Race and ethnicity in Mesopotamian antiquity 1

Abstract

Abstract In this paper I will maintain that race and ethnicity are discursive concepts that are historically and culturally variable. While in the modern West the discourses of race, and later ethnicity, are biological discourses of the body that present ‘race’ in scientific terms, the ancient Mesopotamian conception of otherness was not articulated in terms of biology or of linguistic groups. The conclusions are drawn from a study of the ancient Mesopotamian textual and visual representations, following the theoretical premise that alterity is formulated in and through representation.