Abstract
The intent here is to combine spatial and sensory evaluation of biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts that describe events leading up to, during, and after a battle. Drawing on both factors adds an extra dimension that considers the sense of place, the effect of geo-spatiality on human communities, and the role that the senses play in eliciting human emotions and actions. Use of comparative textual materials demonstrates the universality of these experiences and the impact that the senses have on them.
Bringing sensory and spatial analysis to biblical studies provides new dimensions for research and opens the possibility of experiencing, at least vicariously, “sensations of life on the ground” (Howes 2008a: 443–44). Caution, of course, is necessary since the historian or biblical scholar “must know the representations of the sensory system and the ways in which it functioned” and be “capable of deciphering all the references and of detecting the logic of the evidence … at the period under consideration” (Corbin: 189). Writers and storytellers often leave out items that are common knowledge to their audience (emic perspective), but when they include data it may be for emphasis or to create a metaphorical meaning. With that in mind and to help demonstrate the value of this approach, I intend to analyze elements associated with a battlefield, but that requires me to present a play in three acts. For it is necessary to consider the events leading up to the actual confrontation as well as the battle itself and its aftermath.
Each of these elements involves the evaluation and transformation of space and contains numerous sensory impressions that, acting in concert, can be analyzed as part of the whole episode and in so doing “historicize the senses” as it strives to historicize the past (Smith 2007: 847). It will be shown that by combining sensory evaluation with spatial analysis the biblical narrative takes on a new dimension, adding layers of meaning and allowing the reader to move directly into the world being portrayed in the narrative. Being sensitive to the traces of the sensorium within the text places us a step closer to their world and their experience of that world.
When analyzing a battlefield narrative, the first step is to take into account the continuous impact that space, however it is defined or delimited, has on the armies and civilian population, including all of the human actors and their animals. Space has a basic topographical physicality, while at the same time its dimensions and qualities are tied to complex mental and emotional processes, including memory, fear, pleasure, and planning. Unless space is determined to be liminal space, its relative location and potential use(s) are socially and economically defined and can be registered as such mentally. It also has a defined proximity to other socially defined locations. And, it is intimately and proprietarily associated with the peoples who inhabit it. However, space is always in the “process of being made” based on human activities and environmental forces (Massey: 9).
Humans are constantly defining space in terms of its physical qualities, its relation to a particular social group's identity, its property values, and its boundaries. However, boundaries also imply the existence of socially defined structure that may be based on a political or economic framework or legally drawn dimensions, and as such draw groups into proximity and potential conflict with each other. Also in the mix is liminal space, which exists between geographically defined social entities. It may simply be an invisible line marking the border between one place and another one, much like a threshold leading from a house into the outside world. That point in space, whether a very narrow divide or a larger region often is the neutral location in which legal or political disputes are handled through military means. Adding to the sense of liminality is the movement of peoples or armies through a region causing them to be in a constant state of liminality since they are at that point not occupying their familiar, “owned” space.
Act One: Prelude to Battle
The event begins with activities associated with the journey and the time spent traveling to the site of the battle. It is possible that that site is well known based on information obtained from scouts/spies about the movements or encampment of the enemy force (1 Sam 26:4). And we are aware that there are traditional or perennial battlefields or city sites with a history of being besieged that are located at strategic or bottleneck sites such as in the Jezreel Valley (Judg 6:33; 1 Sam 29:11). Among these sites is Megiddo, which guards the western end of the Jezreel Valley. It became a frequent target of armies wishing to control that important international trade route. Thus, in the description of Thutmose III's First Asiatic Campaign (COS 2.2A: 8–11), the king's advisors discuss possible routes to approach the assembled enemy at Megiddo and to avoid narrow defiles that would require the horses and soldiers to walk “single file.”
During the journey to the site of the battle, the scene continuously shifts. The soldiers’ perception of the ground will change as the army passes through it. This is partially due to a constant refocusing of where they are at any given time. Humans establish both a macro and micro sense of place based on familiar surroundings and their role within it. That sense of place is altered when their senses are required to make continual shifts in their normal ability to perceive their world and their place in it. A part of an individual's sense of place is also “rooted in the sounds of everyday life” (Smith 2007: 852). Humans are conditioned to filter out or “backstage” expected sounds, but immediately take notice of the unusual or threatening tones in their environment (Corbin: 183). Thus the “sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees” (2 Sam 5:24; 1 Chron 14:15) alerts David's forces to the approach of the Philistine army in the Valley of Rephaim.
Furthermore, the armies contribute to sometimes radical environmental change as they trample fields of grain, destroy or strip fruit trees (Jer 7:20), and as they regularly destroy the houses in the villages in their path (COS 2.113C: 267). Sennacherib's account of his first campaign against Merodach-Baladan includes a boast that his army “destroyed, devastated, and burned [their towns] and turned them into forgotten tells” (COS 2.119: 302).
As these troops march along, they also experience new sights and smells. Along the way, they hear some familiar sounds like the beating of horses hooves (Judg 5:22), the rattle of a quiver attached to a horse's side (Job 39:23), the rumble of chariot wheels (Jer 47:3), and shouts of their officers keeping them moving. As long as these sounds remain normal and within tolerable levels, the army can concentrate on its regular tasks and the pace of the march. It is when the unexpected arises that panic can drive them apart and send them into retreat or flight, as when the Aramean army abandons its encampment after hearing what they think is the approach of a “great army” and fear that the Israelites have allied themselves with the kings of the Hittites and Egypt (2 Kgs 7:6).
For many of the soldiers in an invading army the route before them is unfamiliar ground, even if it is within just a few miles of their home territory. For instance, the relatively short distance between Philistine territory and Jerusalem (39 miles from Ashkelon to Jerusalem) is traversed by means of the Valley of Elah, making that route both a strategic west-east link as well as contested, liminal ground for the armies involved (1 Sam 17:1–4). During their march the troops will experience a sense of dislocation. For “not to know where one is, or perhaps, not to know where one is relative to where one would like to be, is a thoroughly unpleasant feeling” (Tally: 2). They are no longer centered in a place where they have spent the bulk of their life. The people they encounter along the march are strangers, who must be assumed to be enemies and may speak a different language. Their houses may have strange construction features. Their clothing may be styled differently. And, their pottery may have unfamiliar designs and glazes. The smells of their cooking may contain new and unsettling aromas that touch off negative reactions or at least the sense of the strange.
Most disturbing, however, is the fact that the soldiers cannot maintain their normal sense of place. The unfamiliar translates into a sense of uneasiness that hinges on becoming intimidating if it is not addressed regularly by their officers. Despite a sense of camaraderie engendered by their fellows and a feeling of confidence in the power of their army, the unfamiliar terrain as well as the unusual obstacles that occur along the march will eventually eat away at their emotional and psychological well-being.
Thus during the march the soldiers will cling to those persons, objects, sounds, or smells with which they are familiar and therefore are most comfortable or meaningful to them. A further effort to maintain a measure of familiarity would likely be the clustering of soldiers into groups of their own ethnic background since many ancient armies included soldiers from conquered or allied peoples (see 2 Kgs 24:16 and Sargon II's Annals: COS 2.118A; 293—see Hallo & Younger in Works Cited section, below). Their leaders, from long experience with other campaigns, would know that routine is the key to maintaining the morale of their troops. A sense of confidence and bonding can be strengthened through remaining in step with one's companions (Pink: 76), as well as the sound of familiar commands or the daily ritual performances associated with the campaign (sacrifices [1 Sam 13:9]). Adherence to a standard diet of food and drink combined with a focus on a common goal and sense of purpose is essential to the maintenance of a large organization. Plus, formal addresses by their commanders or priests (Deut 20:1–9), or the tasks associated with setting up temporary encampments along the way also contribute to this process of maintaining order (Nadali: 113: Yadin: 236–37).
The range of sensory impressions created by an army on the move is quite large. The very vibrations of their trampling sandals can literally shake the ground (2 Sam 5:24; 2 Kgs 7:5; Isa 9:5[4]), while their drums provide a steady cadence and may serve to insulate the soldiers from unfamiliar sounds. The approach of this invading force creates new, jarring sounds incongruous with everyday village life. This aural manifestation of an invading force certainly would have frightened the villagers, who could view the troops’ passage from their hilltop settlements, adding to their increasing level of fear and apprehension.
Correspondingly, these unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells erode their sense of place and stability, since the normal sensory environment such as the lowing of cattle or the turning of a pottery wheel or other background noises are being displaced (Smith 2015: 2). If these villagers have any resolve to try to stop the enemy's advance, they will have to depend on their leaders to organize resistance. In the meantime, they may flee (Jer 4:29; Avrahami: 86–87) or stand aside as wave after wave of soldiers and their chariots and pack animals trample the fields that have cost them uncounted hours of heavy labor. They are witnesses to their wells being destroyed or poisoned and their streams being filled with debris and muddied, making them undrinkable.
Act Two: The Battle
Once the armies are in place or a siege has begun, strategies center on the topography of that place. For example, the Philistine and Israelite forces respectively occupy opposite ridges overlooking the Valley of Elah (1 Sam 17:1–3). While neither side is likely to attack the other's “high ground,” they must consider the possibilities made evident from their vantage points for a battle on the floor of the valley. An army and its commanders can be very confident in their ability to meet the demands of combat, but they can be disrupted in their goals by spatial conditions or unexpected obstacles, and they would therefore want to know as much as they could about its dimensions, topography, and weather conditions.
The sensory aspects of the action now shift to the aggressive activities associated with the movement of troops about the battlefield, the group and individual conflicts, and the sounds and smells that engulf the participants. However, the recording of these events in the biblical narrative and the annals of ancient Near Eastern kings seldom supply a blow by blow account. After all, they are written after the battle and probably are not eye-witness accounts. The propagandistic tone (Laato) often found in these texts heralds the accomplishments of the king, often ascribing to him god-like characteristics or destructive powers comparable to the most violent forces of nature:
As might be expected in these accounts, the repetition of phrases or details are reflections of scribal tradition or “shorthand” designed to both create a sensory experience of the battle and provide expected literary touches that frame official propaganda. The biblical narrative contains similar details reflective of the influence of scribal practice across the Near East, although in many cases it is YHWH as the divine warrior who displays magnificent martial abilities (compare ‘Anat's gory conflict in which she “wades in the blood of soldiers” [COS 1.86.ii 5–16: 250]):
Deut 32:41–42: “I whet my flashing sword….I make my arrows drunk with blood.”
Isa 34:3: “Their slain shall be cast out, and the stench of their corpses shall rise; the mountains will flow with their blood.”
Jer 9:22: “Human corpses shall fall like dung upon the open field, like sheaves behind the reaper, and no one shall gather them.”
Despite the exaggerations inherent to this type of story-telling, there are numerous sensory details and metaphors embedded in the narrative that give a picture of the sights and sounds of battle as it engulfed the participants. First, there are sensory cues that foretell the coming conflict. For instance, the ominous sound of swords being drawn from sheaths and bowstrings being drawn back (Isa 21:15), and the sound of an approaching army “like the roaring of the sea” (Jer 6:23; 50:42). Horses, bearing well-equipped warriors (Jer 6:23; 50:29), are said to sense the tension in the air. Their violent emotions are about to be unleased (Tilford: 46), sparked by the smell of the coming battle (Job 39:25). They quiver with anticipation and snort (Job 39:20; Jer 8:16) as they prepare to “plunge headlong into battle” (Jer 8:6).
Once the armies at last engage, the scene is filled with sensory references and post-conflict propaganda exaggerating the size of the armies. Chariotry are said to be so numerous that they are “like the locust swarm” (Ramesses II, Battle of Qadesh—COS 2.5A; compare Judg 6:5 and Joel 1:4–7) and the powerful momentum of the army is described in terms of a storm or an enveloping fog (Sennacherib, Bavian Rock Inscription—COS 2.119E: 305). There are visual images on the battlefield such as battle standards (Isa 31:9) that served as rallying points or as a means of signaling troop movements (Jer 4:21). Trumpets also served as a form of communication, sometimes to signal the charge into battle (Judg 7:18–22; Sir 26:27) or as a call to cease operations (2 Sam 2:28; 18:16; 20:22). Hearing that sound would elicit a range of emotions from fear and apprehension to a quickening in anticipation of the action to come (Smith 2007: 851–52).
As the troops go into combat, they add their voices to the cacophony of sounds with their battle shouts (2 Chron 13:15) along with the commands barked by their captains (Job 39:25). It is unlikely that the individual soldier during a battle can “visually analyse the picture;” rather he “experiences the events through the senses ‘of proximity'—touch and smell—but he could not describe the spoliation of bodies and scenes of horror, which he does not [personally] experience” (Corbin: 186–87). In the case of the inhabitants of a city being assaulted, proximity is climaxed by the placement of assault ladders (1 Macc 5:30), the concussion of sling stones, and the shock of battering rams and the ring of axes being employed against the walls (Ezek 21:21–22; 26:9–11). These efforts ringing in the ears of its defenders, magnified their concerns for the sturdiness of their walls and gates.
Although most olfactory references to ancient battle scenes deal with the quantity of the rotting corpses after a battle (Isa 34:3; Amos 4:10), occasionally the text includes an element that evokes both the emotions of the participants and a mental whiff of personal agitation. In Sennacherib's Bavian Rock Inscription, the scribe proclaims how the Kings of Elam and Babylon became so frightened that “they defecated in their chariots” (COS 2.119E: 305). While this may have been a shaming jab at these enemy nations, it also invites the reader or the audience to share in both the smell and its cause while maintaining temporal and spatial distance from the event (Howes 2008b). While the massive shedding of blood (cf. Deut 32:42) during the battle must have created a distinctive and pervasive smell, there is no mention of that feature of the conflict. It may be that the smell of blood was so familiar due to the offering of regular animal sacrifice or the slaughtering of animals in the villages and towns that it served as just another expected, backgrounded sensory impression (Smith 2007: 849).
There are heroic images created of “horsemen charging, flashing sword and glittering spear” (Nah 3:3), and a world filled with the “sound of chariots and horses” (2 Kgs 7:6). Even smaller sounds are included in this tableau, including the rattle of the quiver attached to a war horse's side (Job 39:23) and the rattling of lances, possibly against their shields (Job 41:29). And, of course, in the poetic accounts of conflict, the Israelites are assured that YHWH will break the “flashing arrows, the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war” of the enemy (Ps 76:3), and in turn the deity's fiery arrows of lightning (Ps 7:13) are said to speed across the sky while the enemy is dazzled by YHWH'S “flashing spear” (Hab 3:11).
Act Three: The Aftermath
Once the heat of battle has been quenched, the winners taunt their foes and put a psychological exclamation point to the scene by punishing their vanquished opponents and leaving the dead unburied. For this portion of the event we have both textual and visual accounts. Reliefs in the palaces of the Assyrian kings provide graphic representations of events during their military campaigns that accompany the textual narrative (Winter). Unfortunately, there are no corresponding Israelite artistic reliefs, but the narrative is just as graphic in its details of the cries of the wounded, the torture and execution of prisoners (Deut 32:42), and the rape and vivisection of pregnant women (2 Kgs 8:12; Amos 1:13).
Various methods of shaming, including physical gestures, are part of the post-conflict ritual. For instance, when Adoni-zedek, the king of Jerusalem, and his four allied kings are defeated by Joshua's troops, Joshua tells his commanders to “put your feet on the necks of these kings” (Josh 10:24). With a similar intent, mutilation of prisoners and of the dead is intended as a means of publicly shaming the enemy (Lemos: 227–28). The impalement of prisoners before their defeated cities, many of whom are the leaders of the defeated enemy, is also a common practice designed to display power and to reduce these once powerful individuals to objects of scorn. In their suffering state they provide a visual and aural lesson for those who rebel or attempt to stand up to the power of their foe. For that reason, the bodies of Saul and his sons were displayed on the wall of Beth-shean (1 Sam 31:9-10) in a manner like the impalement of the chief ministers of Rezin of Damascus by Tiglath-pileser III (Calah Annals—COS 2.117A: 286). In other cases, the prisoners’ lives were spared, but they were mutilated in such a way that they were walking advertisements of their punishment. Thus Ninurta-kudurrī-Uṣur, the Neo-Babylonian governor of Suḫu, proudly proclaims he “removed the hands and lower lips of eighty of their troops and let them go free to spread the news of my glory” (Suḫu Annals #2—COS 2.115B: 280; compare Judg 1:5-6).
Very often the result or toll of a battle is described in terms of the vast numbers of the slain and the wounded crying out in pain (Job 24:12; Ezek 30:24). Nahum 3:2-3 paints a gruesome picture of the dead lying in massive piles, and causing the combatants to “stumble over bodies.” Rameses III's Medinet Habu inscription speaks in similar terms of enemy troops being “netted, beached, surrounded, put to death and stacked head to foot in piles” (Matthews & Benjamin: 164). Granting no honor to the slain, their bodies are “cast out in every place” (Amos 8:3), left unburied like “dung on the field” (2 Kgs 9:37; Ps 83:10; Jer 9:22), allowing their stench to rise to heaven (Isa 34:3), with insects and birds feasting on their rotting flesh (Deut 28:26; Ps 79:2; Isa 66:24).
It is possible that the valley “full of bones” described in Ezekiel 37:1-3 serves as such a powerful prophetic metaphor because an old battlefield would not be an uncommon sight. Even after the bodies have been skeletonized and are “very dry” they and that place remain a testament to the conflict, artifacts of remembrance within a site of memory (Maaranen: 241; Nora). Even today relics still emerge from old battlefields as they are plowed or eroded and find their way into museums where they are interpreted for visitors to serve as both tangible and mental images of the event (Gijbels). For our purposes here, however, these bones remind the living of their immediate past and the dangers of a future lived in the crossroads of major powers and their political ambitions.
The aftermath of a battle concludes with the sounds and gestures of celebration by the victorious army and, when it is within their own country, by the women of the villages. Shouts of triumph and thanks to their gods (COS 2.2A: 11), the stomping of feet and clapping of hands (Ezek 6:11; 25:6; Block: 234-35), songs of victory accompanied by dancing and musical instruments are depicted in the narrative, all filling the air with joyous emotions and lively sounds (Makujina). Thus when David returns victorious, he is met by women singing, dancing, playing tambourines and other musical instruments (1 Sam 18:6). Similarly, the women come out to meet King Saul, singing and dancing, and playing tambourines (compare parallel scenes in Exodus 15:20; Judges 11:34; Psalm 68:25).
Concluding Remarks
By using the battlefield as an example, the intent here is to reconstruct the “sensory environment” (Corbin 1995: 184) and to accompany that process by coupling it with a recognition of the importance of the spatial aspects of the narrative. Battles occur in space, but that physical site must first be reached by the conflicting parties. Thus it is important to consider the armies in motion, their traversing of, for them, a liminal and unfamiliar world, and the means whereby they overcome the dislocation that accompanies an eroding of their sense of place. The battle itself is filled with such a cacophony of sensory stimuli that it contributes to the creation of mass confusion as well as the compartmentalization of space into the immediate area within which a soldier is fighting. Finally, the aftermath is a joyous time for the victorious army and a tragedy for the losers who are slain, taken prisoner, or forced to flee (1 Sam 17:52). To analyze such a drama in its three acts considers all the data contained in the texts. An awareness of the possibilities provided by sensory and spatial analysis can open up new insights that go beyond the traditional literary or historical critical interpretations.