The Ancient Art of Political Memes

The meme is the message. 

From the photo of Trump’s post-assassination attempt fighting fist to Kamala sitting atop a giant coconut on the cover of New York Magazine, these units of culture distill the personality of the powerful more strikingly than any wonkish policy paper ever will. 

It might surprise many of today’s pundits and X-pontificators predicting “meme wars will decide this election” that it’s been this way since biblical times.

It might surprise many of today’s pundits and X-pontificators predicting “meme wars will decide this election” that it’s been this way since biblical times. Don’t believe me? Ask Isaiah.

Don’t believe me? Ask Isaiah.

Circa 700 BCE, the Israelite empire was plagued by the Assyrians. Ten of our ancestral 12 tribes had already been taken captive, scattered among the vast empire’s territories. The Assyrian king was the most intimidating monarch on earth, commanding its most feared army. His palace’s reception room – more Iron Throne, less Oval Office – depicted his place among the gods. 

Those who entered would see the king seated on his throne. Above him was an artistic rendering known as a pivot relief, now visible to visitors at the British Museum. It depicts two magical creatures, each with four wings. These heavenly beings flanked an image of the king, who faced a sacred tree, representing the cosmic world order. Above the tree hovers the sun, representing the god Assur. The winged creatures carry purification buckets, meant to cleanse the king from harmful spirits. 

One seeing the image couldn’t help but marvel at the political figure’s fortitude. Protected by heaven, his aura was of steeled strength and unquestionable authority.

This intimidating imagery was, millennia before social media memes, pumped into the public consciousness, its virality assured by war. “Assyria’s ideology,” writes the contemporary scholar Shawn Zelig Aster, “was … relentlessly broadcast through a deft combination of art, ritual performance, oral communication, and written text, all designed for the consumption of two audiences: The administrative personnel of the empire, and the states and regions it sought to dominate.” Like today’s campaigns, the all-encompassing messaging was impossible to ignore. Assyria saw itself, and its king, as undefeatable — the beneficiaries of unique protections and unparalleled might. The throne-room image was its mighty meme.

Along came a humble Israelite prophet named Isaiah.

In the sixth chapter of the biblical book that bears his name, he experiences a vision. In it, he recounts:

“I beheld my Sovereign seated on a high and lofty throne; and the train of God’s robe filled the temple. Seraphs stood above him, each with six wings — two covering the face, two covering the body, and two to fly with. And one would call to the other, ‘Holy, holy, holy! God of Hosts — whose presence fills all the earth!’

“… Then one of the seraphs — who had taken a live coal from the altar with a pair of tongs — flew over to me, touched it to my lips, and declared, ‘Now that this has touched your lips, Your guilt shall depart, and your sin be purged away.’”

Playing off the Assyrian depiction of its ruler, this prophecy takes the meme of the Assyrian monarch’s authority and undermines it, offering a theology of resistance. Contra the Assyrian version, the winged creatures do not assist God, or purify or protect Him in any way. Rather, the heavenly figures prep the prophet Isaiah for his mission, purifying him as he sets out to gift the world visions of nations laying down their swords and lions lying down with lambs. The meme’s elements — the mystical winged creatures offering protection, the looming luminary — the very symbolism meant to portray Assyria’s ruler as supreme, is played with and swapped out. Instead sits a depiction of the opposition, the Israelite God’s ultimate rule and aspirations for a redeemed world.

Isaiah’s iteration of the monarchical meme offers three lessons that today’s political observers would be wise to consider.

The first is that introspection will always trump imagery. Isaiah admitted his all-too-human sinful struggles. He sought not depictions of power personal improvement. No surprise then that his words serve as a wellspring for those seeking a more just and generous society, while the Assyrian imperial meme-art sits in a museum — a historical curiosity, calcified.

Second, seek not domination but a sense of divine national calling. Picturing one’s place among the divine has been the vision of the powerful since time immemorial. Yet leaders who have resisted that all-too-easy urge and instead sensed the call toward covenantal responsibility, bridging divides through shared purpose, have legacies that have lasted long after their images have faded.

Lastly, as that other biblical writer who knew a bit about the ephemeral vanity of aesthetics and political authority (and, well, everything else) put it, “I have seen slaves on horseback, while princes go on foot like slaves.” Election seasons turn and turn. In the meantime, best to seek meaning not in memes but in policies that matter.

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”