Visualising War in Old Babylonian Period: Drama and Canon

Within a cultural framework dominated by a single point of view, that of power elites, war memories are constructed and constantly 'commemorate' by them. This process is characterized by a rigorous activity of selection, because it promotes an orthodox reading of events and the building of a rigid image, almost paranoiac, of the world through the omission and the obscuring of some facts. What is stored for the self-preservation and posterity must survive the generations and to be kept intact. Within this process, artifacts and monuments have a special place: as objects placed at the intersection between art, history and religion, they are destined to an eternal presence in the society becoming special 'memorial spaces': cultural memory is kept continuously and periodically alive through the actions and rites performed before them and for their preservation in the future.