In Remembrance of Me: Feasting with the Dead in the Ancient Middle East, shows how the living cared for the dead and how the ancients conceptualized the idea of the human soul in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant.

The show is built around two themes: the offering of food and drink on regular occasions to nourish the dead in the afterlife, and the use of two or three-dimensional effigies of the dead, often made of stone, to preserve their memory and to provide a means of interaction between the living and the dead.

The exhibit is motivated by the discovery of an inscribed funerary monument by the Oriental Institute’s Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli, Turkey, in 2008. The monument, dating to about 735 BC, is carved with an image of a man named Katumuwa seated before a table heaped with offerings and with a lengthy inscription in Aramaic, a language widely used in the Middle East at that time. The text proved to be the longest known memorial inscription of its type. It revealed the until then unknown practice of enacting annual sacrifices for the soul of the deceased and that Katumuwa’s spirit was believed to reside in the monument itself. Dr. Virginia Herrmann, part of the team that discovered the stela and co-curator of the exhibit, commented: “The text gave us a whole new understanding of the ancient belief system in eastern Turkey and northern Syria. Although Katumuwa knew that the realm of the dead could be a cruel and lonely place, the rituals he describes that his family would enact on his behalf would give him a happy afterlife.” Before the discovery of the stela it was not understood that in that region, banquet scenes depicted on other monuments were in fact special pleas to the viewer to make annual offerings of animal sacrifices and grapes or wine to the deceased and that those offerings were directed not only to the deceased, but also to local gods. The biblical commandment to “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long” (Exodus 20:12), is rooted in the tradition expressed by the Katumuwa text.

There will be no curator lead tour of this exhibit, because they are away working on new projects. We will take a self-guided tour and discuss our impressions. Your experience will be enriched reading background material here.

Special exhibit closing January 4, 2015

Saturday, December 6, 2014
10:15 AM (Museum opens at 10:00 am)
Oriental Institute Museum
1155 E 58th St, Chicago, Illinois (Street Parking)

Cost: $7 per person (paid to museum)

This program is hosted by the Chicago Foodways Roundtable. To reserve, please e-mail: chicago.foodways.roundtable@gmail.com