How ancient and modern memory shapes the past. A canon of Assyrian memory

Ancient Near Eastern state agencies that produced monumental art and architecture and crafted rare works out of luxury materials were essentially materializing their own interpretations of reality and thereby producing memories. Because elite memories were rendered into concrete forms and images, they dominated and endured. Thus, ruling bodies curated their particular memories through a range of canonical sites, monuments, and artworks, which they would have viewed as most representative of their power and legitimacy. Modern canons of ancient Near Eastern art and architecture are an indirect legacy of antiquity’s broken and biased record. Modern aesthetic and political agendas have isolated certain archaeological finds and elevated them to canonical status as representatives of a past best suited to modern needs. This essay aims to detangle the ancient and modern canons, and using the Assyrians as a case study, proposes a new memory-based paradigm for canon construction.