Gods, rulers, and death. Nonverbal expressions and group identity in Syro-Anatolian and Assyrian monumental art

From a sociological perspective, nonverbal expressions can communicate much, ranging from political to religious sentiments. At the same time, nonverbal expressions can take on even greater significance in different contexts: they may galvanize a sense of group identity because they imply sharing and collaboration among individuals, who evolve the capacity to demarcate group membership through symbolic markers, such as gestures, body movements, proxemic, and the like. Hence, nonverbal expressions can play a role in maintaining social and psychological order and can become a clear marker of collective identity. Cultural contact between Syro-Anatolian states and the Assyrian empire during the earlier first millennium BCE is known to be notoriously intensive, involving many aspects and affecting material culture, social practices, and social structures to varying degrees. Different kinds of cultural contact may have initiated processes of self-reflection within the collective, or they may have had the potential to induce cultural change. On the material level, this encounter can bring about different effects, ranging from spontaneous rejection to acceptance of specific visual motifs. This article provides an examination and comparison of visual representations of submission and drinking gestures in Syro- Anatolian and Assyrian monumental art, in order to highlight the ways in which these visual motifs were rejected or were appropriated and re-instrumentalized by both parties. It is concluded that the interaction between Syro-Anatolian and Assyrian art reveals: 1) a dialectic between the acceptance and rejection of specific visual motifs, and 2) a conscious formation and protection of nonverbal expressions as signs of collective identity.