When the Subject is the Object: Relational Ontologies, the Partible Person and the Image of Naram-Sin.

Article Abstract

Melanesia is a far cry from Mesopotamia, but Marilyn Strathem's delineation of the partible person in the Pacific offers more than a mere heuristic device for understanding the meaning of certain images of Naram-Sin. It offers a way to bring indigenous Mesopotamian ontologies into dialogue with Western approaches to art, revealing in the process the complexity of the relationship both between a "deified" human being and the objects that are supposed to represent him, and of the relationship between ruler and ruled.