Nelson Henrique da Silva FerreiraHenrique Nelson ON BASED ITERATURE L : ATIN L CT THOUGHT DSCAPE UMERIAN AND S F THEPAST AND ABSTRA Nelson Henrique da Silva Ferreira THE AGRICULTURALTHE LAN THE SILENT VOICES OF THE PAST AND ABSTRACT THOUGHT A DIALOGIC READINGO BASED ON THE AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE: SILENT THE VOICES OF A DIALOGIC READING OF SUMERIAN AND LATIN LITERATURE PhD thesis in Doctorate program in Classical Studies, Ancient World, advised by Professor Francisco de São José Oliveira (PhD) and Professor Adelina Millet Albà (PhD) under a cooperation agreement for a joint supervision between the University of Coimbra and the University of Barcelona, and submitted at the Faculty of Letters, University of Coimbra August 2018 Nelson Henrique da Silva Ferreira The silent voices of the past and abstract thought based on the agricultural landscape: a dialogic reading of Sumerian and Latin literature PhD Thesis in Linguistic, Literary and Cultural Studies and in Classical Studies specialising in the Ancient World, presented at the Faculty of Letters, University of Coimbra and University of Barcelona for the Degree of Doctor. Supervisors: Professors Doctor Adelina Millet Albà and Doctor Francisco de São José de Oliveira. Coimbra, 2018 The research for this thesis was supported by the fellowship SFRH/BD/93806/2013, granted by the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. i To the memory of my grandparents Fernando Soares Ferreira (03/03/1935-30/03/2004) Palmira Silva (20/03/1937-16/05/2012) Mirtila Silva (26/12/1933-15/01/1982) Manuel Ferreira (06/08/1933-18/02/2017) To Laura To my parents, José and Marina, To my brothers, Leandro and Marcelo ii Contents Abstracts vi Acknowledgements x List of abbreviations, conventions and editions of ancient texts 1 0. Prelude, method and justification 6 0.1. Sumerians and Romans: unknown aliens 7 0.2. Agriculture and the culture of the silent people 14 0.3. Justification of method 15 0.4. Chapters and thematic divisions 18 0.5. Some notes on transliteration and translation 19 0.6. Selection of sources 20 0.7. Some notes on the lexicon and the value of semiotics in identifying meaning 20 0.8. Decomposing metaphorical language 22 0.9. Literature as a source of meaning 24 I. Introduction 1.1. Ancient Sumerian agriculture and the disguised metaphor 25 1.1.1. Sumerian literature and the mechanics of the construction of abstract meaning 25 1.1.2. Brief notes on Sumerian agriculture 31 1.2. Rome and the visual language of the farm 34 1.2.1. Instruction as a source of knowledge and of traditional prototype images: understanding a macro symbol 35 II. Water, river and flood: constructing meaning 2.1. The riverine landscape as a source for symbolic language: the water and the flood 44 2.1.1. Geographical context: the landscape and the river 44 2.1.2. From the reality of an image to the symbol 46 2.1.3. Objectifying the abstract image 48 2.1.4. Calamity and the scale of power: the dark side of the flood 53 2.1.5. Water, life and prosperity 65 2.2. Rome and the shadow of the Tiber 72 2.2.1. The landscape, the water and the river of meaning 72 2.2.2. The river and the language of growth and prosperity 78 2.2.3. The power of fluidity 83 2.3.1. Conclusion: A dialogic exercise on signs of meaning from the image of the flood 93 2.3.1.1. The river as a neighbour and the landscape in the language 95 III. Meaning in agricultural landscapes 3.1. The semantics of herding and farming: symbiosis and the landscape of signs 98 3.1.1. The farmer 99 iii 3.1.2. Herding and farming: a shared framework 109 3.1.3. The shepherd and the universality of a traditional image 116 3.1.4. The driver of the plough: a herder working in the fields 124 3.1.4.1. Sex and ploughing 132 3.1.4.2. Ploughing and fertility 135 3.2. The farmer and his place in the social mind 143 3.2.1 The value of rustic hands: wisdom, resistance, moral and labour 145 3.2.1.1. The farmer and the signs of meaning: between reality and symbolic language 145 3.2.1.2. The path to understanding natural phenomena and productivity 161 3.2.1.3 Labour as the path to traditional morality and social reality 166 3.2.1.4. Hardship as a morality builder 171 3.2.2. The plough and the animal 176 3.2.3. Shepherds vs. farmers: reality and literature 181 3.2.3.1. Framing the animal symbol within the image of the shepherd landscape 184 3.2.3.1.2. Power: the wisdom of the wise or the dictatorship of the strongest 184 3.3. Conclusion: Farming and people in the field 193 3.3.1. Farming instructions: an intersection point? 195 3.3.2. The shepherd in the agricultural cosmos 198 IV. Wealth, prosperity and abstract language 4.1. The landscape of prosperity: abundance from the fields 200 4.1.1. Fertility and production 200 4.1.2. The gifts of nature 207 4.1.3. Wealth, happiness and material society 211 4.1.4. Meaning through poverty and absence: the path to sadness 221 4.1.5. Life and beauty 227 4. 1.5.1. Literary devices and interpretation 227 4.1.5.2. Sexuality, beauty and farm produce 231 4.1.6. Landscape: meaning and emotion 235 4.2. The field and the seed: scenes of prosperity in Latin instructional texts 241 4.2.1 Production and fertility: Mother Nature and the role of analogy 241 4.2.2. Crops: fruits of labour and the path to prosperity 249 4.2.3. Nature and the portrayal of beauty 255 4.3. Conclusion: a dialogue between quantities of happiness 264 4.3.1 Products and value 268 4.3.2. Discussing beauty through common sense: aesthetics before aesthetics 269 iv V. Conclusions: Sumerian metaphor and allegory and the language of the Roman instructional texts – conclusion of a parallel study 5.1. The language of literature and the history of humanity 274 5.2. The farmer as an institution 277 5.3. The representation of landscape: a possible dialogue 279 Appendix A.1. Tables and diagrams A.1.1. Signs of meaning from the riverine landscape in the literary sources I A.1.2. Signs of meaning from the farmer’s landscape IV A.1.2.1. Signs of meaning from the image of the farmer V A.1.2.2. Signs of meaning from symbiotic landscapes VI A.1.3. Signs of meaning from abundance and natural beauty VIII A.2. Bibliography XI A.3. Index of ancient texts quoted XXXVII A.4. General Index XLVIII v Abstract Many authors who have studied ancient social systems have emphasised the importance of farming and herding in the genesis of complex societies. Hence, this dependence must have had an intrinsic influence on the cultural matrix of societies sustained by agriculture, such as the entire Mesopotamian and Italic regions. Farming and herding regulated daily activities, influencing the conceptualization of the surrounding cosmos. The natural world was reflected in abstract thought, which inevitably formed the basis for linguistic creativity and expression based on signs of meaning inspired by the agricultural landscape. A variety of media often shows such potential ‘metaphoric’ language, which extends beyond the simple expression of literary telluric feelings to present images obvious to an interlocutor who recognized meaning in signs culturally transmitted by empirical experience within the agricultural cosmos or through traditional preconceptions. In this sense, through the identification and crystallization of what modern semiotics calls ‘signs of meaning’, the empirical observation of fertility, abundance and quality of production would have served as a source for the creation of imagery constructed from common sense and the experience of rural life and natural phenomena. These images, made up of crystalized signs of meaning, would have been converted into linguistic symbols whose semantics reflected a symbiosis of three conceptual levels: rural life, natural phenomena and welfare. The aim of this thesis is to analyse how prejudgments of meanings drawn from nature and based on common sense were constructed and maintained in a defined cultural context which predated the exclusivity and artificiality of literary expression. At the same time, it will explore how such preconceived ideas can help us to understand ancient culture and approach the thinking of the silent people of the ancient world. In order to interpret how the allegorical images and processes for crystallising traditional ideas were constructed, I intend to identify possible traces of ancient traditional linguistic thought in Sumerian literature and Latin instructions on farming, whose matrices were developed from contact with the natural world and date from prehistorical times. The objective is to identify meaning in images transmitted by literary language by applying the same method to two unrelated cultures in order to demonstrate that different cultures may use the same mechanisms to construct abstract meaning, with similar results, in a context based mainly on agriculture and nature. vi Resumo Muitos autores dedicados ao estudo de antigos sistemas sociais apontaram que a gênese das sociedades complexas foi sustentada em grande medida pelo desenvolvimento da agricultura e do pastorícia. Nesse sentido, a matriz cultural destas sociedades foi profundamente influenciada por estas actividades económicas, tal como sucedeu com as culturas antigas de toda a região mesopotâmica e itálica. As atividades de caráter agrícola regulavam o quotidiano e, dessa forma, moldavam a conceptualização do cosmos circundante.