Drama: Ancient Near Eastern Ritual Drama (Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 4, 2nd ed., 2005)

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

4 DACIAN RIDERS • ESTHER

RELIGION SECOND EDITION

L I N D S AY J O N E S

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

RELIGION SECOND EDITION

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Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition Lindsay Jones, Editor in Chief

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Encyclopedia of religion / Lindsay Jones, editor in chief.— 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-02-865733-0 (SET HARDCOVER : ALK. PAPER) — ISBN 0-02-865734-9 (V. 1) — ISBN 0-02-865735-7 (v. 2) — ISBN 0-02-865736-5 (v. 3) — ISBN 0-02-865737-3 (v. 4) — ISBN 0-02-865738-1 (v. 5) — ISBN 0-02-865739-X (v. 6) — ISBN 0-02-865740-3 (v. 7) — ISBN 0-02-865741-1 (v. 8) — ISBN 0-02-865742-X (v. 9) — ISBN 0-02-865743-8 (v. 10) — ISBN 0-02-865980-5 (v. 11) — ISBN 0-02-865981-3 (v. 12) — ISBN 0-02-865982-1 (v. 13) — ISBN 0-02-865983-X (v. 14) — ISBN 0-02-865984-8 (v. 15) 1. RELIGION—ENCYCLOPEDIAS. I. JONES, LINDSAY, 1954BL31.E46 2005 200’.3—dc22

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E D I T O R S A N D C O N S U LTA N T S

EDITOR IN CHIEF LINDSAY JONES Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University BOARD MEMBERS DAVÍD CARRASCO Neil Rudenstine Professor of Study of Latin America, Divinity School and Department of Anthropology, Harvard University GIOVANNI CASADIO Professor of History of Religions, Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità, Università degli Studi di Salerno

Program in Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin—Madison CHARLES H. LONG Professor of History of Religions, Emeritus, and Former Director of Research Center for Black Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara MARY N. MACDONALD Professor, History of Religions, Le Moyne College (Syracuse, New York) DALE B. MARTIN Professor of Religious Studies, and Chair, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University AZIM NANJI Professor and Director, The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London

WENDY DONIGER Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago

JACOB OLUPONA Professor, African American and African Studies Program, University of California, Davis

GARY L. EBERSOLE Professor of History and Religious Studies, and Director, UMKC Center for Religious Studies, University of Missouri—Kansas City

MICHAEL SWARTZ Professor of Hebrew and Religious Studies, Ohio State University

JANET GYATSO Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, The Divinity School, Harvard University CHARLES HALLISEY Associate Professor, Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia and

INÉS TALAMANTEZ Associate Professor, Religious Studies Department, University of California, Santa Barbara

CONSULTANTS GREGORY D. ALLES Associate Professor of Religious Studies, McDaniel College Study of Religion

SIGMA ANKRAVA Professor, Department of Literary and Cultural Studies, Faculty of Modern Languages, University of Latvia Baltic Religion and Slavic Religion

DIANE APOSTOLOS-CAPPADONA Center for Muslim–Christian Understanding and Liberal Studies Program, Georgetown University Art and Religion

DIANE BELL Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies, George Washington University Australian Indigenous Religions

KEES W. BOLLE Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Los Angeles, and Fellow, Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences History of Religions

MARK CSIKSZENTMIHALYI Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literature and the Program in Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin—Madison Chinese Religions

RICHARD A. GARDNER Faculty of Comparative Culture, Sophia University Humor and Religion

JOHN A. GRIM Professor of Religion, Bucknell University and Co-Coordinator,

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EDITORS AND CONSULTANTS

Harvard Forum on Religion and Ecology Ecology and Religion

JOSEPH HARRIS Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English Literature and Professor of Folklore, Harvard University Germanic Religions

URSULA KING Professor Emerita, Senior Research Fellow and Associate Member of the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Bristol, England, and Professorial Research Associate, Centre for Gender and Religions Research, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Gender and Religion

DAVID MORGAN Duesenberg Professor of Christianity and the Arts, and Professor of Humanities and Art History, Valparaiso University Color Inserts and Essays

JOSEPH F. NAGY Professor, Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles Celtic Religion

MATTHEW OJO Obafemi Awolowo University African Religions

JUHA PENTIKÄINEN Professor of Comparative Religion, The University of Helsinki, Member of Academia Scientiarum Fennica, Finland Arctic Religions and Uralic Religions

TED PETERS Professor of Systematic Theology, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California Science and Religion

FRANK E. REYNOLDS Professor of the History of Religions and Buddhist Studies in the Divinity School and the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, Emeritus, University of Chicago History of Religions

GONZALO RUBIO Assistant Professor, Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies and Department of History and Religious Studies, Pennsylvania State University Ancient Near Eastern Religions

SUSAN SERED Director of Research, Religion, Health and Healing Initiative, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University, and Senior Research Associate, Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights, Suffolk University Healing, Medicine, and Religion

LAWRENCE E. SULLIVAN Professor, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame History of Religions

WINNIFRED FALLERS SULLIVAN Dean of Students and Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology and Sociology of

Religion, University of Chicago Law and Religion

TOD SWANSON Associate Professor of Religious Studies, and Director, Center for Latin American Studies, Arizona State University South American Religions

MARY EVELYN TUCKER Professor of Religion, Bucknell University, Founder and Coordinator, Harvard Forum on Religion and Ecology, Research Fellow, Harvard Yenching Institute, Research Associate, Harvard Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies Ecology and Religion

HUGH B. URBAN Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University Politics and Religion

CATHERINE WESSINGER Professor of the History of Religions and Women’s Studies, Loyola University New Orleans New Religious Movements

ROBERT A. YELLE Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto Law and Religion

ERIC ZIOLKOWSKI Charles A. Dana Professor of Religious Studies, Lafayette College Literature and Religion

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Preserved in Greek Tragedy,” in Harrison’s Themis (Cambridge, 1912), pp. 341–363, and on their assumed relation to Greek comedy, see Francis M. Cornford’s The Origin of Attic Comedy, 2d ed. (1934; New York, 1961). On traces of the pattern in Euripides’ The Bacchae, see E. R. Dodds’s edition, Bacchae (Oxford, 1944), and on the ritual background of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, see N. J. Richardson’s The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford, 1974). Survivals in modern Greek folk plays are described by R. M. Dawkins in “The Modern Carnival in Thrace and the Cult of Dionysus,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 26 (1906): 191–206, and by A. J. B. Wace in “North Greek Festivals,” Annual of the British School at Athens 16 (1910): 232ff. The alternative view that Greek drama developed out of recitations at the annual or periodic commemoration of heroes is best presented in William Ridgeway’s The Origin of Tragedy (London, 1910). On the medieval mystery and miracle plays, the best source is E. K. Chambers’s The Mediaeval Stage, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1903), but the older collection of texts in William Hone’s Ancient Mysteries Described, Especially in English Miracle Plays (London, 1823) is still useful. The standard work on the English mummers’ play is R. J. E. Tiddy’s posthumous The Mummers’ Play, edited by Rupert S. Thompson (Oxford, 1923), where some twenty-three specimens are collected. Regarding literary forms of the ritual pattern, see, for the odes in the Chinese Shih ching, Bruno Schindler’s essay in Occident and Orient, edited by Schindler (London, 1936), pp. 498–502; for the Elder Edda, Bertha S. Phillpotts’s The Elder Edda and Ancient Scandinavian Drama (Cambridge, 1920); and for the legend of the Holy Grail, Jesse L. Weston’s ingenious, but much controverted work From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge, 1920). For possible echoes of the pattern in the Psalter, see my Thespis, 2d ed. (1961; New York, 1977), pp. 442–452, and Aubrey R. Johnson’s “The Role of the King in the Jerusalem Cultus,” in The Labyrinth, edited by S. H. Hooke (London, 1934), pp. 73–111. For a skeptical critique of this view, however, see S. G. F. Brandon’s essay “The Myth Ritual and Position Critically Considered,” in Myth, Ritual and Kingship, edited by S. H. Hooks (Oxford, 1958), pp. 261–291. THEODOR H. GASTER (1987)

DRAMA: ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN RITUAL DRAMA [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS] Beginning with his 1936 master’s thesis, Theodor H. Gaster (1906–1992) focused most of his research on the analysis of Ancient Near Eastern mythological compositions (especially those from Ugarit, modern Ras Shamra in Syria) as religious dramas that were performed within a ritual setting. Gaster was deeply influenced by James G. Frazer’s (1854–1941) understanding of the relation between myth and ritual, as well as by his preoccupation with seasonal patterns in mythological narratives and discourses. Although this approach, exemplified by Gaster’s famous work Thespis, was predominant in North American and British scholarship during the 1950s and 1960s, now it can also be regarded as a modern intellectual construct rather than as a historical reconstruction.

ANCIENT EGYPT. Gaster was excessively optimistic about the possibilities of knowing the actual setting of many ancient compositions. In the case of the Ancient Egyptian, some compositions have been regarded as ritual dramas by some scholars, including the Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus, the Triumph of Horus from the Ptolemaic temple at Edfu, and the Ptolemaic papyri concerning the mysteries of Osiris at Abydos. In fact, in some instances (e.g., the Mysteries of Osiris at Abydos and the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus), the papyri include annotations about the performance of songs and switch between first person singular and plural—the latter may indicate solos sung by Isis and duets by the two goddesses (Isis and Nephthys) in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus. Nevertheless, the evidence is generally ambiguous, and even the indications of the expected performative nature of songs and hymns do not imply an actual dramatic performance with different roles enacted by actors. The compositions themselves and the rituals connected to them were literary dramatizations of divine deeds, which would have taken place in a mythical time. However, there is no clear indication that these compositions were ever staged as actual dramas. MESOPOTAMIA. The Mesopotamian case is even more complicated. One can question whether the Sumerian and Akkadian religious narratives had any actual life outside the narrow walls of the scribal world. For many of the ritual texts and exorcisms, specific instructions do prescribe their recitation at various points in rituals. Moreover, there are some letters stating that certain rituals were performed or instructing them to be performed. Nonetheless, almost all the texts whose performance seems more or less well attested in different sources are nonnarrative and mostly performative utterances (i.e., incantations and rituals whose illocutionary linguistic nature qualify them as speech acts). However, for the Mesopotamian religious narratives—the kinds of compositions that articulate a theological or theologico-political discourse—very little evidence exists that they were ever performed. Ironically, the Enuma elish (the Babylonian story of creation) is the only religious narrative for whose performance there seems to be some explicit evidence. One fragmentary tablet refers to the recitation of the whole Enuma elish on the fourth of Nisan (i.e., on the fourth day of the Akitu festival). The Akitu was the Babylonian New Year festival, celebrated from the first to the twelfth of Nisan (the first of Nisan would be near the vernal equinox, about March 21). In Babylon, the Akitu was a sowing festival. In other Mesopotamian cities, however, especially in earlier periods, the Akitu took place twice a year—during harvest season and during sowing season. That the Enuma elish was probably the only Mesopotamian religious narrative ever performed is ironic because this is an exceedingly atypical work: The style, dialect, grammar, and lexicon of the composition seem to point to an individual author, an erudite scholar trained in all the intricacies of the most arcane scribal traditions. Most Assyriologists date the composition to the reign of Nebuchadrezzar I (c. 1100 BCE), and the scribal and scholarly setting of the text can ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

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hardly be doubted. The poem abounds in puns and word play based on signs and compound signs, which can make sense only in writing. The famous list of the fifty names of Marduk in Tablet VII of the Enuma elish is understandable only in its written form: Every line of the text is an expansion based on homophonic and homographic Sumerograms evoked by each specific name of Marduk. The text is itself a scholarly commentary. Thus, the only religious narrative that may have ever been publicly performed in Mesopotamia constitutes the epitome of artificiality, the prototype of scholarly literature. Even if regarded as part of the official cult, the Enuma elish stands alone in the history of Mesopotamian religious texts and little can be inferred from its uniqueness.

SACRED MARRIAGE. Also with regard to Mesopotamia, many assume that the cycle of lyric compositions focused on the relation between Inanna and Dumuzi reflects a ritual usually called hieròs gámos (sacred marriage) and that these texts would have been connected to its performance. However, very little is known about such a ritual. As part of the celebration of the new year from the second half of the third millennium to the beginning of the second, the king, representing Dumuzi, would have had (or pretended to have) sexual intercourse with a woman (usually a high priestess) who was representing the goddess Inanna. Echoes of this ceremony survived in first millennium texts that describe royal rituals and the epithalamia of, for instance, Nabu and Taˇsme¯tu in Assyria, and Nabu and Nanaya in Babylonia. Most of the details of this sacred marriage are unknown. In documents from the Ur III period (c. 2100–2000 BCE), there are some mentions of priestesses spending the night in the god’s bedchamber. Other possible sacred marriage rites have been proposed for earlier periods, especially those involving the moon god (Nanna/Suen), and his high priestess at Ur. In spite of all of this more or less oblique evidence, important doubts have been cast on the actual existence of such a rite. The arcane character of this ritual and the unclear and scanty evidence can be explained in the light of the inherent nature of the ritual, whatever its actual performative mechanisms were. Nonetheless, the Mesopotamian sacred marriage may well have been a mere intellectual construct, a religious narrative in which the mythical and historical discourses intersect as part of the Mesopotamian political theology. HITTITE. Probably the only area in which Gaster’s enthusiasm was partly justified is Anatolia. A number of Hittite rituals have been regarded as the forerunners of drama. Some of ...spell, as in these rituals are labeled as uttar (utterance, word, spell) in their colophons and refrains and have sections clearly noted CTH 820) as direct speech (with the quotation particle -wa). Moreover, some Hittite compositions can be regarded as ritual dialogues, as in the case of the text describing the “great road” (KUB 43.60). the soul takes at death. Nonetheless, most Anatolian texts in Hittite, Luwian, and Palaic are actually rituals, and rituals are performative by nature. Some of these rituals include dialogues that were perhaps dramatized, but this is still a far cry from staged drama. Likewise, in the realm of Mesopotamian ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION

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secular literature, the Sumerian dialogues and disputations might seem pieces of a chamber theater of sorts, if it were not for the fact that these are strictly scribal compositions whose life was limited to the confines of the Mesopotamian schools. The Ugaritic cycle of BaElu has been interpreted by Gaster and others as a ritual dramatization of a seasonal pattern. This approach makes several assumptions for which there is no textual evidence: (1) the BaElu narrative mentions very few terms or expressions that could be linked to a ritual or seasonal cycle; (2) the identification of Yammu (the sea) with a dragon or monster; (3) the banishment of Môtu (death) prior to his confrontation with BaElu; (4) the seasonal pattern reverses the order of the texts; (5) the cycle would correspond to an autumnal festival of which there are no traces in the Ugaritic corpus (e.g., rituals, administrative documents, letters); and (6) the palace of BaElu in the cycle cannot be the temple excavated at Ras Shamra, because the composition places it on Mount Sapanu (s: pn, S: apa¯nu, biblical s: a¯pôn, Saphon), presumably north of Ugarit. Therefore, there is no textual basis for an interpretation of this mythical cycle as a ritual drama. As in the case of the Egyptian compositions above, a composition may narrate a mythical event in a dramatized fashion, but this does not imply that the composition was performed as a drama, especially in the absence of any specific evidence (e.g., administrative texts concerning festivals or references to performance within the composition itself or in other texts). This would also apply to the biblical Song of Songs, which is simply a lyrical dialogue between the Shulammite and her lover, sometimes seemingly portrayed in the poems as King Solomon. The Song of Songs may have been performed as a series of recitatives, but can hardly be labeled as a drama and was probably never a hierogamic text. In sum, it is a misguided effort to search for the historical or typological roots of Greek drama in the Ancient Near East. Some compositions include dialogues between characters and some concrete genres (rituals, incantations, exorcisms) were performative by nature. However, there is no internal or external evidence of any actual dramatic, staged performance of any of these mythological and ritual texts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY On Theodor H. Gaster, see Richard H. Hiers and Harold M. Stahmer, “Theodor H. Gaster, 1906–1992,” UgaritForschungen 27 (1995): 59–114; 28 (1996): 277–285, and Mark S. Smith, Untold Stories: The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the Twentieth Century, pp. 73–75, 88–90 (Peabody, Mass., 2001). On ritual drama in Hittite texts, see Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics, pp. 135–44, 284–88 (Oxford, 1995). On the ritual interpretation of the Ugaritic cycle of BaElu, see Mark S. Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, I, pp. 60–75 (Leiden, 1994). On the Mesopotamian sacred marriage, see Johannes Renger and Jerrold S. Cooper, “Heilige Hochzeit,” Reallexikon der Assyriologie 4 (1975): 251–269, J. S. Cooper, “Sacred Marriage and Popular Cult in Early Mesopotamia,” in Official Cult

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and Popular Religion in the Ancient Near East, edited by E. Matshushima, pp. 81–96 (Heidelberg, 1993), R. F. G. Sweet, “A New Look at the ‘Sacred Marriage’ in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Corolla Torontonensis: Studies in Honour of R. M. Smith, edited by Emmet Robbins and Stella Sandahl, pp. 85–104 (Toronto, 1994), Gonzalo Rubio, “Inanna and Dumuzi: A Sumerian Love Story,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121 (2001): 268–274, Philip Jones, “Embracing Inana: Legitimation and Mediation in the Ancient Mesopotamian Sacred Marriage Hymn Iddin-Dagan A,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 123 (2003): 291– 302, and Pirjo Lapinkivi, The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of Comparative Evidence (Helsinki, 2004). Emmanuel Laroche’s Catalogue des textes hittites (Paris, 1971) is available online at http://www.asor.org/HITTITE/CTHHP. html. Also see Keilschrifturkunden aus Boghazköi (Berlin, 1921–1990). GONZALO RUBIO (2005)

DRAMA: MIDDLE EASTERN NARRATIVE TRADITIONS Popular religious storytelling has been widespread in the Islamic Middle East since the earliest times, and its forms have varied considerably according to time, place, and branch or sect of Islam. For the period before 1500, sources for religious storytelling are few and widely scattered; nevertheless, some idea of the situation can be gained. With the establishment of Shiism as the state religion in Persia in about 1500, important new forms of religious oral narrative appeared, some of which are still practiced in the twentieth century. Religious storytelling on the popular level has its roots in formal preaching in the mosque. In its broadest sense, it attempts to interpret the religion and meet the spiritual needs of the common people in a manner more accessible to them than that of a preacher representing the religious establishment. This kind of storytelling quickly came to reflect the values and beliefs of popular Islam and in doing so widened the gap between the Islam of the theologians and jurisprudents and that of the common people. The sources for the study of popular religious storytelling reflect, by and large, the views of the small educated class, including the religious class, and deplore the existence and influence of popular oral narrators. In the first century of Islam it became the practice of governing authorities to appoint a preacher for the local mosque and pay him a stipend from the state treasury. At the same time, unofficial preachers (qa¯s: s: , lit. “story-teller”; pl., qus: s: a¯s: ) began delivering sermons in mosques and elsewhere. While the official preachers represented the views of the religious establishment, the free preachers were not so restricted. Enlightenment mixed with entertainment in their sermons, and edifying tales slowly developed into entertaining ones, always within the framework of transmitting and interpreting the tradition of the Prophet. Some popular preachers were highly respected men of great learning, and

al-Ja¯h: iz: (d. 868/9) included H: asan al-Bas: r¯ı (d. 728/9) in his list of learned popular preachers. Most, however, were bent on impressing their audiences, and since it is easy to pass from edifying tales to profane ones, they began to enjoy great success among the uneducated. By about 892, popular preaching was considered a problem in the Muslim community, and the government announced that storytellers, astrologers, and fortune-tellers were not to appear in the streets and mosques of Baghdad. In Spain in the twelfth century, religious storytellers were banned from performing in cemeteries and from telling tales in which the Prophet’s name was mentioned, and municipal authorities were charged with preventing women from attending their sessions in tents. Because of the bias of the sources in favor of the religious establishment, most accounts of popular preachers and storytellers after the ninth century describe them as charlatans and often associate them with beggars and confidence men. They were accused of mixing edifying narratives from the QurDa¯n with fanciful biblical legends, stories from preIslamic Arabia and Persia, eschatological and cosmological tales based on invented chains of authorities, romances with religious associations, and popular etymologies, leaving no questions unanswered. Among the public, they became more highly regarded than the theologians, who condemned them for falsifying the religious tradition. They were also opposed by the S: u¯f¯ıs, who maintained that they did not transmit true mystical experiences. More than one source describes their practices used to impress their audiences, which included painting their faces, artificially stimulating the flow of tears, making histrionic gestures, pounding on the pulpit, running up and down its stairs, and even throwing themselves off it. These storytellers flourished in Iraq, Persia, and Central Asia but were relatively scarce in the Hejaz and in Muslim North Africa. Whatever the accuracy of these accounts may be, it is clear that the popular religious storytellers, like the friars of medieval Christianity, bridged the gulf between an intellectual and distant religious establishment and an illiterate populace needing spiritual guidance and education in terms they could comprehend. When the Safavids (1500–1732) were establishing Shiism as the official religion in Persia, one of the means they used to spread their message was the oral storyteller. This appears to have stimulated the development and specialization of oral narration, and to judge from the sources, religious storytelling flourished in Persia from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. I shall describe here the three most important forms. Rawz: ah-khva¯n¯ı began with public readings from Ruwz: at al-shuhada¯ (The garden of martyrs), a collection of stories by H: usayn Va¯Eiz: Ka¯shif¯ı (d. 910 AH/1504–1505 CE) about the Sh¯ıE¯ı ima¯ms. Soon moving out of the mosque and into public places and private houses, rawz: ah-khva¯n¯ı became an integral part of religious life. It is still practiced widely in Iran. Another form of oral religious narrative, rarer today, is a variety of picture storytelling called pardah-da¯r¯ı. Working ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, SECOND EDITION