[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
The study of the ways and processes in which the body was perceived and symbolized in ancient societies is an endeavor which is both ambitious and intriguing. Research of this kind has far-reaching heuristic implications, particularly with regard to the study of the modes and processes of perception in the ancient societies concerned and, consequently, to the critical refinement of the interpretation and evaluation of their cultural products, both tangible and intangible. Given the fundamental importance of the body for the development of the mind and its crucial role in the cultural definition of the world, the editors of Living Bodies, Dead Bodies, and the Cosmos carried out a project that is both timely and relevant, offering hope for further fruitful developments in the future.
This volume brings together sixteen essays, including an introductory part that outlines the book’s objectives and guiding principles and traces a general theoretical framework based on humanistic and psychological-cognitive perspectives. At the heart of the project is the study of the cultural particularities and universal traits that characterize the conception of the body and the cosmos in premodern cultures. As inspiring and motivating as the general objectives and the path leading to them may be, such a statement of intent may seem somewhat naive if it does not consistently give due consideration to logical hierarchies and anthropological metadiscourse. Sadly, such issues are not explicitly expressed in the first part, which instead introduces basic concepts and authors. Preference is here given to concepts such as embodiment, enaction and the Extended Mind Thesis (by Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers), the cognitive value of the metaphor (mainly in the view of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson), Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s view of perception, and those developments in the neurosciences that have become increasingly popular since the beginning of this century. Such ideal guidelines are largely recalled in the volume, making it both methodologically and theoretically consistent. On the one hand this is a noteworthy homogeneity, if one considers the quantity of authors and the variety of their approaches and backgrounds; on the other, there is a noticeable lack of references to some important figures and theories related to the anthropology of the body, the mind, and learning, and this represents a missed opportunity which would have enriched this publication. For instance, works like Douglas 1970 (for the relation between the individual body and the environment, cosmic space, and the socio-cultural body) or Bateson 1979 (for levels of learning and the definition of mind) would have made an interesting contribution to many of the studies included in the volume.
The second part is made up of six essays dedicated to the symbolization, the perception and the collective imagination of the body in ancient Egypt, in the Hellenic and Hellenized world, in the Biblical world, and in the medieval Netherlands. If the contribution by Simone Gerhards on sleeping bodies in ancient Egypt is based essentially on a typical philological investigation of texts from different periods, establishing connections not always properly justified, and outlining “universals” that would need more in-depth analysis, Rune Nyord’s work on sculpted bodies (i.e., statues), their nature and agency is a very careful examination of concepts and material witnesses from the Nile Valley. Nyord considers both the chronological distances between different periods of ancient Egyptian history and the potential cultural biases and misunderstandings which can affect interpretation by scholars with a deeply critical approach. The more-than-representational approach he adopts leads to convincing and interesting results. In the following chapter, the development of speculation and concepts related to the leading part of the body (hēgemonikón) in the Greek intellectual milieu of the classical period (Empedocles of Acragas) and in that of the fourth century CE (Nemesius of Emesa) is very carefully illustrated by Shahrzad Irannejad and Aleksandar Milenković. Their paper is a fine and erudite one, and the authors also explain the heuristic approach adopted by those ancient intellectuals very clearly. The practice of observing the dysfunctions of the body and subsequent effects on cognitive or sensorimotor faculties is especially captivating and recalls popular works of psychiatrists like Aleksandr R. Lurija and Oliver Sacks. Of the two papers dealing with the biblical tradition the first (by Yudit Kornberg Greenbeg) focuses on the parallels in the poetic descriptions of the bodies and the erotic encounters in the biblical Song of Songs (Shir Ha-Shirim) and in the Song of the Cowherd (Gitagovinda) of the much later Sanskrit tradition. The author looks for cross-cultural examples of poetic erotic metaphors evoking entities from landscape, flora, and fauna, but ultimately the impression is that the objective has only been partially achieved. Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic views of the body and the cosmos are examined in parallel in the following work by Reuven Kiperwasser, who touches on a number of themes that are explored in greater depth later in the book. The human body is seen as a universe in miniature, and both are regulated by very similar rules (an ‘order’). In the following chapter Han Nijdam investigates the conception of the human body (the ‘schemas of the body’) and its parts as found in medieval Frisian law. The tariffs compensation system in Frisian criminal law was related to values and social relations which require a complex historiographic approach. In discussing this last point, the author fails to draw on Carlo Ginzburg’s thinking and methodology regarding the relevance of microhistory (e.g. Ginzburg 1993; 2005).
In the view of this reviewer the third section of the book is the most fascinating. It is also chiefly interested in the human body and meanings and metaphors related to it, but considers the body in the specific state of being deprived of life. Four essays focus on testimonies from very different cultures, and together they paint an extremely inspiring picture, a patchwork of accounts rich in theoretical insights. Throughout various historical periods and across different cultures, the decomposition and the miraculous or artificial preservation of dead bodies are linked to ideals and principles that have special value and a significant impact on community life. Two chapters of this section illustrate these phenomena particularly well. The treatment of and ideals relating to the corpse in ancient Egypt are examined by Rebekka Pabst and Oxana Polozhentseva in parallel with medieval European veneration of relics and physical remains of saints. The symbolisms of death and (un)corrupted bodies emerge vividly, and the treatment of these themes is effective, but the concluding interpretations could have been better contextualized. The general underlying subject of Annette Kehnel’s essay—the last in Part III—is not very different, although it boldly brings together two very different cases (distant from one another both chronologically and culturally) of incorrupt bodies in a liminal state, suspended between life and death. Their state of liminality and suspension endows them with special powers of attraction and symbolic exaltation within their respective communities. In the remaining essays Fabian Neuwahl turns his attention to the poetic narratives concerning Roman funeral rites and to the specific challenges posed by epidemics, contagions, and the sudden surge in deaths they bring, while Adriana Gómez Aiza and Alondra Domínguez Ángeles illustrate the complex interconnections between mythic cosmogonic narratives and ritual practices in Mesoamerica, namely in the Maya and Nahua cultures. The accounts and iconography of self-decapitations are thoroughly analyzed within their respective historical and cultural contexts, but some interesting biopolitical implications are only briefly touched upon. In the final lines, the authors offer their own interesting critical interpretation of the concept of “cultural universals.” This interpretation is particularly valuable—not least because of its rare insight—within a publication such as this one.
The last part of the volume, focusing on cosmographies, cosmologies, and related themes, is the most descriptive and analytical, and the least synthetic and theoretical, with the exception of the second essay. Here Tom Hercules Davies discusses the effectiveness and usefulness of the concepts of universality, originality and diffusion (or borrowing) of cultural traits in the context of historical examples from distant cultures. Theoretical aspects could have been handled better, for example by including a debate on the measurement of time in ancient Egypt (at pages 372-373) or looking for appropriate ethnographic parallels (see e.g. Ascher 2002). Laura Borghetti, Marie-Charlotte von Lehsten, and Katharina Zartner investigate the tendency to personify celestial bodies and atmospheric phenomena in the cultures of preclassical Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, and the Byzantine Empire between the ninth and twelfth centuries. The overview is extensive and detailed, but is overall a descriptive work, as are the last two chapters, though no less engaging for that. Daniel W. Graham explores the origins and developments of Greek cosmology, from earliest testimony (Hesiod’s works) to later philosophical theories underpinning subsequent scientific approaches, while Feray Coşkun traces the complex syncretisms and various contaminations, mostly of theological inspiration, that led to the development of Ottoman cosmographies from the fourteenth century onwards.
Most of this volume is for an academic audience, but would also be useful for classes of advanced students. Its important strengths lie in the variety of topics and case studies presented or referenced in the various chapters. This in itself enriches the publication’s value, as it provides the knowledgeable reader with a wealth of insights. On the other hand, the book’s main weaknesses consist in the fact that many chapters present comparisons in a rather superficial and simplistic manner, particularly the parallels involving intercultural communication and contact. Cultural phenomena are not always adequately contextualized, and true structural comparisons are not always made between them.
One final observation concerns an aspect that may seem minor but is significant if the goal is to encourage a more informed reading: it would have been useful for the short author biographies to have provided more detail about their specific academic backgrounds and the fields of research in which they are engaged.
All things considered, it is to be hoped that this project will continue and that, in the near future, this volume will be followed by others devoted to similar topics and based on a similar approach.
References
Marcia Ascher, Mathematics Elsewhere. An Exploration of Ideas Across Cultures, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2002.
Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature, New York, NY: Dutton 1979.
Mary Douglas Natural Symbols. Exploration in Cosmology, New York, NY: Pantheon 1970.
Carlo Ginzburg, Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It, Critical Inquiry 20,1 (1993): 10-35.
Carlo Ginzburg, Latitude, Slaves, and the Bible: An Experiment in Microhistory, Critical Inquiry 31,3 (2005): 665-683.
Authors and titles
Part I: Theoretical Framework
1. Chiara Ferella, Tanja Pommerening, and Ulrike Steinert: Introduction: The Embodied Mind of Premodern Cultures
2. Barbara Tversky: World in Mind, Mind in World: The View from Cognitive Science
Part II: Experiencing and Conceptualizing the Human Body
3. Simone Gerhards: Some Remarks on the Conceptualization of the Sleeping Body in Ancient Egypt
4. Rune Nyord: Bodies of Stone and Wood in Ancient Egypt
5. Shahrzad Irannejad and Aleksandar Milenković: Of Organs, Functions, and Body Concepts: Localization in Empedocles and Nemesius
6. Yudit Kornberg Greenberg: Eroticizing the Body and Nature: A Comparative Reading of Hindu and Jewish Sacred Texts
7. Reuven Kiperwasser: The Order(s) of the Universe and the (Dis)Order(s) of the Body
8. Han Nijdam: Schemas of the Body and Body Metaphors in Medieval Frisian Law
Part III: Conceptualizing the Dead Body and Coping with Physical Death
9. Rebekka Pabst and Oxana Polozhentseva: Dead Bodies: Conceptualizations of the Corpse from Ancient Egyptian and Medieval Perspectives
10. Fabian Neuwahl: “At Last Death Filled the Sanctuaries pf the Gods with Lifeless Bodies”: Dead Bodies in Roman Plague Descriptions
11. Adriana Gómez Aiza and Alondra Domínguez Ángeles: Self-Decapitation and Nahualism: Corporeal/Animistic Transposition in Mesoamerican Cosmovision
12. Annette Kehnel: The Powers of the Quasi-dead Body: A Footnote to Michael Tomasello’s Concept of Shared Intentionality and the Benefits of Cooperation
Part IV: Conceptualizing and Interacting with the Cosmos and Its Phenomena
13. Laura Borghetti, Marie-Charlotte von Lehsten, and Katharina Zartner: Night, Wind, and Sun: Personification of Celestial Phenomena in the Ancient Near East, Ancient Greece, and Byzantium
14. Tom Hercules Davies: The World in Flux: Thinking through Cosmography in Greece, India, and Egypt
15. Daniel W. Graham: The Development of Greek Cosmology
16. Feray Coşkun: Heavens, World, and Human Beings in the Ottoman Cosmographies