Gina Konstantopoulos. Определение и описание расстояний на Древнем Ближнем Востоке

Gina Konstantopoulos (University of California Los Angeles) Defining and Describing Distance in the Ancient Near East Friday, July 1st, 6:00 pm Central European Time (UTC 01:00) This talk considers how several distant lands, as well as the concept of distance itself, was constructed in Sumerian and Akkadian texts throughout the second and first millennia BCE. These distant, often fantastical locations could serve as the setting for dramatic and climatic battles within literary texts, as is clearly seen by the use of the Cedar Forest in the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. These same locations – or rather, their real-world analogues – also held strategic importance to the kings of Assyria and Babylonia, particularly in the first millennium BCE. These locations were carefully employed in royal inscriptions and other texts in order to mark the edges of political and military dominion, establishing grand claims as to the reach and extent of the king. Moreover, as this talk will discuss, the concept of distance itself could be employed as a political tool, shaped to adapt the shifting needs of the empire and its borders.