At the very Edge: Marking Transition and Transformation in Antiquity

One of the principal themes of my work is the importance accorded to the idea and the function of limit in ancient thought. Discussion of the idea of limit (and the unlimited) can be found in early Greek philosophy, and limit is a key idea in both Mesopotamian and Roman civilization. However currently it is not a major focus of interest for scholars, and so its importance is scarcely understood. 

Here are pointers to seven texts which discuss the significance of the idea of limit in antiquity. 

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'The Threshold in Ancient Assyria'. http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-threshold-in-ancient-assyria.html?spref=tw The chapter is based on pioneering research by the scholar Pauline Albenda.

[From The Origins of Transcendentalism in Ancient Religion (forthcoming)]

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 'The Divine and the Limit' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-divine-and-limit.html?spref=tw …  explores the prominence of Janus in the ritual life of the Romans. In the songs of the Salii (‘jumpers’ or dancers) he was called the good creator, and the god of gods; he is elsewhere named the oldest of the gods and the beginning of all things. The king, and in later times the rex sacrōrum, sacrificed to him. At every sacrifice he was remembered first; in every prayer he was the first invoked, being mentioned even before Jupiter. He is especially associated with the idea of limit, which is a preoccupation of a number of ancient cultures.

[From Understanding Ancient Thought (2017)]

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Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/being-kabbalah-and-assyrian-sacred-tree.html  The Assyrian Sacred Tree appears to be associated with the ideas of divine being and also with the idea of limit. The explanation for such an association is that the Mesopotamians conceived divinity to be at the limit of that which is. The parallels between the Kabbalah and the Assyrian Sacred Tree were uncovered by the Assyriologist Simo Parpola in the 1990s. This was achieved using the god numbers which the Mesopotamians used to reference their gods. 

[an extract from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

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'Ocean and the Limit of Existence' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2017/03/ocean-and-limit-of-existence.html?spref=tw There are similar ideas associated with Ocean in Europe and in the Ancient Near East. These parallels, and the concepts which underpin them, are explored in this chapter. 

[a full chapter from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

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'Remarks on the Telos (and other lost ideas)' https://t.co/FBciqYgSWk  We recognise only one cause in the modern world, which is the efficient cause. This is concerned with work, energy and power. In antiquity Aristotle described four causes, which are discussed here. Did Aristotle conjure these by himself, or were these concepts understood across the civilised world for centuries before Classical Greece?

[From the chapter: 'Aristotle’s Four Causes' in: Understanding Ancient Thought (2017)]

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'The Esoteric Conception of Divinity in the Ancient World' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-esoteric-conception-of-divinity-in.html  In my twenties, I was struck by the strong interest the ancients had in the idea of limit – in art, architecture, philosophy, and ritual. This interest did not much seem to engage modern scholarly attention, with a couple of notable exceptions. Initially I had no idea at all what the significance of the idea of limit might be, and no idea where pursuing it would take me. Or that it would lead to a book it would take me four years to write, and which would reframe my understanding of human intellectual history in the process.

[Some extracts from the essay: 'The Esoteric Conception of Divinity in the Ancient World', in Man and the Divine (2018)] 

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'The Making and Renewal of the Gods in Ancient Assyria.' https://t.co/6CMNzMiGw2 We have good information about the installation and refurbishment of the gods in Assyrian temples from Esarhaddon, who ruled Assyria before his son Ashurbanipal. Such operations were agreed (via diviners present in the workshop of the gods) with the relevant divinities beforehand (principally Shamash, the sun god), and the omens were cross-checked for accuracy. The full strangeness of what we now know renders a lot of previous anthropological interpretation horribly out of date.

[a full chapter from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

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'Installing the Gods in Heaven: the Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual' http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-babylonian-mis-pi-ritual.html?spref=tw … This extract contains analysis and commentary on one of the surviving descriptions of the ritual found in Ashurbanipal's library during excavations. Boundaries and limits serve an important function at key moments of the three day ritual. 

[An extract from the chapter 'The Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual', from The Sacred History of Being (2015)]

TY, August 30, 2018

The Time Bomb Under Archaeology

Text from the Spectator archive, November 14, 1970. The programme was broadcast on October 31, 1970 (the Spectator came out once a fortnight). An edited excerpt from their review of TV programming. It is coming up for fifty years since the programme was broadcast, and the 'time-bomb under archaeology' may be about to explode. There is new information.

Magnus Magnusson wrote and narrated an excellent programme about even older good old days, four thousand years ago, when some of the natives of these islands were 'prehistoric Einsteins.' Chronicle: Cracking The Stone Age Code' (BBC 2) was about Professor Alexander Thom's study of megalithic mathematics and astronomy. Now seventy-six, Professor Thom, a retired engineer, has spent the past thirty years studying ancient stone circles. His measurements have demonstrated to his satisfaction that Stone Age man was no barbaric simpleton but erected stones in patterns founded on Pythagorean geometry two thousand years before Pythagoras.
Professor Thom discovered that stone circles all over Britain used a standard megalithic unit of measurement, precisely 2.72 feet in length. Using the crudest instruments, the Stone Age astronomer-priests were able to predict accurately various astronomical events, such as lunar eclipses.

Mr Magnusson suggested that Professor Thom's findings have put 'a time- bomb under archaeology.' Archaeological sceptics were given opportunities to voice their disagreement on the programme, but Thom appeared to be entirely undisturbed by expressions of dissent. Chronicle enterprisingly sent him to Carnac, a megalithic site in Brittany. His findings there fitted his British observations and demonstrated, as Mr Magnusson said, that 'there was an intellectual common market four thousand years ago.' Perhaps Malcolm Muggeridge is right,... when he says that our civilisation is in decline.

The original programme is available from the BBC Archive, and is an extraordinary time capsule from the time in which it was made. There was no consensus about the implications of Thom's work, or even that his suggestions about the basis on which the monuments were laid out were reliably rooted in Thom's phenomenological and statistical analysis.

Since then a resurvey of 300 of the monuments by Clive Ruggles, using a highly unorthodox and inconsistent methodology, has removed the need for archaeologists to engage with the implications of Thom's original study of the monuments. *1 This is because many of the things which Thom drew attention to are now understood by the archaeological community to be the product of a 'selection bias'. As the archaeologist Euan MacKie (who appears in the programme) has pointed out however, Ruggles resurvey was conducted in such a way that it could not possibly verify some of Thom's findings, such as the deliberate orientation of the monuments on foresights in the landscape, even if those findings were correct.

Thom was an engineer, mathematician, and an excellent surveyor. He detected some key components to the construction of the monuments, such as a near obsessive interest in whole numbers, and what appeared to be the use of pythagorean triangles in the laying out of the structures. Those aspects of the circles and ellipses he did not over-interpret, because he had nothing to go on. He reported on what he could see, and how the structures might have been laid out given those clear interests of the original designers of the monuments.

Being an engineer, and a mathematician, there were other things he must have noticed during his surveys, but for which he could offer no sensible explanation. And at the time this documentary was made, nobody else could have either. The phenomenological and statistical analysis of the monuments remains however as a remarkable body of work. There is more information in those surveys than meets the eye.

The interpretative frame has moved forward in the meantime. We know much more about the nature and origins of Pythagorean thought than we did - it is possible, for example, to understand Pythagoreanism as a way of thinking which is rooted in the consideration of natural puzzles. Such an interest necessarily has a bearing on the human response to such puzzles, which can be a religious response (and was, in the case of the later Pythagoreans). Many constants in nature are mathematically irrational, such as pi and phi, etc, which makes them a phenomenon of interest to those disposed to philosophical inquiry. These are staples of Greek philosophy. Such an interest also offers an explanation of how a Pythagorean way of thinking could have arisen so long before the advent of the Pythagorean sect we know from much more recent times.

***


1. Ruggles describes his resurveying work in a chapter in Records in Stone. His 'methodology', might have seemed to him to make sense at the time, but now it looks like what it is: an attempt to unsee a large body of unpalatable evidence for which the discipline of archaeology was entirely unprepared. It was about protecting an academic and cultural narrative, which then, as now, was firmly entrenched. [Records in Stone: Papers in Memory of Alexander Thom, edited by C.L.N. Ruggles, CUP, 1988]

[Readers of this article might be interested in reading Patterns of Thought in Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain, which explores the pre-Pythagorean Pythagoreanism which Thom said was suggested by the evidence. Much of Pythagorean thought was evidently derived from Pythagoras's travels around the ancient Near East, which are documented, and elements of Pythagoreanism might have been a staple ingredient of religious thought from the Neolithic onwards].

Excellence and the Knowledge of Divine Things

[This is one of twenty-one essays in the book Man and the Divine, published in August 2018. The book is available in ePub format from leading retailers of eBooks, such as Barnes & Noble, Blio, Kobo, Itunes, Inktera, Smashwords, etc. Information about Man and the Divine can be found here]

There is a telling passage in the seventh section of Plutarch’s ‘Life of Alexander’, concerning esoteric thought. It is couched in interesting terms, which we rarely associate with things which are hidden because they are associated with divine things. Alexander’s father, Philip of Macedon,

seeing that his son was easily led, but could not be made to do anything by force, used always to manage him by persuasion, and never gave him orders. As he did not altogether care to entrust his education to the teachers whom he had obtained, but thought that it would be too difficult a task for them…. he sent for Aristotle, the most renowned philosopher of the age, to be his son's tutor, and paid him a handsome reward for doing so. He had captured and destroyed Aristotle's native city of Stageira; but now he rebuilt it, and repeopled it, ransoming the citizens, who had been, sold for slaves, and bringing back those who were living in exile. For Alexander and Aristotle he appointed the temple and grove of the nymphs, near the city of Mieza, as a school-house and dwelling; and there to this day are shown the stone seat where Aristotle sat, and the shady avenues where he used to walk.

Plutarch opens his life of Alexander with a cheerful complaint about the sheer extent of the materials available to him to write on Alexander, and defends some of the necessary omissions by saying that he is writing a biography, and not a history. So the details which are in his essay are there because he regarded them as important in showing Alexander’s character, his disposition, and the content of his mind. On the basis of his sources he says:

It is thought that Alexander was taught by him not only his doctrines of Morals and Politics, but also those more abstruse mysteries which are only communicated orally and are kept concealed from the vulgar: for after he had invaded Asia, hearing that Aristotle had published some treatises on these subjects, he wrote him a letter in which he defended the practice of keeping these speculations secret.

Plutarch references and quotes from several letters from Alexander, and from a diary, so it is likely that there were such things in circulation in Plutarch’s time, as well as the writings of his companions. Here he mentions Aristotle’s doctrines of morals and politics, which we would expect, given that he wrote extensively on these subjects (there is a volume on politics; he and his students compiled the constitutions of each Greek polis, only one of which has come down to us; and there are three different works on ethics extant, which are probably lecture notes compiled by his students); but he also references an esoteric level of teaching which Aristotle imparted – ‘those more abstruse mysteries… communicated orally and kept concealed from the vulgar’.

The esoteric is the opposite of the exoteric, or surface meaning of a doctrine. Plato’s teaching was also conducted at two levels, the inside and the outside, referred to as ta eso and ta exo in the Theatetus.

Plutarch however suggests by his wording that there is an esoteric level to an understanding of Aristotle’s teaching on both morals and politics, but the teaching of those mysteries are less abstruse.

How could we ever know what those abstruse mysteries might be? It would seem to be impossible. But the clue is in Alexander’s letter sent from Asia to complain about Aristotle’s publication of some treatises on these subjects. The letter is quoted as follows:

"Alexander to Aristotle wishes health. You have not done well in publishing abroad those sciences which should only be taught by word of mouth. For how shall we be distinguished from other men, if the knowledge which we have acquired be made the common property of all? I myself had rather excel others in excellency of learning than in greatness of power. Farewell."

This is a revealing answer. The objection is connected with the idea of excellence in learning and knowledge, and excelling in that knowledge, in order to be distinguished from other men. We can take from this statement, which places temporal greatness as a poor second to knowledge of abstruse things, that Alexander is referring knowledge of divine things, and consequently the principle of excellence itself.

This adds a whole new level to the endless references in the contemporary literature on Alexander to the question of whether or not he was divine by birth, whether he thought himself to be divine, whether or not he should receive divine honours, or if he was in pursuit of actual divinity.  In modern times the details and significance are not discussed as they were in antiquity, since scholars have no sense of how important such questions were at the time. We flatten everything into a discussion of the pursuit of power, status and political ideology. We have a glimpse here of the real context of Alexander’s understanding of what was important.

Plutarch gives the import of Aristotle’s reply to Alexander, saying that:

To pacify him…. [he] wrote …. that these doctrines were published, and yet not published: meaning that his treatise on Metaphysics was only written for those who had been instructed in philosophy by himself, and would be quite useless in other hands.

The emphasis is mine. So again, we have the assertion, this time from Aristotle, that there is an inside and an outside understanding of his doctrine, and accepts that details of both are in the text. He excuses this on the grounds that it was ‘only written for those who had been instructed in philosophy… and would be quite useless in other hands’.

So the clue is in the teaching of philosophy. Philosophy, at least when taught at an esoteric level, gives useful knowledge of what is excellent, and what is divine. Without philosophy, such knowledge is not to be had. This is a clear indication that philosophy and philosophical questions and puzzles were understood to lie behind doctrine and teaching concerning the divine.

Plutarch then goes on to illustrate Alexander’s interest in excellence, by suggesting that Aristotle:

… more than anyone else implanted a love of medicine in Alexander, who was not only fond of discussing the theory, but used to prescribe for his friends when they were sick, and order them to follow special courses of treatment and diet, as we gather from his letters. He was likewise fond of literature and of reading, and we are told by Onesikritus that he was wont to call the Iliad a complete manual of the military art, and that he always carried with him Aristotle's recension of Homer's poems, which is called 'the casket copy,' and placed it under his pillow together with his dagger. Being without books when in the interior of Asia, he ordered Harpalus to send him some. Harpalus sent him the histories of Philistus, several plays of Euripides, Sophokles, and Æschylus, and the dithyrambic hymns of Telestus and Philoxenus.

Again, Plutarch reinforces the importance of excellence to Alexander, saying that when he was a youth:

… used to love and admire Aristotle more even than his father, for he said that the latter had enabled him to live, but that the former had taught him to live well.

And living well is a main focus of Aristotle’s published work. Though the relationship later cooled,

he never lost that interest in philosophical speculation which he had acquired in his youth, as is proved by the honours which he paid to Anaxarchus, the fifty talents which he sent as a present to Xenokrates, and the protection and encouragement which he gave to Dandamris and Kalanus.

Philosophical speculation of course implies a degree of conjecture in discussion, and the fact that not everything is known or knowable by the merely mortal. Knowledge of the importance of excellence is however one way in which the divine can be approached, and that appears to have been an important component in Alexander’s mission.

This idea can be traced in Plato’s writing also. In the Protagoras, he suggests (through Protagoras) that the practice of philosophy is very ancient among the Greeks, and not something relatively newly invented. He suggests that it is widespread,

and particularly in Crete and Lacedaemon; and there are more sophists there than in any other country. 

Echoing Alexander’s view that philosophy, at least at an esoteric level, should be communicated only by oral teaching, in order that those who have studied philosophy should excel others in the knowledge of excellence, Protagoras says that:

They dissemble, however, and pretend that they are unlearned, in order that it may not be manifest that they surpass the rest of the Greeks in wisdom (just as Protagoras has said respecting the sophists); but that they may appear to excel in military skills and fortitude; thinking if their real character were known, that all men would engage in the same pursuit. But now, concealing this, they deceive those who laconize in other cities. [Protagoras 342a-b]

So the Cretans and the Spartans wished not only to conceal knowledge of excellence, but to conceal that they excelled in knowledge of excellent things. 

To us Plato’s admiration of the Spartans has always seemed rather improbable, since we have followed the account of the Spartans written by Xenophon which reveals nothing which supports the idea that the Spartans were superior in philosophy – nor even that they were interested in the practice. 

What advantage could they gain for themselves by restricting public understanding of their practice of philosophy? The exchange between Aristotle and Alexander gives us the clue. It is about the knowledge of excellence, and of divine things which is attained through the practice of philosophy. The use of the word ‘wisdom’ in connection with the Spartan practice of philosophy is significant: we are accustomed to keeping philosophy and religion apart in the study of the past; however ‘wisdom’ is a concept which appears in ancient sources in the context of both philosophy and religion. If the practice of philosophy among the Spartans was in some way connected with their religion, and perhaps their model of reality, this would supply an explanation of their reticence, and the general reticence of Greeks in discussing religious matters.

 

Plato’s Protagoras tells us that the Lacedaemonians have imitators, who imitate only surface details because they have no knowledge of their real interests and skills.

But the Lacedaemonians, when they wish to speak freely with their own sophists,… expel these laconic imitators, and then discourse with their sophists, without admitting any strangers to be present at their conversations. Neither do they suffer any of their young men to travel into other cities, as neither do the Cretans, lest they should unlearn what they have learnt. But in these cities, there are not only men of profound erudition, but women also. And that I assert these things with truth, and that the Lacedaemonians are disciplined in the best manner in philosophy and discourse.

Protagoras also tells us that:

…if any one wishes to converse with the meanest of the Lacedaemonians, he will at first find him, for the most part apparently despicable in conversation, but afterwards, when a proper opportunity presents itself, this same mean person, like a skilled jaculator, will hurl a sentence worthy of attention, short, and contorted; so that he who converses with him will appear to be in no respect superior to a boy. That to laconize, therefore, consists much more in philosophising, than in the love of exercise, is understood by some of the present age, and was known to the ancients; they being persuaded that the ability of uttering such sentences as these is the province of a man perfectly learned. Among the number of those who were thus persuaded, were Thales the Milesian, Pittacus the Mitylenaean, Bias the Prienean, our Solon, Cleobulus the Lindian, Miso the Chenean, and the seventh of these is said to be the Lacedaemonian Chilo. All these were emulators, lovers, and disciples of the Lacedaemonian erudition.’ [342b-343a]

Protagoras reminds us that the Spartans…’assembling together, consecrated to Apollo the first fruits of their wisdom, writing in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi those sentences which are celebrated by all men, viz. “Know thyself”, and “Nothing too much”’. He tells us this in order ‘to show that the mode of philosophy among the ancients was a certain laconic brevity of diction’  [343b]

Of course it is always possible that this is an elaborate jest on Plato’s part: attributing a philosophical inclination to a people famous for a disinclination to the mental life. Yet many Spartan pronouncements are very famous (those in the preceding footnote included), and of course the Cretans are memorialized in the philosophical conundrum ‘All Cretans are liars: I am a Cretan’.

Socrates was forced to drink the poison Hemlock after being found guilty of both corrupting the youth of Athens and of atheism. The first charge is related to the second in that he was sowing doubt among the youth of Athens about the existence of the gods. In other words, the sin of Socrates was seen among his peers as one committed against the religion of the Athenians. 

If so, it would appear that we owe our knowledge of the practice of philosophy in Greece to the fact that in Attica, in the middle years of the first millennium B.C.E., the practice of philosophy was somehow prised free from its religious context, in that we have a very public show of philosophy from the presocratics onwards. That philosophy was understood to be, however, not entirely beyond the scope of the arbitration by the religious authorities, is shown by the charges brought against Plato’s master Socrates, and the severity of the judgement against him. 

[Text uploaded May 27, 2017]

The Threshold in Ancient Assyria

In 1978  the scholar Pauline Albenda published ‘Assyrian Carpets in Stone’, in JANES [the
Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University], vol10,  which reviews the surviving representations of carpet designs in stone reliefs. Not much attention has been paid to these slabs, but they offer the possibility of insight into the significance of the use of similar motifs in other contexts, most notably of the sacred tree.

We know that ‘decorated threshold slabs are not known to have existed in Assyria before the second half of the 8th century BCE, and then only sporadically. Previous to this period important entrances in the royal residences, as well as temples were often covered with plain limestone or alabaster slabs’. *1 

Stone pavements and portal thresholds in the 9th and 8th centuries were commonly inscribed with royal inscriptions, such as those in the palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE) and the Ninurta temple at Nimrud*2 and ‘in various chambers at Fort Shalmaneser’*3 and the palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad *4. 

Albenda expands on the significance of the threshold, saying that ‘where entranceways containing threshold inscriptions are also flanked by door guardians and decorated further with wall reliefs, the resultant effect is to instill divine protection whose meaning
is expanded in specific terms *5. ‘Thus, the substitution of carved decorated thresholds for the inscriptions at important entranceways…. makes it certain that the floor decorations served a significant role, similar to that performed by the door guardians and wall reliefs’*6. Upon which I shall expand later.

She suggests that ‘the sudden interest in displaying stone versions of rugs and carpets at important entrances after the middle of the 8th century was spurred by the development of pile carpets. This is, as she says, ‘speculation’, but it is supported by a similar judgement by R.S. Young for ‘the apparent invention of the art of floor mosaic-making in Phrygia, which occurred at about the same time .*7 However it does suggest that there was some factor at work which prompted the architects of the time to incorporate representations of carpet designs in stone in important buildings. ‘The origin of this innovative technique of carpet production is unknown, although pictorial evidence suggests that one area of manufacture is to be sought in some region west of Assyria, whence the method was transmitted east to the royal workshops’. As evidence for this, Albenda refers to three graphical representations which are dated to the reign of Shalmaneser III (858-824 BCE) and which ‘illustrate among processions of tribute-bearers carpets of substantial size and weight, rolled and hung over poles carried by two attendants. In each instance the fabrics are presented by the inhabitants of some locality to the west of Assyria’*8.

Albenda points out that woven floor coverings do appear in several second millennium BCE representations, but in general these are rare. One of these is on an orthostat from Alac Hϋyϋk in Anatolia, dated approximately to the 14 cent BCE, ‘which depicts a rectangular fabric, one end possessing fringes grouped into three curved clusters, placed on the ground beneath the throne of the deity.’ Another is from a Egyptian wall painting dating to the time of Akhenaten, where ‘a large red carpet with rows of yellow and blue diamonds in its field is spread under the feet of the pharaoh... and his family’. She notes that ‘the carpet is fringed with a lotus and bud garland, which here seems to be an attachment. This painting may provide the clue to the origin of the border garland designs that formed part of the rugs in later Assyrian periods.’ 

Indeed it may, but not in the sense of the borrowing of a design, as we shall see.

The elaborate tassels could initially, she suggests, be attached after the rug was woven ‘in order to enrich the appearance of the fabric’. However, ‘by the Late Assyrian period ornamental attachments were no longer utilized and in their stead similar motifs were incorporated into the carpet pattern, as suggested by the Assyrian carved threshold pavements’. Albenda expands on this, and says that, on the basis of the designs on the stone threshold slabs,

Assyrian carpet designs differed from those used to embellish contemporary garment textiles which generally combined figural and floral elements, and occasionally emblems that can be readily identified with specific deities. This group of textile decoration was favored particularly in the 9th century BCE., while a second group, limited to floral decoration and geometric patterns, was applied less frequently.*9 In the course of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, however, as a survey of the Assyrian wall reliefs demonstrates, the second group of textile designs took precedence. The grid pattern showing concentric squares was popular during the reign of Tiglath Pileser III (745-727 BCE), and this was gradually superseded in the reign of Sargon II (721-705 BCE.) by the use of an overall pattern of rosettes and concentric circles. Still later, during the period of Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE.), a rich array of emblematic, floral and geometric elements was selected to decorate garment textiles.

However, as she points out, ‘on the thresholds the motifs are limited to geometric and floral patterns arranged in predetermined compositions. The persistence of a select number of design elements on the threshold slabs makes it likely that such floor displays were the prerogative of the royal family . As she points out earlier in her article, ‘textual evidence indicates that thrones were set upon a carpet’.*10 ‘While the carpet compositions remain decorative in appearance, an analytical study may reveal that symbolic significance underlies one or more of the motifs’*11

This is almost certainly the case, but Albenda is thinking in terms of symbolism of particular gods of the Assyrian religion, and suggests that:

…the six-rayed star pattern may actually be a variant of the Ishtar emblem and the floral quatrefoil, if reduced to its simplest form, can be likened to the Maltese cross with central boss and oblique ray lines, generally associated with the god Shamash.

From the second half of the 8th century onwards,

 the positioning of stone blocks for important doorways became standardised and consisted of two main sections: the portal threshold, a single stone which covered the entrance area and which projected slightly beyond the side walls, and the inner threshold, consisting of three slabs together belonging functionally to the threshold*12. As a unit, the inner threshold extends beyond the width of the portal, a distance sufficient to include pivot stones which support the door leaves. The two end slabs therefore have cuts through which the pivots extend. The circular cuts are oftentimes edged with a double or triple raised band. The central block contains a rectangular slot centered near the edge adjacent to the portal threshold, into which the bolt was dropped when the doors were closed and locked.*13 

Apparently the three slab inner threshold design ‘underwent some modification during
Ashurbanipal’s reign in the 7th century BCE., when a single block was used
occasionally for smaller entrances’. Albenda illustrates these in plates 19 & 20.

There is an illustration in the article of a threshold slab from Nimrud which dates to the reign of Tiglath Pileser III, *14 which seems to be the earliest example of carved decoration applied to pavement blocks. This drawing shows the left slab of an inner threshold in the Central Palace; but ‘unfortunately its exact findspot was not recorded. The drawing shows that the entire surface was decorated with floral motifs arranged in horizontal rows and, based upon later examples, the design must have extended to the other two slabs which formed originally part of the inner threshold’.

Other finds were made by Layard in the North-West Palace at Nimrud, *15 in the Burnt Palace at Nimrud a carved threshold slab was discovered ‘in a level which the excavators have assigned to the reign of Sargon II’*16. Albenda notes that the grid-pattern on the slab has parallels with those found in one of the residences at Khorsabad.’*17; two separate groups of carved, patterned pavement slabs were discovered also in Khorsabad, ‘in
what may have been residences reserved for members of the royal family’, which she suggests may be ‘a further indication that this novel form of applied decoration was used more frequently during Sargon’s reign’, although no examples were found in the king’s palace at Khorsabad. 

Portal pavements were found in Residence K at Khorsabad, where three portals connected ‘one side of the great hall to a long chamber. The portal pavements were decorated with the same motifs: the center field was filled with quatrefoils and rosettes, surrounded on all sides by a lotus-and cone garland band’*18; Residence L (also Khorsabad) ‘had three portals … aligned to form a connecting link between the central court and two chambers, each succeeding the other. The pavement blocks set in the entrances were carved with an overall pattern of small squares, each inscribed with a rosette*19. Near the center of the stone was a seven line inscription which identified the owner of the residence as Sinahuser, Sargon’s full brother and vizier’*20

By the time we get to the reign of Sennacherib (704-681 BCE), ‘elaborate carved pavements were used extensively for important entrances of the South-West Palace at Nineveh’*21. 

This concern  for providing elegant approaches continued into the period of Ashurbanipal, for not only were the grand portals leading into rooms I and M of the North Palace embellished with carved pavements (pls 23, 25), but also other doorways leading out of these and other chambers (pls. 17, 18, 20). From the archaeological evidence available, one must conclude that the desire to enhance important entrances grew in importance in the course of the late 8th and early centuries.*22

It can be argued that this embellishment of entrances is a design issue, or simply a matter of taste, as Albenda appears to be suggesting, though she has referenced what would have been understood as a more practical function by the Assyrians, earlier in her article, when she suggested that  the 'substitution of carved decorated thresholds for the inscriptions at important entranceways…. makes it certain that the floor decorations served a significant role, similar to that performed by the door guardians and wall reliefs’

There are three types of garland borders which are found on Assyrian carved threshold slabs: lotus and bud, lotus and cone, and palmette. The contention of this chapter is that boundaries had an especial philosophical/theological and symbolic significance to the Assyrians in particular, as well as to wider Mesopotamia and Asia, and that the details of
the border decorations are tied into this symbolism. The garland borders are associated in terms of design with the sacred tree, discussed in Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree (in The Sacred History of Being). And philosophically the concept of the boundary is one with the concept which the sacred tree enshrines – an object which represents transformation, transcendence, a point of departure, of coming forth and also of passing away. The boundary of anything is the point at which these transformations can occur, and something of the properties of the boundary – particularly the fact that it must be described essentially in negative terms – seems to have been understood as facilitating transformation. Therefore boundaries would be understood of themselves as of great importance.

In consideration of the significance of details of the design of the garland border, Albenda argues, on grounds of practical design, that ‘when planning for the rhythmical aspect of the garland around two or more sides, the corners must have been of prime importance since in every instance each corner contains a large open lotus or a palmette, depending upon the garland type. Additionally, the corner garland stems are compressed to form double straight lines.’ Looking at the question of this detail from a different point of view, in which the garland is a graphical way – a formal way - of reinforcing, of redoubling, of multiplying the power of the threshold, it is likely that the border design represents, as already suggested, an unfurled sacred tree, alternating bud and blossom, and where the borders meet at right angles, so that two boundaries meet, with the corollary that the quality of limit which that meeting represents is doubled, the formal marking at that point is similarly enhanced. The sacred tree design is often found in corners, for the same
philosophical reason, rather than, as most Assyriologists would have it, functioning as a mere‘filler’ motif.

The chronology of the garland types begins with the lotus and bud [Albenda, p6]. ‘It appears on the inner threshold found in the Central Palace at Nimrud, where the motif is repeated twice among horizontal rows of rosettes separated by plain stripes [illustr pl 1]. The flowers are connected by scalloped-shaped stems supported by a base ring. A plain triple arch defines the calyx of the closed and open lotuses. The open flower displays nine petals, while the petals of the closed bud are indicated by a double line drawn down its center. 

This lotus and bud design appears again in the reign of Sennacherib (illustr. pl 15), but the design is subtly modified in its details. Similar garlands appear in thresholds dating to Ashurbanipal’s reign, again having undergone subtle modifications.* 23 During the 8th
century BCE, the cone garland was replaced by the lotus and cone. The lotus and cone garlands are found at Khorsabad [Residence K – illustr. Pl 3 Albenda] –

 the plants are supported by a triple base ring, over which the terminals of the scalloped shaped stems project. The cone appears small and has a narrow body. Its scales are rendered by linear cross-hatchings. This garland type recurs in the next period, at which time the cone seems to be broader, particularly at the base (pls8-9). The base ring may be either plain or banded. The stem terminals emerge over the base ring and curve either down or out. 

The lotus and cone design is found frequently on threshold slabs dating to the reign of Sennacherib [illustr pls. 11-13], but, curiously, never found on the thresholds used in the time of Ashurbanipal. As for the palmette garland motif, it ‘appears for the first time on the portal thresholds from Ashurbanipal’s reign, where it is applied third in a series of decorated bands, following the lotus-and-bud and rosettes (pls 22-23). In the one example of its use on an inner threshold, it occupies the side of the slab that was originally adjacent to the entrance (pls. 17-18). The palmette consists of nine petals of graduating size that radiate from an arched center. Rising over the base ring which supports the flower, the stem terminals divide into four: an outer pair that terminate in upward-curled volutes, below which is an inner pair with downward-curled volutes.’ * 24

As for the centre field designs, Albenda points out that the centre field of the thresholds featured motifs restricted to floral and geometric elements. She also notes that these designs were properly though out ‘according to a basic formula which provided for the orderly division of the parts to the total design.’*25


Notes


1 p4 JANES 10.
2 see A. H. Layard’s Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London 1853, 359-60.
3 n22 Albenda: Mallowan, ‘Nimrud’, I, 42, pl.9; ibid., II 393, pl 319.
4 n23 Albenda: G. Loud, ‘Khorsabad’, Part I. Excavations in the Palace and at a City Gate, OIP 38 (1936), 122-25
5 n24 Albenda is referring to: Paley, King of the World, 120-121
6 Albenda: JANES 10 p4.
7 Albenda, JANES 10, p1; the suggestion by Young appears in ‘Early Mosaics at Gordion’
Expedition 7 (1965), 12-13.
8 The three examples are: The Black Obelisk, the bronze door bands from Balawat, and those carved on the throne dais excavated at Nimrud. On the Black Obelisk, ‘the carpets which form part of the tribute sent by Marduk-apal-usur of Suhi (a district on the middle Euphrates) possess carefully delineated fringes’; those on the bronze bands from Balawat showing tribute from the cities of Tyre and Sidon show less attention to this detail; ‘and those transported by attendants from the land of Unqi (the Amuq plain in North Syria). The inscriptions on the Black Obelisk and on the throne base describe the carpets as ‘bright-colored (woolen) garments and (linen) garments’. They are not described as carpets.
9 n15 – J.V. Canby, “Decorated Garments in Ashurnasirpal’s sculptures,” Iraq 33 (1971), 31-3. For examples of the second group, see S. M. Paley, King of the World: Ashur-nasir-pal II of Assyria 883-859 B.C. (New York, 1976), pls. 22a, 23c, 25a.
10 n12 – Barrelet, R Asyr 71 (1977), 85. Of related interest, the upper surface of the throne base of Shalmaneser III was decorated with an intricate honeycomb and rosette pattern, which may represent a rug. See A. Moortgat, The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia, (New York, 1969), pl. 269.
11 p3 JANES 10.
12  this arrangement is illustrated in Fig 2
13 a feature also illustrated by Frankfort in The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient – pl 223, p196, ‘The Late Assyrian Period’, where the rectangular slot in a door-sill from Khorsabad can be clearly seen, cut into the rosette border which marks the inner limit of the outer design of lotus blossoms, alternating between open and closed forms.’
14 illustrated in Albenda, plate 1. The slab is no longer in existence.
15 ‘a large pavement “ornamented with flowers and scroll-work”’. Max Mallowan found that
the part of the palace where this pavement was found was the domestic wing during Sargon’s renovation of the building‘ [Mallowan, ‘Nimrud’, I, 112-13]
16 illustrated in plate 7, Albenda, JANES 10
17 Albenda: p5
18 illustrated in plate 3, Albenda, JANES 10
19 illustr. Albenda, pl. 4, JANES 10
20 fn 28 Loud and Altman, ‘Khorsabad, The Citadel and the Town’, OIP 40 1938, 48-49
21 illustrated Albenda JANES 10, pls. 13, 14.15.
22 Albenda, JANES 10, p5.
23 Albenda, p9 states that the garland motif first appears in Assyria “as part of a wall painting decoration in Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, dated to the 13th century BCE.’ (n 40., Moortgat, Ancient Mesopotamia, 118, fig 89). Later on, in the 9th century BCE, it appears ‘as a textile pattern reproduced in stone’. On the basis of the evidence of the wall reliefs, says Albenda, ‘it was of minor importance in the decorative arts’. But she notes that ‘two main types are known at this time, a cone garland and a floral garland combined from the so-called lily, palmette, and cone. The first type consisted of a series of cones, each decorated with cross-hatching and surmounting a ring base, connected by scalloped stems. [n41 - A. H. Layard, The Monuments of Nineveh. From Drawings Made on the Spot (London, 1849), 11, pl 47.
24 Albenda, p7
25 Albenda, p7