Religion and Cultural Memory

by Jan Assmann

In ten brilliant essays, Jan Assmann explores the connections between religion, culture, and memory. Building on Maurice Halbwachs's idea that memory, like language, is a social phenomenon as well as an individual one, he argues that memory has a cultural dimension too. He develops a persuasive view of the life of the past in such surface phenomena as codes, religious rites and festivals, and canonical texts on the one hand, and in the Freudian psychodrama of repressing and resurrecting the past on the other. Whereas the current fad for oral history inevitably focuses on the actual memories of the last century or so, Assmann presents a commanding view of culture extending over five thousand years. He focuses on cultural memory from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Osage Indians down to recent controversies about memorializing the Holocaust in Germany and the role of memory in the current disputes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

Genres: Religion, History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Theology, Theory

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Assmann studied Egyptology and classical archaeology in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen. In 1966-67, he was a fellow of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, where he continued as an independent scholar from 1967 to 1971. After completing his habilitation in 1971, he was named a professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg in 1976, where he taught until his retirement in 2003. He was then named an honorary professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Constance, where he is today.

In the 1990s Assmann and his wife Aleida Assmann developed a theory of cultural and communicative memory that has received much international attention. He is also known beyond Egyptology circles for his interpretation of the origins of monotheism, which he considers as a break from earlier cosmotheism, first with Atenism and later with the Exodus from Egypt of the Israelites.

Reviews

[Martin Riexinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eine Sammlung von Aufsätzen zu verschiedenen Aspekten des kulturellen Gedächntnisses im Alten Orient, vor allem Ägypten und Isrsel. Behandelt werden die Rolle des Rituals und die Akzeleration der kulturellen Veränderung durch die Schrift, die die "Auslagerung" der Tradition ermöglichte und damit intellektuelle Kapazitäten für neue Ideen freisetzte. Seine Behauptung, dass es in frühen Schriftkulturen mehr Schriftkundige gab als Gedächtnisspezialisten in vorschriftlichen Kulturen erscheint mir jedoch fraglich.
Assmann behandelt hier auch die Monotheismusproblematik, wobei er hervorhebt, dass die Trennung von Gott und Schöpfung (Israel) beziehungsweise sinnlicher und intelligibler Welt (Griechenland) den Menschen von der Pflicht enthob, die Welt durch Gaben und Riten aufrechtzuerhalten.
Die beiden abschließenden Essays weichen vom Hauptthema ab: Zunächst eine kritische Analyse der Darstellung Ägyptens im Joseph-Roman von Thomas Mann, samt einer Kritik seines Mythosbegriffes. Daran anschließend zeigt er auf, wie das Alte Ägypten in dem Moment als fremde Kultur aus dem westlichen Bildungskanon verschwand, nachdem mit der Entzifferung der Hieroglyphen die Wissenschaft der Ägyptologie entstanden war.

[Carl]

Am reviewing literature on source criticism in religious studies for my former adviser-- he suggested I look into Cultural Memory theory, and I'm finding it fascinating! Not sure how much it will help with his project, but it would have been clearly relevant for my dissertation-- I will have to incorporate some of this when I rewrite it for publication (which I ought to be doing...)

The introduction is great-- if nothing else, read that for a good run down of what Cultural Memory is. So far the rest looks interesting as well, but I'm getting a bit frustrated that there is no clear connection to the problem I am supposed to be investigating at the moment.