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After the Battle Is Over: the Stele of the Vultures and the Beginning Of

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After the Battle Is Over: the Stele of the Vultures and the Beginning Of To raise the ofthe natureof narrative is to invite After the Battle Is Over: The Stele question reflectionon the verynature of culture. Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity . ," 1981 of the Vultures and the Beginning of Historical Narrative in the Art Definitions of narrative, generallyfalling within the purviewof literarycriticism, are nonethelessimportant to of the Ancient Near East arthistorians. From the simpleststarting point, "for writing to be narrative,no moreand no less thana tellerand a tale are required.'1 Narrativeis, in otherwords, a solutionto " 2 the problemof "how to translateknowing into telling. In general,narrative may be said to make use ofthird-person cases and of past tenses, such that the teller of the story standssomehow outside and separatefrom the action.3But IRENE J. WINTER what is importantis thatnarrative cannot be equated with thestory alone; it is content(story) structured by the telling, University of Pennsylvania forthe organization of the story is whatturns it into narrative.4 Such a definitionwould seem to providefertile ground forart-historical inquiry; for what, after all, is a paintingor relief,if not contentordered by the telling(composition)? Yet, not all figuraiworks "tell" a story.Sometimes they "refer"to a story;and sometimesthey embody an abstract concept withoutthe necessaryaction and settingof a tale at all. For an investigationof visual representation, it seems importantto distinguishbetween instancesin which the narrativeis vested in a verbal text- the images servingas but illustrationsof the text,not necessarily"narrative" in themselves,but ratherreferences to the narrative- and instancesin whichthe narrativeis located in the represen- tations,the storyreadable throughthe images. In the specificcase of the ancientNear East, instances in whichnarrative is carriedthrough the imageryitself are rare,reflecting a situationfundamentally different from that foundsubsequently in the West, and oftenfrom that found in the furtherEast as well. We do not have a cultural situationin whichmonolithic religious/mythological/heroic textsstand behind the veryfabric of society- as the Bible does for the Judeo-ChristianWest, the Odyssey and the Iliad forthe classicalworld, or the Ramayanaand the Bha- gavad Gita forthe Indian subcontinent.Nor do we have a traditionof inscriptionsdirectly associated with and there- foreidentifying mythological/religious images. Through jux- tapositionwith text,as in illustratedbooks or throughla- beling, as on Greek vases, for example, images in later Western art at least are far more likelyto be accurately identified;and theseidentifiable images then provide a basic corpusfrom which to argue forthe unknown.5 The problemis furtherexacerbated by the tendencyin theart of the ancient Near East, as discussedby Ann Perkins in the 1955 Chicago symposiumon narrativein ancientart, to be "allusive"rather than explicit, with the "culminating 11 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 17 Dec 2015 20:19:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions scene" of a given storystanding for the whole.6We often is notto say thatsuch worksare neverlinked to texts,since findthe storybehind the image, therefore,demanding the manyof the monumentsare eitheraccompanied by inscrip- viewers priorknowledge and correctidentification of the tionscarved directly upon the stone,or else can be related scene- a processof "matching" rather than "reading" of the to parallel texts,through which our understandingof the imageryitself qua narrative. narrativeis clarified.Yet theyare notdependent upon the However, there is one class of work in the corpus of textsfor their reading. In the verydepiction of historical ancientNear Eastern art- the battle scene, executed pri- events,as opposed to ritualor mythologicalevents, we are - marilyin sculpturalrelief thatdoes fallinto our definition presentedwith a complexinternal sequence and develop- ofpictorial narrative. In content,these workstend to refer ment,through time and across space, whichpermits us to to specificevents in time and place; to contain"action" as "read" the monumentitself. it has been distinguishedfrom "description"; and to be The battle narrativesof the Neo-Assyrian period, from "told," as ifin the thirdperson and in the past tense.7The the ninthto the seventhcenturies B.c., are perhaps the subjectmatter of these monumentsis neitherreligious nor best known,and have been the subjectof an earlierstudy, mythological,but rather historical. Whether conveyed the resultsof which linked the exploitationof this particular throughthe juxtapositionof successive episodes,8or in a genre directlyto the contemporarypolitical situation, as singleimage that nonetheless through its action enables one Assyriankings used representationsof conquest to validate to "read" the event, these reliefscan by our definitionbe the territorialexpansion of the empire.9Comparison with called "pictorialnarrative," as we are not required merely contemporaryannalistic texts describing actual battleses- to associatethrough them to an underlyingtext or tale. This tablishedan exactcorrespondence between battles reported Fig. 1. Obverse,Stele of the Vultures of Eannatum,ensi of Fig. 2. Reverse,Stele of the Vultures. Photo courtesy Musée du Lagash,c. 2460b.c. Whitelimestone; ht. 1.80m; found at Tello, Louvre ancientGirsu; Musée du Louvre(AO 50 + 2436-8+ 16109).Photo courtesyMusée du Louvre 12 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 17 Dec 2015 20:19:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions and battlesdepicted. In thisisomorphism between the ver- verse actuallywrap around the two shallowsides as well. bal and the visual, we are presentedwith a highlysophis- The negativespace is filledwith an inscriptionthat is incised ticated and integratedsystem, in which both means are continuouslyfrom obverse to reverse. Much of the visual expertlymanipulated toward the same rhetoricaland po- contentsof the stele can be reconstructed,though there liticalends. are a few significantlosses. The inscription,however, has It is thereforeof interest to lookback to the very beginning majorgaps. We knowfrom the extantportion that the stele ofthe sequence, to the late EarlyDynastic period (e.d. Ill) was executedby one Eannatum,ensi (city ruler or governor) c. 2500 B.C., in whichconditions surrounding the consol- of Lagash in c. 2460 B.C. Eannatumpresents the historical idationof the city-state had givenrise to thefirst monument background,events, and consequences of his bordercon- thatcould be identifiedas public, historical,and narrative: flictswith an unnamed rulerof Umma, the state immedi- the large, freestandingrelief known as the "Stele of the to thenorthwest of in a overthe " ately Girsu, dispute Gu'eden, Vultures, commemoratinga victoryof the city-stateof La- the fertiletract of irrigatedland between the two states.15 10 gash over the neighboringstate of Umma (figs.1, 2). Thus, fromthe text,as well as fromother contemporary My aim is fourfold:to see whetherthis monument truly referencesto thesame conflict,we have thehistorical details fitsthe definitionof "narrative"presented above; to bring to help anchorthe visual representations on the monument. forththe particularhistorical and culturalconditions that We are thereforein a positionto approachthe problemof producedit and the issues embodiedtherein; to determine pictorialnarrative both froma readingof the imageryitself whetherthe same degree of integrationbetween textand and froma comparisonof textand image: thatis, we can imageprevailed as did inthe Neo-Assyrian period and whether determinenot only what tale is being told, but also how the same degree of politicalends were being served; and the tale is told. finally,to see if it is possible to linkthis early example to The obverseof the stele is dividedinto two registers, the laterworks in the historyof art by elucidatingthe uses (and upper portionalmost twice the heightof the lower(figs. 1, 16 abuses) of public monumentson whichhistorical narrative 3). A large male figure,centrally placed, holds a mace in appears. For it should be clear fromthe outset that the "historicity"of these monumentswas a highlymanipulated one. In the Assyriancase, forexample, only the enemies die; Assyriansnever lose, neverperish. The purportedreal- ity is thus carefullyorganized to "bring out the central mythos"of the state;11and even whereevents depicted are in fact true, the very factof theirhaving been recorded selects the event, its antecedents,and its consequencesas meaningful. The Stele of the Vultures,currently in the Louvre, is ratherpoorly preserved. Originally it was a large, rectan- gularslab ofwhite limestone with a roundedtop. The mod- ern restorationof the whole is based upon onlyseven frag- ments. Six were excavatedduring the 1880s at the site of modernTello, ancient Girsu, a satellitetown withinthe city-stateof Lagash in the Early Dynasticperiod and seat ofthe deityNingirsu.12 The seventhfragment, undoubtedly plunderedfrom the site, was acquired by the BritishMu- seum in 1900 and later given to the Louvre forthe resto- ration.13As restored,the monumentmeasures 1.80 meters in height, 1.30 meters in width, and is .11 meters in thickness.14 The stele is covered on both majorfaces with carving in Fig. 3. Reconstructiondrawing, obverse, Stele of the relativelyhigh, well modeled relief;the scenes of the re- Vultures(drawing by ElizabethSimpson) WINTER 13 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Thu, 17 Dec 2015 20:19:24 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms
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