Damnatio memoriae

Damnatio memoriae (Classical Latin pronunciation: [damˈnaːti.oː mɛˈmɔri.ae̯]) is a modern Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory" or "damnation of memory", indicating that a person is to be excluded from official accounts. There are and have been many routes to damnatio memoriae including the destruction of depictions, the removal of names from inscriptions and documents, and even large-scale rewritings of history.

Etymology

Although the term damnatio memoriae is Latin, the phrase was not used by the ancient Romans, and first appeared in a thesis written in Germany in 1689 by Christoph Schreiter and Johann Heinrich Gerlach. The thesis was titled Dissertationem juridicam de damnatione memoriae, praescitu superiorum, in florentissima Philurea (lit. "A Legal Dissertation on the Damnation of Memory, Foreknown by Superiors, in the Most Flourishing Philurea").

Ancient world

Today's best known examples of damnatio memoriae from antiquity concern chiselling stone inscriptions or deliberately omitting certain information from them.

Ancient Mesopotamia

According to Stefan Zawadzki, the oldest known examples of such practices come from around 3000–2000 BC. He cites the example of Lagash (an ancient city-state founded by the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia), where preserved inscriptions concerning a conflict with another city-state, Umma, do not mention the ruler of Umma, but describe him as "the man of Umma". Zawadzki sees this as an example of deliberate degradation of the ruler of Umma to the role of an unworthy person whose name and position in history the rulers of Lagash did not want to record for posterity.

Ancient Egypt

Egyptians also practiced this, as seen in relics from pharaoh Akhenaten's tomb and elsewhere. Akhenaten's sole worship of the god Aten, instead of the traditional pantheon, was considered heretical. During his reign, Akhenaten endeavoured to have all references to the god Amun chipped away and removed. After his reign, temples to Aten were dismantled and the stones reused to create other temples. Images of Akhenaten had their faces chipped away, and images and references to Amun reappeared. The people blamed their misfortunes on Akhenaten's shift of worship to Atenism, away from the gods they served before him. Other Egyptian victims of this practice include Hatshepsut and the pharaohs that immediately succeeded Akhenaten, including Smenkhkare, Neferneferuaten, and Ay. The campaign of damnatio memoriae against Akhenaten and his successors was initiated by Ay's successor, Horemheb, who decided to erase from history all pharaohs associated with the unpopular Amarna Period; this process was continued by Horemheb's successors. Tutankhamun was also erased from history in this way, even though he had restored Egypt to the Amun god, because he was one the kings who succeeded Akhenaten; he may also have been Akhenaten's son.

Ancient Greece

The practice was known in Ancient Greece. The Athenians frequently destroyed inscriptions which referred to individuals or events that they no longer wished to commemorate. After Timotheus was convicted of treason and removed from his post as general in 373 BC, all references to him as a general were deleted from the previous year's naval catalogue. The most complete example is their systematic removal of all references to the Antigonids from inscriptions in their city, in 200 BC when they were besieged by the Antigonid king Philip V of Macedon during the Second Macedonian War. One decree praising Demetrius Poliorcetes (Philip V's great-grandfather) was smashed and thrown down a well.

After Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of antiquity, the people of Ephesus banned the mention of his name.

At Delphi, an honorific inscription erected between 337 and 327 BC for Aristotle and his nephew Callisthenes, two philosophers who were closely associated with the Macedonians, were smashed and thrown in a well after the death of Alexander of Macedon in 323 BC.

Ancient Rome

In ancient Rome, the practice of damnatio memoriae was the condemnation of emperors after their deaths. If the Senate or a later emperor did not like the acts of an emperor, they could have his property seized, his name erased and his statues reworked (normally defaced).

Compounding this difficulty is the fact that a completely successful damnatio memoriae results—by definition—in the full and total erasure of the subject from the historical record. In the case of figures such as emperors or consuls it is unlikely that complete success was possible, as even comprehensive obliteration of the person's existence and actions in records and the like would continue to be historically visible without extensive reworking. The impracticality of such a cover-up could be vast—in the case of Emperor Geta, for example, coins bearing his effigy proved difficult to entirely remove from circulation for several years, even though the mere mention of his name was punishable by death.

Difficulties in implementation also arose if there was not full and enduring agreement with the punishment, such as when the Senate's condemnation of Nero was implemented—leading to attacks on many of his statues—but subsequently evaded with the enormous funeral he was given by Vitellius. Similarly, it was often difficult to prevent later historians from "resurrecting" the memory of the sanctioned person.

The impossibility of actually erasing memory of an emperor has led scholars to conclude that this was not actually the goal of damnatio. Instead, they understand damnatio:

not so much as an attempt to obliterate memory entirely as to transform honorific commemoration into a form of visible denigration. That is: the power of an act of damnatio relies, at least in part, on the viewer of a monument being able to supplement the gaps in an inscription with their own knowledge of what those gaps had once contained, and the reasons why the text had been removed

These emperors are known to have been erased from monuments:

Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, heresiarchs could have their memory condemned. The Council of Constance decreed the damnatio memoriae of John Wycliffe.

The practice of replacing pagan beliefs and motifs with Christian, and purposefully not recording the pagan history, has been compared to damnatio memoriae as well.

In her book Medici Women - Portraits of Power, Love and Betrayal, Gabrielle Langdon also presents compelling evidence concerning a probable damnatio memoriae issued against Isabella de' Medici, a prominent female figure of the 16th century Renaissance Medici court.

Americas

Ancient Maya

Several apparent damnatio memoriae incidents occurred within the Maya civilization during the Classic period (AD 250–900) as a result of political conflicts between leaders of the local kingdoms.

One notable incident occurred in the kingdom of Paʼ Chan (modern-day Yaxchilan, Mexico) in the middle of the 8th century. In June 742, the k'uhul ajaw (Holy Lord, i.e. king) of Pa' Chan, Itzamnaaj Bahlam III, died after a 60-year-long rule, during which he turned his kingdom into one of great riches after a large number of military campaigns which were recorded and illustrated on multiple high-quality stelae, lintels and hieroglyphic steps of temples which he dedicated to his military success (e.g. Temple 44) and his family (e.g. Temple 23). Though he had a son who eventually ascended to the throne after his death, there was a mysterious decade-long interregnum period in which Pa' Chan did not record the existence of any king. Itzamnaaj Bahlam's son, Yaxun Bʼalam IV, also known as Bird Jaguar IV, ascended to the throne in April 752, nearly ten years after his father's death.