The Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East

This in-depth exploration of emotions in the ancient Near East illuminates the rich and complex worlds of feelings encompassed within the literary and material remains of this remarkable region, home to many of the world’s earliest cities and empires, and lays critical foundations for future study.

Thirty-four chapters by leading international scholars, including philologists, art historians, and archaeologists, examine the ways in which emotions were conceived, experienced, and expressed by the peoples of the ancient Near East, with particular attention to Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the kingdom of Ugarit, from the Late Uruk through to the Neo-Babylonian Period (ca. 3300-539 BCE). The volume is divided into two parts: the first addressing theoretical and methodological issues through thematic analyses and the second encompassing corpus-based approaches to specific emotions. Part I addresses emotions and history, defining the terms, materialization and material remains, kings and the state, and engaging the gods. Part II explores happiness and joy; fear, terror, and awe; sadness, grief, and depression; contempt, disgust, and shame; anger and hate; envy and jealousy; love, affection, and admiration; and pity, empathy, and compassion. Numerous sub-themes threading through the volume explore such topics as emotional expression and suppression in relation to social status, gender, the body, and particular social and spatial conditions or material contexts.

The Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East is an invaluable and accessible resource for Near Eastern studies and adjacent fields, including Classical, Biblical, and medieval studies, and a must-read for scholars, students, and others interested in the history and cross-cultural study of emotions.

Karen Sonik is a cultural historian specializing in the ancient Near East. She is currently a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2021-22), Associate Professor in the Department of Art & Art History at Auburn University, and a Consulting Scholar in the Babylonian Section at the Penn Museum. She earned her PhD in the Art & Archaeology of the Mediterranean World at the University of Pennsylvania, and is editor of Art/ifacts and ArtWorks in the Ancient World (2021); Journey to the City: A Companion to the Middle East Galleries at the Penn Museum (with S. Tinney; 2019); The Materiality of Divine Agency (with B. Pongratz-Leisten; 2015); as well as a forthcoming volume on Mesopotamian literature. Her research has been supported by organizations including the American Philosophical Society; the American Council for Learned Societies; the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University; and the Kolb Foundation. Her current projects draw on developing research into the emotions, senses, and aesthetics of the ancient Near East to explore what it meant to be human at the dawn of urban civilization.

Ulrike Steinert is a postdoctoral researcher in the Research Training Group 1876 Early Concepts of Humans and Nature at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. Her research interests and publications focus on ancient Mesopotamian medicine, religion and cultural history, the Akkadian language, women’s health, gender and body concepts as well as metaphor research. She is the author of a study on the body, self, and identity in Mesopotamian texts, entitled Aspekte des Menschseins im Alten Mesopotamien. Eine Studie zu Person und Identität im 2. und 1. Jt. v. Chr. (2012) and is currently preparing a monograph on Women’s Health Care in Ancient Mesopotamia: An Edition of the Textual Sources.