as a Hittite text, which support identifying the specialists described in texts as performing sword-tumbling.

Finally, I discuss the implications of this type of performance, looking particularly at the relationship between sword-tumbling and the body, danger, and kingship.

1. ḪÚB/ḫuppû: Acrobats in textual and visual sources

Acrobats are usually identified in cuneiform texts via the Sumerian word hubi, usually written ḪÚB, and the Akkadian word ḫuppû, written either syllabically or using a

Sumerogram.197 These figures are most often found in lexical lists and economic records alongside other professional entertainers such as dancers, musicians, and wrestlers, though they

197 CAD H, 240. PSD, hubi (http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/cgi-bin/xff?xff=e2409). Alternate writings also appear including: ḪÚB.BI, ḪÚB.KI, or ḪÚB.ḪÚB. 64

are also mentioned in several festival texts. Etymologically, ḪÚB means “one who is always jumping” and seems to derive from a word for frog.198 Though lexical lists (lists of words that are often grouped thematically; e.g. types of professions, types of animals, etc.) and distribution lists (records of the distribution of payments, clothing, or other goods) make clear that these figures are male professional performers, textual sources go into very little detail about the type of skills or movements involved in their performances. Most of the texts referencing this profession come from two cities: Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh), well known for a large corpus of texts dating to the 24th century BCE, and Mari (modern Tell Hariri), known for a corpus of texts dating to the Old Babylonian period (mid 18th century BCE). The identification of these figures as acrobats warrants some explication. Though the standard translation for ḪÚB/ḫuppû is

“acrobat,” it has been argued that these are specifically equestrian acrobats,199 jugglers, and/or dancers.200 Two descriptions of these figures from Mari give the best indication that they should indeed be understood as acrobats.

The most detailed text concerning the physical performance of ḪÚB/ḫuppû comes from the archives of Mari. It describes a festival to Ishtar and lists the order of activities. According to the text, the entertainment would begin with the singing of a particular lament, during which the king would rise. A series of performances would occur for the duration of the song. When the song was completed, the king would sit. The text reads:

At the beginning of the song "An nuwaše" the king will stand up and remain standing. One of the lamenters will stand and sing the lament for Enlil accompanied by a drum. A (fire?)eater will sit before the goddess and eat. After the Eater the Juggler will juggle;

198 Miguel Civil, “Bilingualism in Logographically Written Languages: Sumerian in Ebla,” Il Bilinguismo a Ebla: atti del convegno internzionale (Napoli 19-22, Aprile 1982), 92. ḪÚB is also translated as frog in an unpublished fragment from Ebla: ARET 12, 0337 (accessed through cdli.ucla.edu). It appears here in a lexical list along with other animals. 199 This is because both cities are associated with the trade of equids, and records of trade list ḪÚB being sent from Nagar to Ebla along with equids. For more on this see: Archi, “The Regional State of Nagar,” 1-15. 200 Amalia Catagnoti, “Les Listes Des HÚB.(KI) Dans Les Textes Administratifs D’Ébla et L’onomstique De Nagar,” MARI 8 (1997); Archi, “The Regional State of Nagar,” 10. 65

after the Juggler the Wrestlers will come forward; after the Wrestlers the Acrobats (ḫuppû) will tumble (ittanablakkatū); after the Acrobats the female clothes-changers(?) (kāpišātum)201 will perform. Once the song "An nuwaše" is finished, the king will sit down.202

Particularly important here is the verb describing the performance of the ḫuppû: ittanablakkatû. The quotation above follows Anne Kilmer’s translation “tumble,” but the verb can be found elsewhere translated as “climb” and “somersault.”203 The root of this word, nabalkutu has the connotation of a particular physical motion; it is used in other texts to describe the capsizing of a boat, the tumbling in the air of a bird, the rolling of waves, and the overturning of trees.204 Given these associations, “tumble” seems a particularly appropriate translation choice. The employment of this particular verb then indicates that the ḫuppû participated in an activity which involved a rolling or inverting movement and that the nature of that movement was so central to their performance that it was used to describe their act in its entirety. It is also worth noting the order in which the entertainers appear: ḫuppû are placed between the highly physical act of wrestling and what seems to be a playful act involving clothing and gender-play.

While difficult to draw any clear conclusions from the order of performers here, it may indicate particular associations with both of these acts.

Another text from Mari also describes the performance of ḫuppû, though with slightly less specific language:

201 The meaning of this term is known only from its use here, from its association with the Sumerian equivalent, lú.túg.túg.bal “the one who changes (his) clothes,” and its appearance in lexical lists with other performers, CAD K, 184. The translation “strip act” and “masqueraders” have also been suggested: Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, “An Oration on Babylon,” Altorientalische Forschungen 18 (1991): 16, fn. 16. 202 Translation is primarily from Kilmer, “An Oration on Babylon,” 16. However the first and final lines have been added from Nele Ziegler, Les musiciens et la musique d’après les archives de Mari, (Paris: SEPOA, 2007): 59 (translated from the French). Original publication of this text can be found in George Dossin, “Un Rituel Du Culte d’Ištar Provenant de Mari,” Revue d’Asssyriologie et d’archéologie orientale 35 (1938): 1-13. 203 For “climb” see “escaladeront” in the original publication of the text, Dossin, “Un ritual du culte d’Ištar.” For “somersault” see: Jack M. Sasson, “Artisans… Artists: Documentary Perspectives from Mari,” in Investigating Artistic Environments in the Ancient Near East, ed. Ann C. Gunter (Madison, WI: Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 25. 204 CAD N, 11, 17-18. 66

3 qa of oil for the porridge when the acrobats danced/performed (immellū) before the king; received by Ilu-kânum; 1/2 qa to anoint the acrobats (ḫuppû).205

There are several interesting pieces of information here. First, we see another word describing the performance of the ḫuppû: immellū. This verb has been translated as both

“danced” and “performed,”206 but these words perhaps don’t precisely capture the meaning of immellū. Jack Sasson notes that immellū, derived from mēlulum, “broadly defines playful action and, for those with a particular bent, it may include warfare.”207

We learn also that the performance of these figures was specialized to such a degree that performers and teachers were sometimes imported from other cities. Texts from Ebla list ḪÚB as natives of the northern Mesopotamian city Nagar who were sent to Ebla both as performers and instructors. One text relates that some of the ḪÚB were sent from Nagar particularly to teach young Eblaites: “Amurugu, ḪÚB of Nagar, instructor of the young ḪÚB of the Palace (of

Ebla).”208 This division between adult and apprentice acrobats can also be found in texts recording the receipt of textiles: while important ḪÚB received a group of high quality textiles, young apprentices were given a different set of textiles.209

Both economic records and the language used for performances indicate that ḪÚB/ḫuppû were highly specialized entertainment professionals whose performance included tumbling or inversion. Both of these factors support the identification of the figures as acrobats. Other texts

205 J-M Durand and M. Guichard, eds., “Les rituels de Mari,” in Florilegium Marianum III: Recueil d’études à la mémoire de Marie-Thérèse Barrelet, Mémoires de NABU 4 (Paris: SEPOA, 1997), 19-78. Text 51. 206 For “Danced” see: FM III, text 51. For “performed” see: Sasson, “The King’s Table: Food and Fealty in Old Babylonian Mari” in Food and Identity in the Ancient World, ed. Cristiano Grottanelli and Lucio Millano (Padua: S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria, 2004). 207 Sasson, “Wit, Banter and Sarcasm in Mari Letters,” in Par le bêche et le stylet! Cultures et sociétés syro- mésopotamiennes. Mélanges offerts Olivier Rouault, eds. Philippe Abrahami and Laura Battini (Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, 2019), 181. 208 Archi, “The Regional State of Nagar,” 10. Citing MEE II 39, obverse side, lines 12-18. 209 Cécile Michel and Marie-Louise Nosch, Textile terminologies in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean from the third to the first millennia BC (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), 148. 67

paint a fuller picture of the role of these figures. In the festival text from Mari quoted above (FM

III, text 51) acrobats are described as performing specifically “before the king”. This association with the king is echoed in texts describing the acrobats’ presence “when the king returned from the upper district.”210 We also see the acrobats’ anointment with oil, an act of ritual purification or consecration, which is repeated in other texts from Mari.211 The occasions for which the acrobats are anointed include specific festivals and the king’s return from the upper district.

Several other fragmentary references give a fleeting look at a possible relationship between acrobats and oath-taking. An unusual Middle Bronze Age tablet from Nippur, which

Kilmer argues should be understood to concern the cult of Inanna/Ishtar, reads in part: “Song, sixty-and-two(?), and oath-taking(?); ruffian, strong(man?), and acrobat(ḫu-up-pu); arrogance, power, and fiery-ness(?).”212 A fragment of a Sumerian proverb possibly also indicates a connection with oath-taking. It reads: “You did not… like an acrobat (ḪÚB.BI) in front of your guarantor (?).”213 Both texts are too fragmentary to provide any clear indication of what, if any, association acrobats might have had with oath-taking.

Based on the above textual evidence, the ḪÚB/ḫuppû profession can be summarized as follows. These professionals are nearly always male.214 It is clear from Ebla texts that, at least in the mid to late 3rd millennium BCE, Nagar (Tell Brak) was particularly known for producing these specialists. The skillset of the ḪÚB/ḫuppû was specialized enough that individuals needed to be brought in from Nagar to teach local youth. Acrobats are most often found alongside other entertainers, including dancers, singers, and musicians. They are also associated with wrestlers,

210 FM III 67, 95; Sasson, “The King’s Table,” 202, fn 65. 211 FM III, Texts: 51, 67, 95, 103, 120, 125 212 Kilmer, “An Oration on Babylon,” 10. 213 “Proverbs: collection 13,” Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, University of Oxford, https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/ 214 Archi, “The Regional State of Nagar,” 10. 68

with the “clothes-changers” described in the Mari Ishtar text, and alongside the aluzinnu

(equivalent of the Hittite logogram LÚALAN.ZU), a class of professional that is usually compared to jesters.215 The ḪÚB/ḫuppû seem to have performed on special occasions and within ritual contexts such as the festival of Ishtar at Mari. Texts from Mari also indicate that the acrobats were often anointed when the king returned from the upper district. We know as well that their skillset incorporated a type of movement that involved inversion, best described as

“tumbling.”

Though it is generally accepted that ḪÚB/ḫuppû are acrobats, it is less clear what precisely this entails. One of the most frequently referenced interpretations of this profession, originally proposed by Alfonso Archi in 1998, is that these figures were equestrian acrobats. This interpretation has been referenced in many publications, several of them recent.216 Given the frequency with which this interpretation is cited, it is worth briefly refuting. Archi’s original argument was only a short remark: “It cannot be merely by chance that Nagar was the only center for the provision of good mules, BAR.AN, or that the ḪÚB-ḪÚB came only from there.

They must have been specialists in the equestrian arts: horsemen whose ability was such that they could have seemed like acrobats to the Eblaites.”217 By Archi’s own admission, though, there is not secure evidence for equid riding until several centuries later in the Old Babylonian period. The presence of ḪÚB/ḫuppû in Mari texts that do not mention equids and in Anatolia where there was no special economic connection to Nagar or BAR.AN equids further challenges this theory, as does the description of the ḪÚB/ḫuppû as “tumbling.” Depictions of equestrian

215 For the association between aluzinnu and acrobats and the role of the aluzinnu see: Rumor, “There’s No Fool Like An Old Fool.” The possibility that the Greek jester character alazôn derived from this figure is also interesting since this Greece would have also experienced the prominence of sword-tumblers during the same period. 216 Archi, “The Regional State of Nagar,” 1998; Matthews, Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol. 4; Ziegler, Les musiciens, 2007; Maria-Giovanna Biga, “La Fete a Ebla,” Journal Asiatique 299 (2011); Rita Dolce, “Equids as Luxury Gifts.” 217 Archi, “The Regional State of Nagar,” 11. 69

acrobatics also do not appear in Mesopotamia until the 4th century BCE.218

If ḪÚB/ḫuppû were not equestrian acrobats, the question then remains: in what type of acrobatic performance were they engaged? Visual evidence, alongside texts from Anatolia, suggests that the ḪÚB/ḫuppû were tumblers who engaged specifically in sword-tumbling, either as the entirety of their act or possibly as a special skill used in the finale of an act. Sword- tumbling is well attested in Classical Greece, where it was a popular form of entertainment, especially at symposiums. In Classical Greece this act involved a female acrobat diving and tumbling into and away from swords, which sometimes may have been arranged in a circle.

Greek texts give detailed descriptions of the performances, their setting, and Greek attitudes towards the performers. In a 4th century BCE text Xenophon describes both the contents of the act and the reaction of the spectators:

After this a hoop was introduced, full all around with upright swords. The dancing girl kept tumbling into these and out again over them, so that those watching were afraid lest she suffer some harm, but she accomplished these things confidently and unerringly (Xenophon, Symposium 2.11).219

Numerous visual depictions of this performance can be found on vase paintings,220 and at least one figurine221 shows a sword-tumbler. Both visual and textual sources show that this act was performed at symposiums alongside other forms of entertainment and acrobatics.222 The sword-tumblers themselves sometimes performed other forms of entertainment; several sources refer to the sword-tumblers as dancers, and one text recalls the sword-tumblers performing fire- breathing.223

218 See the equestrian acrobats on coins: Luigi Todisco, Prodezze e prodigi nel mondo antico: Oriente e Occidente, (Rome: Studia Archaeologica 192, 2013), 36-38. 219 Translation, Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 193. 220 Lekythos with sword-tumbler, Greek (southern Italy), 340-330 BCE, currently in Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (F3489) 221 Statue of a sword-tumbler, Greek, 320-280 BCE, National Archaeological Museum of Athens (13605) 222 Ibid., 199-237. 223 Ibid., 195. Hippolochus of Macedon ap. Ath. 4.129d 70

I do not intend to suggest that there was a continuous tradition of sword-tumbling stretching from the Bronze Age Near East to Classical Greece but, rather to show that such performances existed and were well received at some points in antiquity. There is very limited evidence for the presence of sword-tumbling in the Bronze Age Aegean: only one object, a gold sword hilt,224 (figure 7) dating to the Neopalatial period (1700-1450 BCE)225 and excavated from the Mallia palace on Crete in 1936 by Fernand Chapouthier. The sword hilt features a contorted figure inscribed around the circular guard of the sword. The figure, most likely male, is arching backwards so that his feet come full circle to touch his head. Beginning with Chapouthier’s initial publication, the acrobat was identified as a sword-tumbler. The medium of a sword-hilt has consistently been viewed as instrumental in interpreting this figure.226 It has been suggested that the sword itself would have been used for the sword-tumbling performance,227 or else that the sword belonged to a “master of ceremonies” for bull-leaping performances.228 To support his identification of the figure as a sword-tumbler, Chapouthier points out, and Waldemar Deonna later echoes, that Aegean Bronze Age weapons often featured decorative elements which corresponded to their intended use. For instance, Chapouthier describes a variety of hunting swords and daggers depicting particular animals in order to “express the destination of the point.”229 Chapouthier also notes (likely due to the delicate engraving and the choice of gold for the material) that this sword likely had a function that was more decorative than martial.230 He

224 Gold sword-hilt, 1700-1450 BCE, Mallia, currently in Heraklion Archaeological Museum 225 Jean Coulomb, “La veritable performance de l’acrobate de Mallia,” Revue de Études Anciennes 84 (1984): fn 2. 226 Fernand Chapouthier, Deux épées d’apparat découvertes en 1936 au palais de Mallia, (Paris: Geuthner, 1938). Waldemar Deonna, Le symbolisme de l’acrobatie antique, (Brussels-Berchem, 1953); Mark Davies, “The Suicide of Ajax: A Bronze Etruscan Satuette from the Käppeli collection,” Antike Kunst 14 (1971): 151, fn 18; Coulomb, “La veritable performance.” 227 Chapouthier, Deux épées; Deonna, Le symbolism. 228 Maria Shaw, “Bull Leaping Frescoes at Knossos,” 104, fn 55. 229 Chapouthier, Deux épées, 60. 230 Ibid, 62. 71

remarks that the acrobat would be invisible when the sword was held in the hand but visible when the sword was stuck in the ground.231 The display of the hilt at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion accepts this interpretation and exhibits the object alongside a reconstructed image of the figure on the hilt bent backwards over a sword.

While there is no clear evidence of a direct relationship between this iconography in

Crete and the contemporary examples from the Near East (as is found for instance in the bull- leaping seals from Syria), the sword hilt would have been contemporary with the cuneiform sources from Mari. Indeed, texts from Mari describe weapons belonging to Mari’s king Zimri-

Lim that originated from Crete. Karen Foster even notes that: “The finest parallels from Zimri-

Lim’s time derive from the palace at Mallia, which was a major metallurgical center during the protopalatial period… the most elaborate guard belonged to a sword and depicts an acrobat in repoussé tumbling in a great curve about the gold roundel.”232

While the relationship between the evidence from Crete and the Near East is unclear, several objects and texts from Mesopotamia and Anatolia indicate the presence of sword- tumbling and support identifying it specifically with the textual accounts of the ḪÚB/ḫuppû specialists. I suggest, in particular, that there are three visual depictions of sword-tumbling from the Near East, two of which I offer new interpretations of here, and also a Hittite text that further supports the presence of sword-tumbling and its connection to the ḪÚB/ḫuppû.

One visual depiction of a probable sword-tumbler appears on a series of seal impressions,233 (figure 8) deriving from the same seal, from Tell Brak.234 This seal, which was

231 Deonna, Le symbolism, 71, citing Chapouthier. 232 Karen Polinger Foster, “Mari and the Minoans,” Historisch Tijdschrift Groniek 217 (2018): 350. 233 Seal impressions, 23rd century BCE, Tell Brak (HP dump) 234 Chapouthier, Deux épées; Deonna, Le symbolisme; Mark Davies, “The Suicide of Ajax,” 151, fn 18; Coulomb, “La veritable performance.” 72

deposited around 2300-2250 BCE, is likely roughly contemporary with the Ebla texts describing the presence of acrobats from Nagar in Ebla. The seal depicts a banquet scene and is divided into two registers. On the upper register two figures are seated across from one another at a table and are accompanied by a harpist. The lower register depicts a series of nude figures, bent over backwards, with unusual spikes or supports beneath them. Helen McDonald suggests that these figures could either be understood as the ḪÚB of Nagar or as impaled captives.235 A close look at the figures themselves shows that the hands of the figures curve back towards their bodies, possibly indicating that the hands are bearing weight; I suggest that this supports the identification of the figures as acrobats. Additionally, in other split-register banquet seals of this period the upper register usually features the banquet scene, while the lower register includes either a continuation of the banquet scene or a row of animals.236 While some seals do feature war scenes and one seal possibly depicts a prisoner alongside a banquet,237 a scene of torture would be particularly unusual as it is not until the first millennium BCE that Mesopotamian depictions of war captives are commonly found to include scenes of torture, such as impaling.238

Additionally, if Nagar was well-known during the mid-third millennium BCE for producing and exporting these ḪÚB/ḫuppû specialists, as records from Ebla indicate, then it should not be surprising that a mid-third millennium seal from Nagar includes a representation of these figures. The seal from which these impressions originated appears to have been used regularly; this was they were the most commonly found impressions in the area from which it was excavated.239 Additionally, the appearance of the figures in conjunction with a banquet

235 Matthews, Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol. 4, 224. 236 Matthews, The Early Glyptic of Tell Brak, seals 90-94, 95-102, 326-335. 237 Ibid., seal 90. 238 Zainab Bahrani, Rituals of War: the body and violence in Mesopotamia, (New York: Zone Books, 2008), 19. 239 Matthews, Excavations at Tell Brak. Vol 4, 224. Seal impressions were excavated from the HP dump. 73

scene corresponds to the textual descriptions of ḪÚB/ḫuppû, where they are often described as performing during feasts. If, then, we take these figures as representing acrobats, we must account for the spikes positioned underneath the figures. I argue that these spikes indicate sword- tumbling, an interpretation that is further supported by Hittite evidence from Anatolia.

A second depiction of a sword-tumbler can be found on a Hittite seal impression240

(figure 9) that shows a figure bent backwards over an upright sword. The earliest mention of this impression is in D.G. Hogarth’s 1920 Hittite Seals: with Particular Reference to the Ashmolean

Collection. Hogarth does not interpret the figure as an acrobat but, instead, attributes the figure’s contortions to “a desire to adapt the subject to the shape of the field.”241 Since Hogarth’s interpretation, however, several scholars have identified this figure as an acrobat.242 Hogarth dates this impression to 1600-1400 BCE, perhaps earlier.243 Its provenance however is unclear;

Hogarth simply reports “Syrian coast.” When compared to the Tell Brak seal the similarities in position of the figure is apparent. In both, the figures are poised in a backbend, with the sword directly underneath them.

I also suggest one additional depiction of a Hittite sword-tumbler: the İnandık Vase,244

(figure 10) dating to the 16th century BCE. The vase is comprised of four registers that depict scenes of food preparation, procession, and feasting, culminating in a sacred marriage ceremony.

On the upper register a procession of figures includes two airborne individuals jumping and diving. While the leftmost figure performs an upright jump, the rightmost figure is suspended backwards midair with arms extended towards the ground. These figures are often succinctly

240 Hittite seal impression, ~ 1600-1400 BCE, no provenance, Ashmolean Museum 241 D.G. Hogarth, Hittite Seals: with Particular Reference to the Ashmolean Collection (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1920), 63. 242 Deonna, le symbolisme, 28-29; Todisco, prodezze e prodigy nel mondo antico, 31; Chapouthier, deux épées, 61; Davies, “The Suicide of Ajax,” 151, fn 18. 243 Hogarth, Hittite Seals, 95. 244 İnandık vase, 16th century BCE, İnandıktepe, currently in Ankara Museum 74

identified as acrobats, though I have seen no discussion about the specifics of their performance.

Crucially, in the register below, two sword-bearing figures hold long swords that break out of the scene into the register above, positioning the tips of the swords directly in front of the acrobats.

By reading the sword tips as deliberate inclusions in the upper register, the acrobats can be understood to be jumping and diving around the swords. This reading is supported by the infrequency in the Old Hittite cultic vases of an element breaking out of its designated register.245

Of similar Hittite cultic vases only one, Hüseyindede Vase A, has a feature that similarly expands beyond its register: a large wagon in the upper register that extends out from the top of the scene. In this case, however, the size of the wagon (which was presumed to hold the image of a deity) is logical both because of the importance of the wagon and because its expansion outside of the register does not intrude on another scene. Additionally, the Hüseyindede A vase features two sword-bearers who are nearly identical to those found on the İnandık vase. In this context, however, the figures are scaled so that their swords fit within their designated register. Given the logical relationship between the scale of the wagon and the register in the Hüseyindede vase, perhaps this deliberateness is being employed in the İnandık vase as well.

Finally, whereas no Mesopotamian text details the performances of acrobats, one Hittite text gives a more specific description and provides what is perhaps the most convincing evidence for interpreting the ḪÚB/ḫuppû as sword-tumblers. The text (KBo 25.176 rev. 22) reads: “The acrobats ([LÚ.ME]ŠḪÚB.BÍ) ‘turn’ (i.e., pivot?) on a sword.”246 When referenced, this text is often presented as enigmatic.247 When viewed in the context of the Hittite and Mesopotamian evidence for acrobatics, however, the connection between the sword and acrobat, particularly the

245 It is possible that this is unusual across all Hittite art, though more research is needed in this area. 246 CHD N, 352. 247 Ibid., Ahmet Ünal, “Textual Illustration of the ‘Jester Scene’ on the Sculptures of Alaca Höyük,” Anatolian Studies 44 (1994): 216. 75

description of being “on” (ANA) the sword, seems to indicate a sword-tumbling practice. The

Hittite text’s use of the Sumerogram ḪÚB to denote acrobats seems to indicate a connection between the Mesopotamian and Anatolian acrobatic profession, possibly suggesting that in both cases these professionals performed sword-tumbling.

The evidence described above, though sparse, demonstrates consistent connections between swords, acrobats, and ḪÚB/ḫuppû specialists in the Bronze Age Near East. Given the infrequent evidence for acrobats generally, the repeated connection between the two seems beyond coincidence. While the existence for sword-tumblers is therefore compelling, the precise role of their performances remains unclear.

2. Analysis of performance

Though the evidence discussed above indicates that sword-tumbling was practiced in the

Bronze Age Near East, a full account of this performance requires us to contextualize it within its cultural setting. Making specific claims is difficult as the scattered evidence for sword- tumbling is drawn from a broad geographical (across Mesopotamia and Anatolia) and chronological span (23rd to 16th centuries BCE).248 This breadth makes any specific conclusions about the practice tentative at best. Still, by examining known variables such as the gender, performance context, and nature of sword-tumbling, several suggestions can be made about the role of this performance and what it indicates about the body.

The following analysis will discuss the four components of acrobatic performance laid out in section one: physical movement, setting, audience, and performers. Throughout the

248 It is perhaps worth noting that the practice remains consistent from the Greek to Roman world, indicating the long-term popularity of this performance; see: Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 205. Acrobatics with swords can also be seen in the medieval period. See for instance: https://art.rmngp.fr/en/library/artworks/misericorde-de-saint- lucien-de-beauvais-bateleur_relief-sculpture_chene-bois; http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=royal_ms_10_e_iv_f058r 76

discussion I point to ways in which an awareness of kinesthetic experience and the semiotics of acrobatic performance might better inform our understanding. Much of this discussion draws on

Vickers’ account of Greek sword-tumbling, which allows for a comparative analysis of the Near

Eastern practice.

Physical movement

As argued above, the movements performed by the ḪÚB/ḫuppû involved tumbling over upright swords. While it is difficult to reconstruct the performance in detail, the visual evidence gives some indication of the physical movement involved. Both the Tell Brak and Hittite seals show the acrobats positioned in a backbend, inverted directly above the sword. The Hittite text seems to record a similar movement, describing the acrobats as “turning on the sword.” The

İnandık vase differs slightly; here the acrobat is placed slightly before the sword, perhaps moving towards it.

These visual and textual representations, however, transcribe only a moment within the performance. Sword-tumbling should be understood not just as a figure arched over a sword but as a dynamic act that involved movement both towards and away from the swords. This movement is made clear in the Mari text which describes the movement of acrobats as ittanablakkatū, tumbling. This movement could have been of several types. It might have included dynamic tumbling, such as front and back handsprings, in which the acrobat was airborne, or it may have included slower movements such as front and back walkovers. The

İnandık vase, which shows an inverted and airborne figure suggests that some of the movements, at least in Anatolia, were of the dynamic type. This type of movement would have required extreme kinesthetic awareness and control, as well as flexibility.

The use of swords is also crucial in understanding this performance. Swords carry many

meanings, particularly connotations of danger and warfare. The presence of swords certainly heightened the risk of the performance, creating “a narrative pattern in which a protagonist overcomes lethal obstacles,” the result of that being movement which “[embodied] a triumph of life over death.”249 Vickers argues that the accentuation of danger was central to the reception of the performance; he claims that “as [audience members] ‘live through’ the performance and performative body, the spectators’ tension is increased, since they potentially identify (to some extent) with a body that could suffer harm.”250 Swords are then a semiotic element of performance that contributed a specific kinesthetic reception from the audience. It is also possible that sword-tumblers performed both with and without swords and added the swords to intensify the performance. We see this sort of sequential act building in the modern circus— performers might perform a trick and then add a prop to make the trick more difficult, dangerous, and/or impressive.

The choice by Mesopotamian and Hittite artists to show the figures arched over the swords is also worth remark. The depictions from these Near Eastern regions mirrors those of

Greece which most frequently represent the acrobat arched over swords and very occasionally show an acrobat approaching swords. The choice to depict the acrobatic arching over the swords highlights both the danger of the movement and its successful completion. Vickers notes that these depictions represent "a stylized moment of ongoing success... [in which] they showcase the action in progress.”251

Setting In the Near East acrobatic performances were primarily included in feasts and festivals and were accompanied by both music and food. We see this in numerous festival texts, in the

249 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 207. 250 Ibid., 206. 251 Ibid., 207. 78

depiction of a feast on the upper register of the Tell Brak seal, and in the procession on the

İnandık vase. Both the Tell Brak seal and the İnandık vase show musicians playing. We also know from the Ishtar text from Mari that the ḫuppû performed specifically during the “An nuwaše” song. Another text from Mari (FM III, text 51) describes the food that will be eaten during the performance: “3 qa of oil for the porridge (mersum) when the acrobats danced/performed (immellū) before the king.” Mersum, a bread or porridge-like food with dates, terebinth, oil, coriander, and garlic was important enough that in Mari there were up to at least eight specialists at once (śa mersim) dedicated to making the food.252 Given these settings we might consider the ways in which the reception of acrobatics affected not only individuals but contributed to particular atmospheres. Feasts and festivals are occasions that disrupt normal temporality.

Hamilakis points out that feasts not only disrupt normal time but “are also about the production of synchronicity: we do not simply eat together but we also eat and share substances, sensorial experiences, emotions, and feelings at the same time.”253 In this context of shared experience, the visceral physical reaction of the audience to the dangerous performance, what

Vickers calls kinesthetic empathy, might be considered a further contribution to the atmosphere of synchronicity. We can consider this experience both in terms of the connection among audience members and in a connection between performers and observers. Acrobatics then might have been a key component in creating an atmosphere of communal experience during feasts and festivals.

Finally, we should note the religious setting of these performances. We know that acrobats performed during the festival of Ishtar in Mari, as well as the Hittite KI.LAM festivals

252 Jack Sasson, “Food and fealty,” 190. 253 Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 87. 79

in Anatolia, though they likely performed in many similar events.254 Compared to the performance of acrobatics in the more secular setting of Greek symposiums, the religious element of the Near East performances indicates a different attitude towards these events.

According to Vickers, there was often a negative association with female acrobats in Greece. For the Greeks, sword-tumbling “falsely ‘imitates’ the dangers of warfare, and the body is one that goes to extreme lengths to avoid weapons, not wield or confront them.”255 While this was sometimes remarked on by Greek authors as brave, others spoke of it derisively, seeing it as a cheapening of the danger.256 Vickers further suggests that spectators’ response to these performers was to disassociate themselves with the female acrobats, seeing them as inferior or even sub-human.257 Conversely, the performance in the Near East by male acrobats at festivals likely indicates a different, though unclear, association with this performance. The performance may have been a display of physicality that was meant to honor the gods, give thanks, or accrue divine favor. It seems unlikely, however, that the negative connotation in Greece can be applied here.

Audience

In the case of a festival, banquet, or other religious event, the audience would almost certainly have been multifaceted and marked by lines of inclusion and exclusion. Possible spectators (both intended and unintended) may have included courtiers and officials, the royal family, visiting dignitaries, and elite guests, as well as other performers, banquet attendants, and,

254 Though the acrobats are not listed as performing, there is a record of their being anointed at least one other feast, FM III, text 125: “1/2 aq of oil for anointing the baladins-huppum for (the feast of) the month birizirrum; in the orchard of Abullat.” 255 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 217. 256 Ibid., 212. 257 Ibid., 217. 80

depending on the specific event, a broader segment of the local population.258 We also might also consider the religious function of these events and whether they might be considered in part entertainment for deities. Hittite texts in particular refer to the importance of entertaining the gods during feasts and festivals. Ahmet Ünal remarks that “[i]t sometimes seems as if the entertainment of the gods was the main target of the festivals.”259 Many highly physical actions make up this entertainment including boxing matches, mock fights, stone slinging, and running competitions, as well as dancing and music.260

The role of the king is also worth noting, particularly because acrobats often seem to be associated with the king, especially in the Mari texts.261 These references include: the standing of the king during the Mari ritual, the performance “before the king,”262 and the multiple texts recording the acrobats’ anointment on the return of the king from the upper district. The close association between these two figures hints at a royal co-option of some qualities of the acrobats.

Rita Wright argues that Mesopotamian kings during Ur III period often associated themselves with craftsmen as a tool for legitimizing their authority. Wright herself extends this discussion to the acrobatic performances described in the Mari Ishtar Ritual which, she argues, “[served] to accentuate the association of creative acts with kings and the gods.”263 While Wright is primarily interested in the king’s association with creativity, we might also imagine here an association with the physical ability of the acrobats. The type of physical ability on display during such performances would not only have been strength but also a kinesthetic awareness in the face of

258 For instance, at Mari, Sasson notes that: “The retinue that shared the king’s meal included bodyguards, the king’s inner circle, his secretary, scribes, and diviners, as well as the local top administrators. In the provinces, perhaps also at Mari, elite women could also attend.” (Sasson, “The King’s Table,” 200.) 259 Ünal, “Hittite Architect and A Rope-Climbing Ritual,” 1489. 260 Ibid., 1489-1492. 261 Sasson, “The King’s Table,” 202, fn 65. 262 FM III, text 51. 263 Rita Wright, “Crafting Social Identity in Ur III Southern Mesopotamia,” Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 8 (2008): 57-69. 81

obstacles and danger that amounts to a form of physical competency or perhaps physical cleverness. Though speculative, if correct, this analysis would indicate that royal messaging drew on connections with a distinctive and exceptional type of physical ability. This might contribute to both our understanding of the nature of kingship and the physical abilities that were valued by society more generally.

Performers

Exactly who acrobats were is also unclear from the texts, though they were certainly all male. While in Ebla these figures were consistently brought in from Nagar (listed names of ḪÚB show that they are not of Elbaite origin),264 there are no such indications of outsider status from other regions. In either case, what a local/non-local status might have meant is unclear.

It is also unclear what costuming the ḪÚB/ḫuppû wore. There is evidence both for costumed and nude performances. Nude figures appear on both the Hittite and Nagar seals. A

Hittite text records nude ḪÚB figures: The dancer-acrobats (LU.MESHUB.BI), ten or more, stand behind the carriage of nanankaltag… One among them is naked.”265 It is unclear, however, if this nakedness was specific for this occasion or was standard for their performances. That their nudity was specified here but not elsewhere perhaps indicates that they did not always perform nude. Several texts from Ebla list clothing being distributed to acrobats. These texts record different sets of clothing being given to the older ḫuppû than to the apprentices.266 It is unclear if the clothing was worn during performance, but the İnandık vase, which shows clothed figures, does indicate slightly different costuming on the larger figure than the smaller, possibly

264 Catagnoti, “Les Listes Des HÚB.(KI).” 265 CHD, 433. Citing: KBo 10.23 iv 11-12. Text is from the KI.LAM festival which seems to have particularly featured acrobats. 266 Biga, Maria Giovanna, “Textiles in the Administrative Texts of the Royal Archives of Ebla (Syria, 24th century BC) with Particular Emphasis on Coloured Textiles,” in Textile Terminologies in the Ancient Near East from the Third to First Millennia BC, ed. C. Michel and M.-L. Nosch, (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), 148. 82

corresponding to these difference in clothing style.

Greek visual evidence for sword-tumbling also shows the figures in varying states of coverage. While several Greek performers were nude, most were simply topless. Vickers argues that in the Greek world this had a specific effect: “The female acrobats are sexualized and spectacularized through their partial nudity, but that nudity also emphasizes the danger they face by exposing their bare skin to the weapons.”267 While in the Near East the sexualization seems unlikely given that all performers were male, the connection between nudity and danger might also apply in the Near East.

The frequent mention of anointing acrobats, found particularly in Mari texts, may similarly indicate a relationship between acrobats and masculinity. Other Mesopotamian athletic figures, such as wrestlers and runners, were also anointed.268 While the practice of anointing seems primarily cultic in nature, one additional possibility is that the application of oil served to visually emphasize the musculature and athleticism of the acrobats. If this is the case, then acrobats seem to hold an aesthetic value that may indicate that their physical bodies as well as performances were understood as a signal of masculinity.

Conclusions

Though bull-leaping is the only acrobatic practice that has received significant attention, it was certainly not the only type of extreme movement that was performed in the ancient world.

In order to understand how bodily limits were understood and how the extreme body was approached, the types of movement being performed must first be identified. This chapter represents an attempt to make such an identification and to offer some tentative thoughts on how this performance might fit into Near Eastern society.

267 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 205. 268 Deane Anderson Lamon, “Running Phenomena in Ancient Sumer,” Journal of Sport History 22 (1995): 209. 83

Vickers describes the narrative arc of Greek sword-tumbling as follows: "a protagonist is faced with difficult obstacles, which she must overcome lest she perish. She is especially qualified to face them with her extraordinary yet abnormal abilities. As she proceeds to encounter the dangers, uncertainty over her fate leads to tension among the spectators, but that tension dissolves with her eventual triumph.”269 We can imagine a similar narrative understanding of sword-tumbling in the Near East, where the performance of such an act at feasts and festivals might have entertained the gods and produced synchronicity among the audience and participants.

269 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 209. 84

Conclusions

In this thesis I have proposed a theoretical and methodological approach to evaluating the evidence for acrobatic performance in the ancient world. I have argued that the performance of acrobatic movement creates an embodied experience for both the performer and the observer and that this movement is thoroughly and inescapably semiotic in nature. It is the extremeness of movement involved and the interactive and intentional nature of performance that makes acrobatic performance an especially productive area in which to examine how meaning is conveyed through bodies.

I have identified two types of acrobatic performance that were prevalent in the

Bronze Age Near East and Mediterranean world: acrobats who leapt over bulls and acrobats who tumbled over upright swords. In these two case studies I discussed the specific variables involved in each performance and made several suggestions for how these performances might have been used to convey social meaning. I argue, in particular, that bull-leaping may have held different meanings in different regions. While in Crete bull-leaping may have been used both in practice and iconography by the elite to accrue support, in Anatolia bull-leaping does not appear to have served an overtly political role. I also argue that sword-tumbling may have been a component of Anatolian and Mesopotamian banquets and that it contributed to the collective atmosphere of these settings.

By identifying and contextualizing moments of acrobatic performance we begin to get a sense of how society understood extreme bodies and physical abilities. For example, what kinds of people were associated with extreme physical abilities, and in what conditions did these bodies operate? Most obvious is that nearly all of the acrobats under discussion are male;270

270 The single exception being the possible depiction of a female bull-leaper on one of the Mesopotamian cylinder seals. 85

perhaps this indicates an association between kinesthetic awareness and masculinity.

Additionally, these figures were sometimes professionals and sometimes non-professional elite youth. Where they are professional they perform in specific contexts, usually in relation to either ritual and/or kingship. This gives some indication of the social importance of acrobatic movement. In the case of elite youth, physical ability is aligned with high social status and a particular age. In the case of professionals, the performance of physical ability is seen as important enough to be funded by state, as we see from the appearance of acrobats on distribution lists.

While both bull-leaping and sword-tumbling involve extreme movement, the types of movement are different. Bull-leaping involved tumbling much higher in the air, and engaging with a living animal, whereas sword-tumbling required tumbling lower to the ground, and attention to where and how they landed. Both types of performance required a proprioceptive awareness of the body in space. Even with one type of performance there might be variations across region: whereas bull-leapers on Crete are often shown airborne or high above the bull, the

Hittite vase shows the performer with all four limbs attached to the bull. How danger is emphasized through movement of the body again carries particular social meaning.

We also observe that danger is emphasized in both types of performance by the inclusion of either bulls or swords. The inclusion of these elements increased the risk of performance, but each also had particular connotations. While swords carry meanings of warfare, bulls had religious connotations (particularly in Anatolia and Crete), as well as connections to nature, and human control over nature. The meaning of these symbols, in conjunction with the performance of extreme bodies, viscerally connects these symbols to the audience. In this way, extreme bodies are both associated with these symbols and also coproduce meaning alongside

them. In the performances I have identified, bulls, swords, and bodies in motion work together to produce meaning. The kinesthetic nature of acrobatics then allows for these performances to be viscerally experienced, connecting observers and performers to each other.

Acrobatic performance is a public, conspicuous, place where bodily norms are constructed and understood. If we can identify moments of acrobatic performance, we can begin to get a sense of how those norms functioned in society. Ultimately, these performances need to be further situated with broader understandings of bodies, gender, abilities, in these regions. This thesis offers only an initial attempt to identify, describe, and evaluate, one way in which extreme bodies were constructed and understood in the ancient world.

Johnathan Vickers writes of acrobatics: “The exploration of the body and its capabilities is part of the lived experience of being human. Acrobatics is one answer to the question ‘how can my body move?’”271 The performance of such explorations not only exhibits the discovery of these capabilities but also the way people saw their bodies — the associations and connotations that come with extreme physical ability. The study of acrobatic performance therefore gives us a unique kind of access to the process by which attitudes towards the body are constructed, consumed, and reproduced.

271 Vickers, “The Acrobatic Body,” 1. 87

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APPENDIX

Appendix A

Figure 1: Terracotta Bull Rhyton, Prepalatial period, Koumasa and Porti, now in Heraklion Archaeological Museum (Y126)

Figure 2: Boxer Rhyton, 1550-1500 BCE, Hagia Triada, now in Heraklion Archaeological Museum (AE 498) Image source: Beazley archive

Figure 3: Toreador Fresco, 1450-1400 BCE, Knossos, now in Heraklion Archaeological Museum Image source: Penn Museum

Figure 4: Seal impression, Alalakh, Level VII of Palace, currently in Hatay Museum in Antak. Image source: Collon, 1994.

Figure 5: Cylinder seal, ~1700 BCE, private collection (originally Erlenmeyer Collection, later sold). Image Source: Collon, 1994.

Figure 6: Hüseyindede B Vase, 16th century BCE, Hüseyindede B, currently in Çorum Archaeological Museum. Image source: Wikicommons

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Figure 7: Gold sword-hilt, 1700-1450 BCE, Mallia, currently in Heraklion Archaeological Museum

Figure 8: Seal impressions, 23rd century BCE, Tell Brak (HP dump) Image Source: Matthews, 2003

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Figure 9: Hittite seal impression, ~ 1600-1400 BCE, no provenance, Ashmolean Museum. Image source: Todisco, 2013.

Figure 10: İnandık vase, 16th century BCE, İnandıktepe, currently in Ankara Museum. Image Source: Wikicommons

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