Repetition, Parallelism and Creativity: An Inquiry into the Construction of Meaning in Ancient Mesopotamian Literature and Erudition

Project Information

REPAC

Grant agreement ID: 803060

DOI

10.3030/803060

Project closed

EC signature date 31 August 2018

Start date 1 May 2019

End date 30 April 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 494 198,00

EU contribution

€ 1 494 198,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT WIEN
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - REPAC (Repetition, Parallelism and Creativity: An Inquiry into the Construction of Meaning in Ancient Mesopotamian Literature and Erudition)

Reporting period: 2023-11-01 to 2024-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

REPAC investigates repetition and parallelism as structuring and meaning-constructing devices in Babylonian literature and scholarly writing from the first millennium BCE. REPAC argues that the pervasive use of repetition and parallelism in these texts reflects a culture-specific ontology rooted in analogical thinking. REPAC demonstrates that in Babylonian literature and scholarship, repetition in its several forms was not merely an aesthetic ornament but served as a pragmatic tool for constructing meaning through analogy. By examining three major genres - poetry, magical texts, and divinatory compendia – REPAC is the first project to investigate repetition in all its facets as a unified phenomenon in Babylonian erudition and to highlight the role of analogical reasoning in shaping the scribal worldview that accounts for its significance and ubiquity.
REPAC has four objectives, which are linked to four interrelated work packages: 1) investigate the role played by repetition as a structuring device in Babylonian literature and scholarly writing; 2) establish the functions of repetition in context; 3) clarify how repetition and analogical reasoning reflect a vision of the world as permeated by correspondences between its parts resulting from bonds of similarity; 4) create a dialogue with neighbouring fields of study regarding the investigation of repetition and parallelism and of the underlying worldview.
The ancient’s choice and use of particular analogies elucidates their ontological presuppositions; consequently, the study of these analogies opens up Ancient Mesopotamia to meaningful comparisons with other cultures, including our own. The work conducted within REPAC on literary forms of argument in Babylonian scholarly and poetic texts introduced a novel methodological approach in Assyriology. Our research showed that systematically examining micro-arguments embedded in the texts through repetition is both effective for investigating these texts’ compositional structures and essential for fully grasping their messages. REPAC’s research has significantly enhanced our understanding of Babylonian scholarly thought and its place in intellectual and cultural history.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

REPAC created an extensive database covering repetition and analogical thinking in literary, magical, and divinatory texts from Ancient Mesopotamia, as well as similar texts from Ancient Egypt, China, and the Bible. This database provided the foundation for our corpus-oriented work.
The project produced forty-two publications: twenty-eight are published, and fourteen are submitted and forthcoming. Two dissertations have been written within REPAC under the PI’s supervision. The first in an investigation of analogical reasoning in divinatory texts from the first millennium BCE, while the second focuses on analogism, poeticity, and performativity in anti-witchcraft rituals. Both significantly advance the study of Babylonian divination and magic beyond the current state of the art.
The setup of REPAC’s homepage (https://repac.at/) and the digital infrastructure for the online open-access publication of REPAC’s research showcases represent innovations in Assyriology. These showcases are written in accessible language for a broader audience, aiming to make EU-funded research in the specialized field of Assyriology available to a larger audience. Methodologically, they break new ground by combining written descriptions of Babylonian texts with schematic presentations of textual structures using colored graphs, which have proven effective in helping readers follow the analysis more easily.
REPAC fostered, for the first time, a dialogue between Ancient Near Eastern and Classical Chinese studies. Specifically, we examined current discussions on textual repetition, literary argumentation, and underlying ‘correlative thinking’ in early China, integrating research methodologies developed for Babylonian scholarly texts into the study of early Chinese texts. This comparative work, never before attempted, yielded groundbreaking insights into the mode of meaning construction in these two scribal cultures.
REPAC organised two international workshops ("The Construction of Meaning in Ancient Mesopotamian Literature and Scholarship", 2021 and 2023), an interdisciplinary conference (“Textual Repetition and Creativity in Ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, Egypt, and China”, 2024), and a reading seminar (“Strategies for Reading Early Chinese Manuscripts and for Re-Reading Chinese Classics”, 2024).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The analysis of patterns of repetition in Babylonian literary and scholarly corpora yielded significant results beyond the state of the art. It provided a more complete understanding of the techniques of composition and the nature, purpose, and development of the three text groups we studied: poetry, magical texts, and divinatory compositions. It allowed us to discover that a larger number of Babylonian texts than previously assumed are product of a creative usage of existing material. Our analyses revealed that works that were thought to be single coherent compositions are, in fact, comprised of entirely separate texts. By studying the ways arguments within individual compositions are built, we discovered that different forms of repetition function as argumentative techniques, impacting both limited clusters of entries and the texts’ macro-structure. The interplay of repetition and variation in Babylonian poetry and scholarly texts creates a web of equivalences and contrasts that echo each other over both long and short distances, framing overarching arguments and introducing crucial nuances of meaning. We identified several arguments based on similarity built into works of Babylonian poetry, in particular hymns and wisdom literature, and discovered new levels of meaning reflecting complex theological arguments in these compositions. Babylonian scribes made ample use of repetitive patterns that bind together two parts of an argument by revisiting a previously introduced point while simultaneously leading in a new direction. Such patters have been identified in literary texts and selectively studied in the past. However, we identified similar patterns in divinatory and magical texts for the first time, and, and more importantly, placed them into a larger interpretative framework. These insights mark significant breakthroughs as they demonstrate that also divinatory and magical texts display a remarkable level of literary sophistication, supported by a well-established repertoire of text-structuring devices.
By applying REPAC’s methodologies, originally developed for Babylonian scholarly texts, to early Chinese texts, we uncovered striking similarities between early Chinese and Babylonian divinatory compositions. Both traditions employ similar text-structuring techniques, including syntactic and phonetic repetition and parallelism. This unprecedented cross-disciplinary integration between Assyriology and Sinology in the study of divination has the potential to vastly enhance our understanding of ancient divinatory practices across ancient scribal cultures.

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