Mesopotamian emotions were felt in different body parts

Does your heart soar when you’re happy? If you were living in ancient Mesopotamia, you might assign such joyful flights to the liver.

Researchers have analysed Mesopotamian texts to see how they described emotions inhabiting different parts of the body.

The study, published in iScience, draws on Neo-Assyrian cuneiform texts dating from 934-612 BCE.

The team collected descriptions of emotions from the 1 million words of ancient Akkadian language, using a statistical analysis to find connections to body parts.

This gave them 18 distinct “embodied emotions”, which they used to make bodily maps describing where each emotion was felt the most.

Two heat maps labelled happiness, modern one is lit up in head and chest, mesopotamian lit up with liver, heart and face — Happiness ‘lights up’ similar areas on both modern and ancient body maps, with the exception of the liver, which was more significant for the ancient Mesopotamians. Credit: Modern/PNAS: Lauri Nummenmaa et al. 2014, Mesopotamian: Juha Lahnakoski et. al 2024.

Pride, for instance, was strongly associated with the heart. Happiness, meanwhile was often referred to as an “open”, “shining”, or “full” feeling in the liver.

“Even in ancient Mesopotamia, there was a rough understanding of anatomy, for example the importance of the heart, liver and lungs,” says research lead Professor Saana Svärd, from the University of Helsinki, Finland.

The maps allow the researchers to compare the embodied emotions of Neo-Assyrians with those of modern people, using maps they constructed a decade ago from studies on modern participants.

“If you compare the ancient Mesopotamian bodily map of happiness with modern bodily maps, it is largely similar, with the exception of a notable glow in the liver,” says cognitive neuroscientist Juha Lahnakoski, a visiting researcher at Aalto University, Finland.

Two body heat maps labelled anger, modern map lights up upper body, mesopotamian map lights up legs — Modern people experience anger in the upper body and hands. In Mesopotamia, anger was associated specifically with the feet. Credit: Modern/PNAS: Lauri Nummenmaa et al. 2014, Mesopotamian: Juha Lahnakoski et al. 2024.

Modern people assign anger most to their hands and upper body, while the Neo-Assyrians described it most in the feet.

Love was felt similarly in both modern and Neo-Assyrian maps, with a slight Mesopotamian preference for liver, heart and knees.

Two body heat maps labelled love, modern heat map is lit up from top of body, mesopotamian map is lit up from liver, heart and knees — In Mesopotamia, love is particularly associated with the liver, heart and knees. Credit: Modern/PNAS: Lauri Nummenmaa et al. 2014, Mesopotamian: Juha Lahnakoski et al. 2024

“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 and whether, for example, fear has always been felt in the same parts of the body,” says Svärd.

“Also, we have to keep in mind that texts are texts and emotions are lived and experienced,” Svärd adds, pointing out that self-reported modern surveys don’t generate the same data as an ancient textual analysis.