An Ideological Approach to the Issue of Propaganda in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. New Answers to Old Questions

Synonyms? Complementary words that comply with the same concept? Too often ideology and propaganda have been interchangeably used. Propaganda is the practical instrument to express, foster, and propagate an ideology, either political or religious (sometimes the two expressions coincide). If, on one hand, ideology is the structure, propaganda is the shape that ideology assumes to enable it to be clearly expressed, displayed, and represented through different forms, languages, and images. The present contribution faces the question of ideology and propaganda on two different levels and via two different perspectives: etic and emic. First I will analyse the concept of ideology and propaganda through an etic lens, that is through and with the eyes of the analysts—from outside. How has the social and cultural background of the observer affected the analysis of ancient societies, actually adopting and in the end adapting his/her own tenets to the ancient culture under analysis? Has this method of investigation always been used? Is it the result of a deliberate choice or is it an unavoidable effect that observers and analysts should in fact mitigate and control, preventing the constraints that derive from it? The second part of the paper will look at the concepts of ideology and propaganda through an emic lens, that is through and with the eyes of the same ancient culture and society—from inside. Can we still speak of ideology and propaganda? Does an unbiased analysis of the documents at our disposal confirm or deny the systematic superstructure of ideology and propaganda? In this respect, I will try to show how the words ideology and propaganda, once their negative and pejorative political acceptation is denied, can in fact still work and explain the mechanism of the communication in ancient Near Eastern societies, without necessarily implying a strict top-down coercive hierarchy: as largely admitted in current studies, it seems that communication of ideological aspects and contents were mostly (surely not exclusively) addressed to ranks of people who did not need to be convinced via a propagandistic bombastic use of verbal and visual slogans.