Secrecy, Protection, and the Foundations of Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia

Mohr, Sara

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Overview

Year:: 2022
Contributor:: Mohr, Sara (creator); Rutz, Matthew (Advisor); Steele, John (Reader); Escobar, Eduardo (Reader); Brown University. Department of Egyptology and Assyriology (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: Cryptography; Assyriology; Civilization, Assyro-Babylonian; Secrecy
Extent:: iix, 278 p.

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Abstract:: This dissertation examines secrecy statements, the so-called cryptographic cuneiform texts, and foundation deposits in first millennium BCE Mesopotamia, linking them through the network of people involved in their production and contextualizing them in the large-scale political shifts that occurred in the region at the time. I argue that for the scribal class at the time, aspects of secrecy and hidden writing were more about protection, invented tradition, and generational maintenance in the face of significant fear of information loss due to collapsing powers and the introduction of non-native rule to Mesopotamia. Secrecy statements, in their similarity to curses and oaths, implored future scribes to keep safe the information contained on the tablets that bore them, increasing in frequency after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian empire. The so-called cryptographic texts were a similar response to the dying out of the cuneiform script in which cuneiform scribes sought to expand their knowledge structures horizontally when confronted with vertical stagnation as other languages supplanted Akkadian. Finally, I connect these forms of secrecy with the work of ritual experts in laying foundation deposits. The same scribes adapting the tradition of secrecy and the polyvalency of cuneiform were responsible for the ritual aspects of laying foundations, which defined space and were physical manifestations of the impulse to maintain culture and knowledge from generation to generation. Ultimately, secrecy and hidden writing are about fear of loss and protection, the ways in which crisis affects how knowledge is conceived, and how it is preserved for future generations.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2022

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Citation

Mohr, Sara, "Secrecy, Protection, and the Foundations of Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia" (2022). Egyptology and Assyriology Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:yej5nw6p/

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Egyptology and Assyriology Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the Egyptology and Assyriology department.
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