"Their corpses will reach the base of heaven": a third-millennium BC war memorial in northern Mesopotamia?

• Autores: Anne Porter, Thomas McClellan, Susanne Wilhelm, Jill Weber, Alexandra Baldwin, Jean Colley, Brittany Enriquez, Meagan Jahrles, Bridget Lanois, Vladislav Malinov, Sumedh Ragavan, Alexandra Robins, Zarhuna Safi
• Localización: Antiquity, ISSN 0003-598X, Vol. 95, Nº 382, 2021, págs. 900-918
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Burial mounds piled high with enemy corpses are well known in Mesopotamian inscriptions as symbols of victory, but no archaeological examples have so far been recovered. Archaeological investigations of a tall mound adjacent to the site of Tell Banat in Syria have revealed an unusual, late third-millennium BC mortuary population, dominated by adult and sub-adult males. The systematic placement of these human remains and associated assemblages suggests that, rather than containing enemy combatants, this was a memorial to a community's battle dead. The authors propose that the deceased belonged to an organised army, with broader implications for state administration and the adherence or resistance to a new regime fostered by such monumentalisation.