Mapping Ancient Emotions: How Mesopotamians Felt and Expressed Their Feelings in the Body
Exploring Neo-Assyrian Cuneiform to Understand the Connection Between Emotion and Anatomy Thousands of Years Ago
Discovering Emotion in Ancient Mesopotamia
From the flutter of "butterflies in the stomach" to the weight of a "heavy heart," emotions are often tied to physical sensations in modern cultures. But how did ancient humans experience and describe these feelings? A groundbreaking study of Neo-Assyrian texts written in the Akkadian language has revealed how emotions were understood and expressed in Mesopotamia between 934 and 612 BCE.
By analyzing one million words of Akkadian cuneiform, researchers unearthed fascinating connections between emotional states and specific body parts, offering fresh insights into human emotional experience through time.
How Ancient Mesopotamians Felt Emotions
The study, published in the journal iScience1, demonstrated a complex understanding of the human body among ancient Mesopotamians. Texts revealed that happiness was often associated with an “open,” “shining,” or “full” sensation, located primarily in the liver.
"Even in ancient Mesopotamia, there was a rough understanding of anatomy, for example the importance of the heart, liver, and lungs," explains Professor Saana Svärd, Assyriologist at the University of Helsinki and lead researcher on the project.
Interestingly, the liver’s role in happiness distinguishes ancient Mesopotamian emotional mapping from modern studies, which instead show happiness radiating throughout the body. Meanwhile, anger was experienced differently, described as "heat" or "rage" in the feet, rather than the hands or upper body as seen in contemporary emotional body maps. Love, in contrast, was surprisingly similar between ancient and modern interpretations, linked to sensations in the heart, liver, and knees.
The Intersection of Language, Emotion, and Anatomy
Cuneiform writing, used primarily by scribes for the elite class, included a range of materials—literature, prayers, tax records, and even legal documents. This diversity provided the team with a robust dataset to study the linguistic relationship between emotion and anatomy.
"Ancient Near Eastern texts have never been studied in this way, by quantitatively linking emotions to body parts," explains Svärd.
However, researchers caution that linguistic descriptions alone may not capture the full scope of emotional experience. Unlike modern body maps based on self-reported feelings, Mesopotamian mappings rely on interpretations of textual references.
Towards a Universal Understanding of Emotions
This study opens new doors to understanding whether emotions are universal or culturally specific. The corpus linguistic method used in the research, developed at the Center of Excellence in Ancient Near Eastern Empires, highlights intercultural differences in emotional expression.
"It remains to be seen whether we can say something in the future about what kind of emotional experiences are typical for humans in general," notes Svärd, emphasizing the importance of further research.
The team’s next steps include analyzing a 20th-century English-language corpus of 100 million words and comparing it with Finnish texts to examine whether similar patterns emerge in modern languages.
A New Perspective on Human Emotional Evolution
This study sheds light on how cultural and linguistic contexts shape the understanding of emotions across time. By revealing how ancient Mesopotamians tied feelings to specific organs, it contributes to the broader conversation about the universality and variability of emotional experiences in human history.
Related Research Studies
These articles explore the intersection of emotions, embodiment, and linguistic or cultural semantics in Neo-Assyrian and related Mesopotamian contexts.
Emotion and the Body: Embodiment, Conceptual Metaphor, and Linguistic Encoding of Emotions in Akkadian
Author: U. Steinert
Book: Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East, 2022.
Link: Taylor & Francis Chapter PDF
Visualizing Emotions in the Ancient Near East
Author: S. Kipfer
Journal: ZORA: Zurich Open Repository and Archive, 2017.
PDF Link: uzh.ch PDF
Fear in Akkadian Texts: New Digital Perspectives on Lexical Semantics
Authors: S. Svärd, et al.
Journal: Expression of Emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, 2020.
PDF Link: Brill Chapter PDF
Pounding Hearts and Burning Livers: The "Sentimental Body" in Mesopotamian Medicine and Literature
Author: U. Steinert
Journal: Expression of Emotions in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, 2020.
PDF Link: Brill PDF
Imaging Emotions: Emotional Communities of Mesopotamia and the Potential of an Emotional Turn in the Study of Visual Cultures
Author: E. Wagner-Durand
Journal: Homo Pictor: Image Studies and Archaeology in Dialogue, 2020.
PDF Link: Academia.edu
Sadness and Grief in Akkadian Texts
Author: I. Sibbing-Plantholt
Book: Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East, 2022.
Link: Taylor & Francis Chapter PDF
The Construct of Royal Masculinity in the Textual and Visual Sources of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
Author: O. N'Shea
Thesis: University of Malta, 2019.
PDF Link: University Repository
Using Word Embeddings for Identifying Emotions Relating to the Body in a Neo-Assyrian Corpus
Authors: E. Bennett, A. Sahala
Conference: Ancient Language Processing Proceedings, 2023.
PDF Link: ACL Anthology
Love and Kindness in the Assyrian State
Author: K. Sonik
Book: Routledge Handbook of Emotions in the Ancient Near East, 2023.
PDF Link: Academia.edu
Fear and Masculinities During the Neo-Assyrian Period
Author: E. Bennett
Journal: Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 2023.
PDF Link: Helsinki University
Lahnakoski, J. M., Bennett, E., Nummenmaa, L., & Steinert, U. (2024). Embodied emotions in ancient Neo-Assyrian texts revealed by bodily mapping of emotional semantics. iScience, 29(1), Article 111365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.111365