The Tattoos of Antiquity
Jul 15, 2014 18:57:45 GMT -5
Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Jul 15, 2014 18:57:45 GMT -5
The Tattoos of Antiquity
It may be best to start here with a bit of disambiguation: For years enenuru has talked about cuneiform tattoos, has become home to many Sheshki posts on the topic, and recently we have enjoyed alot of "google popularity" as the #4 website that is returned when one searches for "cuneiform tattoo" and, of course, we have discussed cuneiform tattoos with a growing number of visitors. Those odd enough to consider the prospect mainly.
However this thread is not about modern cuneiform tattoos - I aim here to sum a portion of the fascinating discussion of this topic given by Eckart Frahm. Much of Frahm's work is available here academia.edu profile and his discussion of ancient tattoos appears at the end of an article entitled "“Reading the Tablet, the Exta, and the Body: The Hermeneutics of Cuneiform Signs in Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries and Divinatory Texts.” Particularly relevant here is the part where he talks about "reading...the body."
The relevant information is presented in point form:
- What sort of tattoos existed in ancient Mesopotamia? The exact way in which people were marked is actually uncertain, it may have been by tattooing, branding or scarification, or all of these (Frahm note 104).
- Who was marked? Marking of the body seems mainly to have been used as a means of identifying slaves, prisoners or temple oblates (Frahm 131).
- What sources are there for this practice? Various texts from the OB to late periods, often legal texts. Frahm mentions an OB legal text which records: "he is a runaway, seize him,’ he engraved (i.e., tattooed?) on his (the slave’s) face" (p. 131). In the 1st millennium, slaves may be tattooed on the faces or there hands - a letter from Nineveh and bill of sale from Borsippa attest to the continuation of these practices.
- What did these tattoos or brandings consist of? The description of such markings on the body from the various periods indicate that cuneiform was marked on the body and the message seems to have been simply the name of the owner of the slave in most cases - or an instruction to "seize the escapee" may be inscribed on the forehead (!). According to Frahm: "the slaves and temple oblates of the neo-Babylonian and late Babylonian period could carry inscriptions in cuneiform, aramaic, and even Egyptian characters, but they were also often marked with symbols, for example, a star representing the goddess Ishtar that signaled an ownership claim of the Eanna temple in Uruk. Sometimes, slaves became, quite literally, human palimpsests, inscribed with the symbols or names of their successive owners one above the other. Given how widespread the practice was to tattoo Babylonian slaves, it is certainly not by chance that the famous Greek playwright aristophanes, in his (mostly lost) comedy “the Babylonians” from 426 b.c., seems to apply to Babylonians emerging from a mill the term polygrámmatos “(multi)-lettered,” apparently referring to slave marks on their foreheads." (p. 131).
Finally, Frahm makes reference to the above item, a metal branding iron now held in the Schoyen collection (here), which would have been used on cattle or -quite possibly- slaves. It was used to document the ownership of a certain Duganni over these possessions. It is currently unique, being the only example of such an item recovered from Mesopotamia, and proves these practices were in use already in the Early Dynastic period.
