War Remembrance Narrative: Negotiation of Memory and Oblivion in Mesopotamian Art

Acts of forgetting are, paradoxically, also a constructive part of internal social transformations and, when referring to the military competition for supremacy, serve to censor or negate some aspects deemed dangerous for the stability of present and future kingdoms. The abundant visual evidence concerning the representation of the 'Other' after a military victory contrast with a parallel phenomenon: the lack of monuments commemorating the society's fallen against outer enemies or the remembrance of those who had fallen for the community (a different attitude is documented in ancient Greece . Even if future archaeological discoveries may modify the picture emerging from the available written and visual sources, it can be said that defeats in the Ancient Near East resuled in a total absence of monuments.