Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter, Leiden - Boston, Brill, 2007

Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context

Culture and History of the Ancient Near East Founding Editor

M.H.E. Weippert Editor-in-Chief

Thomas Schneider Editors

Eckart Frahm, W. Randall Garr, B. Halpern, Theo P.J. van den Hout, Irene J. Winter

VOLUME 26

xvi

table of contents

barley as a key symbol in early mesopotamia

Irene J. Winter

1

Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by Her Students

Edited by

Jack Cheng Marian H. Feldman

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication data Ancient Near Eastern art in context : studies in honor of Irene J. Winter / by her students ; edited by Jack Cheng, Marian H. Feldman. p. cm. — (Culture and history of the ancient Near East) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-15702-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Art, Ancient— Middle East. I. Winter, Irene. II. Feldman, Marian H. III. Cheng, Jack. IV. Title. V. Series. N5370.A53 2007 709.39’4—dc22 2007010469

ISSN: 1566-2055 ISBN: 978 90 04 15702 6 Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

table of contents

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Editor’s Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix xiii xv

Introduction Introduction Jack Cheng and Marian H. Feldman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Personal Perspective on Irene Winter’s Scholarly Career John M. Russell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Picturing the Past, Teaching the Future Michelle I. Marcus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21

Bibliography for Irene J. Winter, 1967–2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . .

35

3 13

I. “Seat of Kingship/A Wonder to Behold”: Architectural Contexts A Note on the Nahal Mishmar “Crowns” Irit Ziffer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Upright Stones and Building Narratives: Formation of a Shared Architectural Practice in the Ancient Near East Ömür Harmanâah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blurring the Edges: A Reconsideration of the Treatment of Enemies in Ashurbanipal’s Reliefs Stephanie Reed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

69

101

II. “Idols of the King”: Ritual Contexts Assyrian Royal Monuments on the Periphery: Ritual and the Making of Imperial Space Ann Shafer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

133

vi

table of contents

The Godlike Semblance of a King: The Case of Sennacherib’s Rock Reliefs Tallay Ornan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ceremony and Kingship at Carchemish Elif Denel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Temple and the King: Urartian Ritual Spaces and their Role in Royal Ideology TuÅba Tanyeri-Erdemir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

161 179

205

III. “Legitimization of Authority”: Ideological Contexts Workmanship as Ideological Tool in the Monumental Hunt Reliefs of Assurbanipal Jülide Aker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Darius I and the Heroes of Akkad: Affect and Agency in the Bisitun Relief Marian H. Feldman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Melammu as Divine Epiphany and Usurped Entity Mehmet-Ali Ataç . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

229

265 295

IV. “Sex, Rhetoric and the Public Monument”: Gendered Contexts Between Human and Divine: High Priestesses in Images from the Akkad to the Isin-Larsa Period Claudia E. Suter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shulgi-simti and the Representation of Women in Historical Sources T. M. Sharlach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Lead Inlays of Tukulti-Ninurta I: Pornography as Imperial Strategy Julia Assante . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

317

363

369

V. “Opening the Eyes and Opening the Mouth”: Interdisciplinary Contexts Barley as a Key Symbol in Early Mesopotamia Andrew C. Cohen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

411

table of contents Biblical mÀlîlot, Akkadian millatum, and Eating One’s Fill Abraham Winitzer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Self-Portraits of Objects Jack Cheng . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From Mesopotamia to Modern Syria: Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives on Female Adornment during Rites of Passage Amy Rebecca Gansell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Ninety-Degree Rotation of the Cuneiform Script Benjamin Studevent-Hickman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vii

423 437

449 485 515

viii

table of contents

list of contributors

ix

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Jülide Aker is a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture. Currently, she’s finishing her dissertation on the ideological effects of Assurbanipal’s monumental lion hunt reliefs. Julia Assante (Ph.D. 2000, Columbia University) has written on eroticism, sexuality and magic in the ancient Near East. A number of her essays are targeted at the widespread distortions in scholarship that impose over-sexualized interpretations (e.g. prostitution) on women in Mesopotamian images and texts. Mehmet-Ali Ataç is assistant professor of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College. Jack Cheng received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 2001 for his thesis “Assyrian Music as Represented and Representations of Assyrian Music.” Based in Boston, he writes for academic and general audiences. Andrew C. Cohen, Ph.D. (2001) in Near Eastern Archaeology, Bryn Mawr College, is a Visiting Research Associate in Anthropology at Brandeis University. He is the author of Death Rituals, Ideology, and the Development of Early Mesopotamian Kingship: Toward a New Understanding of Iraq’s Royal Cemetery of Ur (Styx/Brill 2005). Elif Denel received her Ph.D. in 2006 from the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College with a dissertation entitled “Development of Elite Cultures and Sociopolitical Complexity in Early Iron Age Kingdoms of Northern Syria and Southeastern Anatolia.” Marian H. Feldman is associate professor of Near Eastern art at the University of California at Berkeley. She received her Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Harvard University in 1998 and is the author of Diplomacy by Design: Luxury Arts and an ‘International Style’ in the Ancient Near East, 1400-1200 BCE (2006).

x

list of contributors

Amy Rebecca Gansell is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Harvard University. As Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Intern at the Harvard University Art Museums in 2001-2002 she helped co-curate and write a gallery guide (Harvard University Art Museums Gallery Series 36, 2002) with Irene Winter for the University of Pennsylvania Museum’s traveling exhibition, “Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur.” She holds a Whiting Dissertation Completion Fellowship for 2006-2007. Ömür Harmanâah is an architectural historian who primarily works on the ancient Near East. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of Near Eastern art and archaeology at the Joukowsky Institute of Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University. He received his Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania in 2005 with a dissertation entitled, “Spatial Narratives, Commemorative Practices and the Building Project: New Urban Foundations in Upper SyroMesopotamia during the Early Iron Age.” Michelle I. Marcus received her M.A. from Columbia University and her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Her publications include Emblems of Identity and Prestige: The Seals and Sealings from Hasanlu, Iran (1996), as well as many articles about Assyrian palace program, body ornament and social identity, gender and sexuality, and seals and administration. She has held post-doctoral fellowships from the Getty Foundation, National Endowment from the Humanities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and others; teaching posts at Columbia University and the Pierpont Morgan Library; and consulting work at The Jewish Museum, The Children’s Museum of Manhattan, and The Heschel School. She is currently Resident Art Historian and Museum Liaison at The Dalton School in New York City. Tallay Ornan (Ph.D. 1998, Tel Aviv University) is the Rodney E. Soher Curator of Western Asiatic Antiquities at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. She is the author of The Triumph of the Symbol, Pictorial Representation of Deities in Mesopotamia and the Biblical Image Ban (2005). Her scholarly work focuses on ancient Near Eastern pictorial representations and their bearing on religious and political issues.

list of contributors

xi

Stephanie Reed is a Ph.D. candidate in Mesopotamian Art and Archaeology at the University of Chicago, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department. Since 2004, she has been a visiting scholar in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Harvard University. She is writing her dissertation on hospitality and gift-exchange in the court reliefs of Persepolis. John Malcolm Russell received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985, working under the supervision of Irene Winter. He teaches the art of the ancient Near East and Egypt at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. He has written four books and numerous articles, primarily on the subject of Neo-Assyrian art. Ann Shafer is assistant professor in the Performing and Visual Arts Department and Director of the Art Program at the American University in Cairo. She holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University in the History of Art & Architecture, an M.A. in Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Archaeology from the University of Chicago, and an M.Arch. from the Rhode Island School of Design. T. M. Sharlach is assistant professor in the History Department at Oklahoma State University. Her 1999 dissertation was published by Brill in 2003 as Provincial Taxation and the Ur III State. Benjamin Studevent-Hickman is a Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in Assyriology from Harvard in March 2006. Claudia E. Suter received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. Her revised dissertation was published by Styx in 2000 as Gudea’s Temple Building: The Representation of an Early Mesopotamian Ruler in Text and Image. She served four years as coordinator of the Diyala Project at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and is currently working on a complete catalogue and study of the ivory carvings from Samaria, Israel. Her main interest lies in ancient Near Eastern images and texts as reflections and expressions of philosophy of life, identity, ideology and power.

xii

list of contributors

TuÅba Tanyeri-Erdemir received her Ph.D. from Boston University in Archaeology in 2005, with a dissertation titled “Continuity, Change, and Innovation: Considering the Agency of Rusa II in the Production of the Imperial Art and Architecture of Urartu in the 7th Century B.C.” She currently teaches in the graduate programs of Middle Eastern Studies and Eurasian Studies in the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, and works at the Science and Technology Museum in the same university as a researcher. Abraham Winitzer received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2006 with a dissertation entitled “The Generative Paradigm in Old Babylonian Divination.” He teaches Semitic languages at Notre Dame. Irit Ziffer is curator of ceramics and metals at Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv. She received her Ph.D. in 1999 from Tel Aviv University. From1976-1979 and 1982 she was a member of the Aphek-Antipatris Expedition and from1999-2005 adjunct teacher in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Tel Aviv University. Her publications include, At That Time the Canaanites Were in the Land (1990), Islamic Metalwork (1996), Oh My Dove that Art in the Clefts of the Rock: The Dove Allegory in Antiquity (1998), and The Corn Spirit (2002).

table of contents

xiii

EDITORS’ NOTE The editors chose not to impose particular rules of transliteration, spelling or dates, although contributors have been consistent within their papers. Akkadian and foreign phrases are rendered in italics, and Sumerian is set in Helvetica bold font. References are listed at the end of each article, and abbreviations follow the standard forms found in the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (CAD), the American Journal of Archaeology (AJA), and the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI, found on-line at http://cdli. ucla.edu).

xiv

table of contents

table of contents

xv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume owes its existence to many people, just a few of whom are singled out here. Kathryn Slanski and John Russell contributed as editors in the initial stages; although various commitments drew them away, both of them helped shape the scope of the project, including the list of contributors. Jülide Aker compiled Irene’s bibliography for this volume, with assistance from John Russell and Brian Brown. All the contributors pitched in in numerous different ways—commenting on one another’s papers, fielding questions in their areas of expertise and offering practical advice. Michiel Klein Swormink at Brill has been extremely generous with his time and patient with us throughout the editing process. Over the course of this project, more than half a dozen babies were welcomed by contributors, in addition to numerous other life-changing events; we thank them and all the friends and families for letting their parents, partners, etc. spend some time reading and writing. Jack relied on the support, encouragement and good sense of his wife, Julie M. Crosson. Likewise, Marian is deeply grateful to James Berger for his constant support. Thank you.

xvi

table of contents

introduction

Introduction

1

2

j. cheng and m.h. feldman

introduction

3

INTRODUCTION Jack Cheng and Marian H. Feldman Irene Winter is widely recognized as the seminal scholar of ancient Near Eastern art of her generation, in large part due to the limitless imagination of her scholarship and her insistence on the material’s relevance in art historical and Mesopotamian studies. She began her career with a magisterial dissertation on North Syrian ivories that immediately established her commitment to an understanding of Near Eastern art through a contextualizing lens. She subsequently turned her attention to Neo-Assyrian arts and in particular the throneroom of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud. Building on the work of Julian Reade, Mario Liverani and others, Irene broke fresh ground in proposing the expression of a coherent Assyrian ideological system by means of a programmatic architectural, visual and textual design. Similarly, in her work on Gudea of Lagash, she brought text and image together and forged them through her familiarity with ethnography to reframe a study of statuary into a consideration of living idols that required care and maintenance. Again and again, objects that seem to have exhausted their store of historical information become not deconstructed but re-constructed under Irene’s gaze, opening up new possibilities for understanding them. Fully engaged in the Near Eastern sources while drawing upon theoretical approaches from numerous disciplines rarely brought together, Irene arrives at conclusions that had never before been considered and that irrevocably alter the way we see the artifacts under study. In addition, she has taken care to publish her papers in a range of journals and essay collections so that the material reaches the greatest audience and so that discussions of the theories and ideas presented enter a diversity of fields and disciplines where they may be further tested and applied. At the same time, Irene has always taken her pedagogical responsibilities seriously and has shared her teaching across a wide spectrum of eager acolytes. For that reason, when several of her students considered what form of tribute would be fitting for her, they decided that a volume of essays, written and edited by the younger generation that

4

j. cheng and m.h. feldman

has benefited so much from her intellectual generosity, was particularly apt. Thus was born this collection of essays that is uniquely informed by the perspective of our educational formation under her tutelage. Toward the end of January 2006, Irene and Jack spoke about the recent passing of Erica Reiner and Hayim Tadmor. “Those were the last two who had any connection to my dissertation,” she told him. “It’s a little like losing your last parent.” And then, of course, Irene told more stories of her mentors, never flinching from telling details even if they were unflattering—to them or to herself—and always conveying the mutual warmth and respect she felt for her friends. It’s a shame, Jack responded, that this rich history “behind the scenes” in Near Eastern scholarship is never preserved. Oh, but it is, Irene said. “I’ve heard so many stories from [Edith] Porada and Leo [Oppenheim] and I tell them to you, and you’ll pass down those stories, and maybe stories about me. They may not last more than three generations, but they’re there.” We had considered writing down some of these stories, but upon reflection the stories serve better in an oral tradition for a number of reasons. Libel laws being the first. But also because in an oral tradition the stories take on the sheen of legend or fable, and become more meaningful for that reason. One story we love to hear Irene tell involves two of her mentors, Edith Porada and Leo Oppenheim. The bare bones version: Edith, while studying in a Chicago library, was coaxed out for a ride in Oppenheim’s red convertible and even escaped the library from a second story window. We’re sure we’ve gotten more than one detail wrong in the retelling but it doesn’t matter—it’s a great story because of the wonderful image and because it reveals that the professor emeritus we knew at Columbia University was once vivacious and impetuous; for all her dedication to her work, even Porada knew there was more to life than the library. Stories about Irene are not like that. They don’t reveal a side of her that you didn’t know because those sides aren’t there. Her public conduct is as warm, generous, open and principled as her private life. And in turn, she socializes, follows horse racing and reads science fiction novels with the same enthusiasm and intensity that she brings to her scholarship. One doesn’t wonder what Irene “really” feels about art collectors, or a particular museum curator, or her students. In her teaching, her lectures and her writing she makes her positions clear.

introduction

5

So stories about Irene don’t show another side of her, they tend to reveal her depths, her strengths and her foibles. As her students, Irene’s scholarship impresses us, but it is her character that inspires us. Naturally, she is called upon by many people, committees and groups for her advice and expertise, and it can sometimes be hard for individual students to find a moment with her. But when they do, they know that they’ll have her to themselves, that she’ll have read in detail everything they have written and she will listen intently to whatever they have to say and respond instantly from her gut and give them a useful answer. And they’ll know if their argument or idea made an impression because Irene will reference it, always giving credit, in a lecture or a footnote; Irene is never prouder than when she can publicly cite the work of a student or young scholar. She can be intense. She talks faster than most people can think. A conversation with Irene sometimes feels like a tennis match: you’d do well to warm up first and then as things go along, you might find that your skill level improves as you try to match her shot for volley. It can be a surprise for new students to find out that her husband Bob—Robert C. Hunt—can be more intense than his wife; listening to them talk—about research or computers or gardening—one sometimes feels like one can see the ideas flying through the air, growing and reforming and coming into sharper focus each minute. Bob and Irene clearly belong together, always taking each other very seriously except for the times when they don’t take each other seriously at all. Lest this introduction seem too cloying, we need to state that Irene is hardly perfect. But what makes her example so worthy of emulation is that she recognizes her imperfections and is not afraid to share her problems with you, to allow herself to be vulnerable. One of the editors remembers talking with an art history graduate student who had just decided to leave Harvard. This student did not specialize in ancient Near Eastern art but had just had a talk with Irene in Irene’s capacity as graduate student advisor. We talked, the student said, about how hard it is to live the life of a scholar while having a family. Irene listened respectfully to the student and made the case for staying in the program, but ultimately she simply let the student speak her mind and then shared her own thoughts on the complex balance of life and work. We cried, the student recalled, I think it was the first time I had been to Irene’s office to do anything but get a signature and we talked and cried for an hour.

6

j. cheng and m.h. feldman You are very lucky to have her as your advisor, she said. All the contributors to this volume know that.

Indeed, it is Irene’s generosity—intellectual and otherwise—that has provided all of us contributors with the wherewithal to pursue our various studies into the ancient Near East. This volume strives to honor Irene J. Winter in its content, but also in its conception and production. Although Irene is loved and respected by her peers, she clearly relishes and excels in her role as a teacher, and so our contributors are drawn from the ranks of her students, the next generation of scholars that she has done so much to nurture. (We regret turning away her colleagues who offered to contribute here but if we had dithered on this one principle, this volume would have ballooned uncontrollably.) Contributors to the volume were solicited from both Irene’s “formally enrolled” students and also from many younger scholars who, while not technically her students, benefited from her mentorship. However, if we had solicited all of the students who have felt her influence in their work, this book would have been a rather diverse, not to say schizophrenic, offering of modern art, anthropology, Chinese archaeology and Egyptology, among other subjects. Our choice to limit our contributors to scholars of ancient Near Eastern art, history and culture reflects our appreciation of Irene’s mission to make Mesopotamia and its neighbors legitimate and important components of the art historical curriculum, and to include visual culture in the body of evidence that must be considered by scholars of the ancient Near East. Although two names are listed as editors of this book, all of the authors could also be named contributing editors. Drafts of each paper were distributed among the writers who then offered comments and critiques of each others’ work. Although some participants have never met, and some earned their degrees decades after others, we found a common ground in the approaches and concerns that we learned from Irene; we became a multigenerational cohort (to use a word Irene often invoked in her exhortations to us as students to find a like-minded and supportive community). The idea for this volume was conceived in 2002, with the thought that we could have it published within a few years. However, when the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, other archaeological collections and innumerable sites all over Iraq were vandalized and looted during the invasion and occupation of that country, our work stalled. Among

introduction

7

those who planned to participate in this volume, some went to Iraq, others created databases of looted material to aid authorities and most wrote letters and opinion pieces to their local newspapers. As of this writing, the situation in Iraq is still in flux. The project lay dormant for several years, and when activity once more began, personal situations had shifted—sometimes in large, sometimes small ways that have affected the final shape of the volume today, including the regretful absence of some participants. While Irene’s contributions to the field of ancient Near Eastern art are so numerous that it might seem impossible to make an accurate accounting of them, arguably one of the most profound has been her unfailing commitment to contextualization in the widest and richest sense of the term—from a careful consideration of the art within its archaeological settings to the ideological, rhetorical, ritual and aesthetic networks in which these arts existed and participated. It is this total integration that has inspired the title of this volume and that we hope to have emulated in the diverse array of articles gathered within it. To begin, however, we have two articles of a more personal nature from two of Irene’s first graduate students that put Irene herself into context. John Russell contributes a scholarly biography, assessing Irene’s contributions to the academy from his own perspective as a scholar, teacher and activist. Michelle Marcus writes about Irene’s role as an educator and mentor as a model for pre-college education, and she makes the case for the importance of and potential for studying visual culture even in kindergarten and elementary school classrooms. In the rest of the contributions, although we did not solicit specific topics, we were pleased to find that common themes emerged as we assembled the finished articles. And these themes, not surprisingly, intersect with those that Irene has explored in her own work. Thus, we have grouped the articles in five sections, the title of each having been drawn from seminal articles in Irene’s corpus.

I. “Seat of Kingship/A Wonder to Behold”: Architectural Contexts Irene’s work in the early 1980s on the Neo-Assyrian palace of Ashurnasirpal II pioneered an approach to studying the relationship between texts, images and architecture as an integrated and coherent program

8

j. cheng and m.h. feldman

designed to define or defend a royal ideology. Her students continue to explore the use of architecture and architectural decoration as symbol, especially as they convey messages about royal power. In this section, Irit Ziffer examines a group of Chalcolithic Levantine copper “crowns” and suggests they reflect palatial forms of an early, emerging rulership. Ömür Harmanâah explores the development of the orthostat tradition in North Syria, which the Neo-Assyrian rulers later drew upon for their palaces, and considers how the physical and structural qualities of the orthostats convey as much meaning as the images carved on them. Stephanie Reed problematizes the interpretation of the Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs of Ashurbanipal, finding traces of emotive affect in the depiction of prisoners of war that may be indicative of a little-explored aspect of conflicting Assyrian perceptions of the enemy.

II. “Idols of the King”: Ritual Contexts In her work on the statues of Gudea in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Irene considered the ways in which ancient monuments operated within contexts of ritual and in particular how such ritualized use reinforced royal needs. Monuments are not simply objects to admire, but rather key participants in social action and thus represent traces of physical acts and desires played out long ago. A number of our contributors have taken a similar tack, reconstructing ritual based on archaeological, representational or architectural evidence and then contextualizing how those rituals may have served significant functions in maintaining hegemony. Ann Shafer considers the peripheral monuments of Assyrian kings—carved stelae and rock reliefs—not only as marking the borders of conquest, but also as sites and residues of ritual performance critical to the maintenance of royal ideology. Tallay Ornan proposes that the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib may have appropriated aspects of the divine in his images, blurring the lines between god and king and moving toward a kind of royal deification. Elif Denel demonstrates that areas of the city of Carchemish, elaborately ornamented with carved reliefs and exhibiting evidence of offerings, were designed as focal points of rituals that reinforced the power of the North Syrian rulers. TuÅba Tanyeri-Erdemir traces the coevolution of temple architecture and state ideology in the Urartian Empire, arguing that rituals conducted

introduction

9

outside and inside state sponsored sacred sites were critical to the establishment and perpetuation of an Urartian royal ideology.

III. “Legitimization of Authority”: Ideological Contexts In her work on the seemingly mundane sealings of Ur III bureaucrats, as well as in her research on royal images, Irene has shown us that ideological messages are pervasive in the visual culture, the two being inextricably entwined with the larger socio-political landscape of the Near East. The three papers in this section explore different ways in which Near Eastern rulers derived political legitimization through artistic production. Jülide Aker’s contribution focuses on Ashurbanipal’s lion hunt reliefs to find the hierarchies of the royal personnel reflected and affirmed in the quality of the craftsmanship applied to different subjects. Marian Feldman traces the Mesopotamian, and in particular Akkadian Empire, lineage of Darius I’s “heroizing” style and proposes methods of transmission from Mesopotamia to Persia and from the third millennium to the first. Mehmet-Ali Ataç draws upon parallels from Classical Greece to explore the description of divine radiance—melammu in Akkadian—as a heroic quality associated with Mesopotamian kingship.

IV. “Sex, Rhetoric and the Public Monument”: Gendered Contexts Given that questions of gender and sexuality must be considered in any social history and Irene’s commitment to a total understanding of ancient Mesopotamia, it is not surprising that a part of her work has focused in this area. In her 1996 study of the Stele of Naram-Sin, Irene applied theories of gender and masculinity to demonstrate how Naram-Sin’s physical allure functioned as a key quality in his royal persona. Attempting to reconstruct the roles of women in Mesopotamian society, she has written on the Disk of Enheduanna, one of the very few images of women in the corpus of ancient Near Eastern art. The three contributions in this section follow suit, exploring diverse cases of gendered contexts. Claudia Suter identifies representations of priestesses in the Akkad through Isin-Larsa periods, and in so doing, brings their socio-economic and ideological roles into focus. Using a

10

j. cheng and m.h. feldman

case study of an archive attributed to a wife of Shulgi, Tonia Sharlach discusses the methodological considerations in studying a “woman’s” archive—including how to define such a thing. Julia Assante studies a group of presumably private monuments—pornographic lead inlays—proposing that the aesthetic treatment of women and foreigners seen on them, and the ways in which they would have been experienced by Assyrian courtiers, played a decisive role in bolstering the royal ideology of Tukulti-Ninurta I.

V. “Opening the Eyes and Opening the Mouth”: Interdisciplinary Contexts One of Irene’s great talents is to look at familiar objects in a fresh light and through new “eyes” in order to provide a different perspective on them. The title of this section is taken from an article from 2000 in which Irene drew upon living rituals observed in India to gain insight into the ancient practices in which artworks once existed. The article—like so much of Irene’s work—emphasizes and capitalizes on the benefits of crossing fields, disciplines, media, time and space. The contributions in this final section exhibit a similar “breaching” of traditional boundaries and in the process reveal new aspects of the ancient Near East. Andrew Cohen discusses how and why barley became a “key symbol”—an important and pervasive touchstone that helped define Mesopotamian culture on an economic as well as ideological level. Abraham Winitzer combines his knowledge of both Hebrew and Akkadian to parse the Deuteronomic laws regarding the taking of a neighbor’s fruit and grain. Jack Cheng considers the phenomenon of objects depicted with representations of themselves as a message from the past to the future. Amy Gansell, in a nod to Irene’s ethnoarchaeological explorations of Hindu ceremonies, researches a modern tradition of Syrian bridal adornment as a way of furthering our understanding of ancient jewelry. Benjamin Studevent-Hickman takes a new look at the moment at which cuneiform writing turned ninety degrees and discusses the variables involved, suggesting that to insist on a single point in time is to miss the dynamic complexity of language and writing. A few additional editorial observations may serve as further testament to the quality and breadth of Irene’s scholarship. Our authors cited

introduction

11

29 different articles by Irene, dating from 1974 to her more recent publications in 2004. It is certainly a tribute to her continuing relevance in the field that Irene has never had a fallow period in her scholarship and continues to publish groundbreaking work on almost every period of Mesopotamian art history.1 This is mirrored in the wide range of dates and cultures explored by the contributors, from Ziffer at the beginning of state formation in the fourth millennium to Feldman at the end of the independent ancient Near East in the Achaemenid period to Gansell’s ethnographic study of Syria in the 20th century CE. The Neo-Assyrian period—an area in which Irene has produced such impressive scholarship—is the subject of papers by Aker, Ornan, Reed and Shafer. Her interest in the first millennium kingdoms of northern Syria and southeastern Turkey surfaces in papers by Denel, Harmanâah and Tanyeri-Erdemir. Different aspects of the third millennium are addressed in the papers of Cohen, Sharlach and Suter. In addition, Irene’s continuing interest in the relationship between text and image is explored by Studevent-Hickman and Cheng. Her recent work on aesthetics and affect threads through many of these papers. Despite the disruptions and lengthy time in the production of this volume, we are delighted with the quality and breadth of the essays. In pitching the idea of this book to our publisher, we made the argument that Irene’s influence is so broad and deep that her students represent the next wave of scholarship of the visual culture of the ancient Near East. For Irene’s sake, we hope that promise has been fulfilled.

1 We had to limit the bibliography of Irene’s scholarship provided at the end of this introductory section to works through 2005; however, her corpus continues to grow as we know of several works in press and others in progress.

12

j.m. russell

a personal perspective

13

A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE ON IRENE WINTER’S SCHOLARLY CAREER John M. Russell I don’t know what might draw a student to specialize in the more popular areas of art history. One can imagine that a great high school art class, childhood trips to local art museums, or memorable trips abroad might incline one to focus on the study of Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, modern, or Asian art. For the art of these periods, cultural reinforcements abound. I suspect this is rarely the case, however, for the art of the ancient Near East, an area not well represented in most museums and one often neglected in art history survey classes. Students of ancient Near Eastern art, in other words, are made, not born. All those I can think of discovered this art more or less by chance, under the influence of a teacher who somehow inspired them to see the attractions of the art of a period that they otherwise wouldn’t have considered. This was certainly true for me. As a vaguely pre-med freshman at Washington University in St. Louis, I stumbled into Prof. Sarantis Symeonoglou’s “Art of Ancient Mesopotamia,” and was so taken with the experience that I changed my major to Art and Archaeology, and went on to take every ancient art course he taught. Graduating with an interest in art history in general, and ancient art in particular, I commenced graduate studies in the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania with no declared area of concentration but with strong interests in ancient and northern Renaissance art. At the end of my first semester at Penn, the ancient art professor left the department, leaving me to explore a range of later periods the following year. Thirty years ago, at the end of the Spring 1976 semester, it was looking very much like my future was Flanders. That all changed dramatically that fall with the arrival of Professor Winter at Penn to teach ancient art, so young in manner and appearance that all her students except me called her “Irene.” Despite the university’s strong tradition in ancient Near Eastern languages, history, and archaeology, to my knowledge she was the first ancient

14

j.m. russell

Near Eastern specialist to be appointed in the History of Art department, and her appointment probably wouldn’t have happened without lobbying from outside the department. Even so, she was expected to teach not only the Near East and Egypt, but Greece and Rome as well. I believe she considered these latter areas to be distractions from her main area of interest, but I wonder to what extent this obligatory immersion in the art of Greece and, especially, Rome influenced her later inquiries on narrative, portraiture, and empire? After years of teaching all of ancient art, she was able to negotiate the addition of a classical specialist, at which point the ancient Near Eastern art history position came into its own and continued as one of Irene’s enduring legacies to the field, even after her departure to accept another position in Near Eastern art history created specially for her, this time at Harvard University. Looking through my notes from “Ancient Mesopotamia,” the first course I took with Irene in Fall 1976, I’m struck by the themes already there that she would develop in her research over the following years: hierarchy in the Warka vase, landscape elements in the stele of Naram-Sin, the strong arm of Gudea, the royal presentation scene on Ur III seals, the relief program of Assurnasirpal II’s throne room. Apart from the content of the lectures themselves, my notes from that term remind me of two other remarkable aspects of Irene’s teaching. First, at the beginning of each lecture, she handed out a comprehensive bibliography for the period to be covered. These averaged three typed pages in length (and in those days they were indeed typed), with a full six pages devoted to the Neo-Assyrian period, and covered not only artistic media, but also excavation reports and cultural/historical studies. The first 2 pages were devoted to method and theory, including studies of style, narrative, semiotics, and reception, a foretaste of the rich range of methodologies that Irene was drawing upon in her investigations of ancient Near Eastern art. Although I didn’t think about it at the time, in retrospect I believe these bibliographies were critical to bringing students into the study of the field, serving as they did both to summarize the state of knowledge and to highlight gaps where one might make a contribution. Gaps there were aplenty. It’s stunning to see how much has been added in the past thirty years, due in no small measure to the work of Irene herself—the 26 pages of bibliography that Irene distributed to us in 1976 contained exactly one entry by Irene J. Winter! These bibliographies,

a personal perspective

15

sporadically updated, live on in the bibliographies that I and Irene’s other students now distribute to our own students. The other remarkable feature from my notes from Irene’s first semester at Penn is a notation on the last page that the class was invited to her house for an end-of-semester dinner, a tradition that she continues to this day. This prompts me to expand a bit on something that every contributor to this volume has experienced, namely Irene’s generosity as teacher, mentor, and friend. From my own graduate student days, I recall Irene inviting me to exclusive events, such as meetings of the Columbia University Seminar and the Marching and Chowder Society, and once there, always making sure to introduce me to everyone we met. Through her, I met Edith Porada, Haim and Miriam Tadmor, Nadav Na’aman, and many others who would become treasured friends and colleagues. When I needed to visit Iraq for dissertation research and couldn’t get a visa, Irene arranged for me to accompany Mac Gibson’s Oriental Institute expedition to Nippur. When my dissertation writing was getting bogged down because of distractions, she allowed me to use her office at Penn for a year while she was away on leave, and that proved to be just the environment I needed to settle down to serious writing. That many other students also felt she was an extraordinary teacher is clear from her receipt of the Lindbach Award for Distinguished Teaching from the University of Pennsylvania in 1980. I vividly recall (though unfortunately I didn’t write down her exact words) that during one class she observed that the key for the health of our field was the love that we bear for those who till it. She has certainly been a beacon of love and respect for a generation of students. This volume is another testament to Irene’s impact as a teacher. As teachers, there is no more important legacy that we leave our field than the students who will continue to nurture it. In this respect also, Irene has made our field a much richer place than she found it. In growing us as scholars, Irene never insisted that we do things her way. She did, however, insist that we develop three critical scholarly tools. First, was to learn to look closely at the object of our inquiry. No matter how familiar we are with a piece, no matter how many times we’ve looked at it, there’s always more to see. She demonstrated this lesson herself memorably in a class shortly after the publication of “After the Battle is Over” (1985), her magnificent study of the Stele of the Vultures. She first described to us the painstaking process of close

16

j.m. russell

observation and consultation between herself and the artist, Elizabeth Simpson, that resulted in the beautiful drawings of the stele’s two faces that were published in the article. Then she surprised us with the news that despite all that looking, they both had missed one of the stele’s most remarkable features: the hand and arm of a mystery figure who originally stood behind the king in his chariot, and who was later deliberately and selectively obliterated. The second tool was to learn the languages of the people we were studying. While this has long been standard scholarly practice in most areas of art history, it had not generally been true for the ancient Near East. There the prevailing view was that the study of Akkadian and Sumerian was beyond the ability of all but philologists and historians, and this may well have been true in an era when the dictionaries of these languages consisted of individual scholars’ handwritten notes. Irene must have been one of the first (if not the first) art historians to learn Akkadian, while earning her Master’s degree at the University of Chicago, home of the editors and files of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary project. By the time I started graduate school, however, the Assyrian Dictionary and Akkadisches Handwörterbuch were well advanced and Akkadian language classes were taught at every school with an ancient Near Eastern art history program, so there was no excuse not to learn the language. Sumerian was less accessible at that time, and there again Irene was the art-historical pioneer. I vividly remember when she won the MacArthur Prize in 1983. The prize gave her five years of total freedom to do whatever she chose, and she announced that she was going to use the opportunity to learn Sumerian at Penn, the home of the fledgling Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary. Not long thereafter, her articles began to be peppered with bold-face lower-case Sumerian syllables, joining the italicized Akkadian words that had featured in her work all along. As every student of Akkadian and Sumerian knows, the study of these languages is not primarily an exercise in mastering vocabulary and grammar, but rather an investigation of contexts, contexts in which is embedded the culture we seek to recover. It seems to me—although she might dispute this—that for Irene, the verbal (when we have it) is the fundamental key to the visual in understanding ancient Near Eastern art, that their words are a more reliable guide than our eyes to what they were seeing. This is not to say that

a personal perspective

17

she discounts the evidence of her eyes, only that she distrusts it, or at least that’s what this student learned from her. The third tool that Irene urged her students to develop was a hands-dirty familiarity with archaeological fieldwork practice. She gave us two reasons for this. First, you can’t critically read an excavation report unless you’ve experienced the process that generates one, and second, you can learn a lot about the way ancient people lived by living in the same environment yourself. I resisted this expectation at first, presumably imagining I had better things to do, but gradually the idea caught on as I discovered what is, for me, the fundamental difference between art history and archaeology: as an art historian, you chose the data set for your research; as an archaeologist, you dig and the data set chooses you. It strikes me that these three tools may derive from her own scholarly upbringing in three different disciplines: BA in Anthropology, MA in Oriental Languages and Literature, and PhD in Art History. Irene’s scholarly career has been characterized by one landmark study after another. In my ancient Near Eastern art classes, I’ve always assigned a large selection of required articles, and so many of them are by Irene that students joke that I might as well call the course “reading Irene Winter.” Nevertheless, a few points in her career stand out for me as major watersheds. One such was her receipt of the MacArthur Prize and ensuing study of Sumerian, which led to a series of startlingly original articles on Sumerian monuments and culture. Another was the publication of “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs” in 1981, which at the time just overwhelmed me with its richness of new ideas and methodologies. This was her first article to be written for a nonspecialist theory-sophisticated audience. It simultaneously reframed a number of major issues for those who work in the field of ancient Near Eastern art, while bringing the field and its issues to the attention of a new audience. The interdisciplinarity of her approach even carried over to her unorthodox reference system, which used both social-science-style author references in the text and lengthy humanities-style notes at the end. This is the first time I recall her employing a motif that recurs throughout her work, namely the structuring of her subject in triads of related elements. “Royal Rhetoric” begins with a summary of received opinion on the elements of narrative (content—telling—narrative),

18

j.m. russell

and then goes on to formulate a new and very powerful theory of political expression (ideology—rhetoric—propaganda). A similar approach figures in her various discussions of the concept of style (maker—object—perceiver) and aesthetics (making—appearance—affect). All of these formulations, it occurs to me, derive from the very human structure “idea—expression—reception,” and the even more fundamental “self—communication—others.” For Irene, I think, the big question isn’t “what is art about?” but rather “how does art communicate?” Other watersheds were the series of trips she took to India beginning in the mid-1980’s, resulting in her development of a rigorous ethnographic approach to investigating ancient Mesopotamian ritual practice (“Opening the Eyes and Opening the Mouth,” 2000), and her ongoing interest in Mesopotamian aesthetics, triggered by I don’t know what. In all of this work her research defined new areas of inquiry that have enriched our understanding of the past, and of ourselves. I recall a recent discussion of her “Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamian Art” (1995) in one of my classes at Massachusetts College of Art. Irene’s article makes the point that since the Mesopotamians apparently lacked an explicit concept of art, classical aesthetic approaches to appreciating their artifacts are anachronistic. She therefore proposes that we consider their handiwork in terms of the categories of quality that they themselves valued, namely “making, appearance, and affect.” Several of my students, artists all, observed that this seemed to them to be a superior way to evaluate any art, especially their own. Finally, to conclude, Irene’s influence on the field extends far beyond her scholarship and teaching. Her professional activities by themselves would seem to constitute a full-time job. Active on numerous committees of the Archaeological Institute of America and the College Art Association (where for years she has represented ancient Near Eastern art history pretty much singlehandedly), member of the editorial board of half a dozen journals, and one of the founders of the International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, she represents the ancient Near East to a wide range of professional audiences and works tirelessly to promote causes for the well-being of the field. Foremost among these causes is the issue of the illicit trade in antiquities and its destructive consequences for us, as humans and as students of antiquity. I have class lecture notes from 1978 where Irene digressed from the topic (Achaemenid Art) to educate us on the difference between provenanced and unprovenanced objects, and to

a personal perspective

19

warn us against scholarship that blurs the distinction. Whether it is urging museums to adopt an ethical approach to collecting (“Change in the American Art Museum,” 1992), promoting ethical standards for scholars, or educating students on the issues, her voice on this matter has been clear and singularly uncompromising. One of her greatest legacies is a generation of students and peers who understand why it is critical to protect heritage, and who, following her example, are willing to step forward to do so.

20

m.i. marcus

picturing the past, teaching the future

21

PICTURING THE PAST, TEACHING THE FUTURE1 Michelle I. Marcus How to Calm a Classroom An incantation by Katherine Pryor (fifth grader, 2002)2 A noisy classroom is like a drum, A steady beat, Never stopping, The hoof beat of the one-horned bull. O summoned Ishtar, Bring down your love, your hate, your temper. Teach the children a lesson, A kind lesson, a dangerous lesson, A lesson they will never forget. Restore the quiet, Bring back the peace, The calmness, We need you Ishtar, O summoned one. Thirty years ago, when I was recovering from a back injury in college, Irene Winter brought me an Old Babylonian clay plaque carved with the head of the ancient Near Eastern demon Humbaba (ca. 1700 BCE), on loan from the collection of the Queens College Art Library. Like other images of this guardian of the Cedar Forest, beheaded by the mythological heroes Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the plaque shows the demon full face, with big eyes, huge mouth and 1 I am extremely grateful to Karen Rubinson, Stephanie Fins, Neil Goldberg, Lynn LiDonnici, Jack Cheng and Marian Feldman for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Thanks also to the Dalton families who gave permission to publish student work. 2 Based on Sumerian hymns and incantations in B. Foster 1996, 68-71. Sharon Almog was the classroom teacher.

22

m.i. marcus

labyrinth-like markings framing the facial features. And, like the Greek Gorgon after him, once disembodied, the head of Humbaba became a protective amulet. Irene, of course, knew the affective power of visual things. Although open access to the precious cedar wood of the Lebanon didn’t mean to me what it did to the residents of southern Mesopotamia, that artifact nevertheless carried with it an arsenal of meaning that still stays with me: about one incredible teacher; about hope, healing and heroism; and about the relationship between the context of an object and its meaning. To fully appreciate this incident one has to realize that it followed a year of phone conversations about the Gilgamesh Epic between Irene Winter and myself, a seventeen-year-old undergraduate, temporarily confined to bed. We talked for hours about big intellectual ideas, about the creation of hybrid monsters in the ancient Near East and the concomitant rise of the early state. She even had me call Professor Gregory Johnson in the Anthropology Department at Hunter College to talk about my notion that the popularity of hybrid human and animal creatures in the art of the third millennium BCE was related to new needs to harness the forces of nature for the purposes of city life. This experience summarizes for me all the qualities that make Irene Winter such a phenomenal teacher: her humanity, kindness and spirit; her generosity; her respect for her students; her sense of collaboration; her ability to see the big picture; her skill at pulling compelling ideas out of even the most rudimentary visual materials; her infectious excitement about the power of visual things; her interest in the relationship between texts and images; her insistence on the importance of context; her ability to pull all the pieces together in a cohesive, convincing way; and her evolving commitment to the methods of art history. Irene Winter’s approach to teaching the art history of the ancient Near East is so extraordinary that it has provided her students with a vast range of ideas to explore. As this volume indicates, her influence has encouraged generations of scholars to pursue broad issues of gender, sexuality, narrative, aesthetics, power, program, ideology, kingship, iconography and style, as well as particular and detailed studies of cylinder seals, sculpture in the round, relief-sculpture, inscriptions and pedagogy. She has us all turning the visual evidence upside down and inside out, always with an emphasis on the context of the material—historical, social, cultural and archaeological.

picturing the past, teaching the future

23

She has us studying Baroque palace programs in order to get insights into Assyrian relief sculpture. She has us studying Akkadian, so that we can try to make sense of some of the metaphors we see in the art. In other words, there is always an emphasis on interdisciplinary study in her scholarship, as well as her pedagogy. Thanks to a relationship with the Anthropology Department at the University of Pennsylvania, I had the privilege of working on the cylinder seals and sealings, and then the personal ornaments from the Iron Age site at Hasanlu, Iran.3 With Irene’s direction, these simple objects brought me into contact with some of the larger theoretical ideas in art history—about cultural identity, gender and sexuality, and body decoration (for example, Marcus 1988, 1993). Irene encourages us all to work with excavated materials, for both ethical and intellectual reasons. She demonstrates in her teaching and writing that insights always become richer when one can embed a work of art in its original context. As a teacher, she is meticulous in her comments on our papers, to be published or otherwise. She has taught many of us how to pull slides for a presentation: to find the perfect pair of images, to make the very best comparison, to make a particular point in the most concise, visually convincing way. This is remarkable training that could have taken any of us anywhere. Irene teaches us how to tease original meaning out of works of art. With Humbaba, however, she was teaching me about the secondary life of things, how their meaning shifts once they are withdrawn from their original social setting (Kopytoff 1986). In my own life, transformations and changes, including my experiences as a new mother, presented a “secondary life” for my years of college and post-graduate study, teaching and scholarship: as the Resident Art Historian at the Dalton School, a private, kindergarten through twelfth-grade school in New York City. This position has given me the opportunity to apply what I learned from Irene about pedagogy and content to an audience of young learners and teachers. In the K-12 classroom, as in more advanced studies, images have the remarkable power to motivate beginning learners to care about the past. What is wonderful about working with such a young audience is the challenge it provides to teach the very basics of what I do as an art 3

With the generous permission and support of Robert H. Dyson, Jr., director of the Hasanlu excavations.

24

m.i. marcus

historian: how to look; how to compare; how to contextualize; how to see the big picture; in the end, how to use visual materials as primary sources of evidence about the past, not simply as illustrations of a text; and, best of all, to do these things with students that still have a sense of fun in their approach to learning, unburdened by years of bias. In the fifth grade, our students can immediately see connections between art styles and political ideologies; for instance, that the third millennium ruler Eannatum chose to stress his role as a military leader in a time of competing city states in his Victory Stele, while the later ruler Gudea drew on Early Dynastic temple figures in order to promote his proper relationship to the gods in his statues in the round. Our third graders can suggest that Mughal manuscript patrons incorporated elements of landscape and perspective from contemporary European art in order to show off their cosmopolitan relationships with the west. I have learned that once youngsters are given a few well-selected images, a sense of context and good directions in how to pull information out of visual sources, their capacity for making sophisticated inferences is remarkable. If our goal as educators is to encourage more sophisticated visual thinking (Elkins 2003), to keep the field of history alive beyond the graduate school arena or to create a generation of global critical thinkers, then it makes sense to start the conversation about what is worth learning as early as possible. And yet, at a time when students need better tools to navigate an increasingly complex visual world, public school education is stressing reading and math at the expense of the humanities and visual history (Klein 2006). My official mandate at Dalton is to integrate visual materials into the K-12 academic curriculum. That means teaching students and teachers how to use works of art and artifacts as historical tools in order to clarify the past. It means passing on Irene’s excitement about the power of visual things, about looking carefully and critically, always with an eye towards context and meaning. And, it means adapting Irene’s extraordinary pedagogical skills to a much younger audience. Irene herself has addressed the issue of teaching in an article about the introductory syllabus at Harvard University, co-authored with Henri Zerner (1995). It summarizes their collaborative, interdisciplinary, challenging and far-reaching approach to visual materials. The field continues to attempt to redress the long-standing neglect of education within our professional ranks. The College Art Association has called for articles that discuss ways to engage beginning viewers,

picturing the past, teaching the future

25

by which they mean college undergraduates (Bersson 2005). Similarly, James Elkin and others have written compellingly about how to connect our visual expertise with pedagogical strategies that artfully engage college students in visual learning (2003, see also Sandell 2005). Some of the pedagogy sessions at the 2006 Annual Conference of the College Art Association in Boston spoke to the value of interchanges between the academy and learning work in different environments, such as museums, rural colleges, community colleges, civic dialogues, as well as K-12 schools. These efforts strive to bring higher education, especially art history, long consigned to an outsider status, into the mainstream (Bersson 2005). In the K-12 arena as well, there is a vigorous discourse about teaching with visual materials. This began with a series of publications by the Getty Foundation and Harvard’s Project Zero, which called for integrating art history into what Howard Gardner and others then called a disciplinary-based (studio) arts education (Dobbs 1998; Gardner and Perkins 1989; Alexander and Dey 1991). More recently, educators have begun to discuss “visual literacy” (Yenawine 2003, 2005). This term has a range of meanings, but for me, primarily, it emphasizes the skills of looking and thinking about visual media that, like the skills of reading and math, need to be part of an integrated curriculum at every grade level. Although this educational movement is a positive development, more needs to be done to connect visual literacy curricula with the study of history and with some of the most interesting concepts of art history: for example, how art can be used as evidence of cultural interaction, the concept of style, the concept of influence, the idea of a visual program, and the relationship between art and ideologies. College level and K-12 educators have similar goals, such as finding ways to foster respect for the cultural heritage of people other than ourselves (Smith 2006) and reaching students with different learning styles. This discussion of some of the curricula that my colleagues and I have developed at Dalton may bridge the gap that exists between these two groups engaged in separate conversations on similar subjects. At the same time, it may redress the bias that exists in the academy against having graduates work on the pre-college level, including writing for a younger audience. One of the many things I have learned at Dalton is that visual literacy can be introduced immediately, when children are in

26

m.i. marcus

Kindergarten. At this point, the main goal is to start teaching children how to look and describe what they see, especially in museum settings. Nevertheless, it’s not too early to sneak in larger concepts: about personal identity when looking at self-portraits; cultural style when looking at period rooms; and pictorial narrative when looking at nineteenth-century representations of Greek myths. When the classroom curriculum directs the choice of images, it becomes relatively simple, even at this level, to integrate larger concepts “into the picture.” The third grade happens to have one of the richest visual literacy curricula at the school, largely because it is wrapped around simulated archaeological excavations that the children dig up in specially constructed plastic boxes in the back yard of the school (figure 1). Our resident archaeologist, Neil Goldberg, creates a three-level site for each class, packed with hundreds of artifacts that are directly tied to the curriculum, which explores cultural exchange in different parts of the world during the so-called Age of Exploration (ca. 1200-1500 CE). It takes the students about six to eight weeks to uncover their finds using true scientific methods. The excavation gives the children the motivation and sense of ownership they need to carry out very sophisticated analyses of one or two artifacts of their choosing. For the analysis, the students have access to a team of experts; in addition to Neil Goldberg and myself, there are Stephanie Fins, our cultural anthropologist affiliated with the American Museum of Natural History, the classroom teachers, the science teachers, computer technicians and outside specialists.4 This curriculum has become so fine-tuned over the years, that, by now, no matter what artifact a student chooses to analyze, there will be enough comparative information available for them to do a sophisticated, satisfying job.5 We ended up creating on-line galleries of carefully chosen images for each of the six sites the children excavate.6 Through these, when 4

Including, to date: Tracy Fedochnik, Margaret O’Connor, Mary Smeltzer, Barbara Cramer, Jody Seifert, Karen Bass, Scott Lerner, Ben Lesch, Fred White and Laura Haddad. 5 This curriculum, including an archaeology component, has been adapted with a small budget by Pamela Weinreich and Denise Jordan for a third-grade unit on China at PS 158 in New York City. The Dalton program has been discussed previously at the annual conference of the New York Association of Independent Schools, New York, 2004, as well as at a conference on the AMICO Library K-12 pilot program at Asia Society, New York, 2003. 6 This work was supported by grants from the AMICO Library (now CAMIO) and Artstor.

picturing the past, teaching the future

27

one young girl found a blue and white porcelain vase in a simulated excavation of Kashgar, she was able to find comparanda among our gallery of fifteenth-century Chinese ceramics and suggest a similar date and place of production for her own artifact. She then sorted through our galleries of Islamic paintings and found similar vessels in a courtly scene in a Timurid manuscript page. She made the intelligent suggestion that her vessel was imported from eastern China and traveled along the Silk Road to Kashgar, where it was used in elite courtly settings by individuals wearing decorated garments in highly decorated palace settings. Likewise, when a student uncovered a pearl earring in their simulated site at New Amsterdam, she used paintings by Vermeer to suggest that the earring once belonged to a Dutch woman who may have worn a blue head scarf and sat at a table with a Chinese-style bowl in a room with Delft tiles along the floor boards. The students are able to go from here to quite sophisticated conversations about population movement, commercial exchange, inexpensive copies of Chinese artifacts, wealth and status. The point is that the imagery allows the students to reach a level of critical thinking that would not have been possible from texts (especially third-grade texts) alone. This past year, we tried organizing a third-grade Silk Road curriculum around the concept of style.7 We devoted one week each to Renaissance Europe, Timurid Persia, Mughal India and Ming China, in anticipation of the mix of goods the students would be finding in their simulated excavations of Kashgar. Through a combination of classroom work and museum trips, the children generated a list of stylistic attributes for each cultural group. With that list in mind, they were able to play a style game that the classroom teacher, Tracy Fedochnik, and I developed. Each child was given a small laminated card with a telling detail from a larger work of art. The children were expected to identify the larger cultural group to which the detail belonged and then, with a partner, articulate their reasons: the bend of a tree, the netted body of a dragon, the perspective in the background. Ultimately, of course, the goal of the exercise was for the students to see how elements of style were able to inform their understanding of long-distance interaction 500 years ago. The notion that third graders 7

For other curricular ideas on the Silk Road, see UNESCO 1997; The Silk Road Student Activity Package 1997; Along the Silk Road: People, Interaction and Cultural Exchange nd.

28

m.i. marcus

could meet this goal came from two sources: the collaboration with a wonderful classroom teacher and the legacy of Irene Winter. By the time the children enter Middle School, we expect them to be visually equipped to address some of the more theoretical concepts that arise in the history curriculum, such as imperial program, art and ideology, power and propaganda, and gender and other aspects of social identity. In the sixth grade, the students study the Iron Age in Assyria, Greece, and Rome, using a curriculum centered on a compelling in-house computer program that simulates the excavations of an archaeological site, one based on the Assyrian outpost at Til Barsip in northern Syria in the first half of the year, the other a hypothetical Classical Greek site. This was created before my arrival by the several other Near Eastern archaeologists that we are so lucky to have on staff at Dalton.8 Obviously, this curriculum was already heavily driven by visual culture. Instead, what needed attention when I first joined the staff was a unit on Bronze Age Mesopotamia, taught in the fifth grade by classroom teachers with little background in the Near East or in how to use primary visual sources. The initial idea, conceived in collaboration with the classroom teachers, 9 was to center the curriculum around the available literature. We let the literature introduce the related intellectual issues and material culture; for example, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (K. P. Foster 1999) to raise issues of geography, the development of cities and long-distance exchange; The Gilgamesh Epic (Zeman 1998) to talk about concepts of kingship, militarism, building programs and cultural values; and The Descent of Ishtar (Moore and 8 This program, called Archaeotype, was written by Mary Kate Brown, Neil Goldberg and William Waldman, with recent revisions by Craig Bolotin. John Russell helped provide the original architectural data from Til Barsip for the Assyrian simulation. See a description of the program in Gordon 2000. The software has been shared with a school in California, as well as with John Russell then at Columbia University and Rita Wright at New York University. Dalton commissioned Donald Sanders (Institute for the Visualization of History) to create and add a virtual simulation of the palace at Til Barsip to the Archaeotype software, available from [email protected]. Our Near Eastern and archaeology staff includes Goldberg, Brown, myself, as well as Susan Springer and Paul Zimmerman. 9 Especially Lisa Gross, in addition to Carole Brighton, Sharon Almog, Susan Jaxheimer, Sage Sevilla-Morillo, Lisa Larsen and, more recently, Maria Arellano and Amy Terpening. As the fifth-grade teachers have become more comfortable with this material, it is a pleasure to see them revise the original curriculum to suit their own teaching needs and styles.

picturing the past, teaching the future

29

Balit 1996) to bring in goods from the Royal Cemetery at Ur, as well as issues of death, burial, social stratification and prestige.10 As part of this curriculum, the students create their own texts, one of which was the remarkable incantation with which this essay began. The fifth grade also uses a set of modern impressions of cylinder seals in the collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library, which Sidney Babcock created for us. These impressions provide a unique opportunity to practice focused looking, sketching and describing in a classroom setting, as well as to introduce the function of cylinder seals in the ancient Near East (figures 2, 3). Best of all, the students have the rare privilege of handling the actual seals in the Morgan Library, rolling them across wet clay and keeping their baked impressions.11 In the context of a curriculum about the development of cities and the concomitant rise of craft specialization, long-distance trade, systems of administration and emblems of prestige, this experience is a remarkable one. Even in the fifth grade, the students feel the power of handling 3000-year-old objects, just as I did when Edith Porada allowed her graduate students to handle these same seals in the Morgan Library and when Irene let me borrow the clay amulet of Humbaba when I was an undergraduate. The key at any level is providing the proper contextual information. The High School is a different animal in some ways, with too much to cover in too little time and an agenda tied to college admissions. Nevertheless, collaboration with some of the English teachers has created lovely opportunities to talk in small groups at the Metropolitan Museum of Art about the relationship between text and image; for instance, between the Odyssey and Greek male statuary; the Gospel of Luke and Spanish Baroque paintings; and Willa Cather and contemporary American portraiture (see Johnson 1994). At this point,

10

For other curricular ideas for Mesopotamia, see Oriental Institute of Chicago 2006; Stix and Hrbek 2001; and Marcus and Gross 2000. See also Sumer and its City State, issue of Calliope (Summer 2003), with articles by Richard L. Zettler and Elizabeth E. Payne. 11 I am especially grateful to Sidney Babcock, Curator of Seals and Tablets at the Morgan Library, for providing students at Dalton with this rare opportunity. In a time when ancient Near Eastern objects are bought and sold on eBay, it is a pleasure to witness how certain collections can be marvelous tools for teaching purposes without the notion of buying antiquities coming into the picture. Although this opportunity is not available at most schools, many museums have study collections that are available for teaching purposes.

30

m.i. marcus

the students are intellectually ready to talk about the affective properties of art, its ability to evoke an emotional response, as well as to influence the way people think and behave; for example, the way Baroque representations of the Passion would have made the intended audience feel and believe the suffering of Christ on a level that the text alone could not; or the way the perfect athletic male body in Greek art would have served as a model of the well-fit citizen, ready to act on behalf of his city state. What is so compelling about this K-12 program is that it aims to provide the students with the skills and content of a cultural history curriculum in a sequential integrated fashion. It seamlessly incorporates material culture into whatever the students are doing in the classroom, rather than segregating the images in a class by themselves.12 Part of what makes the program work and what makes it so much fun to teach is that it is a team effort. The cultural anthropologist, archaeologist and myself, who have had similar training in different disciplines, all speak the same intellectual language. We also make every effort to bring in outside experts, for instance: a manuscript illuminator to create Medieval or Aztec manuscripts with the third and seventh graders; actors to recite Civil War poetry to the eighth grade; a costume designer from the High School to create seventeenth-century British costume with the third graders; Stephen Murray of Columbia University to talk to the seventh-grade teachers and students about Amiens Cathedral; and various upper-school historians to talk to the lower-school students. Most important, we work with extraordinary classroom teachers and a great technology team, who are willing to collaborate and share their ideas as well as their students. Personally, the joy for me is seeing how visual materials can get youngsters hooked on history; and how the skills I learned from Irene can be adapted to younger students, who are just as eager as college students to make visual things talk. More important, there exists an opportunity for collaboration between art historians and K-12 educators: the former can help classroom teachers integrate visual materials into their history curriculum; and the latter can share their strategies for active learning. The point is there is room for art historians (even those with a specialty in the ancient Near East) to join 12

An official art history class is offered by Robert Meredith for advanced highschool students.

picturing the past, teaching the future

31

the mainstream. Irene Winter has done so much more than produce academic scholars. She has produced a generation of students who knows the value of visual materials, inside and outside the Near East; who knows that by keeping people in touch with the world and its history, visual resources can promote a much-needed understanding of cultural difference.

References Alexander, Kay, and Michael Dey, eds. 1991. Discipline-Based Art Education: A Curriculum Sampler. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust. Along the Silk Road: People, Interaction and Cultural Exchange. nd. USC-UCLA Joint East Asian Studies Center (at http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/sum-inst/links/silkunit.htm). Burns, Mary. 2006. A Thousand Words: Promoting Teachers’ Visual Literacy Skills. Multimedia and Internet@Schools 13: 16-20. Bersson, Robert, ed. 2005. Building the Literature of Art Pedagogy. CAA News: Newsletter of the College Art Association 30 (September). Dobbs, Stephen Mark. 1998. Learning in and through Art. Los Angeles: The Getty Education Institute for the Arts. Elkins, James. 2003. Visual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction. New York: Routledge. Foster, Benjamin. 1996. Before the Muses. Vol. 1. Bethesda: CDL Press. Foster, Karen Polinger. 1999. The City of Rainbows: A Tale from Ancient Sumer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum Publications. Gardner, Howard, and David Perkins, eds. 1989. Art, Mind, and Education: Research from Project Zero. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Gordon, David T., ed. 2000. The Digital Classroom: How Technology is Changing the Way We Teach and Learn. Cambridge: Harvard Education Letter. Johnson, Warren. 1994. American Literature and Interdisciplinary Study. In “A Resource for Educators,” an unpublished teacher’s guide to the exhibition American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885-1915. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, unpaginated. Klein, Joel I. 2006. A Letter to Parents from Chancellor Joel I. Klein. The New York City Department of Education (June 1). Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. The Cultural Biography of Things. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai, 64-91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lidner, Molly M. 2005. Problem-Based Learning in the Art-History Survey Course. CAA News 30 (September): 7-9, 41-43.

32

m.i. marcus

Marcus, Michelle I. 1993. Incorporating the Body: Adornment, Gender, and Social Identity in Ancient Iran. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 3: 157-178. ———. 1988. Emblems of Status and Prestige: The Seals and Sealings from Hasanlu, Iran. Philadelphia: University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Marcus, Michelle I., and Lisa Gross. 2000. Southern Mesopotamia During the Bronze Age. Unpublished curriculum package for the fifth grade, The Dalton School (Summer, revised edition). McKay, John P., Bennett D. Hill, John Buckler, and Patricia Buckley Ebrey. 2004. A History of World Societies. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Moore, Christopher, and Christina Balit. 1996. Ishtar and Tammuz: A Babylonian Myth of the Seasons. New York: Kingfisher Books. Oriental Institute of Chicago. 2006. Mesopotamia: Ancient History, Our History. Chicago (at http://mesopotamia.lib.uchicago.edu). Sandell, Renee. 2005. Inspiring Pedagogy: The Art of Teaching Art. CAA News 30 (September): 6-7, 40. The Silk Road Student Activity Package. 1997. Vancouver BC: North American Multimedia Corporation. Smith, Roberta. 2006. Should Museums Always Be Free? The New York Times (Sunday, July 22): 7, 13. Stix, Andi, and Frank Hrbek, 2001. Ancient Mesopotamia. Westminster, CA: Teacher Created Materials. UNESCO. 1997. The Silk Roads: Roads of Encounter. Winter, Irene J., and Henri Zerner. 1995. Art and Visual Culture. Art Journal 54, no. 3 (Special issue: Rethinking the Introductory Art History Survey, ed. Bradford R. Collins): 42-43. Yenawine, Philip. 2003. Jump Starting Visual Literacy. Art Education 56/1 (January 31): 6-12. (HTML, distributed by ProQuest Information and Learning). ———. 2005. Thoughts on Visual Literacy. In Handbook of Research on Teaching Literacy through the Communicative and Visual Arts, ed. James Flood, Shirley Brice Heath, and Diane Lapp, 845-846. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zeman, Ludmila. 1998. Gilgamesh the King (The Gilgamesh Trilogy). Toronto: Tundra Books.

picturing the past, teaching the future

33

Figure 1. View of the middle level of Dalton’s simulated excavation at Kashgar, third grade. Photograph courtesy of Neil Goldberg.

Figure 2. Photograph of two fifth-grade students (2005) working together with a modern impression of an Old Babylonian cylinder seal in the collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library and an enlarged photograph of the impression. Impression courtesy of the Morgan Library. Photograph courtesy of Susan Jaxheimer.

34

m.i. marcus

My seal design shows three people, two women and one man in a presentation scene. The first woman is a goddess with a flounced skirt and a horned headdress. She has her hands up in front of her face. The second figure is a king, who is wearing a “ski cap” and a short robe. He is holding a sword and he has very muscular legs. The third figure is Ishtar wearing a robe or dress. She has arrows coming out of her shoulders and is holding a mace or something. There is also cuneiform on the side.

Figure 3. Sketch and description of the impressed design of an Old Babylonian cylinder seal in the collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library (No. 371). By Celena Kopinkski, fifth grader, 2003. Photograph courtesy of the Dalton School.

bibliography for irene j. winter

35

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR IRENE J. WINTER, 1967–2005 1968. The Carmona Ivories and the Phoenicians in Spain. M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, Chicago. 1968. (with Stephanie Rachum.) Ingathering: Ceremony and Tradition in New York Public Collections. New York: The Jewish Museum. 1973. North Syria in the Early First Millennium B.C. with special reference to Ivory Carving. Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York. 1974. Review of Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East, by Henrietta GroenewegenFrankfort. Journal of the American Oriental Society 94, no. 4: 505-506. 1975. Review of Untersuchungen zur späthethitischen Kunst, by Winfried Orthmann. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 34: 137-142. 1976. (editor) Ancient and Antique Glass in the Queens College Art Collection. New York: Queens College Press / City University of New York. 1976. Carved Ivory Furniture Panels from Nimrud: A Coherent Subgroup of the North Syrian Style. Metropolitan Museum Journal 11: 25-54. 1976. Phoenician and North Syrian Ivory Carving in Historical Context: Questions of Style and Distribution. Iraq 38: 1-22. 1977. Perspective on the “Local Style” of Hasanlu IVB: A Study in Receptivity. In Mountains and Lowlands: Essays in the Archaeology of Greater Mesopotamia, edited by Louis D. Levine and T. Cuyler Young, Jr., 371-386. Malibu, Calif.: Undena. 1979. On the Problems of Karatepe: The Reliefs and their Context. Anatolian Studies 29: 115-151.

36

bibliography for irene j. winter

1980. A Decorated Breastplate from Hasanlu, Iran: Type, Style, and Context of an Equestrian Ornament. Hasanlu Special Studies 1, University Museum Monograph 39. Philadelphia: The University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. 1981. Is There a South Syrian Style of Ivory Carving in the Early First Millennium B.C.? Iraq 43: 101-130. 1981. Review of The Nimrud Ivories, by Max E. L. Mallowan. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 40, no. 4: 351-354. 1981. Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs. Studies in Visual Communication 7, no. 2: 2-38. 1982. Art as Evidence for Interaction: Relations between the Assyrian Empire and North Syria. In Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im Alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. / XXV. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Berlin, 3. bis 7. Juli 1978, edited by Hans-Jörg Nissen and Johannes Renger, 355-382. Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 1. Berlin: D. Reimer. 1983. Carchemish àa kiàad puratti. Anatolian Studies 33 (Special Number in Honour of the Seventy-fifth Birthday of Dr. Richard D. Barnett, 23rd January, 1984): 177-197. 1983. The Program of the Throneroom of Assurnasirpal II. In Essays on Near Eastern Art and Archaeology in Honor of Charles Kyrle Wilkinson, edited by Prudence O. Harper and Holly Pittman, 15-31. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1984. Review of La statuaire du proche-orient ancien, by Agnès Spycket. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 36, no. 1: 102-114. 1985. After the Battle Is Over: The Stele of the Vultures and the Beginning of Historical Narrative in the Art of the Ancient Near East. In Pictorial Narrative in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, edited by Herbert L. Kessler and Marianna Shreve Simpson, 11-32. Studies in the History of Art 16, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts Symposium Series 4. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art.

bibliography for irene j. winter

37

1985. Ivory Carving. In Ebla to Damascus: Art and Archaeology of Ancient Syria, edited by Harvey Weiss, 339-346. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. 1985. Art History in the Study of the Ancient Near East: Historical Perspective and a Personal Debt. Source 5, no. 1 (Special issue: Essays in Honor of Howard McP. Davis): 2-6. 1986. Eannatum and the “King of Kià”?: Another Look at the Stele of the Vultures and ‘Cartouches’ in Early Sumerian Art. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 76, no. 2: 205-212. 1986. The King and the Cup: Iconography of the Royal Presentation Scene on Ur III Seals. In Insight Through Images. Studies in Honor of Edith Porada, edited by Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, Paolo Matthiae and Maurits Van Loon, 253-268. Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 21. Malibu, Calif.: Undena. 1987. Legitimation of Authority through Image and Legend: Seals Belonging to Officials in the Administrative Bureaucracy of the Ur III State. In The Organization of Power: Aspects of Bureaucracy in the Ancient Near East, edited by McGuire Gibson and Robert D. Biggs, 69-106. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 46. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 1987. Women in Public: The Disk of Enheduanna, the Beginning of the Office of EN-Priestess, and the Weight of Visual Evidence. In La Femme dans le proche-orient antique. Compte rendu de la XXXIIIe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Paris, 7-10 Juillet 1986), edited by Jean-Marie Durand, Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations. 1988. North Syria as a Bronzeworking Centre in the Early First Millennium BC: Luxury Commodities at Home and Abroad. In BronzeWorking Centres of Western Asia c. 1000-539 B.C., edited by John E. Curtis, 193-225. London and New York: Kegan-Paul International. 1989. The Body of the Able Ruler: Toward an Understanding of the Statues of Gudea. In Dumu-E2-dub-ba-a: Studies in Honor of Åke W. Sjöberg, edited by Hermann Behrens, Darlene Loding and Martha T. Roth,

38

bibliography for irene j. winter

573-583. Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 11. Philadelphia: The University Museum. 1989. The “Hasanlu Gold Bowl”: Thirty Years Later. Expedition 31, no. 2-3: 87-106. 1989. North Syrian Ivories and Tell Halaf Reliefs: The Impact of Luxury Goods upon “Major” Arts. In Essays in Ancient Civilization Presented to Helene J. Kantor, edited by Albert Leonard, Jr. and Bruce Beyer Williams, 321-332. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 47. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 1990. Review of Phoenician Bronze and Silver Bowls, by Glenn Markoe. Gnomon 62: 236-241. 1991. Reading Concepts of Space from Ancient Mesopotamian Monuments. In Concepts of Space, Ancient and Modern, edited by Kapila Vatsyayan, 57-73. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Abhinav. 1991. Review of The Monument: Art, Vulgarity and Responsibility in Iraq, by Samir al-Khalil [Kanan Makiya]. Art in America (September): 47-51. 1992. Change in the American Art Museum: The (An) Art Historian’s Voice. In Different Voices: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Framework for Change in the American Art Museum, edited by M. Tucker, 30-57. New York: Association of American Art Museum Directors. 1992. “Idols of the King”: Royal Images as Recipients of Ritual Action in Ancient Mesopotamia. Journal of Ritual Studies 6, no. 1 (Special issue: Art in Ritual Context, edited by Kathleen Ashley and Irene J. Winter): 13-42. 1992. Review of An Archaeological History of Religions of Indian Asia, by Jack Finegan. Journal of Field Archaeology 19, no. 3: 413-417. 1992. Review of Ivories from Room 37 Fort Shalmaneser [Ivories from Nimrud, Fasc. IV 1-2], by Georgina Herrmann. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 51, no. 2: 135-141.

bibliography for irene j. winter

39

1992. (editor, with Kathleen Ashley.) Art in Ritual Context. Special issue of the Journal of Ritual Studies 6, no. 1. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh. 1993. Review of Bronze and Iron. Ancient Near Eastern Artifacts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by Oscar W. Muscarella. Journal of the American Oriental Society 113, no. 3: 492-495. 1993. Review of The Return of Cultural Treasures, by Jeanette Greenfield. Art Journal 52, no. 1: 103-107. 1993. “Seat of Kingship” / “A Wonder to Behold”: The Palace as Construct in the Ancient Near East. Ars Orientalis 23 (Special issue: Pre-Modern Islamic Palaces, edited by Gülru NecipoÅlu): 27-55. 1994. Affective Images. In Review Feature: Talismans and Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual, by Christopher A. Faraone. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 4, no. 2: 279-282. 1994. Radiance as an Aesthetic Value in the Art of Mesopotamia (with Some Indian Parallels). In Art, the Integral Vision: A Volume of Essays in Felicitation of Kapila Vatsyayan, edited by B. N. Saraswati, S. C. Malik and Madhu Khanna, 123-132. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld. 1995. Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamian Art. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack M. Sasson, Vol. 4, 2569-2580. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1995. (with Henri Zerner.) Art and Visual Culture. Art Journal 54, no. 3 (Special issue: Rethinking the Introductory Art History Survey, edited by Bradford R. Collins): 42-43. 1995. Homer’s Phoenicians: History, Ethnography, or Literary Trope? [A Perspective on Early Orientalism]. In The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule, edited by Jane B. Carter and Sarah P. Morris, 247-271. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1995/1996. Review of Les figurines de Suse [Memoires de la Délégation Archéologique en Iran LII], by Agnès Spycket. Archiv für Orientforschung 42/43: 285-286.

40

bibliography for irene j. winter

1996. “Agency”: An Alternative to Subjectivity. In Field Work: Sites in Literary and Cultural Studies, edited by Marjorie Garber, Paul B. Franklin and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, 196-203. New York and London: Routledge. 1996. Artists’ Trial Pieces from Susa? In Collectanea Orientalia: Histoire, arts de l’espace et industrie de la terre. Études offertes en hommage à Agnès Spycket, edited by H. Gasche and B. Hrouda, 397-406. Civilisations du Proche-Orient, Serie 1, Archeologie et Environnement 3. Neuchâtel: Recherches et publications. 1996. Exhibit/Inhibit: Archaeology, Value, History in the Work of Fred Wilson. In New Histories, edited by Lia Gangitano and Steven Nelson, 182-190. Boston: The Institute of Contemporary Art. 1996. Fixed, Transcended and Recurrent Time in the Art of Ancient Mesopotamia. In Concepts of Time: Ancient and Modern, edited by Kapila Vatsyayan, 325-338. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Sterling Publishers. 1996. Sex, Rhetoric and the Public Monument: The Alluring Body of Naram-Sîn of Agade. In Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, edited by Natalie Boymel Kampen and Bettina Bergmann, 11-26. Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology. In Assyria 1995. Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7-11, 1995, edited by Simo Parpola and Robert M. Whiting, 359-381. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki University Press. 1997. Packaging the Past: The Benefits and Costs of Archaeological Tourism. In Partnership in Archaeology: Perspectives of a Cross-Cultural Dialogue, edited by Beat Sitter-Liver and Christoph Uehlinger, 127-146. Fribourg: Fribourg University Press. 1998. The Affective Properties of Styles: An Inquiry into Analytical Process and the Inscription of Meaning in Art History. In Picturing Science,

bibliography for irene j. winter

41

Producing Art, edited by Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison, 55-77. New York and London: Routledge. 1998. Review of The Small Collections from Fort Shalmaneser [Ivories from Nimrud, Fasc. V], by Georgina Herrmann. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 57, no. 2: 150-153. 1999. The Aesthetic Value of Lapis Lazuli in Mesopotamia. In Cornaline et pierre précieuses: La Méditerranée, de l’Antiquité à l’Islam. Actes du colloque organisé au musée du Louvre par le Service culturel les 24 et 25 novembre 1995, edited by Annie Caubet, 43-58. Paris: La documentation Française / Musée du Louvre. 1999. Reading Ritual in the Archaeological Record: Deposition Pattern and Function of two Artifact Types from the Royal Cemetery of Ur. In Fluchtpunkt Uruk: archäologische Einheit aus methodischer Vielfalt. Schriften für Hans Jörg Nissen, edited by Hartmut Kühne, Reinhard Bernbeck and Karin Bartl, 229-256. Internationale Archäologie. Studia honoraria 6. Rahden: Marie Leidorf. 1999. Tree(s) on the Mountain: Landscape and Territory on the Victory Stele of Naram-Sîn of Agade. In Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East, Papers presented to the XLIVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Venezia, 7-11 July 1997. Part I, Invited Lectures, edited by L. Milano, S. de Martino, F. M. Fales and G. B. Lanfranchi , 63-72. History of the Ancient Near East, Monographs III/1. Padua: Sargon srl. 2000. Babylonian Archaeologists of the(ir) Mesopotamian Past. In Proceedings of the First International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Rome, May 18th-23rd, 1998, edited by Paolo Matthiae, Alessandra Enea, Luca Peyronel and Frances Pinnock, Vol. 2, 17851798. Rome. 2000. The Eyes Have It: Votive Statuary, Gilgamesh’s Axe, and Cathected Viewing in the Ancient Near East. In Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, edited by Robert S. Nelson, 22-44. Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

42

bibliography for irene j. winter

2000. Opening the Eyes and Opening the Mouth: The Utility of Comparing Images in Worship in India and the Ancient Near East. In Ethnography and Personhood: Notes from the Field, edited by Michael W. Meister, 129-162. Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat Publications. 2000. Le palais imaginaire: Scale and Meaning in the Iconography of Neo-Assyrian Cylinder Seals. In Images as Media: Sources for the Cultural History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean (1st Millennium BCE), edited by Christoph Uehlinger, 51-87. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 175. Fribourg: Fribourg University Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2000. Thera Paintings and the Ancient Near East: The Private and Public Domains of Wall Decoration. In The Wall Paintings of Thera. Proceedings of the First International Symposium, Petros M. Nomikos Conference Centre, Thera, Hellas, 30 August-4 September 1997, edited by Susan Sherratt, Vol. 2, 745-762. Athens: Thera Foundation. 2001. Introduction: Glyptic, History, and Historiography. In Seals and Seal Impressions. Proceedings of the XLVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Part 2, edited by William W. Hallo and Irene J. Winter, 1-13. Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press. 2001. (editor, with William W. Hallo.) Seals and Seal Impressions, Proceedings of the XLVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Part 2. Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press. 2002. Defining “Aesthetics” for Non-Western Studies: The Case of Ancient Mesopotamia. In Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies, edited by Michael Ann Holly and Keith Moxey, 3-28. Williamstown, Mass.: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2002. How Tall was Naram-Sîn’s Victory Stele? Speculation on the Broken Bottom. In Leaving No Stones Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen, edited by Erica Ehrenberg, 301-311. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns.

bibliography for irene j. winter

43

2002. (with Amy Rebecca Gansell.) Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur. Harvard University Art Museums, Gallery Series 36. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Art Museums. 2003. Ornament and the “Rhetoric of Abundance” in Assyria. EretzIsrael 27 (Special issue in honour of Hayim and Miriam Tadmor, edited by Peter Machinist et al.): 252-264. 2003. Review of The “Ur-Nammu” Stela, by Jeanny Vorys Canby. Journal of the American Oriental Society 123: 402-406. 2003. “Surpassing Work”: Mastery of Materials and the Value of Skilled Production in Ancient Sumer. In Culture through Objects: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of P. R. S. Moorey, edited by Timothy Potts, Michael Roaf and Diana Stein, 403-421. Oxford: Griffith Institute. 2004. The Conquest of Space in Time: Three Suns on the Victory Stele of Naram-Sîn. In Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen, edited by J. G. Dercksen, Uitgaven van het Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten te Leiden 100. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. 2005. Establishing Group Boundaries: Toward Methodological Refinement in the Determination of Sets as a Prior Condition to the Analysis of Cultural Contact and/or Innovation in First Millennium BCE Ivory Carving. In? Crafts and Images in Contact: Studies on Eastern Mediterranean Art of the First Millennium BCE, edited by Claudia E. Suter and Christoph Uehlinger, 23-42. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 210. Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

44

bibliography for irene j. winter

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

I “Seat of Kingship/A Wonder to Behold”: Architectural Contexts

45

46

i. ziffer

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

47

A NOTE ON THE NAHAL MISHMAR “CROWNS”1 Irit Ziffer Among the art objects of the Chalcolithic period in Palestine, the hoard from Nahal Mishmar, dating from the second quarter of the fourth millennium BCE, stands out.2 The hoard was discovered by a team headed by Pessah Bar-Adon in 1961 in the cave to be known as “Cave of the Treasure” on the western shores of the Dead Sea, in a steep cliff-face of the Nahal (Wadi) Mishmar canyon, 50 meters below the top and 250 meters above the gorge. Ussishkin (1977; 1980) proposed that the hoard of 429 objects, the majority of which are made of arsenical copper, comprised the cultic equipment of the En-Gedi temple which was hidden in the cave once the temple was abandoned.3 My attention focuses on one of the ten circular ring-like objects from the treasure, which the excavator defined as “crowns” for want of a better term (Bar Adon 1980, cat. nos. 7-16). Based on textual and artistic evidence, I shall offer more insights into the iconography of crown no. 7, thereby seeking a new interpretation for the function of the crowns.

1 At a tutorial seminar “Eclectic Art” given by Pirhiya Beck in Israel, Irene Winter’s wide-ranging work served as a textbook. Small wonder, therefore, that all the students looked forward to a special class given jointly by Irene and Pirhiya. Her participation was an eye-opener to all of us attending. The following discussion, triggered by her article on Mesopotamian palaces (1993), is offered to Irene with respect and very best wishes. 2 For gold and copper objects discovered since, and previous literature within see: Gopher et al. 1990; Gopher 1996, 114-213; Gal et al. 1997; Levy and Shalev 1989; Shalev and Northover 1987; Namdar et al. 2004. 3 Tadmor (1989, 252; 2002, 142*) suggested that the treasure was the stock of traders or smiths who handled the trade of such commodities and who acted as intermediaries between production centers and the Negev sites. Gates (1992, 131) assumed that the hoard was a store of metal goods whose piece-meal sale was intended to provide for the families of nomadic pastoralists who wintered in the cave.

48

i. ziffer The “Crowns”

The “crowns” measure 15 to 19 cm in diameter and 8 to 10 cm in height. All are open-ended cylinders with concave walls. Three are plain, two have simple linear decorations on the sides, three have a linear ornament and additional decorative projections on the rim, one has a human face with a prominent nose on the outer face, and one plain-sided crown has two horned animal heads peeping from the top. Crown no. 7 in Bar-Adon’s list is exceptional among the crowns (figures 1 and 2). It has one rectangular opening in its herringbone-decorated wall, with studs flanking the upper part of the opening. A pillar is placed on the rim above the right side of the opening. Another pillar, now broken, was placed above the left side. Two gate-like projections decorated with studs and topped by a pair of caprid horns stand on opposite sides of the rim.4 Between these gate-like projections, opposite the opening in the wall, two birds (of prey or perhaps doves?)5 are set. Aside from the Nahal Mishmar crown featuring an architectural façade, two more fragments of horned gate posts from a copper crown retrieved from the underground cavities at Giv‘at ha-Oranim have recently been published (Scheftelowitz and Oren 2004, 6; Namdar et al. 2004, cat. no. 16). All agree that crown no. 7 represents a building, but what was the nature of this building? Bar-Adon (1980, 132-133) and Epstein (1978, 26) suggest that crown no. 7 represents a horned temple facade. Beck compared this crown with a two tiered horned building depicted on a Late Uruk cylinder seal impression from Susa (figure 3), which depicts a war scene with a horned stepped building. She concludes that because the horns emanating from this stepped building are those of a bull, and since in Mesopotamia bull’s horns were the hallmark of the divine image, the horned building represents not a specific god, but divine power in general. Beck finds an Egyptian parallel for the horned building on a sealing from Abydos (1989, 44). According to Moorey the crowns may be miniature models of animal byres, others may represent open-air shrines, or perhaps enclosures where the dead were exposed to birds of prey prior to burial (1988, 179; 4 Tadmor (1986, 75-76, cat. no. 21) compared the gates with the clay ossuary façades, whose openings are flanked by studs and are surmounted by frontons, which sometimes are decorated with ibex horns. 5 Griffin vultures (Tadmor 1986, 75); doves (Schroer and Keel 2005, 130).

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

49

see also Merhav 1993, 38). Although no round buildings are known from the Chalcolithic period, Tadmor (1990, 257) also postulates that the ornate crowns are architectural models, comparing the Nahal Mishmar hoard crowns with the only so far known round model of a house of the Chalcolithic period with a doorway and a hearth found in Cyprus (Peltenburg 1988, 1989). Amiran proposes that these crowns were too small and too heavy to be worn on the head and were instead drums of composite stand-like objects, cult stands or altars. Amiran (1985) reconstructs these cult objects as superimposed drums, the top pieces being those with decorative motifs projecting vertically from the rim (figure 2).

Comparative Material: Horned Buildings in Ancient Near Eastern Art and Texts The Nahal Mishmar crowns may well be architectural models of round buildings, of which crown no. 7 with its horned gate-like projection is the most articulate, therefore also the most telling. Evidence for horned buildings seems to come from Iran. Amiet has discussed the subject of ancient Iranian buildings decorated with horns extensively over the years (Amiet 1953, 27-29; 1959, 41-42). In an article published in 1987, in view of two other Late Uruk impressions, one reportedly from Syria (figure 4), the other from Choga Mish in Iran (figure 5), Amiet dismisses his previous identification of the bovine-horned building on the Susa impression (figure 3) as a ziggurat-temple on its platform. The sealings from Syria6 and Choga Mish show a war scene near a stepped building. However, the stepped building is without horns.7 He compares these Late Uruk representations of a horned building on a platform with the Median stepped, multi-crenellated fortress of 6 Contrary to Amiet’s ascription of the sealing to northern Syria, Potts (1999, 67, fig. 3.12:2) has published it as Susian. 7 Margueron (1986) points out that the Susa impression does not describe sacred architecture of its time, such as the “White Temple” at Uruk, or the “terrasse” of Susa. Attempting to solve the discrepancy between the depiction and the archaeological reality, Margueron postulates that if the seal cutter indeed intended to depict an existing sanctuary of his time, he must have depicted it from angles that would emphasize a certain feature of the building, thus compatible with the impression. He does, however, admit that his suggested interpretation of the cutter’s viewing angles of the real building still requires a systematic study.

50

i. ziffer

Kiàesim, besieged by Sargon II during his sixth campaign and depicted in the palace at Khorsabad (figure 6). The Kiàesim fortress is topped by three pairs of antlers. Another Iranian horned building is the Elamite edifice adorned with bull horns in a wall relief from Room I of Assurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh (figure 7). The bull horns that emanate from the sides of the building on the Assurbanipal relief and those of the Susa impression building may be construed as signifying the sacred character of these edifices. However, the Sargon relief of the Iranian fortress of Kiàesim has the antlers of a stag, which by no means are a mark of divinity. Potts, following Amiet, rightly points out that these antlers belong to another tradition than that of the horn as a divine symbol and proposes Iran as the origin of the horned building tradition. Furthermore, Potts emphasizes the longevity of the horn motif in Iran, as exemplified by the later Luristan bronzes with horned creatures, displaying conservatism in the representation of animals (Potts 1990, 35). This tradition endured well into the twentieth century CE, where antlers were used to decorate the houses of local khans in Luristan, as described by de Mecquenem.8 Potts carries the topic of the horned edifice one step further. He collectes the textual evidence from the dictionaries (CAD and AHw s.v. qarnu) that mention horns attached to buildings—to temples as well as to the palace gate at Isin.9 The texts, however, are not specific about what kind of horns were to decorate the various buildings. I would like to add yet another piece of textual information pertaining to the embellishment of palaces, that is, non-religious edifices, with horns, that has so far been overlooked in support of a new interpretation for the Nahal Mishmar crown no. 7. Kassite documents from Dår-Kurigalzu of the thirteenth century BCE confirm that the embellishment of public edifices with figures or protomes of stags, deer and mountain sheep originates in the Iranian plateau. The majority of Dår-Kurigalzu documents are vouchers concerning the issue of gold, silver and precious stones to the craftsmen attached 8 De Mecquenem, cited by Potts (1990, 36, see also p. 40, fig. 4). Interestingly, according to Islamic traditions compiled by W§siãi, who read his work at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1019 CE, there was on the dome of the Dome of the Rock a deer made of gold, its eyes inlaid with precious stones, by the light of which the women of the Balqa (in Transjordan) could spin their wool at night. These traditions go back to the eighth century CE (Sharon 1992, 60-63). 9 Potts provides further examples of hunted gazelle and ibex horns attached to religious as well as secular buildings from Arabia (1990, 37-39).

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

51

to temples (Gurney 1953). These vouchers mention the names of two palaces at Dår-Kurigalzu: the Palace of the Stag (¿kal ayyali) and the Palace of the Mountain Sheep (¿kal UDU.KUR.RA). Precious materials were used to embellish various parts of the palaces, especially the doors and doorways, and also figures of stags, mountain sheep and birds (Gurney 1953, 23, nos. 20-22)10 as well as lions (Gurney 1953, 24, no. 25). These documents prove that the Kassites, whose origin was in the Zagros, cherished reminiscences of their original homeland; when building their palaces at Dår-Kurigalzu, they adorned them with figures or protomes of the animals typical of the Kassite’s mountainous origin (Sassmannhausen 1999, 415).11 These animal protomes may have been symbolic of deities. I group the decorative protomes with the variety of Iranian animal subjects that have to do with wildlife and heroic huntsmanship (Porada 1990a, 75; 1990b, 50).12 The hunt was a royal activity that epitomized the power of the ruler—no one can control the powerful creatures but the ruler who is thus represented as the maintainer of order against the forces of chaos. Once tamed by the royal hunter, these ferocious beasts must have been conceived as protective of him, thereby fit to decorate his royal abode. The gate-like structures possibly further enhanced the magic border between the wild, untamed nature and civilized life (Mazzoni 1997, 315). Furthermore, these documents mention that metals, stones and wood were issued for the production of scepters, bows, swords and ceremonial weapons made of bronze, some with a haft (or hilt) of gold and an alabaster head (Gurney 1953, 24, no. 24). The variety of ceremonial items mentioned in the Dår-Kurigalzu documents recalls the assemblage of copper artifacts of the Nahal Mishmar hoard, especially the standards and scepters, whose early parallels found outside Israel are the decorated mace heads from Iran and Mesopotamia (Beck 1989, 41; Merhav 1993, 24-26). Such scepters were carried in processions

10 Carnelian for birds’ beaks and stags’ bodies and lapis lazuli for stags’ hooves for the Palace of the Stag. Assorted stones and glass for the Palace of the Stag. 11 Ehrenberg (2002, 66) proposes a similar transfer of a symbol for the Kassite cross. Originally an early Iranian symbol of a supreme celestial power, the cross was assumed by the chief Babylonian deity in the readily adopted Babylonian culture. 12 See also Kawami (2005, 120-122) regarding proliferation of deer antlers in the architecture and imagery at Hasanlu BB II, perhaps related to the patron deity of the citadel.

52

i. ziffer

as symbols of status. I contend that the crowns too were symbols of status and that they were used in public display.

Suggested Interpretation of Crown no. 7 In contrast to those who seek a temple interpretation, I propose an alternative one: that it represents a “palace” or the residence of a leader. The identification of “exceptional” edifices within village architecture as “temples” was challenged some twenty-five years ago by Aurenche (1982), who points out the clear resemblance between ordinary houses and monumental buildings of the Ubaid period in Mesopotamia. With similar “canonical Ubaid” plans, the monumental buildings set in the center of a village, sometimes on a platform, were differentiated from the rest of the houses only by their larger size or special architectural features, such as buttressed walls. Instead of qualifying such buildings as “temples,” Aurenche proposed to term these buildings as “bâtiments de prestige.” This prestigious architecture, conceived in the late fifth-early fourth millennium BCE, gave rise to two different constructions—the temple and the palace (Aurenche 1982, 256). Hence I suggest that the decoration of crown no. 7 with its birds and gate like projections topped by caprid horns may be a local expression of such a “bâtiment de prestige,” in which an Iranian tradition of palace decoration was emulated. Indeed, most recently the horns incorporated in the Susa impression building (figure 3) have been said to recall the exaggerated ibex horns so prominent in the pottery and seals of prehistoric Iran (Johnson 2005, 85).13 Contacts with Iran in the Chalcolithic period are further confirmed by the fact that the Nahal Mishmar ceremonial objects are made of antimony-arsenic-rich copper, a rare alloy which is not attested from any contemporary site in the Near East. The only region rich in suitable arsenic and antimony copper ores is in northwest and central Iran and in Azerbaijan, whence ingots were brought to Palestine for the production of prestige articles (Tadmor, Begemann et al. 1995, 141-144; 13 For the predominance and symbolism of caprid horns in Iran, compare the goatman bronze statuette dated stylistically to the Late Uruk period and the goat-demon (“shaman”) subduing wild beasts and snakes on stamp seals from western Iran of the Chalcolithic period, see Barnett 1966; Amiet 1979; Porada 1995, 40-41; Pittman 2003; Wilburn 2005, 68.

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

53

Tadmor 2002, *142).14 Imported prestigious materials—metals from Asia, obsidian from Anatolia, gold and tusks from Egypt, as well as precious stone from the Sinai—would have conferred power and status on those who controlled their distribution within the local exchange networks. This network of trade must have allowed for cultural contact and transfer of ideas and symbols of authority (Teissier 1987),15 of which the horned façade may be one. Crown no. 7 may thus represent a “palace,” the seat of rulership in miniature. So far no such “palaces” have been identified in Chalcolithic sites. But the differential status of individuals is increasingly accepted—on the basis of funerary evidence (Levy 1986), as well as on the evidence of far-reaching trade and unique craftsmanship of the period, that must have been controlled by economic and political systems headed by a leader (Tadmor 2002, *138, *142-*143).16 These systems exercised their power through symbols of authority. The Nahal Mishmar elaborately decorated standards or scepters17 may illustrate symbols of status carried by certain people on special occasions to indicate their social ranking or a political or religious role in society (Moorey 1988, 184; Beck 2002, 24-26). The “Hennessy

14 This rare type of copper alloy is attested only in the artifacts from Nahal Mishmar and from several other sites in Israel, but does not occur in any other contemporary site in the Near East. The mining area of ores is not necessarily identical with the area where the smelting of the ores took place, nor with the artifact production centers. Metal ingots were imported into Palestine and the artifacts were produced in local workshops which so far have not been unearthed. In some of the underground houses in the Beersheba valley evidence exists for the smelting of copper ores mined in the Arabah (Shalev and Northover 1987) or the re-smelting of scrap metal, including items manufactured of composite metals originating in the east (Eldar and Baumgarten 1985). 15 One wonders whether the festive silver stands decorated with lion heads and stag horns of Aàkur-Addu, king of Karana, on which silver goblets of many kinds were placed (ARM XIII 22), also echo an Iranian tradition. Bearing in mind that some of the animal head cups imported to Syria were made in the Iranian town of Tukrià, the decoration of the king’s stand could reflect a Syrian borrowing of an Iranian motif (ARM VII 239, 12’, 18’; ARM XXIV 91, 9; ARM XXV 347, 22-23; 449 rev. 5-6; Dalley 1984, 61-62, 93). 16 Imported materials include metals from the Caucasus and Iran, obsidian from Anatolia, gold and hippopotamus and elephant tusks from Egypt, and semi-precious stones from the Sinai. 17 The total number of mace heads and standards included: 240 mace heads and 116 “standards,” 12 elaborate triangular or disk-shaped mace heads, 5 copper scepters, no two of which were equal in size or identical in decoration. Many standards represent caprid heads or horns. Caprids horns are found on clay ossuaries and the portable basalt altars from the Golan (Beck 1989).

54

i. ziffer

Fresco” from Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan, for example, may depict such a procession of goat-masked participants headed by a boomerangshaped standard bearer, all portrayed frontally (Cameron 1981, 13 and cover). 18 Baines points out that in Egypt the standards and attendants defined and circumscribed the king’s presence and that the standards proclaimed the king’s power, probably by associating him with protective deities (1995, 120; Moortgat 1966, pl. 6:33). The single burial unearthed at Wadi el-Makkukh in the vicinity of Jericho, which became known as the “Warrior’s Tomb,” may furnish the (so far) only archaeological evidence of a leader in the period (Schick 1998). The deceased, who according to C-14 data lived in the early fourth millennium BCE, was interred in an enormous linen fringed wrapping sheet with decorative bands, along with a long stave, bow and arrows, and other luxury objects. He may be the only surviving “chief” of the period (Tadmor 2002, *138), whose likeness was immortalized in the figure wearing a tall headdress and carrying a longstemmed spear-like object, incised on a paving slab from the vicinity of the earliest temples at Megiddo (figure 8), perhaps from the Late Chalcolithic period (Beck 2002, 25). It may well be that crown no. 7, representing a palace with a decoration of horns, served a function similar to that of the mace heads and the standards—a means of elite or royal display for society. Instead of visual representation (and writing), architecture—a palace or an enclosure—is the chief form of more general display. An architectural feature dominates the landscape in which it is set, its location is significant as are its scale and quality. Visible and enduring, architecture conveys its message to people through exclusion (Baines 1989, 477-478). As Irene Winter so aptly put it, The palace is thus set up as a mirror of the king. It is a physical manifestation of the ruler’s power and ability to build; and at the same time, by having built so impressively, the ruler has further demonstrated his power and ability to command resources, induce astonishment, and create a fitting seat of government—in short—to rule. The rhetorical function of the palace . . . is as essential as its residential, administrative, productive, and ceremonial functions.” (Winter 1993, 38-39)

18

Compare to goat-headed shaman wielding a boomerang on a Chalcolithic container sealing from Tepe Gawra (Root 2005, cat. no. 38).

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

55

A miniature version of the seat of kingship, which in the ancient Near East was conceived as incorporating various activities and functions—residential, political, administrative, industrial, ritual and ceremonial—crown no. 7 may have been instrumental in conveying the concepts of authority and rule. Similarly to the standards and maces as symbols of martial values and prowess ascribed to the leader, the crown, representing the seat of rulership, may have been carried in processions, or laid out for public display. This assumed function of the crown brings to mind town models of the second millennium BCE and those of the first millennium BCE, which are depicted in palace reliefs brought as tribute to the Assyrian king and placed for display to symbolize the victory over a city (Mallowan 1966, 446-449; Porada 1967; Calmeyer 1992, 99-101, pls. 22:2, 23, 26:1; Winter 1993, 37, fig. 16; Börker-Klähn 1997).19 These models are shaped as defensive walls with battlements, implying the protective power and probably often the sanctity of the buildings which they enclosed. A clay model of a citadel (Calmeyer 1992, pl. 22:1) and the turreted iron brazier found in storage magazine A2 at Fort Shalmaneser (Oates and Oates 2001, pl. 12c) may be a material form of the Assyrian models. 20 Crown no. 7 may be an early example of such an architectural model which signified the majesty and success of the ruler. When thus interpreted, each of the plastic elements represented may be ascribed a symbolic significance: the gate-like structure possibly representing the magic border between civilized life and nature, embodied in the birds, while the pillar, so reminiscent of the mace standards of Nahal Mishmar, perhaps signifying the ruler’s scepter. Crown no. 7 may have served in royal rituals, such as investitures or renewal of kingship.

References Amiet, Pierre. 1951. La Ziggurat d’après les cylindres de l’époque dynastique archaïque. RA 45: 80-88. ———. 1953. Ziggurats et “culte en hauteur” des origins a l’époque d’Akkad. RA 47: 24-33. 19 M/Ass, j/NB kulålu (Black, George, and Postgate 1999, 166) denotes both “crown” as a mark of royalty and “crenellation” of gateway towers. 20 The brazier brings to mind Amiran’s suggestion that the crowns were altars or stands.

56

i. ziffer

———. 1959. Représentations antiques des constructions anciennes. RA 53: 40-44. ———. 1979. L’iconographie archaïque de l’Iran: quelques documents nouveaux. Syria 56: 334-352. ———. 1987. Temple sur terrasse ou fortresse? RA 81: 99-104. Amiran, Ruth. 1985. A Suggestion to See the Copper ‘Crowns’ of the Judean Desert Treasure as Drums of Stand-like Altars. In Palestine in the Bronze and Iron Ages: Papers in Honour of Olga Tufnell, ed. J. N. Tubb, 10-14. London: Institute of Archaeology. Aurenche, Olivier. 1982. A l’origine du temple et du palais dans les civilisations de la Mésopotamie ancienne. Ktema 7: 237-259. Baines, John. 1989. Communication and Display: The Integration of Early Egyptian Art and Writing. Antiquity 63: 472-482. ———. 1995. Origins of Egyptian Kingship. In Ancient Egyptian Kingship, ed. D. O’Connor and D. P. Silverman, 95-156. Leiden: Brill. Bar-Adon, Pessah. 1980. The Cave of the Treasure. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Barnett, Richard D. 1966. Homme masqué ou dieu-ibex? Syria 43: 260-276. Beck, Pirhiya. 1989. The Style and Iconography of the Chalcolithic Hoard from Nahal Mishmar. In Essays in Ancient Civilizations Presented to Helene Kantor, ed. A. Leonard, Jr. and B. Beyer Williams, 39-54. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations 47. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Reprinted in Beck 2002, 1-18). ———. 2002. Issues in the History of Early Bronze Age Art in Ancient Israel. In Imagery and Representation Studies in the Art and Iconography of Ancient Palestine: Collected Studies, ed. N. Na’aman, U. Zevulun and I. Ziffer, 19-57. Tel Aviv Occasional Publications 3. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, Sonia and Marco Nadler Institue of Archaeology, Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology (originally published in Hebrew in Cathedra 76: 3-33). Black, Jeremy, Andrew George, and Nicholas Postgate. 1999. A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian. SANTAG 5. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Börker-Klähn, Jutta. 1997. Mauerkronenträgerinnen. In Assyrien im Wandel der Zeiten, 39 Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Heidelberg, 1992, ed. H. Waetzoldt and H. Hauptmann, 227-234. Heidelberg: Heidelberg Orientverlag. Calmeyer, Peter.1992. Zur Genese altiranischer Motive XI. “Eingewebte Bildchen” von Städten. AMI 25: 95-124. Cameron, D.O. 1981. The Ghassulian Wall Paintings. Luton: Kenyon Deane. Dalley, Stephanie. 1984. Mari and Karana: Two Old Babylonian Cities. London: Longman. Ehrenberg, Erica. 2002. The Kassite Cross Revisited. In Mining the Archives: Festschrift for Christopher Walker on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday, ed. C. Wunsch, 65-74. Babylonische Archive Bd. 1. Dresden: Islet.

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

57

Eldar, Ilan, and Yaakov Baumgarten.1985. A Chalcolithic Site of the “Beer-sheba Culture.” BA 48: 134-139. Epstein, Claire. 1987. Aspects of Symbolism in Chalcolithic Palestine. In Archaeology in the Levant, ed. P. R. S. Moorey and P. Parr, 23-26. London: Institute of Archaeology. Gal, Zvi, H. Smithline and D. Shalem. 1997. A Chalcolithic Burial Cave in Peqi‘in, Upper Galilee. IEJ 47: 145-154. Gates, Marie-Henriette. 1992. Nomadic Pastoralists and the Chalcolithic Hoard from Nahal Mishmar. Levant 24: 131-139. Gopher, Avi, Tzvi Tsuk, Sariel Shalev and Ram Gophna. 1990. Earliest Gold Artifacts from the Levant. Current Anthropology 31: 436-443. Gopher, Avi, ed. 1996. The Nahal Qanah Cave. Monograph Series of the Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University 12. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology. Gurney, Oliver R. 1953. Further Texts from Dur-Kurigalzu. Sumer 9: 21-34. Johnson, Karen. 2005. Modes of Religious Experience in Late Prehistory. In This Fertile Land: Signs + Symbols in the Early Arts of Iran and Iraq, ed. M. C. Root, 73-86. Kelsey Museum Publication 3. Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Kawami, Trudy S. 2005. Deer in Art, Life and Death in Northwestern Iran. Iranica Antiqua 40: 107- 131. Levy, Thomas E. 1986. Social Anthropology and the Chalcolithic Period: Explaining Social Organization and Change during the 4th Millennium in Israel. Michmanim 3: 5-20. Levy, Thomas E., and Sariel Shalev. 1989. Prehistoric Metalworking in the Southern Levant: Archaeometallurgical and Social Perspectives. WA 20/3: 352-372. Mallowan, Max E.L. 1966. Nimrud and Its Remains. Vol. II. London: Collins. Margueron, J. 1986. Monument figuré et architecture réele: Premier approche en vue d’une analyse critique comparative. In Fragmenta Historiae Aelamicae: Mélanges offerts à M. J. Steve, ed. L. de Meyer, H. Gasche and F. Vallat, 9-16. Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations. Mazzoni, S. 1997. The Gate and the City: Change and Continuity in Syro-Hittite Urban Ideology. In Die altorientalische Stadt: Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch, ed. G. Wilhelm, 307-337. Colloquien der Deutschen Orientgesellschaft. Saarbrückeen: Saarbrücker Druckerei Verlag. Merhav, Rivka. 1993. Scepters of the Divine from the Cave of the Treasure at Nahal Mishmar. In Studies in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel, ed. M. Heltzer, A. Segal and D. Kaufman, 21-42. Haifa: Haifa University Press (in Hebrew). Moorey, Peter R. S. 1988. The Chalcolithic Hoard from Nahal Mishmar, Israel, in Context. WA 20/2: 171-189. Moortgat, Anton. 1966. Vorderasiatische Rollesiegel. Berlin: Mann.

58

i. ziffer

Namdar, Dvori, I. Segal, Y. Goren and S. Shalev. 2004. Chalcolithic Copper Artefacts. In Giv‘at ha-Oranim: A Chalcolithic Site, ed. N. Scheftelowitz and R. Oren, 70-83. Tel Aviv: Salvage Excavation Reports, Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University 1. Oates, Joan, and David Oates. 2001. Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Peltenburg, Edgar J. 1988. Kissonerga-Mesophilia 1987: Ritual Deposit Unit 1015. Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, 43-52. ———. 1989. Lemba Archaeological Project, Cyprus 1987. Levant 21: 195-197. Pittman, Holly. 2003. Standing Horned Demons. In Art of the First Cities, ed. J. Aruz, 46-48. New York and New Haven: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press. Porada, Edith. 1967. Battlements in the Military Architecture and the in the Symbolism of the Ancient Near East. In Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, ed. D. Fraser, H. Hibbard and M. J. Lewine, 1-12. London: Phaidon. ———. 1990a. Animal Subjects of the Ancient Near Eastern Artist. In Investigating Artistic Environments in the Ancient Near East, ed. A. C. Gunter, 71-79. Washington D.C.: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. ———. 1990b. Mountain Goat. In Glories of the Past: Ancient Art from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection, ed. D. von Bothmer, 49-52. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ———. 1995. Man and Images in the Ancient Near East. Wakefield, Rhode Island and London: Moyer-Bell. Potts, Daniel T. 1990. Some Horned Buildings in Iran, Mesopotamia and Arabia. RA 84: 33-40. ———. 1999. The Archaeology of Elam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Root, Margaret C. 2005. Catalogue of Artifacts, Didactics, and Images in the Exhibition. In This Fertile Land: Signs + Symbols in the Early Arts of Iran and Iraq, ed. M. C. Root, 139-172. Kelsey Museum Publications 3. Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Sassmannhausen, Leonard. 1999. Adaptation of the Kassites to the Babylonian Civilization. In Languages and Cultures in Contact at the Crossroads of Civilizations in the Syro-Mesopotamian Realm, Proceedings of the 42nd RAI 1995, ed. K. Van Lerberghe and G. Voet, 409-424. Orientalia Lovaniensa Analecta 96. Leuven: Peeters. Scheftelowitz, N., and R. Oren, eds. 2004. Giv‘at ha-Oranim: A Chalcolithic Site. Tel Aviv: Salvage Excavation Reports, Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University 1. Schick, Tamar. 1998. The Cave of the Warrior. Israel Antiquities Authority Reports 5. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority. Schroer, Sylvia, and Othmar Keel. 2005. Die Ikonographie Palästina/Israels und der alte Orient. Fribourg: Bibel + Orient Museum and Academic Press Fribourg.

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

59

Shalev, Sariel, and Jeremy P. Northover. 1987. Chalcolithic Metal and Metalworking from Shiqmim. In Shiqmim I: Studies Concerning Chalcolithic Societies in the Northern Negev Desert, Israel, ed. T. E. Levy, 357-371. BAR International Series 356, 1-2. Oxford: BAR. Sharon, Moshe. 1992. The “Praise of Jerusalem” as a Source of the Early History of Islam. BiOr 49: 56-67. Tadmor, Miriam. 1986. The Judaean Desert Treasure. In Treasures of the Holy Land: Ancient Art from the Israel Museum, 72-85. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ———. 1989. The Judean Desert Treasure from Nahal Mishmar: A Chalcolithic Traders’ Hoard? In Essays in Ancient Civilizations Presented to Helene J. Kantor, ed. A. Leonard, Jr. and B. Beyer Williams, 249-261. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations 47. Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. ———. 1990. A Group of Figurines and Miniature Vessels of the Chalcolithic Period. Eretz Israel 21: 249-258. ———. 2002. Notes on the Nature of the Chalcolithic Period in Palestine. In Aharon Kempinski Memorial Volume: Studies in Archaeology and Related Disciplines, ed. E. D. Oren and Sh. Ahituv, 132*-150*. Beer Sheva 15. Beer-Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press (in Hebrew). Tadmor, M., F. Begemann, D. Kedem, A. Hauptmann, E. Pernicka and S. ScmittStrecker. 1995. The Nahal Mishmar Hoard from the Judean Desert: Technology, Composition, and Provenance. ‘Atiqot 27: 95-148. Teissier, Beatrice. 1987. Glyptic Evidence for a Connection between Iran, SyroPalestine and Egypt in the Fourth and Third Millennia. Iran 25: 27-53. Ussishkin, David. 1971. The ‘Ghassulian’ Temple in Ein Gedi and the Origin of the Hoard from Nahal Mishmar. BA 34: 23-39. ———. 1980. The Ghassulian Shrine at En-Gedi. Tel Aviv 7: 1-44. Wilburn, Andrew. 2005. Shamans, Seals and Magic. In This Fertile Land: Signs + Symbols in the Early Arts of Iran and Iraq, ed. M. C. Root, 65-71. Kelsey Museum Publication 3. Ann Arbor: Kelsey Museum. Winter, Irene, J. 1993. ‘Seat of Kingship’/‘A Wonder to Behold’: The Palace as Construct in the Ancient Near East. Ars Orientalis 23: 27-55.

60

i. ziffer

Figure 1. Copper crown with gate-like projections (Amiran 1985, fig. 1)

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

61

Figure 2. Cult stand/altar made of superimposed crowns, as reconstructed by Amiran (Amiran 1985, fig. 1)

62

i. ziffer

Figure 3. Late Uruk cylinder seal impression from Susa depicting war scene with horned building (Amiet 1987, fig. 1)

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

63

Figure 4. Late Uruk cylinder seal impression showing war scene with stepped building (Amiet 1987, fig. 2)

64

i. ziffer

Figure 5. Late Uruk cylinder seal impression from Choga Mish showing war scene near a stepped building (Amiet 1987, fig. 3)

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

Figure 6. Siege of Kiàesim, Khorsabad (Amiet 1987, fig. 4)

65

66

i. ziffer

Figure 7. Elamite edifice adorned with bull horns, Nineveh (Potts 1990, fig. 2)

a note on the nahal mishmar “crowns”

Figure 8. Figure of a ruler on a paving slab, Megiddo (Beck 2002, fig. 5a)

67

68

i. ziffer

upright stones and building narratives

69

UPRIGHT STONES AND BUILDING NARRATIVES: FORMATION OF A SHARED ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Ömür Harmanâah The beginnings of the Modern, dating back at least two centuries, and the much more recent advent of the Post-Modern are inextricably bound up with the ambiguities introduced into Western architecture by the primacy given to the scenographic in the evolution of the bourgeois world. However, building remains essentially tectonic rather than scenographic in character and it may be argued that it is an act of construction first, rather than a discourse predicated on the surface, volume and plan . . . Thus one may assert that building is ontological rather than representational in character and that built form is a presence rather than something standing for an absence. In Martin Heidegger’s terminology we may think of it as a “thing” rather than “sign.” Kenneth Frampton, “Rappel à l’ordre, the case for the tectonic” (1990).

Raising Orthostats as an Architectural Practice The architectural practice of using orthostats—sculpted wall slabs in stone—in monumental buildings is usually understood as an idiosyncratic phenomenon in the Upper Mesopotamian cities of the Iron Age. Late Assyrian and Syro-Hittite rulers of this period are known for sponsoring building projects that incorporated carved orthostats into their architectural corpus, lining the monumental walls of ceremonial and public spaces. These orthostat programs were commemorative in nature and often took the form of pictorial narratives that structured and animated the ceremonial spaces of the Iron Age cities. Irene J. Winter was among the very first to address critically the problems of representation in the narrative relief programs of Late Assyrian palaces, while breaking new ground in developing a contextual approach to study Syro-Hittite monuments within the artisanal networks of the

70

ö. harmanâah

early first millennium BC.1 In a number of articles, she eloquently demonstrated that architectural technologies and material styles offer exceptional opportunities to study cultural interaction between the Assyrian empire and the Syro-Hittite polities.2 As the following discussion was sparked in part by Irene Winter’s work on networks of cultural interaction, it seems appropriate on this occasion to present this paper on the architectural significance of the orthostats. Visual analyses of Assyrian palatial relief programs occupy a distinctive place within the art historical literature on the ancient Near East. The extraordinary quality of the carving techniques applied to the gypsum slabs at Assyrian sites, the historical-narrative character of their programmatic display, and the sophistication that they exhibit in their iconography receive well deserved attention in art historical literature.3 Furthermore, several scholars have been investigating how the relief sculpture contributed to the articulation of space in palatial contexts (see esp., Reade 1979; Winter 1983; Russell 1991, 1999). Rarely acknowledged, however, is the architectonic context of these orthostats within the structure of monumental walls, in other words, their architectural role as part of the material corpus of the buildings in question. The term architectonics (or sometimes simply tectonics) is used here in reference to aspects of building pertaining to construction and materiality, in the way that it is currently employed in contemporary architectural theory. The concept of tectonics not only “indicates a structural and material probity, but also a poetics of construction” (Frampton 1990, 20; also Hartoonian 1994). Frampton suggests that the tectonic character refers to the ontological aspect of building construction in contrast to the representational or the scenographic. Nonetheless, art historical discourse has principally treated sculpted orthostats as representational surfaces, often reducing their materiality, 1

In two foundational articles, Winter (1981, 1983) explores royal rhetoric and narrativity in the sculptural program in Assurnasirpal (Aààår-n§sir-apli) II’s Northwest Palace at Kalhu (modern Nimrud). In a later article, Winter (1993, 38) explores this idea in a broader historical scope and reflects on the entire layout of the Near Eastern palace, concluding that the palaces had a “rhetorical function . . . as embodiment of the state.” 2 Especially Winter 1982. The issue was partially taken up again from another perspective in Winter 1998. 3 The bibliography of the art historical scholarship on the Assyrian programs is vast. For the most up-to-date list of references, see Russell 1999; Winter 1997, 377 n. 1; Pittman 1996, 334-335 nos. 1-4. For an articulate discussion of the recent approaches to Assyrian relief programs, see Winter 1997, 359f. and esp. 377 n. 2.

upright stones and building narratives

71

their ontological quality, to iconographic and literary content. This iconographic and textual content as well as the stylistic form are conveniently studied by means of standard art historical and philological methods of analysis, which assume that the cultural significance of the orthostats is only dependant upon their pictoriality and textuality. This understanding has indeed been materially damaging to the stone artifacts at the time of their excavation. Following the initial discovery of the Assyrian orthostats at the site of Assurnasirpal II’s Northwest Palace at Nimrud in 1845, Austen Henry Layard hired some marble cutters from Mosul to slice the stone orthostats in order to relieve them from their “excessive” weight for easy transport to England. The parts bearing the “standard inscription” that occupied the middle section of many orthostats were sawn into pieces and apparently sent to Layard’s friends across the world as souvenirs, while the overall thickness of the slabs was reduced by cutting away their back (Layard 1849, 1: 140). Max Mallowan (1966, 1: 98, 324 n. 10) reports that approximately 15 centimeters of “plinth” was also cut from the base of several slabs. For Layard, the only valuable aspect of these artifacts was apparently their pictorial content, nothing less, nothing more. Much valuable architectural evidence about the Assyrian wall construction techniques, such as dowel holes, tool marks and slab thicknesses, was destroyed in this manner. But more significantly, the ontological quality of the orthostats was altered: solid architectural members were transformed into thin pictorial plaques. To this day, the strategies of exhibiting Assyrian orthostats in Western museums and their publication formats only continue to endorse this view of orthostats as two-dimensional planar entities, a view that has largely dominated the art historical and archaeological interpretations of these artifacts accordingly.4 It seems therefore important to start to address the material aspects of orthostats as architectonic members in monumental contexts. In this paper, I will refer to relevant archaeological and textual evidence for the early development of orthostats as an architectural practice, even prior to the incorporation of relief imagery on them, 4 See now Winter (2002, esp. 6ff.) on how European aesthetic judgment was applied to Mesopotamian artifacts upon their arrival to Western museums. This cultural confrontation in the museum contexts was often painful, leading to “surgical interventions that made ‘art’ out of the reliefs by cutting semi-human figures down to what would correspond to good Western portrait bust formats” (Winter 2002, 10).

72

ö. harmanâah

and reflect upon the subsequent formation of an architectural koine in Upper Mesopotamia through the widespread use of carved orthostats.5 The early orthostats seem to have appeared in the form of finely dressed plain slabs on a regional scale during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages in Syria, which was then a prominent region of cultural interaction between Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt and the Levant. The curious transition in the cultural biography of this architectural technology took place between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, when orthostats extensively began to receive pictorial representations on them, not only offering a new visual medium for Near Eastern craftsmen but also transforming urban contexts into commemorative and narrativized spaces. I argue that this transformation in fact coincides with the formation of a cultural koine between the Assyrian empire and the Syro-Hittite city states, suggesting that the source of such widespread innovative practice may have to do with the historical circumstances of a cross-cultural encounter. Based on available archaeological and literary evidence, it is possible to argue that the symbolically charged technique of using upright stone slabs became part of the royal rhetoric among the Assyrian and Syro-Hittite elites, and this shared rhetoric involved perceptibly common ideological tools (Harmanâah 2005). Furthermore, I also maintain that the making of the orthostat programs with symbolic technologies of architectural production acted as powerful agents in the constitution of the urban space, public sphere and social memory in Assyrian and the SyroHittite cities.

Orthostats: A Monumental Finish for Weathering Walls The word orthostat is an architectural term borrowed from classical Greek [Ñrqost£thj = orthostatês] to refer to upright stone slabs in Near Eastern wall construction.6 Practically, these stone slabs were used to 5 koine is used here to refer to a multi-regional dynamic phenomenon of shared/exchanged material culture, or “the whole milieu of cultural, social and economic interchanges” (Horden & Purcell 2000, 530). M. H. Feldman recently referred to the idea of a ‘visual koine” in defining the “international style” in the eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age (Feldman 2002, 17-23, esp. 18 with n. 87). 6 Orthostatês simply means in ancient Greek “one who stands upright” but also attested with the specific architectural meaning “building stones laid with their longest edges vertical” in a number of Greek building inscriptions (Liddell and Scott 1940, 1249).

upright stones and building narratives

73

consolidate the lower courses of mudbrick walls against erosion and weathering caused by rain, wind or other forms of everyday physical damage. As a technique of wall cladding, orthostats were developed primarily to alleviate the effects of such weathering on wall surfaces, comparable to other finishing techniques such as plastering or painting. Mostafavi and Leatherbarrow (1993) suggest that the acquired knowledge of the weathering process enabled the building craftsmen to turn this problem into a design criterion and continuously improved the tectonic qualities of building surfaces by means of a variety of innovations in architectural finishing. In other words, building practices are reflexively adjusted in response to the continuous monitoring and the anticipation of weathering processes, and this has been an important component in the formation of architectural traditions. This is reminiscent of Pierre Bourdieu’s (1990, 53) concept of habitus, “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can objectively be adopted to their outcomes.” Long-term architectural practices generate certain objective structures (in Bourdieu’s sense) of tradition, through continously producing new representations (architectural forms, in our paradigm). Newly constructed buildings as representations or architectural dispositions, then, present themselves to their makers as being part of those objective structures, which appear to the society as unchanging. However, conversely, as Bourdieu has shown, those representations and practices continue to reproduce and transform the objective structures, of which they are the products. Therefore, as the weather phenomenon illustrates, architectural practices and technologies effectively continue to regenerate and redefine the very social processes of which they are believed to be the products. This approach allows architectural historians to consider innovation and change not as antithetical to tradition, but in fact, integral to it. The materials and technologies employed in wall construction varied considerably from region to region in the northern Syro-Mesopotamian settlements, but the most common technique was mudbrick walls with timber framing.7 In certain regions that have abundant sources of building stone (and a wetter climate) such as the Anatolian 7

For Mesopotamian building techniques in general, see Moorey 1994, 302-362 and Naumann 1971.

74

ö. harmanâah

plateau, the Levant or Cyprus, ashlar foundations were raised up to the dado level, by means of a few finely dressed ashlar courses above the ground, to serve as a protective “wall socle” (Naumann 1971, 75). A stone socle provides greater structural stability to the mudbrick superstructure and avoids surface dampness, water creepage and erosion at the base of the load-bearing mudbrick walls (Gregori 1986, 91-92). Alternatively, builders of the Middle Bronze Age North Syria introduced thinner rectangular slabs cut to cover the lower wall faces of mudbrick walls as revetments, in an apparent architectural economization and refinement of the socles (figure 1). Stimulated by the tectonic surface quality and the sense of dignified monumentality that the wall socle or the orthostat masonry offered, they eventually transformed the stone surfaces into fields of pictorial representation, either with isolated images or narrative programs in painting and relief. One must consider this process in correlation to the development of other wall cladding techniques throughout the Late Bronze Age, such as wall painting and glazed brick decoration, both of which had already served as representational-narrative media. It is possible to understand this phenomenon, then, as an incorporation or appropriation of representationality as symbolic value by the Iron Age craftsmen, to be inscribed onto the tectonic surfaces of the finely dressed walls. This appropriated representationality, no doubt, was an essential constituent of the ceremonial, ritual and institutional spaces in the Early Iron Age cities. However, the materiality of stone and the building technologies it embodied remained in the foreground of the significance of these urban spaces. It is indispensable to turn then, to North Syria during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages to trace the early history of the orthostat technique in monumental structures. The architectural and archaeological evidence is vast and complex, and therefore it is beyond the limits of this brief paper to survey comprehensively the manifestations of the technique before the Early Iron Age. So I will limit myself to only some new archaeological evidence to point out the socio-cultural and architectural context of this symbolically charged tectonic expression.8 The history of Syria in the Middle Bronze Age runs roughly from the beginning of the second millennium BC to the military campaign of the Hittite king Muràili I into North Syria at the beginning of the 8

For a detailed overview of this material, see Harmanâah 2005, chs. 2, 5.

upright stones and building narratives

75

sixteenth century BC, a period only now becoming better known archaeologically (Klengel 1992, 39-49). Flourishing archaeological work in Syria at sites like Tell Mardikh, Tell Mishrifeh, Aleppo and others suggests that a new wave of urbanization and the formation of regional states were in place during this time period (figure 2). In the first half of the Middle Bronze Age, the kingdom of Mari on the middle Euphrates, especially under Yahdun-Lim (ca. 1810 BC) and the short-lived Assyrian territorial state under ’amài-Adad I (ca. 1813-1781 BC) that expanded into the Habur and the middle Euphrates, presumably influenced the political and cultural climate of the northwestern Syrian kingdoms of Yamhad, Qatna and Karkamià and important urban centres like Ebla (Tell Mardikh) and Alalah (Tell Atchana) (Kuhrt 1995, 1: 98-102). In the second half of the Middle Bronze Age, however, textual sources especially from Mari, Alalah, and Hattuàa suggest that the “Great Kings” of Yamhad represented the strongest territorial power in Syria until the Hittite kings Hattuàili I (1650-1620 BC) and Muràili I (1620-1590 BC) campaigned effectively into North Syria (Bryce 1998, 75-89, 102-105). Excavations at the sites of Tell Mardikh, the Aleppo citadel, Tell Atchana and Tilmen Höyük provide the earliest evidence for the use of orthostats in urban contexts and suggest the flourishing nature of architectural traditions in northwestern Syria in the Middle Bronze Age often associated with the construction of cities such as Ebla. It has recently been argued that Ebla of the Middle Bronze I (Mardikh IIIA) was “built in a relatively short period of time” as a planned monumental project (Pinnock 2001, 22), a new urban foundation that sealed off the remains of the Early Bronze Age IVB (Mardikh IIB) levels after a short hiatus.9 This involved the construction of two sets of fortifications (one for the citadel and the other for the lower town), palatial and temple complexes on the citadel, and a belt of public buildings immediately around the citadel. Several architectural 9 See also Matthiae 1997, 380. A fragmentary basalt statue with a cuneiform inscription in Akkadian on its torso was excavated at Tell Mardikh citadel out of stratigraphic context in 1968. The inscription is a dedicatory inscription of [Y]ibbit-Lim, “king of the Eblaite dynasty,” to the goddess Iàtar (concerning a cult basin). Elaborately carved basalt cult basins with cultic scenes are known among the finds in MB levels at Ebla, especially Temples B1, N and D. They were probably an important aspect of the temple furniture (see Matthiae 1997, 400-404, figs. 14.21, 22, 23). The inscription not only confirmed the identification of the site with Ebla, but also was suggestive of the nature of kingship in the earlier part of the Middle Bronze Age.

76

ö. harmanâah

innovations are identified in the construction of these buildings, including the widespread use of finely dressed stone slabs. In the Southwest (“Damascus”) Gate of the lower city in Area A, for instance, finely dressed basalt and limestone orthostats of about 1.80 meters in height lined the walls of the inner and outer gate structures, which were then tightly connected with a trapezoidal hall.10 Basalt revetments consolidated the protruding 3-pier and 2-pier structures while limestone was used in the facing of inner rooms/recesses. Orthostats were raised on slightly protruding ashlar foundations. Such overall architectural design and construction technology are attested in the gate buildings of Syria and the Levant at this time and are understood as a distinctive feature of Middle Bronze Age architectural practices in the region.11 A headless, seated basalt statue wearing a thick cloak was found near the inner gateway and dated by Matthiae possibly to the twentieth century BC (Matthiae 1997, 399-400; also Ussishkin 1989, 485). Both the monumental design and tectonic quality of the gate, as well as its association with a royal/cult statue, suggest that the gate had a ceremonial character in the urban landscape of Ebla. One must consider here the fact that similar ceremonial gate structures continued to be built in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages in Anatolia and Syria, with comparable architectural planning and full-fledged visual narrative programs. These gate structures, such as the well-known Iron Age examples from Karkamià, Malatya and Zincirli, constituted fundamentally important threshold monuments in the ceremonial-ritual structure of urban landscapes. It is therefore probably no coincidence that the earliest plain orthostats of Ebla appear at its gates.12 Similarly massive orthostats were also used in the contemporaneous monumental buildings from the rest of the site, such as Temple D on the western edge of the Ebla citadel and the Western Palace in Area Q to the west of the citadel (Matthiae 1997). One of the most essential gaps in the archaeology of Syria has been the lack of archaeological investigations in the city of Halab (Aleppo), which has been identified with the capital city of Yamhad. Since 1996, 10 For a detailed architectural description of the gate, see Matthiae 1997, 382, fig. 14.2; 1981, 118-123. 11 They are often referred as “three-entrance gates” (Gregori 1986; Ussishkin 1989). The significant component of the earthen rampart on the outer face of these fortifications is also a shared feature. 12 On the Syro-Hittite gates and their ceremonial function, see Mazzoni 1997.

upright stones and building narratives

77

excavations were carried out in a limited area of the citadel of Aleppo by a joint Syrian-German archaeological team. The team located a Middle Bronze Age temple on a massive scale and its early first millennium rebuilding (Khayatta and Kohlmeyer 2000).13 Based on the prominent location of the structure in the topography of the citadel, its massive size (its cult room possibly ca. 26.65 meters in width), and the relief program on the early first millennium orthostats that have been uncovered so far, the excavators identified the building as the textually well-known temple of the Weather/Storm God Teààub of Halab (Khayyata and Kohlmeyer 1998, 94; Kohlmeyer 2000b, 116117). The northern and western walls of the early second millennium temple are lined with finely dressed uncarved limestone orthostats, 1.2 meters in height and raised above an ashlar foundation, reminiscent of the Southwest gate at Ebla in its workmanship (figures 3-5). The orthostats consistently have small, circular dowel holes or mortises on their top surfaces, presumably used to receive wooden tenons with molten lead fixing and to attach it to the timber beams above and thus to the rest of the wall structure (Hult 1983, 79). Preliminary reports demonstrate convincingly that the earliest temple with uncarved orthostats must date somewhere to the beginning of the second millennium BC, and reconstructions of the temple are continuous throughout the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, with considerable amounts of spoliation and recarving of the stone slabs in these later phases. Spoliation, the re-use of architectural elements of former buildings in new constructions, becomes a symbolic practice in the early and middle Iron Ages especially in the case of carved orthostats. It is evident that uncarved orthostats and finely dressed ashlar masonry were prestigious architectural technologies in Middle Bronze Age North Syria, and they were used primarily in ceremonial and public spaces including temples, city gates and the urban façades of palaces. Relatively comparable evidence for the use of plain orthostat slabs are attested at the sites of Tilmen Höyük and Alalakh. During the Late Bronze Age, in contrast, as the eastern Mediterranean world 13 Preliminary report of the 1996-1997 season appears in Khayyata and Kohlmeyer 1998. Later, Kohlmeyer (2000a) published a small monograph on the temple, where he (2000a, 5 n.1) indicates that the first volume of the excavations, Qal‘at Halab-I, is under preparation and will report on the 1996-1998 campaigns. A detailed archaeological report on the 1996-1999 seasons appears in Kohlmeyer 2000b. For a plan of the temple see Kohlmeyer 2000a, Abb. 6; Khayyata and Kohlmeyer 1998, Abb. 3.

78

ö. harmanâah

became the hub of a remarkable geography of inter-regional contacts, the Near Eastern supra-regional powers had increasing material interests in Syria. Only then, the koine of stone masonry gradually encompassed the Anatolian plateau, the Levantine coast and Cyprus in particular, but also reached the middle Tigris cities of Assyria. By the end of the Late Bronze Age, the major entrepreneurial cities of the eastern Mediterranean, like Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani on the Syrian coast, Enkomi and Hala Sultan Tekke on the eastern coast of Cyprus and the Hittite cities of the Anatolian plateau like the capital Hattuàa, its regional centers like ’apinuwa (Ortaköy) and ’ariààa (KuâaklÌ), participated in the inter-regional architectural practice of using finely dressed ashlar and orthostatic masonry in large quantities.14 This was carried out on such an extensive and monumental scale in these urban environments that it is reminiscent of what William MacDonald (1986, 5) has argued for the Roman cities of the Mediterranean: an “urban armature,” in reference to the complex material manifestation of building technologies forming “the framework for the unmistakable imagery of imperial urbanism.” It can be argued that this was possible not only by means of an operative circulation of architectural knowledge and other artisanal technologies across these regions (through gift exchange, mobility of craftsmen, etc.), but also in the form of material manifestoes of the ruling elite to express royal prestige and cultural interest in the lingua franca of building practices in stone.15 Andrew and Susan Sherratt’s (2001, 20) recent argument that “added value” was created within such urbanized “technologically more advanced centres of manufacturing” can perhaps be applied to the stone-working technologies of North Syria, where cultural value of the monumental use of stone in Near Eastern architecture is reconfigured with the introduction of limestone and basalt orthostats. The Hittite interest in the North Syrian region, especially directed at the kingdom of Yamhad, dates back to the military campaigns of Hattuàili I and Muràili I in the late seventeenth and early sixteenth 14 Ashlar masonry is most comprehensively studied in Hult 1983, with particular emphasis on Late Bronze Cyprus and the Levant. 15 The historical problem of the Late Bronze Age political contact zones in the Near East is addressed from a structuralist point of view by Liverani (1990). For the development of an “international style” in the craftsmanship of prestige goods, see most recently Feldman 2002, with literature.

upright stones and building narratives

79

centuries BC. Only two centuries later, ’uppuliliuma I (1344-1322 BC) was the one who consolidated the territorial power of the Hittite empire over this region, with his appointment of his own sons, ’arri-kuàuh (Piyaààili) as a viceroy ruler at Karkamià and Telipinu at Aleppo, presumably as a priest of the Storm God Teààub of Halab (Bryce 1998, 75-102, 195). The prosperous city of Karkamià then became the main center of Hittite presence in North Syria and the Hittite dynasty there survived the destruction of Hattuàa at the end of the Bronze Age. The fourteenth and thirteenth centuries in North Syria and Hittite Anatolia provide abundant archaeological evidence for sculpted orthostat programs, mainly associated with temples and city-gates. The impressive and characteristically unique citadel-gate at the imperial Hittite city at Alacahöyük, excavated by Theodore Macridy in 19061907, is perhaps the earliest narrative program in such scale, even though the date of its construction is debated.16 The gate’s double passageway is flanked by colossal guardian sculpture in the form of andesite monolithic sphinxes, comparable to the gate sculpture at the Upper City at Hattuàa and the unfinished basalt sphinxes of Yesemek quarry near Tilmen Höyük. On either side of the entrance, however, the outer and inner façades of the casemate walls have a series of andesite ashlar blocks carved with scenes depicting a particular sacrificial festival and scenes of hunting.17 The sculpted architectural blocks are fitted together in at least three courses in a finely bonded cyclopean technique, which is mostly unknown from the North Syrian Late Bronze or Iron Age sites .18 Apart from its well known monumental gate sculpture, the thirteenth century Upper City temples of Hattuàa exhibit an even more sophisticated version of cyclopean/coursed ashlar masonry in combination with uncarved orthostats, featuring not only megalithic wall socles with oblique or crotched and finely fitted joints, but also well-cut orthostats (Hult 1983, 42-43). Hattuàa’s stone blocks were never worked to form flat and dull surfaces but 16 See Macridy 1908. Naumann (1971, 81-82) prefers a late 13th c. date, while Mellink (1970, 18) rejects this late date. 17 The narrative subject matter is also known from a number of Hittite relief vases, especially from Bitik and InandÌk (Mellink 1970, 18). 18 On the Alacahöyük relief program, see Mellink 1970, 1974. Mellink (1974, 203) has already pointed out the architectural character of the relief blocks; Naumann (1971, 79-81) briefly discusses the architectonic aspects of the construction.

80

ö. harmanâah

rather usually given a smooth three-dimensionality with bulging and pillow like surfaces, creating a very distinctive tectonic aesthetic. For instance, in Temple V, which was built at the time of Tudhaliya IV (1235-1216 BC) within one of the major cult complexes of the Upper City and connected with an ancestor cult, well dressed orthostats of 1.80 meters in height are raised on ashlar plinths and line the northern and eastern façades of the temple as well as a cult-room (Neve 1993, 34-37, Abb. 93, 96; Naumann 1971, 76). According to Neve’s reconstruction (1993a, Abb. 100-103), a relief orthostat of Tudhaliya IV was raised above this orthostat level on a column in House A, which served as one of the ancestor-cult buildings in the same sanctuary. It seems possible to argue that the flourishing of this masonry and sculptural tradition under the patronage of Hittite kings especially in the last two centuries of the Late Bronze Age should be associated in general terms with the Hittite participation in the architectural koine of the eastern Mediterranean, and in particular in relation to the intense Hittite involvement with North Syria at the time.

Appropriation of Representationality: The Transition to Early Iron Age in North Syria Recent excavations in two North Syrian sites, namely Ain D§r§ and the Aleppo citadel, have further illuminated not only the early formation of the sculpted orthostat programs in cultic contexts but also thrown light on the problematic cultural transition between the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Ages in the region. A monumental temple (possibly to Iàtar-’awuàka), decorated with an impressive sculptural program in basalt and limestone, was excavated between 1980 and 1985 at the Late Bronze-Iron Age settlement on Tell Ain D§r§, about 40 kilometers northwest of Aleppo, overlooking the Afrin valley (Abå Assaf 1990). The director of the excavations, Abå Assaf (1990, 20-24, 39-41), identifies at least three building phases in the history of the temple, mostly based on its program of architectural sculpture, extending from 1300 to 740 BC. The earliest temple, presumably founded sometime in the Late Bronze Age, features a common North Syrian temple plan: it is raised on a limestone platform with a monumental double-columnar entrance, an ante-cella and a main cult-room. The architectonic features of the temple are better understood for the slightly later second phase, when carved steles,

upright stones and building narratives

81

orthostats and decorated architectural members were introduced to the corpus of the temple construction.19 The architectural sculpture of the temple presents several innovations including cultic reliefs, orthostats and stairs inlaid or carved with guilloche patterns. The temple combines limestone and basalt forming a striking overall material contrast between the tectonic members in limestone and sculptural elements in basalt. The last phase of the temple in the Early Iron Age introduced a corridor-like processional platform all around the cella and a series of basalt steles erected on limestone bases, as well as lion and sphinx orthostats and protomes decorated all around the façade of the temple. The evidence from the monumental urban temples of Aleppo and Ain D§r§, and the ceremonial gate structures at Alacahöyük, Karkamià and Malatya, suggests that the introduction of relief representational sequences in the form of complex pictorial narratives was principally associated with cultic performances and urban cult festivals, at least during the Late Bronze Age. I argue that these festivals usually related to powerful supra-regional cults of Tarhunzas, Storm God of the Syro-Hittite world, or Ninurta in Assyria, whose religious ideologies were always enmeshed with ideologies of the ruling elite and state ceremonialism. This idea is strongly supported by the fact that especially in Kalhu and Karkamià, the orthostat programs eventually became a domain of historical commemorations of the ruling elite during the Early Iron Age as much as they maintained their cultic and mytho-poetical significance. This intersection of ritual and stately ceremonialism of official ideologies is common to both Syro-Hittite and Assyrian relief programs. Throughout the tenth and early ninth centuries BC, a new wave of urban foundations and large scale building activities is attested in Syro-Hittite realm, where novel architectural forms were introduced to

19 Abå Assaf dates the sculptural program of the temple based on stylistic criteria and concludes that the first stylistic group that includes the mountain-god relief-orthostats (E1-7) dates to 13th-12th c., while the second group, which covers the lion and sphinx protomes (C 5-26 and 31-42) and the reliefs D 1-4 of the ante-cella (i.e. the relief of the mountain-god with upward turned toes, orthostats with guilloche pattern “false window”) dates to 10th c. BC. Problems for this art historical dating have been pointed out already, particularly concerning the Iàtar-’awuàka relief (Orthmann 1993; Zimansky 2002). Abå Assaf himself has accepted that at least some of the reliefs found at Ain D§r§ should be associated with the imperial Hittite realm, rather than Iron Age SyroHittite styles, and therefore should date to the 13th-12th c. BC.

82

ö. harmanâah

the urban landscapes. An outstanding aspect of these projects was the construction of ceremonial urban ensembles that contained temples, palaces and monumental gates. The tenth and ninth century programs are especially well known from the sites Zincirli, Tell Halaf, Hama, Tell Ta’yinat and Malatya. In the Early Iron Age urban landscapes, the city or citadel gate was a ritually strategic, ceremonially significant part of the urban sacred and political landscape and construed collectively as a liminal space to be protected for the well-being of the city. Beyond the city gates, the archaeological evidence from Early Iron Age Karkamià offers an even more comprehensive picture of how these orthostat programs transformed the entire city-scape into a coherent spatial narrative. The urban renewal program carried out by the Suhis-Katuwas dynasty at Karkamià during the tenth century and early ninth century BC is significant, owing to the complexity of the building operations in this Early Iron Age city and the wealth of epigraphic material that comes from the site. The monumentalized public space of Karkamià was exuberantly animated with several programs of carved basalt and limestone orthostats and architectural sculpture, punctuated with monumental inscriptions in hieroglyphic Luwian, monuments to ancestor cults, as well as narrative scenes of military and cultic subject matter. In one building inscription found in the so-called King’s Gate, Katuwas, the early ninth century Karkamiàean king, gives us an important understanding of the architectural context and the cultural significance of orthostats.20 4.11 mu-pa-wa/i-‘pi-na’LINGERE-sa-ti kar-ka-mi-si-za(URBS) (DEUS)TONITRUS-ti DEUS.DOMUS-tà PUGNUS-ru-ha But I myself then constructed (?) the temple(s) with luxury for Karkamiàean Tarhunzas 4.12 wa/i-tú-ta-‘ PANIS(-)ara/i-si-na PONERE-wa/i-ha for him I established ARASI-bread. 4.13 |za-ia-ha-wa/i “PORTA”-la/i/u-na á-ma |AVUS-ti-ia mu-|PRAEna CRUS.CRUS-ta And these gates (of) my grandfathers passed down to me 4.14 a-wa/i PURUS-MI-ia DEUS.DOMUS-sa(?) ku-ma-na AEDIFICARE+MI-ha 20 Hawkins 2000, I.1: 95-96, Text II.9. Karkamià A11a (A8). The orthostat is now fragmentary, largely in the Anatolian Civilizations Museum, Ankara (nos. 10900a-h), with one fragment in the British Museum (BM 117916). It is a “basalt orthostat in the form of a rebated door jamb for right side of entrance bearing 7 line inscription” (Hawkins 2000, I.1: 94).

upright stones and building narratives

83

When I built the holies of the temple (OR: the Holy (one)’s temple) 4.15 wa/i-mu-tà-‘|za-zi (SCALPRUM)ku-ta-sa5+ra/i-zi |POST-ní|| 5.15 |PES-wa/i-ta these orthostats “came after” me, 5.16 a-wa/i za-ia “PORTA”-na |SCALPRUM-sa5+ra/i-ha these gates I “orthostated” 5.17 wa/i-tà-‘ |FRONS-la/i/u ARGENTUM.DARE-si-ia sa-tá-’ they were foremost in(?) cost(?) (very costly?) 5.18 wa/i-tà-‘ “LIGNUM”-wa/i-ia-ti AEDIFICARE+MI-ha I built them (also) with wood 5.19|za-zi-pa-wa/i (DOMUS)ha + ra/i-sà-tá-ni-zi a-na-ia BONUS-sa-mi-i FEMINA-ti-i DOMUS + SCALA(-)tá-wa/i-ni-zi i-zi-i-ha and these upper floors for Anas my beloved wife as TAWANI-apartments I made...

Orthostats appear in this fascinating text not simply as components of an outstanding architectural ensemble but as personified powerful agents who bolstered the king’s socio-political power. Moreover, their cultural power and their social significance are not at all tied solely to the pictorial and textual narratives inscribed on them: their efficacy derives precisely from their materiality, their architectonic disposition in the form of a prestigious technology. The cumulative evidence suggests that the transformation of such orthostatic surfaces into surfaces of representation and surfaces of performativity coincides precisely with the production of urban spaces in the Early Iron Age, the comprehensive program of new urban foundations. Complex narrative schemes of the Early Iron Age monumental projects built their significance over the previously existing practice and the tectonic culture of raising orthostats as a symbolic technology. Still, the articulation of the relief representations in a complex mixture of historical commemorations, state ceremonies and ritual spectacles that continuously refer to a mytho-poetical past appears to be a striking innovation of Early Iron Age artisans in Assyria and Syro-Hittite cities.

Tiglath-pileser I: Middle Assyrian Orthostats and the Idea of Commemoration Analogous to the Syro-Hititte practices of raising commemorative monuments, Middle and Late Assyrian kings also erected carved

84

ö. harmanâah

and inscribed public monuments in the medium of stone, however, mainly in the form of “symbol socles,” steles, obelisks, and rock reliefs. These commemorative monuments delineated public spaces of the Assyrian cities and marked the landscapes of contested frontiers with a calculated (re)presentation of royal and religious imagery. As mentioned earlier, other representational techniques of monumental display, such as bronze architectural friezes, glazed brick paneling and wall painting in architectural contexts, should be added to the list of narrative media. These various architectural representations were raised as commemorations following specific historical events, such as a military campaign or a building project, and presented the geography of the empire in the form of a narrativized map, a spatial narrative. This was accomplished not only literally by means of the pictorial narratives themselves, but also through the performative acts of erecting these monuments at specific locations at specific historical moments, which then weaved the landscapes into a narrative through the establishment of sites of memory. Tiglath-pileser (Tukulti-§pil-eàarra) I (1114-1076 BC) is known to have carved a series of rock reliefs during his campaigns to eastern Anatolia, one at the so-called “source of the Tigris,” modern Birklinçay source near Lice in the DiyarbakÌr province of Turkey, as well as others in YoncalÌ on the Murat River, north of Lake Van near the Malazgirt plain in eastern Turkey. The carving of display monuments were culminating moments in the course of the king’s expedition: they marked strategic locations in the foreign/frontier landscapes, created places of imperial ritual to be frequented and reaffirmed by future generations and locals, and celebrated a significant political and economic accomplishment. The Birklinçay (“Tigris Tunnel”) rock relief of Tiglath-pileser I was later visited by Shalmaneser III, who not only had his craftsmen carve his own image and inscriptions at the same site, but also represented this commemorative event in the narrative relief program of his Mamu temple gate bronze reliefs at Imgur-Enlil (modern Balawat) and additionally mentioned it in his annals.21 Textual evidence for the use of orthostats and gate sculpture in late Middle Assyrian architecture comes from the annals of Tiglath-pileser

21

For a survey of references to the Birklinçay monument in Shalmaneser III’s annals, see Yamada 2000, 281-283, 291-92; Shafer 1998, 191-201.

upright stones and building narratives

85

I. Tiglath-pileser I’s reign stands as an important period in the later section of Middle Assyrian history, not only in terms of the political expansion of Assyrian presence in Upper Mesopotamia, but also due to a series of innovations in the cultural sphere. During his rule, the writing of annals on clay cylinders and prisms took shape and, for the first time, military expeditions were presented in a new narrative format in chronological order, accompanied by the accounts of royal hunts and building activities.22 His annals record that he campaigned extensively to the west and north of Assyria. In his campaign to the land of Amurru, during which he crossed the Euphrates, he defeated the so-called Ahlamu-Aramaeans, ritually “washed his weapons” in the Upper Sea (Mediterranean), felled logs of cedar from the Cedar Mountain, and imposed tribute over Ini-Teààub of Karkamià, king of Hatti (Hawkins 1982, 380). During his expeditions to the north and west, Tiglath-pileser I went twice to the city of Melidia (Malatya), once during his return from the land of Dayeni (fourth campaign) and the second time during his return from the Mediterranean, and received tribute from the king Allumari (Hawkins 2000, I.1: 283). His annals provide solid evidence that the king had seen the Syro-Hittite cities in existence in the early eleventh century BC, including Melidia and Karkamià with their flourishing orthostat programs. In an interesting text restored from a number of clay and stone tablets and a clay prism excavated from Aààur, Tiglath-pileser I describes his reconstruction of the bÊt àahåru and bÊt labbånu of a cultic complex. Among the variety of details concerning their architectural technology, he claims to have provided stone revetments for these cult rooms and gate sculpture:23 61-62)... i-na si-te-et GI’ e-re-ni É àa-hu-ri àa-tu-nu ià-tu uà-àe-àu a-di gabadib-be-àu ar-ßip ...with this (same) cedar wood, I constructed those bÊt àahåru from foundations to crenellations 63) i-na a-gúr-ri àa NA4.AD.BAR a-na si-hír-ti-àu al-mi É la-bu-ni àa puti-àu 22 Tadmor (1997, 327) suggests that two literary genres of the time period were blended together by the scribes of Tiglath-pileser I’s court: “the heroic epic” and “the chronicle.” 23 The text is translated most recently by Grayson 1991, 38-45, text A.0.87.4. I followed this translation mostly with some rewording. It was originally collated, translated and published by Weidner (1958, 347-59)

86

ö. harmanâah I surrounded it all around with slabs of basalt. BÊt labbånu, opposite to it, 64) i-na GI’ bu-uã-ni ià-tu uà-àe-àu a-di gaba-dib-be-àu ar-ßip i-na a-gúr-ri àa NA4.pe-e-li I constructed of terebinth from foundations to crenellations. With slabs of limestone 65) pa-ße-e a-na si-hír-ti-àu al-mi É.GAL-la àu-a-ti i-na GI’ e-re-ni I surrounded it all around. This palace of cedar 66) ù GI’ bu-uãni ar-sip ú-àék-lil ú-àèr-rih ú-si-im and terebinth I constructed, completed perfectly and made its appropriate decor splendid. 67) na-“hi ”-ra àa AN’E.KUR.RA àa A.AB.BA i-qa-bi-àu-ú-ni pa-ri-an-gi ep-àet qa-ti-ya a nahiru, which means a sea-horse, with a pariangu (harpoon?) of my own making 68) àá i-na siq-ri DINGIR.MA’ ù DINGIR.IGI.DU DINGIR.ME’ GAL. ME’ EN.ME’-ya i-na A.AB.BA which by the command of the gods Ninurta and Nergal, great gods, my lords, in the [Great] Sea 69) [(rabÊte) àa m§t a]-mur-ri a-du-ku-ni bur-hi-ià ba-al-ãa àa ià-tu KUR luma-áà [of the land of A]murru, I killed; and a live burhià, which was transported from the land of Lumaà 70) [...]-te am-mi-te àa KUR hab-hi na-ßu-ú-ni tam-ài-li-àu-nu àa NA4.AD.BAR e-pu-uà [...] the other side of the land Habhu. I made their representations in basalt 71) [ina n¿rib àarrå]-ti-ya im-na ù àu-me-la ú-àa-zi-iz I stationed them on the right and left [at my ro]yal [entrance].

This is a rich text and it is hard to do justice to its historical significance within the limits of my discussion here. Later in the same text, the king refers to another palace, of boxwood this time, which he surrounds with slabs of giànugallu stone and deposits his royal inscriptions within. From the variety of stones that are being used in these monumental buildings and from the implication that they were conspicuously displayed, the agurru can be understood here as orthostats.24 Even more interesting is the description of the apotro24 CAD s.v. “agurru.” Originally “kiln-fired brick.” When used with a stone determinative followed with a type of stone, it is attested as “paving stone, tile (of stone), slab” in inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser I, Sennacherib and Esarhaddon. The alternative word

upright stones and building narratives

87

paic sculpture that is erected at a royal entrance: basalt replicas of exotic monsters, a nahiru and a burhià, acquisitions from the king’s campaigns in foreign territories, are reproduced in basalt, a stone that is not found easily around Aààur and had to be imported (Moorey 1994, 345-346). A significant number of basalt fragments of animal sculptures and inscribed slabs of Tiglath-pileser I were excavated at Aààur during Walter Andrae’s expedition at the site of the king’s palace in 1905 (Grayson 1991, 62).25 One of the now-lost inscriptions from this collection was edited by Grayson (1991, 62-63, text A.0.87. 17) and reads: (Property of) the palace of Tiglath-[pileser, king of] Assyria, conqueror [from] Babylon [of the Land of Akkad] to Mount Lebanon [to the Great] Sea [of the land Amurru and] the sea [of the land(s) Nairi, builder of] the cedar [palace].

The alternating use of limestone and basalt as orthostats, the idea of erecting gate sculpture as replicas of animals that were victims of the king’s royal hunt in the west, carved in basalt as they were in the west, as well as the historical context of the inscription, all suggest that Tiglath-pileser I is making reference to the architectural technologies of the Syro-Hittite cities that he had visited in his campaigns. The text should be read as an ideological statement of the king that expresses the incorporation of an architectural technique and material of a particular foreign cultural domain into a building program that he initiates at the Assyrian capital, and should be understood along the same lines as later Assyrian kings who imported the bÊt hil§ni, an architectural feature from an expressly North Syrian domain. It is then possible to argue that Assyria was already participating in the architectural koine of raising orthostats, as much as the royal rhetorics that is shaped around its cultural significance in Upper Syro-Mesopotamia in the making, throughout those transitional decades from the end of the Bronze Age to the beginning of the Iron Age.

askuppu was later adapted from the time of Tiglath-pileser III onwards, to be used for upright slabs in architectural contexts (CAD s.v. “askuppu”). 25 For a brief description of the inscribed pieces, see Andrae 1905, 52-56. For pictures of these sculptural fragments, see Weidner 1958, 357-358, Abb. 1-5. See discussion on the nahiru and burhià statues in Weidner’s commentary (1958, 355-359) to his edition of the text. On this topic, see now Briquel-Chatonnet and Bordreuil 2000.

88

ö. harmanâah Concluding Remarks

This discussion aimed at bringing to the forefront the complexity of archaeological and literary evidence regarding commemorative monuments in the Upper Mesopotamian Iron Age and their interpretation in the relevant cross-cultural contexts. The practices of historical commemoration in buildings make use of socially recognized systems of representation, both textual and pictorial, and operate at a societal level of historical consciousness and collective memory. The monuments themselves make the space speak, being laden with cultural references and historical representations and creating “topographies of remembrance” (Jonker 1995) and “sites of memory” (Nora 1989). Repeated social practices that involve such public monuments maintain the mental maps of this historicized topography. Monuments often commemorate particular historical events of major socio-political significance, and the narrative accounts of their representational program negotiate the conceptual relationship between society and history. However, as seen in several cases such as Assurnasirpal II’s Northwest Palace or Katuwas’s temple to Tarhunzas at Karkamià, the erection of the monument becomes a historically conspicuous event itself. Among other levels of meaning, they also commemorate their own making through the celebratory building inscriptions inscribed on them. The metaphorical language of monuments, therefore, is not limited to the pictorial and textual narratives that the monuments may offer. As it was argued throughout this discussion, construction materials and techniques—the tectonic qualities of buildings—become part and parcel of the metaphorical vocabulary of architectural representation. The study of commemorative practices comes with dichotomies of its own: on the one hand, commemorative monuments are usually considered as ideological statements of the ruling elite, thereby serving as vehicles of securing social prestige and political power, while the historical narrativity in their pictorial and textual representations aligns with the particular rhetorics of rulership. On the other hand, if one considers that rhetorical acts of the ruling ideology “effectively constitute culture” and “confer meaning on the world” (Holliday 2002, xx-xxi), the production of monuments as a social practice can not be disengaged from the cultural practices of the society. Therefore, a balanced view of monumental buildings should be sought, between

upright stones and building narratives

89

imperial practices of commemoration as symbolically charged gestures and artisanal practices that create their own corpus of skilled knowledge and operate in regional and supra-regional levels. This question conveniently brings us to the problem regarding the Assyrian orthostatic tradition, formulated elegantly by Irene Winter (1993): the fine distinction between supra-regional sharing of artisanal practices through the circulation of skilled knowledge and the conscious borrowing of culturally significant foreign elements in a symbolically charged rhetorical gesture of the ruling elite. My argument here is that the Assyrian involvement in the architectural practice of raising orthostats should be read in various levels of meaning, where both of the above mentioned phenomena were operative. The survey of the long-term development of orthostats in the context of Near Eastern architecture demonstrated that this construction technique not only changed in physical form and architectural context, but also in its cultural meanings in different regions and time periods. Nevertheless, it remained a component of prestigious architecture and commemorative monuments; therefore, the skilled knowledge of the making of orthostats circulated cross-culturally and extra-regionally as a highly esteemed architectural technique. Assyria was an important participant in this koine of stone masonry, especially after the administrative center of the empire was shifted to the stone-rich environments of the Ninuwa-Kalhu region. The Assyrian contribution to the representational use of orthostats was spectacular. Archaeological and textual evidence demonstrate that Assurnasirpal II’s reign certainly involved experimentations and innovations in building technology in the context of his new foundation at Kalhu and his large-scale building projects. Otherwise, not only the construction technique of raising orthostats was known to Assyrian monarchs, at the latest from Tiglath-pileser I onward, but also its symbolic significance was commented upon. In the building accounts of Tiglath-pileser I, the accomplishment of raising orthostats was presented as symbolic capital, that is, the material acquisition of a particularly prestigious material resource as well as the craftsmanship associated with it. The innovative moments in Assyrian history such as the reigns of Tiglath-pileser I and Assurnasirpal II should be considered in the context of long-term supra-regional networks of cultural interaction and circulation of artisanal knowledge, as well as with respect to the shared power rhetorics among the ruling elites of regional polities.

90

ö. harmanâah

The initiation of orthostat relief programs functioned on multiple levels of social signification and material practice in the earlier part of the Iron Age. First and foremost, having started as a prestigious architectural practice in the Middle Bronze Age, orthostats were transformed into a pervasive feature of the urban fabric in the refounded cities of the Early Iron Age, coinciding with the significant shifts in the ideological and socio-economic structures of the new Syro-Hittite cities. The innovative technological style of finely worked and pictorially articulated stone surfaces brought in a renewed concept of ceremonialized public spaces. Looking at this orthostat evidence, I agree with David Summers (2003), who recently argued that social spaces are explicitly bounded and distinguished by the technologies of their production, which he calls “facture”. The imaginative handling of distinct materials through skilful work therefore transforms the site of a building project into a site of material elaboration, and assembles a world of artisanal knowledge around it, that is, physically inscribed in the social space and thus configures the collective imagination with its material significations. Technology or facture dwells in social spaces as one component of their multiple and complex meanings; it bounds and marks them for long durations and continuously commemorates their own making. The making of orthostatic surfaces into surfaces of representation and surfaces of performativity coincides precisely with the production of urban spaces in the Early Iron Age, the comprehensive program of new urban foundations. Complex narrative schemes of the Early Iron Age projects built their significance over the previously existing practice of raising orthostats as a symbolic technology. Or to put it in another way, representationality and narrativity, as forms of socio-symbolic value, were appropriated by the architectonic culture of upright stones. The configuration of the relief representations on upright stones, with a complex mixture of historical commemorations, ritual ceremonies and state spectacles that continuously refer to a mytho-poetical past, constituted building narratives in the social space and effectively shaped the collective imagination.

upright stones and building narratives

91

References Abå Assaf, AlÊ. 1990. Der Tempel von Ain D§r§. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern. Andrae, W. 1905. Aus den Berichten W. Andraes aus Assur von Oktober 1904 bis März 1905. MDOG 26: 19-64. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Originally published as Le sens pratique (Les Éditions de Minuit 1980). Translated by Richard Nice. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Briquel-Chatonnet, F and P. Bordreuil. 2000. Tiglath-phalazar Ier a-t-il pêché ou chassé la nahiru? Topoi Supplément 2: 117-124. Bryce, Trevor R. 1998. The Kingdom of the Hittites. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Feldman, Marian H. 2002. Luxurious Forms: Redefining a Mediterranean ‘International Style,’ 1400-1200 B.C.E. Art Bulletin 84: 6-29. Frampton, Kenneth. 1990. Rappel à l’ordre, the Case for the Tectonic. Architectural Design 60/3-4: 19-25. Grayson, A. Kirk. 1991. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium B.C. I (1114-859 B.C.). RIMA 2. Toronto : University of Toronto. Gregori, Barbara. 1986. Three-entrance City Gates of the Middle Bronze Age in Syria and Palestine. Levant 18: 83-102. Harmanâah, Ömür. 2005. Spatial Narratives, Commemorative Practices and the Building Project: New Urban Foundations in Upper Syro-Mesopotamia during the Early Iron Age. Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania. Hartoonian, Gevork. 1994. Ontology of Construction: On Nihilism of Technology in Theories of Modern Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawkins, John David. 1982. Neo-Hittite States in Syria and Anatolia. In CAH2 3.1: 372-441. ———. 2000. Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions. 3 vols. Berlin: De Gruyter. Holliday, Peter. 2002. The Origins of Roman Historical Commemoration in the Visual Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horden, Peregrine and Nicholas Purcell. 2000. The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean history. Oxford : Blackwell. Hult, Gunnel. 1983. Bronze Age Ashlar Masonry in the Eastern Mediterranean: Cyprus, Ugarit and Neighboring Regions. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology LXVI. Göteborg: Paul Åströms Förlag. Jonker, Gerdien. 1995. The Topography of Remembrance: The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia. Leiden: Brill. Khayyata, Wahid and Kay Kohlmeyer. 1998. Die Zitadelle von Aleppo—Vorläufiger Bericht über die Untersuchungen 1996 und 1997. DaM 10: 69-95.

92

ö. harmanâah

———. 2000. Syro-German Excavations on the Citadel of Aleppo. In Proceedings of the First International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, ed. P. Matthiae, A. Enea, L. Peyronel, F. Pinnock, 733-739. Rome: Università degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Archeologiche e Anthropologiche dell’Antichità. Klengel, Horst. 1992. Syria 3000 to 300 B.C.: A Handbook of Political History. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Kohlmeyer, Kay. 2000a. Der Tempel des Wettergottes von Aleppo. Münster: Rhema. Kohlmeyer, Kay. 2000b. Halab: Neues zu Aleppo im 2. und 1. Jahrtausend vor Christus. Nürnberger Blätter zur Archäologie 16: (1999/2000) 111-130. Kuhrt, Amélie. 1995. The Ancient Near East: c. 3000-330 B.C. 2 vols. London and New York: Routledge. Layard, Austen Henry. 1849. Nineveh and its Remains with an Account of a Visit to the Chaldæan Christians of Kurdistan and the Yezidis, or Devil-worshippers, and an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. 2 vols. London: John Murray. Liddell, H. G. and R. Scott. 1940. A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Liverani, Mario. 1990. Prestige and Interest: International Relations in the Near East ca. 1600-1100 BC. Padua: Sargon srl. MacDonald. William L. 1986. The Architecture of the Roman Empire. Vol. II, An Urban Appraisal. New Haven: Yale University Press. Macridy, Theodore. 1908. La Porte des sphinx à Euyuk: fouilles du Musée Impérial Ottoman. Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft 1908.3. Berlin: Wolt Peiser Verlag. Mallowan, Max E. L. 1966. Nimrud and its Remains. 2 vols. London: Collins. Marcus, Michelle I. 1995. Geography as Visual Ideology: Landscape, Knowledge, and Power in Neo-Assyrian Art. In Neo-Assyrian geography, ed. M. Liverani, 193-202. Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, Dipartimento di scienze storiche, archeologiche e anthropologiche dell’Antichità, Quaderni di Geografia Storica 5. Rome: Sargon srl. Matthiae, Paolo. 1981. Ebla: An Empire Rediscovered. Translated by Christopher Holme. New York: Doubleday & Company. ———. 1997. Ebla and Syria in the Middle Bronze Age. In The Hyksos: New Historical and Archaeological Perspective, ed. E. D. Oren, 379-414. The University of Pennsylvania Museum Monograph 96. Philadelphia: University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Mazzoni, Stefania. 1997. The Gate and the City: Change and Continuity in Syro-Hittite Urban Ideology. In Die orientalische Stadt: Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruc, ed. G. Wilhelm, 307-338. Saarbrücken: SDV Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag. Mellink, Machteld J. 1970. Observations on the Sculptures of Alaca Höyük. Anadolu 14: 15-25.

upright stones and building narratives

93

———. 1974. Hittite Friezes and Gate Sculptures. In Anatolian Studies presented to Hans Gustav Güterbock on the Occasion of his 65th birthday, ed. K. Bittel, Ph. H. J. Houwink ten Cate, and E. Reiner, 201-214. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten. Moorey, Peter Roger Stuart. 1994. Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries: The Archaeological Evidence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mostafavi, Mohsen and David Leatherbarrow. 1993. On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. Naumann, Rudolf. 1971. Architektur Kleinasiens von ihren Anfängen bis zum Ende der hethitischen Zeit. Tübingen: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth. Neve, Peter J. 1993. Hattusa – Stadt der Götter und Tempel: Neue Ausgrabungen in der Hauptstadt der Hethiter. Zaberns Bildbände zur Archäologie 8. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. Nora, Pierre. 1989. Between Memory and History: Les lieux de memoire. Representations 26: 7-24. Orthmann, Winfried. 1993. Zur Datierung des Iàtar-Reliefs aus Tell ‘Ain D§r§. IstMitt 43: 245-251. Pinnock, Frances. 2001. The Urban Landscape of Old Syrian Ebla. JCS 53: 1333. Pittman, Holly. 1996. The White Obelisk and the Problem of Historical Narrative in the Art of Assyria. Art Bulletin 78: 334-355. Reade, Julian Edgeworth. 1979. Assyrian Architectural Decoration: Techniques and Subject-matter. Baghdader Mittelungen 10: 17-49 with plates 1-25. Russell, John Malcolm. 1991. Sennacherib’s Palace without Rival at Nineveh. Chicago: University of Chicago. ———. 1999. The Writing on the Wall: Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Shafer, Ann Taylor. 1998. The Carving of an Empire: Neo-Assyrian Monuments on the Periphery. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University. Sherratt, Andrew and Susan Sherratt. 2001. Technological Change in the East Mediterranean Bronze Age: Capital, Resources and Marketing. In The Social Context of Technological Change: Egypt and the Near East, 1650-1550 BC, ed. Andrew J. Shortland, 15-38. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Summers, David. 2003. Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism. London: Phaidon. Tadmor, Hayim. 1997. Propaganda, Literature, Historiography: Cracking the Code of the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions. In Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 325-338. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project.

94

ö. harmanâah

Ussishkin, David. 1989. The Erection of Royal Monuments in City-Gates. In Anatolia and the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honor of Tahsin Özgüç, ed. K. Emre, B. Hrouda, M. Mellink, and N. Özgüç, 485-496. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu. Weidner, Ernst F. 1958. Die Feldzüge und Bauten Tiglatpilesers I. AfO 18: 342360. Winter, Irene J. 1981. Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian reliefs. Studies in Visual Communication 7: 2-38. ———. 1982. Art as Evidence for Interaction: Relations between the Assyrian Empire and North Syria. In Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr, XXV Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Berlin 3. bis 7. Juli 1978, ed. H.-J. Nissen and J. Renger, 355-382. Berlin: Dietrich Reimar Verlag. ———. 1983. The Program of the Throneroom of Assurnasirpal II. In Essays on Near Eastern Art and Archaeology in Honor of Charles Kyrle Wilkinson, ed. P. O. Harper and H. Pittman, 15-31. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ———. 1993. ‘Seat of Kingship’/ ‘a Wonder to Behold’: The Palace as Construct in the Ancient Near East. Ars Orientalis 23: 27-55. ———. 1997. Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology. In Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 359-381. Helsinki: The NeoAssyrian Text Corpus Project. ———. 1998. The Affective Properties of Styles: An Inquiry into Analytical Process and the Inscription of Meaning in Art History. In Picturing Science, Producing Art, ed. C. A. Jones and P. Galison, 55-77. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2002. Defining ‘Aesthetics’ for Non-Western Studies: The Case of Ancient Mesopotamia. In Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies, ed. M. A. Holly and K. Moxey, 3-28. Clark Studies in the Visual Arts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Yamada, Shigeo. 2000. The Construction of the Assyrian Empire: A Historical Study of the Inscriptions of Shalmaneser III (859-824 B.C.) Relating to his Campaigns to the West. Leiden: Brill. Zimansky, Paul. 2002. The ‘Hittites’ at #Ain Dara. In Recent Developments in Hittite Archaeology and History: Papers in Memory of Hans G. Güterbock, ed. K. A. Yener, and H. A. Hoffner Jr. with the assistance of S. Dhesi, 177-191. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.

upright stones and building narratives

95

Figure 1. Tilmen Höyük, Middle Bronze Age palace, system section through northwestern façade orthostats. (Drawing by author with the permission of Refik Duru).

Figure 2. North Syria with sites mentioned in the text. (Base map: MODIS Rapid Response Project, NASA/ GSFC).

96 ö. harmanâah

upright stones and building narratives

97

Figure 3. Yamhad (Aleppo), Middle Bronze Age temple orthostats, general view. (Photo by author, summer 2002, courtesy of Kay Kohlmeyer)

98

ö. harmanâah

Figure 4. Yamhad (Aleppo), Middle Bronze Age temple orthostats, detail (Photo by author, summer 2002, courtesy of Kay Kohlmeyer)

Figure 5. Yamhad (Aleppo), Middle Bronze Age temple orthostats, detail (Photo by author, summer 2002, courtesy of Kay Kohlmeyer)

upright stones and building narratives 99

100

ö. harmanâah

blurring the edges

101

BLURRING THE EDGES: A RECONSIDERATION OF THE TREATMENT OF ENEMIES IN ASHURBANIPAL’S RELIEFS1 Stephanie Reed The imperial art of Neo-Assyria is famously violent—battle narratives lined the palace walls in order to awe the spectator with the power of the king and the state. Like any good story, the Neo-Assyrian narratives contain overt and subtle elements that create thematic tension: alongside glorified depictions of the conquering Assyrians are less conspicuous, but intriguing portraits of the vanquished. These images not only draw the viewer into the action, but can also evoke varied and complex responses.2 In Nineveh, during the reigns of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) and Ashurbanipal (669-627 B.C.), the palace sculptures 1 I am honored to contribute to this volume in honor of Irene Winter, my teacher and surrogate advisor, who has gifted me with the boundless generosity and devotion she bestows upon each of her students. The original version of this paper was developed for her seminar on cross-cultural aesthetics (Harvard University, 2005). Irene continues to inspire my deepest gratitude and admiration, and I can only hope that maturing versions of this study will complement her own pioneering approach to Neo-Assyrian art. I am also grateful to TuÅba Tanyeri-Erdemir, Ömür Harmanâah, and Jack Cheng, whose insights were indispensable to this paper, and to Peter Machinist, for the gift of his personal bibliographical sources. 2 I refer to both the modern and ancient viewer, while recognizing the problematic nature of “audience” and the difficulties of evaluating aesthetic response. How do we begin to compare modern encounters with the reliefs to those of the Assyrians themselves? Winter (2002, 18) summarizes that when approaching aesthetics, “the cultural and the social must be engaged as necessary variables between the subject and the species”. For both audiences, reactions to particular stimuli would derive from the individual’s socio-historical situation and personal experiences (see note 3 below). Though we lack contemporary Assyrian accounts of the sculptures’ visual effectiveness, the palace reliefs, not to mention the very nature of Mesopotamian art, provide insight into Assyrian aesthetic value. There is an emphasis upon ornament or “auspicious” objects, exotic “otherness” (whether man or beast), in movement or action sequences, descriptive clarity and design symmetry. These attributes reflect cultural ideals of beauty, designed to produce the desired affect in the intended audience. Given the variety of individuals who may have viewed the reliefs, we can surmise that even variations of “fear” and “awe” would fail to capture the full range of responses (see Winter 1998, esp. 66-67 on “style” and “affective agency”; 2002 on the “language” of Mesopotamian aesthetic experience).

102

s. reed

reached new levels of novelty, complexity and sensitivity; aspects that may go unobserved to those more accustomed to Western narrative styles.3 From a modern perspective, the artistic treatment of Assyria’s opponents, especially in the reign of Ashurbanipal, suggests conflicting perceptions of the enemy, which may indicate conflicting motivational values at work within imperial propaganda. The violent sculptural themes reflect the king’s struggle to maintain as well as justify his realm; and while the palace narratives give the impression of extreme confidence in Assyria’s invincibility, they nonetheless contain traces of an existential uncertainty that pervades Mesopotamian thought (see Bottero 2001; Frankfort 1971, 262-274; Jacobsen 1977, 202-219; Oppenheim 1964). I will argue that the complexity of Assyrian royal ideology is evident in depictions of foreign captives that are not purely hostile and demeaning but suggest an element of “good shepherd” protectiveness. These “emotive” images are found within scenarios of human interaction or familial relationships. At the same time, they are often juxtaposed with elements that imply imminent danger or death, leaving authorial intent ambiguous, and allowing for multiple interpretations. The examples provided below are primarily excerpts from the battle narratives of Ashurbanipal. Most are “minor” representations of Assyrian war victims within a relief sequence, or vignettes. The vignettes layer various episodes within the narrative that enhance the larger story, A useful source for the ancient Assyrian audience is Russell’s (1991) analysis of Sennacherib’s palace sculptures, their intent, and how Assyrian elites and visitors to the palace might have received them. 3 The essential sources for Neo-Assyrian sculpture are listed in Iraq 34 (Reade 1972, 112). For the full corpus of sculptures from the Southwest and North Palaces, see Barnett (1976) and Barnett et al. (1998). Winter (2002) outlines the problems of European aesthetic scholarship and its hindrances to reconstructing a non-Western aesthetic experience. The influence of this intellectual heritage is evident in cases where scholars found Assyrian art to be deficient as “true” narrative: the standardized, “lifeless” human figures failed to meet a Western ideal of reality, where individual human features and emotions can be distinguished (Bersani and Dutoit 1985, 7). Thus scholars concluded that Assyrian art lacked human relations, and without a variety of “expression,” the reliefs could not produce a powerful emotional response in the viewer (e.g. Strommenger 1964, 10-11; Parrot 1961, 12-13). These individuals, accustomed to traditional Western hierarchies of “art” and “beauty,” saw bland repetition in a style that adhered to an Assyrian aesthetic ideal, expressed by symmetry and traditionalized human forms (see Albenda 1998, 30; Reade 1979, 331; Winter 1981, 10; 1995).

blurring the edges

103

and create subtle associations in the mind of the viewer. Due to the stylistic conventions of Assyrian art, human faces and bodies were generally standardized and rendered in traditional Mesopotamian profiles. Due to the lack of individualized human features, some scholars have found that Assyrian art lacked emotive expression (see note 2); but the vignettes utilize postures and gestures, and perceptive, true-to-life details that contribute to the emotional character of the episode. The vignette seems to be a particularly appropriate viewing methodology for our purposes, since one of its definitions is “an image with no definite border, but its edges are gradually faded into the background (Webster’s New World Dictionary).” I will address this aspect in more detail in the next section, and suggest that “blurred edges” in the vignettes create startling irregularities that add tension to the narratives, keeping the viewer off-balance and in anticipation (or perhaps apprehension) of the next act. In my view, the narrative function of these images is nonetheless subservient to their larger ideological implications, and within these vignettes lies the underlying power of the palace reliefs.

Blurring the Edges Beginning in the reign of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC), the Assyrian kings developed a unique form of sculptural narrative in ancient Mesopotamia. The palace reliefs commonly document the king’s activities, selected battles, and episodes of Assyrian life, especially on campaign. The ideology of the Assyrian kings lay in the stories they told—and what is a more riveting vehicle than action sequences? Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit (1985, 64) observe that in Assyrian palace reliefs, “visual analogies are subverted by the obstacles we encounter.” In other words, to make connections between images, we must pass through “interesting space which diverts us from the connection...[T]hey touch, ultimately, through the mediation of other forms.” “Incongruous” images can be used to arrest our attention, and force awareness of the overall context and subtle complexities of the narrative. Marcel Proust (1924) observed that the cultivation of illusion required the artist to obscure the edges of demarcation, so that passing between images created a sense of constant movement. Only then would the viewer grasp the essence of the work, or apprehend the commonalities between objects, space and time that perhaps should not logically

104

s. reed

connect. Bersani and Dutoit (1985, 63) summarize Proust’s argument as follows: The writer and painter should deliberately cultivate those illusions which blur the distinctness of individual objects. For each such illusion may be the sign of a hidden quality common to different objects (or to different moments of time) . . . The demarcations between past and present, between land and sea, fade; juxtaposed objects are fused in a transcendental identity; and the heterogeneous space of human life would be replaced by a unifying, homogenous space of essences.

Proust believed that the goal of art was to recapture the “errors” of our original vision by the creation of this constant movement between melded boundaries. In his “psychic space” between the terms of all relations (or for example, between events in the narratives), Proust found that there can also be a “detemporalizing essence,” or a past sensation that invades the present, leaving the viewer somewhere in between. These arguments point to the power of “minor” irregularities that distort the frames of contrasting spaces, marking commonalties where they might otherwise be obscured, and creating narrative depth. By “blurring” the borders of multiple vignettes, the artist can move the viewer’s gaze between elements in the narrative that are seemingly contradictory, producing ambiguous readings and suggesting multiple outcomes. In the battle reliefs, the border of a vignette of foreign captives often seems to be a “suggestive” marker between the captives and an alternate fate. A recurring “border” for instance is the Assyrian solider, who alternately watches over the “civilian captives”—exiles who will be relocated to other Assyrian lands—and/or the “enemy soldiers” who are being roughly treated, even killed, in the space beyond. The soldier’s purpose then becomes open to question: to which scenario does he truly belong; and is he “guard,” or could he be “guardian”? In some cases, where we only have a portion of a relief sequence, the borders of a scene are enforced; creating associations that may or may not be true to the original narrative (see below, the “Minor Images”).

blurring the edges

105

Assyria and Its “Enemies” Neo-Assyrian kings were anxious to prove their own worthiness and surpass the achievements of their predecessors. Thus each new palace contained its own corpus of personal propaganda, with themes designed to emphasize a specific royal persona. The scenes are largely commemorative, created with specific details that lend authenticity to the historical moment (Russell 1991, 256).4 This propensity for distinguishing details also extends to the rendering of foreign peoples. Julian Reade (1979, 334-335) comments, “in one respect...[foreigners] are all treated alike: tremendous care is taken to represent them, their cultural and sometimes physical characteristics, and the landscapes in which they live...[A] receptive attitude is implicit in the sculptures.” Assyria’s general interest in novelty or “otherness” appears in both text and image; when viewing the reliefs, Reade (1979, n. 12) recalls Leo Oppenheim’s commentary on the account of Sargon’s eighth campaign: The text addresses itself at an audience really interested in learning about foreign peoples, their way of life, their religion and customs...[T]he attitude just described indicates an audience sure of itself, deeply imbued with a conscious tradition of native origin but, at the same time, aware of the existence of other traditions without reacting to them so intensely as to evolve patterns of either aggression or fossilizing self-isolation.

As Oppenheim observes, the figures of the defeated seem to be treated with a rather detached scrutiny, but their prevalence, and the artists’ attention to detail, suggests that the Assyrians were not indifferent to the plight of the conquered. The reason for this is perhaps multivalent: an inherent interest in “otherness,” the potential contributions of deportees to the Assyrian state, and an ideological component manifest in royal hymns and inscriptions, in which one of the king’s roles is “pious shepherd,” or protector of the weak (see Livingstone 1997; Oded 1992; Saggs 1982). 5 4 There is nonetheless “an ideological ‘end’” to the historicity of the representations (Winter 1981, 3). For instance, the Assyrians depict only successful battles, and only the enemy can be shown wounded or killed. The narratives may contain elements of suspense, but the eventual Assyrian victory is a foregone conclusion. 5 On the scale of Assyrian deportations and the resettlement of foreigners, see B. Oded (1979; 1992). Tiglath-Pileser III asserts that he added “countless people” to the land of Assyria, and “continuously herded them in safe pastures” (Tadmor 1994, 105

106

s. reed

If we take the reliefs at face value, the various representations of the defeated can be viewed as another element of royal propaganda, a political tool used to contrast the misery and simplicity of these societies with the strength, sophistication and general superiority of the Assyrians. Indeed, conquered peoples are often shown humbled and subservient, their hands upraised and beseeching their captors, and sometimes performing forced labor. 6 Artists illustrate the torture and death of enemy soldiers and/or their leaders, while the Assyrian army razes its weakened city (for example, figures 1, 2, 11). The Assyrian narratives told a cautionary tale: in order to dissuade disloyalty and rebellion by foreigners and courtiers alike (Russell 1991, 256), the artists displayed the atrocities incurred by the enemy with a rather macabre relish. Certain peoples were treated with greater or lesser consideration and uncooperative nomadic peoples, for instance, seem to have fallen in the latter category.7 In the aftermath of battle, Assyria’s policy in dealing with the defeated was generally commensurate with the historical cooperation of the foreign state and the category of allegiance to which it belonged (see Reade 1979, 334). Severe punishment, meaning the public execution of local dignitaries, forced labor, or the elimination of an entire people, was the exception rather than the rule, occurring in cases of particularly recalcitrant tribes or rebellious tributary states (Reade 1979, 334; Saggs 1982). Sennacherib’s destruction of Lachish, and the consequences to its people, is a famous example of what happened when tributary states rebelled against their Assyrian overlords.8 col. II B, 15-24; see also Oded 1992, 36-38). Correspondence between the king and his officials also indicate the Assyrian government’s concern for war prisoners, or hubt§nu; reports contain instructions to provide prisoners with footwear, cattle and sheep, and even wives (Saggs 1982, 91-92). Saggs (1982, 92) remarks here, “Whilst this [the treatment of captives] certainly does not suggest any abstract concern for human life, it does indicate a complete lack of racialism; senior Assyrian administrators and foreign war-prisoners were not thought of as beings in different categories, and the life of the Assyrian administrator might be required if any of the prisoners came to harm by his negligence...except for those guilty of some specific offense against the state, the king’s duty was to shepherd all peoples equally.” 6 In the Southwest Palace, Sennacherib illustrates the quarrying and transport of a human-headed winged bull by gangs of foreign prisoners (Reade 1998, fig. 51). 7 An image from Ashurbanipal shows Assyrian soldiers in their battle encampment, assaulting the women of an unruly Arab tribe (Reade 1979, fig. 10). 8 After the battle of Lachish, processions of captives are shown marching along a rocky landscape with the Assyrian army. A few soldiers carry looted items from the be-

blurring the edges

107

The battle narratives were primarily concerned, however, with commemorating an Assyrian victory, and war victims, in their varied states, were the proofs of that victory; “civilian” captives, in my opinion, are not consistently, nor perhaps even intentionally, demeaned. There are several instances in which an exceptional rendering by the artist provides a figure with subtle dignity (for example, figure 4), indicating close observation of the subject, and moreover, that the ideology behind portraits of Assyrian captives is not so straightforward. In the reliefs, there seems to be a distinction made between pictures of the actual enemy—meaning the foreign king, his officials and soldiers, and the civilians—foreign peoples subject to the fate of their city-state. In Assyrian terms, war was morally and ethically justified as a crusade against the foreign monarch whose rebellious acts made him unfit to govern his peoples. Campaigns were launched in order to “defend the subjects of a foreign country against the unjust sovereign ... through the agency of war he [the Assyrian king] sets right the injustice committed by the transgressors” (Oded 1992, 37-38). Foreign subjects, rid of their “oppressors,” came under the protection of the àarru k¿nu, r§’im k§n§ti “true king, lover of justice” (Oded 1992, 38). As we will see, the narratives often juxtapose two groups of Assyrian victims, showing vignettes of relatively well-treated civilians next to harshly treated prisoners. The borders of adjacent vignettes can be “blurred” via artistic devices or irregular scenic elements, drawing attention to two versions of imperial “justice.” The “Minor” Images: Assyrian Captive Vignettes Some of the most striking aspects of the Assyrian campaign sequences are the realistic details, revealing the activities of the Assyrians and their opponents within the midst of warfare. Many intricate reliefs capture the “climax” of the battle, showing the Assyrian army besieging a fortified city with arrows and battering rams, while firebrands sieged city (Reade 1998, fig. 68). Toward the front of the procession, male prisoners stand before Assyrian officials, humbly bent forward from the waist, their hands upraised and signifying their distress. Families carrying their possessions follow, with small children clinging to the skirts of their parents. In front of the exiles, two local dignitaries are flayed while others are beheaded for their roles in the rebellion (Reade 1979, 334). The artist shows the relatively well-treated families with the tortured rebels, and deftly incorporates bodily postures and gestures to convey the captives’ fear and anxiety.

108

s. reed

rain down from above. An example from Sennacherib’s assault of Lachish depicts three enemy dead impaled on staves in the lower right foreground, and in the center of the fighting, a small row of captives file out of the walled fortress carrying their possessions (figure 1).9 A comparable scene from the reign of Ashurbanipal shows the Assyrian army toppling Egyptian soldiers from their defenses, collecting enemy heads, and setting fire to the city (figure 2). In the center of this image, a procession of enemy warriors emerges from a tower gate, “interrupting” the battle scene by breaking the dividing line between the upper and lower registers. The curving groundline beneath the procession diverts the viewer’s eyes downward and toward the left, where the warriors are bound and led away by Assyrian soldiers—two of whom triumphantly hoist the decapitated heads of fallen Egyptians. This procession is contrasted with a row of civilian exiles on the far right. The individual leading the group carries a basket pole that merges into the line of doomed warriors, fusing the two processions, and blurring the lines between exile and (presumed) execution for the soldiers. The “innocents” are facing the warriors: their focus, and ours, is guided toward the harsher punishment of Egypt’s defenders. Yet among the group of exiles is another vignette that distracts from the spectacle of Assyria’s revenge —two small children are riding out on a donkey, both of whom nervously turn back toward their “father” (figure 3). This man guides the animal from behind with one hand, and balances a bundle upon his head with the other.10 The little ones are either looking toward their father for comfort, or alternatively, are distracted by a child seen just beyond this group, riding on another man’s shoulders. The man is holding one of the little boy’s legs against him, but with his other hand, he lifts the boy’s arm up in the direction of the other children, perhaps in order to greet them. In Assyrian narratives, the civilian peoples of a besieged city are often shown in this manner, ostensibly in the process of relocation to other parts of the empire. As they march with their families and meager belongings, the artists depict mothers nursing their babies, 9 Sennacherib reports (perhaps with exaggeration) that he deported 200,150 people for resettlement after this campaign (Reade 1998, 48). 10 Cf. Barnett et al. (1998, pl. 246), where a Chaldaean family is pictured in a similar manner: a woman sits upon a donkey with a naked male (?) child riding behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist. The “father” walks behind, grasping the tail of the donkey. This excerpt, like figure 4 of this article, is from the “marsh battle” sequence from the Southwest Palace, but is attributed to Ashurbanipal. See below, note 13.

blurring the edges

109

and fathers carrying older children upon their shoulders.11 A wellknown, sensitively carved image from Ashurbanipal shows a Chaldaean woman on the march, stopping to give her child water from an animal skin (figure 4). The vignette makes the procession of captives memorable, but its message is ambiguous: it alerts the audience to the Chaldaeans’ misfortune and vulnerability, while at the same time, its seeming empathy diverts attention from the source of their plight (that is, Assyrian aggression). Are we to view the Assyrians as their captors, or liberators? Another remarkable sequence of vignettes, and one that poses a similar question, comes from a relief commemorating Ashurbanipal’s victory over the Elamites at Hamanu (figure 5). In a small register just below the main battle scene, two groups of prisoners, or four sets of “couples,” are seated in the Assyrian camp around cooking cauldrons. Their gestures suggest lively conversations in progress: on the left, one woman raises her arm, palm up, toward the woman sitting across from her (figure 6). The woman on the right returns the same gesture with her right hand, while holding a bowl in her left. The man seated next to her is looking toward the figure opposite him, a man who is perhaps minding the cauldron: his right arm is shown stretched toward it, with his fingers touching the top of the vessel. The artist may also be using this gesture to convey directionality: the arm is lifted toward the man facing him, alerting the viewer that these two individuals are engaged in a separate conversation from the women. On the right side of this register is another, similar group of captives (figure 7). This time, however, the alternating positions of the men and women enliven the scene. In order to show that the two men are conversing with one another, the man on the right leans forward, his right arm stretched across his body and down toward the man on the opposite side. Another male stands next to the seated figures holding what looks to be a drinking vessel, perhaps a wineskin, to his lips. The man is inclined in the direction of a seated woman whose hands are lifted toward him, as if she is requesting a taste. The two women in this scene are not speaking with one another: one directs her attention toward the man with the “wineskin,” while the woman on the opposite side is turned, gesturing toward an Assyrian guard behind her. Her arm is held up, palm open, mimicking the same “conversational” 11

See also Barnett et al., 1998, pl. 213, fig. 285b; pl. 465, fig. 645b.

110

s. reed

gesture as the women on the left portion of the register. It is unclear whether the scene ended with the guard, or was continued on another relief panel; only the battle above and the first register below exist in their entirety, but the panel is cropped evenly behind the Assyrian guard, suggesting that he was in fact the “border” of this scene. 12 The woman could have been gesturing toward someone behind the guard in a missing panel, yet her fingers are touching his shield, suggesting that the artist wants to draw our attention to the guard’s presence, or to the group’s imprisonment. It may also indicate that the woman is in conversation with her captor. A separate relief fragment from the “Hamanu” series also shows Elamite and Chaldaean prisoners in the Assyrian camp, one of whom is stoking the campfire (figure 8). To the far left is an Assyrian soldier, his back to the group of prisoners. Two women behind him are just entering the camp carrying their possessions and are welcomed by a seated man who turns and waves to them. The first woman’s head is turned back toward her friend who follows behind, but she has one arm stretched toward the man who greets them, palm up, seemingly “introducing” him to her female companion. The relief stops just beyond the image of an Assyrian solider to the left, and just behind a group of two other male captives conversing on the right. The fragment seems to have been roughly the same width as the camp register described above, but nonetheless remains a “snapshot” of a scene: without the remaining panel or panels, we cannot be certain if the Assyrian guard was originally part of another episode, guarding another group of prisoners, or whether he indeed guarded the perimeter of this space. As it remains, his shield, turned toward a hypothetical threat to the camp, implies to the viewer an element of protectiveness; moreover, the women entering the scene convey no signs of agitation—their gestures and body postures indicate a happy reunion. The tone of the camp vignettes is created by the actions of the participants; human relations, even emotions, are conveyed without individual facial expressions. The episodes may be viewed as a poised threat within a convivial atmosphere; a subtle warning that creates 12 There are fragments of camp vignettes that most likely made up two more registers below this one. See Barnett (1976, pl. LXVI), which illustrates all the remaining images from this series. We have a small piece of the second camp register, showing similar couples seated around a cauldron.

blurring the edges

111

tension. But while they raise awareness of the captives’ reduced circumstances, it also suggests that rather than being “threatened,” they are being “protected” by the Assyrians. Both viewpoints serve to emphasize Assyrian dominance, but the nuances of the scenes leave the captives’ status open to interpretation, highlighting a problematic aspect of the vignette: without knowing if an extended scenario existed, the images can become mentally parsed into vignettes with ambiguous readings. A series of illustrations from the Southwest palace of Sennacherib (but usually attributed to his grandson Ashurbanipal, who occupied the palace early in his reign) recreates the capture of Chaldaean refugees from southern Babylonia.13 Groups of Assyrian soldiers in reed boats are systematically apprehending escapees hiding in the marshes (figure 9). The particular vignette I would like to draw attention to is a group of three figures huddled together within a bank of marsh reeds: an older, bearded male in a short tunic, his hair bound by a fillet, crouches on a reed boat facing two smaller, beardless individuals in long robes, either male or female, and presumably children (figure 10). The male is presumably their father and is perched upon the prow of the boat, his posture inclined protectively toward the younger refugees. His right hand is placed on his lap, while his left is lifted in a fist. The two children have their left hands fisted upon their laps, but their right hands are raised, palms up. The gestures of the Chaldaean “family” indicate that they are either in the midst of an activity—perhaps a prayer, or a game of distraction. This small moment captures the Chaldaeans’ anxiety and the overall precariousness of their situation. Adding tension to the scene is a headless, naked enemy body floating in the water nearby. Its legs overlap with the upper portion of the reed bank that camouflages the group, insinuating danger by blurring the space between their hiding place and the open water, or between “safety” and “death.” The headless body and relentless progression of Assyrian soldiers imply the ultimate capture of our group of refugees, but the viewer is, at least momentarily, unsure of their fate. 13 For the full marsh battle sequence, see Barnett et al. (1998, pls. 233-265). The dating of the reliefs to Ashurbanipal seems very likely, according to E. Bleibtreau (Barnett et al. 1998, 88). No inscriptions survive on these slabs, but the adjacent room, XXXIII, was redecorated with reliefs after Sennacherib’s reign. On stylistic grounds, they have been attributed to the same period of Ashurbanipal’s sculptures in the North Palace.

112

s. reed

The “Battle of Til Tuba” series from the Southwest Palace (also from the reign of Ashurbanipal), illustrates the merciless (and unambiguous) fate of one of Assyria’s most worthy opponents and exemplifies the evolving complexity of Assyrian palace narrative (figure 11). The horizontal groundlines, or registers, that traditionally divided narrative sequences were distorted in the reign of Sennacherib, creating sweeping landscapes, and for “Til Tuba,” Ashurbanipal’s artists take full advantage of this innovation: though the registers are not entirely discarded, they are abbreviated and blurred by continuous and overlapping action sequences. The directional gestures of the soldiers, the strategic positioning of weapons, and finally, the head of the Elamite king Teumman, act as guideposts, moving the viewer through an intricate battle landscape and a grand chase (Bersani and Dutoit 1985; Watanabe 2004; see also Bahrani 2004; Bonatz 2004): the Assyrians capture and kill Teumman and his son, bringing the head of the Elamite ruler home to hang as a prize in Ashurbanipal’s garden (figures 12, 13). The “Battle of Til Tuba” relief is a deliberate, ordered chaos: the space is littered with seemingly jumbled yet carefully orchestrated vignettes that provide a fuller picture of the action, but the head of Teumman connects the scenarios to Ashurbanipal’s ultimate victory. In the final act, it hangs if we look closely, we find the head hanging in a tree on the edges of the king’s celebratory banquet—almost as an afterthought. Yet its subtle, almost nonchalant placement, extraneous to the main event, makes its insertion all the more chilling, and thereby more powerful. The small, grisly trophy contradicts the complacent tranquility of Ashurbanipal’s garden, where the king lounges upon his royal couch next to the queen. It symbolizes a humiliating defeat for the Elamites, but this incongruous memento of victory also signals the thematic tension of the narratives, where life and death are juxtaposed, creating a pervasive anxiety. The banquet panel is comparatively small, only about as large as the register of Elamites in the Assyrian camp, yet like the headless body in the Chaldaean marsh, it encapsulates the power of suggestion that propels the battle sequences.

blurring the edges

113

King as Conqueror, King as Shepherd The overall character of Assyrian battle narratives does not suggest to me that the vignettes of “innocents” are a conscious effort toward “humanitarianism.” Rather, the artists documented highlights from the battle and its aftermath that most efficiently, and effectively, conveyed the imperial message. The ambiguities are more likely a result of the nature of that message: in text and image, we can observe each ruler’s anxiety to fulfill the duties of royal office required by the gods, and to justify the traditional titles of great Mesopotamian rulers: not only “king of the world,” but also “pious shepherd.”14 In Assyrian royal ideology, native and foreign peoples were to be cared for as the “flock” of Aààur. The Assyrians felt themselves bound to the gods; taking the royal office required that the king meet divine expectations, which were embedded in Assyrian cultural traditions and the royal ideological code (Livingstone 1997, 165-166). Middle Assyrian to Neo-Assyrian rituals and royal hymns express Aààur’s wish that with his “sword,” the king expand his imperial borders and his peoples (Tadmor 1999, 58; see also Weissert 1997, 240). I would suggest that the “humanity” of the Assyrian sculptures is not to be found in Western preconceptions of how human emotion is expressed, but in the carefully wrought vignettes within each battle sequence—they contain narratives within narratives that provide a fuller picture not only of the campaign but also its consequences. The fate of the enemy was part of the historical moment represented, but also intertwined with that of Assyria itself; and in the Assyrian worldview, “safety,” even for themselves, was a relative term. Assyria’s religious ideology (and its particular form of imperial anxiety) was conditioned by its geopolitical situation: the heartland lay on a crossroads between Anatolia, Iran, Babylonia, Arabia and Syria-Palestine. With few natural barriers, Assyria’s success as a trading nation in the late third and early second millennium attracted foreign aggression and eventual 14 M. Liverani explains that Sennacherib’s epithets evolved over time: from “pious shepherd, fearful of the great gods” to “expert shepherd, favorite of the great gods” (after 697 B.C.) (Russell 1991, 242, citing Liverani). The late, more confident title suggests to Liverani that Sennacherib earned the title only after several years of successful campaigning—after he had filled the role of “heroic warrior.” Sennacherib, following in the wake of Sargon’s ominous and untimely death, believed that his future was uncertain—the gods did not automatically bestow a king with good fortune, and the right to rule must be earned.

114

s. reed

domination; by the late second millennium, Assyria responded with an offensive policy of conquest and expansion (Livingstone 1997, 165, citing Oppenheim). By the Neo-Assyrian period, war was the natural “vocation” of the king (Oded 1992, 38). Irene Winter (2002, 66-67) remarks that in art, “certain visual attributes derive from the special geographical and/or historical situation of the producing culture...[T]hey represent not-necessarily-conscious reflections of worldview and experiences held by some members of that culture.” I might propose that those instances of “receptive,” even “empathetic” renderings of victims convey that, although the king’s role may have necessitated warfare and conquest (Livingstone 1997; Oded 1992; Tadmor 1999), it did not preclude (consciously or otherwise) an understanding of the inherent vulnerability of man, whether victor or vanquished. It is this underlying apprehension, or anxiety, that may be reflected in the varied representations of Assyria’s opponents. Royal rhetoric aside, Assyria recognized that there were practical limits to its external control, and its relationships with foreign states, whether equal, tributary or subject, were designed to insure Assyria’s own stability. The “unquestioning loyalty” of Assyrian citizens (particularly soldiers) to the crown is a common ancient Near Eastern artistic idiom, but Assyria’s attitude toward the world outside the empire was necessarily more complicated, “reflecting in a practical fashion the realities of imperial power and responsibility” (Reade 1979, 332). Whatever the authors’ or artists’ motivations, I would argue that Assyrian narrative hinges upon human relationships and their emotive affect, due to both the intense vitality of the vignettes and the small, tension-creating details that capture the precarious circumstances of life in the Neo-Assyrian period. The contradiction of the captive images lies in the fact that these peoples are ostensibly Assyria’s enemies, who have been robbed of their homelands and will be deported to other parts of the Assyrian empire to become Assyrianized. They may reflect, however, the desire of the king’s desire to be depicted not only as “heroic warrior,” expanding the empire and defeating upstart rivals, but also as “good shepherd,” defender of the innocent and protector of his own. Embedded within the late palace reliefs are scenes that, perhaps not altogether consciously, reveal the complex character of Assyrian imperialism. The king’s outward show of invincibility is colored by the

blurring the edges

115

realities of maintaining the “four quarters” and the demands of his position as divine liaison. The vignettes suggest his attempt to balance a dual role: conqueror and shepherd, or his practical and ideological responsibilities. This struggle is underscored within violent propaganda that signified a strong central authority—one that perceived warfare, and its consequences, as a necessity. The “enemy” vignettes, however, are full of ambiguities that convey the inherent tragedy of the situation; and therein lies their power to captivate. They transcend the morbid recesses of the battleground, blurring triumph with tragedy, and persecution with protection.

References Albenda, Pauline. 1998. Monumental Art of the Assyrian Empire: Dynamics of Composition Styles. Malibu: Undena Publications. Bahrani, Zainab. 2004. The King’s Head. Iraq 66: 115-119. Barnett, Richard David. 1976. Sculptures from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (668-627 BC). London: The British Museum. Barnett, Richard David, Erica Bleibtreu, and Geoffrey Turner. 1998. Sculptures from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh. London: The British Museum. Bersani, Leo, and Ulysse Dutoit. 1985. The Forms of Violence: Narrative in Assyrian Art and Modern Culture. New York: Schocken Books. Bonatz, Dominik. 2004. Ashurbanipal’s Headhunt: An Anthropological Perspective. Iraq 66: 93-101. Bottéro, Jean. 2001. Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foster, Benjamin Read. 2005. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. 3rd ed. Bethesda: Capital Decisions Ltd. Press. Frankfort, Henri. 1971. Kingship and the Gods. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jacobsen, Thorkild. 1977. Mesopotamia. In The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, ed. H. Frankfort, H. A. Frankfort, J. A. Wilson, T. Jacobsen, and W. A. Irwin, 125-202. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Livingstone, Alasdair. 1997. New Dimensions in the Study of Assyrian Religion. In Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995, Helsinki, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 165-177. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project.

116

s. reed

Oded, Bustenay. 1979. Mass Deportations and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Wiesbaden: Reichert. ———. 1992. War, Peace, and Empire: Justifications for War in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions. Wiesbaden: Reichert. Oppenheim, A. Leo. 1964. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Parrot, André. 1961. The Arts of Assyria. The Arts of Mankind. New York: Golden Press. Proust, Marcel. 1924. Remembrance of Things Past. 2 vols. New York: Thomas Seltzer. Reade, Julian. 1972. The Neo-Assyrian Court and Army: Evidence from the Sculptures. Iraq 34: 87-112. ———. 1979. Ideology and Propaganda in Assyrian Art. In Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires, ed. M. T. Larsen, 329-343. Mesopotamia 7. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. ———. 1998. Assyrian Sculpture. 2nd ed. London: The British Museum. Russell, John M. 1991. Sennacherib’s Palace Without Rival at Nineveh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Saggs, H. W. F. 1982. Assyrian Prisoners of War and the Right to Live. AfO19: 85-93. Strommenger, Eva. 1964. 5000 Years of the Art of Mesopotamia. New York: H. N. Abrams. Tadmor, Hayim. 1994. The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. ———. 1999. World Dominion: The Expanding Horizon of the Assyrian Empire. In Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East: Papers Presented to the 44e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Venezia, 7–11 July 1997, ed. L. Milano, S. de Martino, F. M. Fales, and G. B. Lancranchi, 55-62. History of the Ancient Near East 3/1. Padua: Sargon srl. Watanabe, Chikako E. 2004. The Continuous Style in the Narrative Scheme of Assurbanipal’s Reliefs. Iraq 66: 103-114. Weissert, Elnathan. 1997. Royal Hunt and Royal Triumph in a Prism Fragment of Ashurbanipal. In Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the NeoAssyrian Text Corpus Project Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995, Helsinki, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 339-358. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Winter, Irene. 1981. Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs. Studies in Visual Communications 7: 1-37. ———. 1995. Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamian Art. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. J. M. Sasson, 2568–2582. New York: Charles Schribner’s Sons.

blurring the edges

117

———. 1998. The Affective Properties of Styles: An Inquiry into Analytical Process and the Inscription of Meaning in Art History. In Picturing Science, Producing Art, ed. C. A. Jones and P. Galison, 55-77. London: Routledge. ———. 2002. Defining ‘Aesthetics’ for Non-Western Studies: The Case of Ancient Mesopotamia. In Art History, Aesthetics, Visual Studies, ed. M. A. Holly and K. Moxey, 3-28. Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

118

s. reed

Figure 1. The Assyrian assault on Lachish (British Museum, WA 124906; © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum)

Figure 2. The Assyrian army attacking an Egyptian town (British Museum, WA 124928; © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum)

blurring the edges 119

Figure 3. Egyptians departing the city with their belongings, detail of figure 2

120 s. reed

blurring the edges

121

Figure 4. A Chaldaean group of exiles, featuring a mother giving her child a drink from a pigskin (British Museum, WA 124954; © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum)

122

s. reed

Figure 5. The Assyrian battle against Hamanu, Elam (British Museum, WA 124919; © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum)

Figure 6. Elamite prisoners in an Assyrian camp, detail of figure 5, left side of bottom register

blurring the edges 123

Figure 7. Elamite prisoners in an Assyrian camp, detail of figure 5, right side of bottom register

124 s. reed

Figure 8. Elamite and Chaldaean prisoners in an Assyrian camp, relief fragment from the battle of Hamanu series (British Museum, WA 124788; © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum)

blurring the edges 125

126

s. reed

Figure 9. The Assyrian army capturing Chaldaeans in the southern marshes (British Museum, WA 124774; © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum)

Figure 10. A group of Chaldaeans hiding in a reed bank, detail of figure 9

blurring the edges 127

Figure 11. A relief panel from the Assyrian battle at Til Tuba (British Museum, WA 124801; © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum)

128 s. reed

Figure 12. Ashurbanipal and his queen banqueting in the royal garden (British Museum, WA 124920; © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum)

blurring the edges 129

Figure 13. The Elamite king Teumman’s head hanging in Ashurbanipal’s garden, detail of figure 12

130 s. reed

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

II “Idols of the King”: Ritual Contexts

131

132

a. shafer

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

133

ASSYRIAN ROYAL MONUMENTS ON THE PERIPHERY: RITUAL AND THE MAKING OF IMPERIAL SPACE Ann Shafer During the early first millennium BCE, the Neo-Assyrian state grew to become the most far-reaching and militarily powerful entity in the ancient Near East. In their quest for territory, Assyrian kings campaigned from the heartland of Assyria to outlying regions, creating a unified realm that lasted for approximately three centuries. Much of what we know of these conquests comes from texts and images from the center of this realm, the Assyrian capital cities. Here, however, I would like to discuss another group of Assyrian monuments not in the center, but in the peripheries of the expanding empire.1 These monuments were erected while on military campaign, and consisted of freestanding stone stelae and rock reliefs (figures 1, 2). They were produced by every major Neo-Assyrian king from Ashurnasirpal II in the ninth century to Ashurbanipal in the seventh, were carved in various types of locations, and were distributed over a wide geographical area. Approximately fifty of these monuments still survive today, and nearly as many undiscovered monuments are mentioned in royal texts. Because these monuments were erected on military campaigns, it might make sense to interpret them as political in aim. If one looks more closely at their larger context, however, one begins to see another possible purpose and message. It is the goal of this paper to begin to foreground the relationship of these monuments to ritual activity. Many, if not all of these royal stelae and rock reliefs were the recipient of ritual activity, including elaborate ceremony and sacrifice. As such, they seem to have been sacred objects, or objects commemorating sacred acts. Once we begin to view the monuments 1 I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the foresight and generosity of my mentor, Irene Winter, under whose tutelage this study was originally developed as a Ph.D. dissertation (Shafer 1998). I shall always be indebted to and inspired by Irene for her powerful wisdom and presence.

134

a. shafer

this way, the Assyrian campaigns themselves, as well as the making of Assyrian art in general, takes on a new identity. The present study outlines our evidence for these rituals and will show how, through the simultaneous actions of image-making and ritual performance, Assyrian kings not only marked territorial conquest in a literal way, but also engaged a highly-charged symbolic field of space, tradition and legitimacy.

Geographical Distribution In order to understand fully the symbolic power of these royal monuments in Assyria’s peripheral zones, it is first necessary to discern the patterns in their spatial distribution and related function. Using both the extant monuments as well as ancient textual references to others that did not survive, we are able to plot their original locations, and in so doing, are able to understand the deliberate ways in which they were crafted and placed into the landscape.2 When we survey the monuments in chronological order, the nature and evolution of their purpose becomes clear. In the ninth century, during the early period of the Assyrian territorial consolidation, the peripheral monuments assumed their paradigmatic function, steadily marking outlying territories as they were added to Assyria’s borders. During the reign of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE), the monuments mostly marked endpoints of campaigns or secure zones of political transition, and as such, together marked the perimeters of the king’s realm as a whole. It is also during his reign that these monuments began to engage an earlier, apparently established tradition of revisiting sites previously marked by earlier kings.3 Using the conquests of his father as a base, Shalmaneser III (858-824 BCE) effected a much more ambitious military program, extending Assyria’s borders and erecting a record number of monuments far a field. In tandem with the speed of his territorial expansion, 2 Individual textual sources—which include palace historical inscriptions of both the annalistic and display types as well as the inscriptions on the peripheral monuments themselves—are far too numerous to list here (see Shafer 1998, Appendix A). 3 Ashurnasirpal II is said to have visited and marked the “source of the Subnat River,” where his predecessors Tiglath-Pileser I and Tukulti-Ninurta II also erected monuments (Grayson 1991, 200-201).

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

135

Shalmaneser III’s monuments were erected more frequently, not only marking important military victories, but also delineating entire geographical regions. Like his father, Shalmaneser III also adopted the practice of revisiting and remarking sites containing monuments of his predecessors. Finally in the ninth century, although Shamshi-Adad V’s reign was relatively short and military victories few, he also appears to have used royal monuments to mark his most notable territorial expansions beyond those of his predecessors. In contrast to the significant political gains of the ninth century, the beginning of the eighth century marked a degree of political decentralization in Assyria. While Adad-nirari III (810-783 BCE) may have intended to use the royal monument in the same fashion as his predecessors, it was the increasingly powerful provincial administrators who began to use the monuments for their own purposes instead. Nevertheless, the most fundamental characteristic of the Assyrian monument type—territorial delineation—now played itself out on a much smaller scale, marking off administrative boundaries within the Assyrian heartland. Despite the political discontinuity of the early eighth century, the successful reign of Tiglath-Pileser III (744-727 BCE) heralded an upsurge in the production of royal monuments on the periphery. His monuments reflect a clear knowledge of Assyria’s previous territorial boundaries, thus marking only those victories that resulted in significant territorial expansions beyond those of the ninth century. During the reign of Sargon II (721-705 BCE), the monuments were used in a similar fashion, marking further territorial expansions. In addition, during Sargon’s reign the function of the monument began to expand to include political diplomacy as well. This trend toward broadening the function of the royal monuments saw its fullest expression in the seventh century, especially during the reign of Sennacherib (704-681 BCE), who, although using monuments to mark military victories, also explored their potential to commemorate construction projects closer to home. As for Esarhaddon (680669 BCE), during his reign monuments seem to have become a tool for political negotiations among Assyria’s allies. Finally, in the time of Ashurbanipal (668-631 BCE), peripheral monuments remained a powerful royal symbol, but like the slowly-weakening empire, their production appears to have eventually halted.

136

a. shafer

Thus, when we plot the locations of the monuments in relation to historical events, clear patterns in geographical distribution and political function emerge. First of all, we see that the monuments consistently marked important culminating or transitional points in the campaigns. In many cases, their locations corresponded to what were viewed as the most important outlying regions or borders of the Assyrian realm. Moreover, when we compare reigns, we see that each king was aware of his predecessors’ monuments, and felt the desire or political necessity to engage that tradition by placing monuments in the very same locations. In addition, as the tradition matured, Assyrian kings created increasingly subtle and sophisticated variations, not only in their placement, but also in their intended message and political function. Over the three centuries of their production, therefore, the royal peripheral monuments acted as a consistent and effective tool for creating a powerful Assyrian presence on the periphery.

Iconography The patterns in spatial distribution and dynastic continuity are further reinforced by the singular, very consistent form of the Assyrian monuments themselves. The surviving monuments consist of both rock reliefs and stelae, and all have several important features: a similar image of the Assyrian king, divine emblems, and an Akkadian annalistic inscription (figures 1, 2). For the purposes of this study, I will examine the monument image that, even for the Assyrians, seems to have been the monument’s most salient characteristic. Long overlooked because of its deceptively accessible iconography, the monument’s standardized image can be shown to reflect a strong cultural investment and self-consciousness about its message, namely, that the central agent in Assyria’s growth and power is the king himself. One of the monument’s most distinctive characteristics is its deliberate adherence, despite its location on the empire’s periphery, to the central palace idiom of royal representation. As a result, we are able to examine the image in relation to well-established domains of visual elaboration and convention, which in turn allows us to arrive at a more precise understanding of the image and its referents. Not just an image of the Assyrian king, but of the complex notion of “kingship,” as the Assyrian term ßalam àarråtija (“image of my kingship”) implies,

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

137

the peripheral monument image intersects with multiple systems of royal visual communication. What results is a multi-layered image of the ideal aspects and attributes of Assyrian kingship. One way in which the peripheral monument communicates the notion of ideal Assyrian kingship is through its rendering of the king’s physical attributes. Adhering to well-established palace convention, although relatively lifelike, the image is not a “portrait” in the modern sense of representing individual likeness, but engages a highly-charged set of codes for representing the multiple aspects of Assyrian “kingship” in the broadest sense of the term.4 Shown only in profile or three-quarter view, the figure of the king never engages the viewer directly, but instead occupies a separate plane, displaying at a respectful distance a full array of notable attributes. The king’s physical fitness to rule and potential for action are indicated by his upright and alert stance, detailed musculature, and grounded, yet forward-moving feet. In addition, other details such as the king’s robe, divine emblem necklace, and conical polos crown are coded for specific action, locating him immediately in his cultic role as high priest.5 While these individual features locate the king in a general cultic guise, his arm gesture is coded in a more specific way. Most distinct is his raised right arm, wherein his hand-gesture shows the forefinger extended as though pointing. This gesture has been shown to have been made during prayer and seems to express the king’s humility before the gods.6 More important, in the visual realm, the gesture usually appears in scenes of the king addressing one or more full-figured images of deities, as examples from seal impressions and palace frescoes indicate.7 It is therefore probable that on the peripheral monuments, the king’s gesture is meant to reference such a scene. But here, of course, the full-scale divine recipients of his gesture do not 4 The discussion of “portraiture” in the ancient world has largely been Greco-centric in nature, but in Irene Winter’s study of images of the Mesopotamian ruler Gudea (1989), and of the Akkadian ruler Naram-Sin (1996), she has begun to decipher the complex aspects of royal attributes in the ancient world. More recently, she elaborated upon this discussion for the Neo-Assyrian period (1997). 5 For a fuller discussion of the royal robe and costume types see Magen 1986. 6 The nature and meaning of this gesture in the Neo-Assyrian period is not adequately documented in the ancient sources, but Magen’s reconstruction of the evidence (1986, 45-54) strongly points to this interpretation. Whether the deity represents a cult statue or simply an abstract idea, the king’s gesture clearly indicates his capacity for piety. 7 For example, in the wall painting from Residence K at Khorsabad, which depicts Sargon II and the crown prince before the god Ashur (Loud 1938, pl. 89).

138

a. shafer

appear. Instead, the peripheral monument’s frame seems to isolate the king’s figure, and so what remains is not an image of the king’s action toward any particular deity, but an abstracted image of pious action alone. It is this kind of iconographical reconfiguration that characterizes a second level of meaning in the peripheral monuments, namely, the way in which they embody and affirm the royal prerogative to make established iconographies into new images. In order to understand this second layer of meaning, it is helpful to look further into the peripheral monument iconography. Let us return to the most “active” iconographical element of the king’s figure, his raised right hand. As noted above, this gesture is usually used to show the king’s reverence or piety toward a divine figure, whose representation, in this case, is missing. Instead, in the field above the king’s head, are divine emblems. While for the casual viewer the king might seem to be pointing toward the emblems, upon closer inspection it becomes clear that the king focuses and points directly ahead, effectively unaware of the emblems above. Although the exact origin of such representations of divine emblems is unclear, they often appear in scenes of military parade.8 More important than what this reveals about iconographic sources, however, is the fact that our peripheral monument image is a new one, comprising elements of several distinct visual traditions. In the process of uniquely re-combining such traditions, the Assyrian king himself, it seems, assumes the role of creator. While this image on the peripheral monument is unique, comparing it to a specific body of images from the Assyrian center does help us to understand its symbolic message further. In many ways, the image on slab B-23 of Ashurnasirpal II’s Northwest Palace throneroom (figure 3), provides the best parallel for our peripheral monument image.9 This scene is simple compositionally, depicting four figures symmetrically arranged around a central stylized tree, above which floats an anthropomorphic winged disk, probably representing the state god of Assyria, Ashur. Closest to the tree and deity stand two nearly mirrorimages of the Assyrian king wearing a fringed robe and gesturing in a now-familiar manner with a pointed finger. Behind the figures of the

8 For example, on the so-called Broken Obelisk of Ashur-bel-kala, from Nineveh (Börker-Klähn 1982, fig. 131). 9 This image also appears in the throneroom of the Northwest Palace on slab B-13.

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

139

king, and thus framing the entire scene, are two winged male deities with horned crowns (apkallus) carrying in the left hand a pail, and in the raised right hand an oval object similar to a pinecone. While the exact purpose of their gestures cannot be certainly determined, it seems that they are performing some kind of operation on the tree, perhaps pollination. Although placed prominently in Ashurnasirpal II’s throneroom, since no direct mention of this scene is made in Assyrian texts, the meaning of the tree scene remains the subject of debate. 10 Specific interpretations vary, but it seems most likely that the image symbolically characterizes the king’s relationship with the divine world, and that the stylized tree represents not only the concept of abundance, but more specifically, the land of Assyria and its potential for territorial growth.11 That the growth of the tree, or Assyria, was thought to be divinely generated is suggested in glyptic images, wherein the winged disk’s long pendant tassels encircle the tree.12 That the king was thought to be the primary earthly agent in this divine growth, however, is suggested in slab B-23, not only by Ashur’s gestural acknowledgement of the king, but also by the king’s position in the composition, whereby he too becomes the recipient of the apkallus’ actions. With this direct relationship in mind, how can B-23 be used to complement our understanding of the peripheral monument image? One important parallel is the reduplication of the king’s figure in both right and left profile views. In B-23, the two royal figures alternate on either side of the central tree. Likewise, the royal figures on peripheral monuments alternate too, from right to left profile. More specifically, of those monuments still surviving, roughly half depict the king facing right, and half facing left. That such alternation was not simply coincidence, but was an integral feature of the monument type in general, is graphically represented by the monuments of Sennacherib—such as the rock reliefs at Cudi Dag and the stelae from Nineveh—where alternating royal figures were used at the same site (Börker-Klähn 1982, figs. 180-184, figs. 203-204).

10

For a summary of theories identifying the figures and their actions, see Porter

1993. 11

Irene Winter (1983) makes this particularly compelling symbolic argument. See for example, the ninth-century cylinder seal from Sherif Khan (Collon 1987, fig. 341). 12

140

a. shafer

In order to understand the alternation and reduplication of the king’s image on peripheral monuments, however, it is necessary to re-examine slab B-23. There, it is possible that one function of the reduplication was to describe movement. This is suggested by the abovementioned interpretation of the scene as depicting a pollination ritual performed by the apkallus and the king upon the tree (Porter 1993). If so, the reduplicated figure of the king could represent his successive movements to encircle the tree. If we agree that the tree symbolically represents the collective Assyrian lands, the peripheral monuments might be said to represent the king’s movements around the territories of his realm. With these readings of B-23 in mind, the reduplicated peripheral monument images erected at various locations in the Assyrian landscape appear to embody the literal meanings of both movement within, as well as imposition of order upon the land of Assyria itself. To summarize, a comparison with images in the Assyrian center reveals that peripheral monuments were directly linked with ideas about the king’s relationship to Assyria’s territorial growth. The symbolic complexity of the Assyrian royal image is probably not unique to monuments on the periphery, however, but may also play a role in the larger body of images that make up Assyrian palace visual culture as a whole.13 It is precisely because of their paradigmatic nature, however, that monuments on the periphery becomes so valuable a tool for expanding our understanding of ancient Assyria. This becomes especially apparent when we step away, for a moment, from the monuments themselves, and look instead at the way they are described in both inscriptions and visual representations. Here, the monuments are shown to have been the focus of an elaborate set of rituals performed, in part, by the king himself. On the basis of this evidence, these images become much more than simply markers of territorial conquest; instead, they now become a window onto a complex Assyrian perceptual reality, where the symbolic and the real become one.

13

For example, see individual studies by Marcus 1987; Russell 1991.

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

141

Assyrian Ritual Revealed As a background to our discussion of ritual activity, it is first important to clarify an important relationship between monument accessibility and function. Since the Assyrian process of military expansion often involved the conquest of urban centers, a large portion of the peripheral monuments were stelae erected in enemy cities, displayed prominently in the city gate or outer defensive system.14 In addition to the urban sites, however, many monuments were also carved into the landscape itself, in more remote and often inaccessible regions.15 In contrast to the urban contexts where siting may reflect the desire for political visibility, the rural locations may reflect a move to control and protect the land and its resources. While the remote rural monuments were probably hidden even from enemy populations, it seems that in many cases, because of the symbolic nature of their locations, the monuments were well-known to the Assyrians, and furthermore, that they functioned as important loci of Assyrian ceremony and ritual. The most vivid example of such a site is what the Assyrians called the “source of the Tigris River,” today called the Tigris Tunnel, located on the Birklincay, a tributary of the Tigris River near the modern village of Lice in southeastern Turkey.16 Shalmaneser III visited the site on two separate occasions, and each time carved images and inscriptions marking two portions of the site: a lower tunnel, through which the river flows, and an upper cave. Neither of the locations is easily accessible, requiring the visitor to either wade through the river or to climb. More to the point, neither the upper nor the lower monuments are visible to the naked eye from a distance, indicating that only those with prior knowledge of their locations would be likely to visit them. Just as the Tigris Tunnel seems remote for the modern visitor, so too did it seem for the Assyrians, as is captured in a visual representation of the site on the upper and lower friezes of Band X of Shalmaneser III’s Balawat Gates (figure 4) (King 1915, 30-31, pls. LVIII-LIX). 14 For example, Sargon II erected a stele in the city gate of the city of Tikrakki, which is depicted in Room 2 of his palace at Khorsabad (Albenda 1986, pl. 120). 15 The rock carving at Uzunoglantepe, attributed to Shalmaneser III, is a good example of how remote and difficult to access such monuments can sometimes be (Tasyürek 1975). 16 For a complete bibliography, see Börker-Klähn 1982, 187-188.

142

a. shafer

Here, we see the simultaneous carving of two royal monuments, one at the upper cave and one at the lower tunnel. The upper frieze of Band X focuses on the concealment of the monument in the upper cave, depicting a semi-circular enclosure surrounded by the rocky landscape of its remote setting. Framed by the curvature of the cave walls, two solitary craftsmen—shown to be deep in the cave by their diminished scale—carve an almost imperceptible image and/or text into the darkness. The only witness to the carving is a single Assyrian official with his attendant, who both stand outside the cave on a small footbridge, gesturing toward the cave interior. At the end of the frieze, the vast and remote mountainous terrain fills the entire height of the image, interrupted only by a solitary figure and the tiny outline of a mountain fortress in the distance. Just below this scene in the lower frieze of Band X is a similar scene, which emphasizes both the difficulties of the mountainous terrain and the raging force of the river. On a rocky wall outside the tunnel, two Assyrian craftsmen carve an image of the Assyrian king. Water is flowing profusely from the tunnel, and in order to gain enough height above the river to carve the relief, the men must stand on a stone block placed in midstream. Just like the craftsmen, those approaching the site must also combat the river; behind them, a procession of Assyrian soldiers and officials crosses a swirling torrent, while in front, Assyrian soldiers carefully wade through the dark. While this image reveals much about the details of the making of a monument, what is most striking about the Balawat images is their depiction of an elaborate ritual procession, an activity identified not only in the scene’s caption, but also confirmed in Shalmaneser III’s annalistic texts (Grayson 1996, 27-32). In these texts, the king describes his actions, saying, “I washed the weapon of Ashur, made sacrifices to my gods, and gave a joyful feast.” In fact, the performance of ritual seems to have been so important in the ninth century that even the Assyrian palace texts, which in other periods rarely discuss such details, make relatively frequent mention of these rituals.17 Although the text accounts are reticent in their description of details, this scene and others on the Balawat Gates reveal invaluable information about the facts of Assyrian ritual activity on the periphery, 17

For example, in Shalmaneser III’s text on the Black Obelisk (Grayson 1996, 65-66).

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

143

including details on ritual paraphernalia and the participants. As is shown in the Balawat image of the Tigris source, an important event in the ritual procession was animal sacrifice, here specified as the slaughter of cows and rams. In the upper and lower friezes we see two ritual processions, one at the upper cave, and the other at the lower tunnel. It is possible, based on comparisons with Assyrian images, that these two scenes represent sequential moments in the same ritual. If so, in the lower scene we see the procession at an early stage when the entire entourage—with the sacrificial animals in tow—moves toward the royal monument. In contrast, in the upper scene we see a later moment, when the sacrifice itself is taking place. To carry this thought even further, in the Balawat Band I scene of Shalmaneser III’s visit to the Nairi Sea (figure 5), we are shown yet another, even later, moment in the activity, when the sacrifice has already taken place and the remains are being thrown into the water. While these scenes are graphic in their representation of the ritual killing, we know little about the beliefs behind such activity in ancient Assyria.18 These images do tell us, however, that animal sacrifice was just one step in a ritual series, and that it may have occurred early in the procession and in front of the monument image. That proximity to the royal monument may have, in fact, been important to these rituals is suggested in the scene at the Nairi Sea (figure 5), where the arrangement of the ritual paraphernalia delineates a ritual precinct. Here, near the monument—presumably in front of it—stands an array of cultic furniture: military standards with tasseled disks, a three-legged tripod, a flaming incense burner, and a libation stand with vessel.19 Placed at regular intervals to create a visual rhythm, these unusual objects, when encountered in the larger narrative reading of the band as a whole, slow the viewer’s gaze, and in the process, recreate a sense of ritual distance and awe for the royal monument itself. Further emphasizing the close relationship between the monument and the ritual procession is the placement of the monument on elevated ground, so that its height is equal to that of the participants.

18

For various discussions on this subject, see Quaegebeur 1993. For an analysis of the visual representation of ritual paraphernalia and ceremony, see Watanabe 1992. 19

144

a. shafer

In addition to the details of ritual paraphernalia, the Balawat scenes are also important for what they reveal about the identities of the ritual functionaries. While from both scenes it appears that Assyrian soldiers were given charge of the animal slaughter, other figures were part of the ritual procession as well. For example, in the depiction of the monuments at the Tigris source (figure 4), the soldiers at the front of the procession are followed by other figures, including several carrying bundles, one on horseback, and other members of the Assyrian military and administration. While the Tigris source scene depicts the ritual procession from a distance, however, the scene at the Nairi Sea (figure 5) focuses its perspective, so that the ritual functionaries take center stage. Here we see that in addition to the military personnel, the ritual procession also consisted of musicians, Assyrian officials, members of the priesthood, and the king himself. As such, the procession seems to have been a complex affair, involving several waves of activity. While a full procession is depicted in both Balawat scenes, the climax of the events is fully developed in the Nairi scene only (figure 5), showing the moment when the Assyrian king himself reaches the head of the procession and, facing his own image, performs libations. In the process, it seems, the king sanctifies Assyria’s new border, which, as is emphasized by the careful rendering of the mountainous landscape, is very literally carved from the land itself. In the process of ritually acknowledging his own image-as-border, the king foregrounds the role of his own divinely-sanctioned deeds and accomplishments. In so choosing to highlight this moment, Shalmaneser III characterizes what must have been, at least during the ninth century, the peripheral monument’s defining significance, translating territorial gains into concrete form. While the abovementioned texts and images are highly evocative of the importance of Assyrian ritual activity, they appear to have been limited to the ninth-century reigns of Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III. In addition, ritual appears to have been restricted to particular types of sites, especially those associated with mountains and waterways. In fact, during these reigns in particular, a relatively large number of monuments was erected in association with topographical features. One of the most frequently mentioned types of locations is said to have been a “river source,” much like the Tigris source mentioned above. Whether these types of locations were considered to be more sacred

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

145

than others—as is suggested by the rituals associated with them—is uncertain. We do know, however, that frequently these locations were mentioned in conquest summaries, and as such, seem to have defined important cosmic extremities. In a related fashion, they may also have symbolized the king’s far-reaching control of important natural resources and trade. One imagines the water “source” to have been particularly symbolic of the king’s ability to rechannel, so to speak, the benefits of Assyria’s conquests, a theme also underlying accounts of booty and foreign tribute. In Shalmaneser III’s account of his visit to the Tigris source, for example, he describes the monument site in a vivid manner, as being located “where the waters rush forth.” In creating such an image, not only does the king evoke the great force and abundance of the waters, but also his own perseverance and strength. As a powerful military leader, the king places his image where the river begins, and in the process, likens himself to the source of Assyria’s abundance. Much later than Shalmaneser III, we find this ninth-century tradition revived during the reign of Sennacherib, who, at the site of Khinnis, created his own version of this same phenomenon (Jacobsen and Lloyd 1935, 41-49). There he carved a total of at least eleven rock reliefs along the cliffs of the Gomel River. More to the point, however, these reliefs did more than simply mark the river; instead, they commemorated Sennacherib’s construction of a canal head, whereby waters could be drawn to irrigate the fields. As such, the reliefs mark a new kind of water “source” that is the very creation of the king himself. While the ninth-century examples emphasize the importance of ritual activity in remote locations, other evidence exists for Assyrian monuments in temples, where their exposure to ritual activity must have been more regular. In contrast to what we might hope for, few of the text accounts describe the actual erection of the monument in the temple, and in no case does a text describe the temple itself. Instead, those that do elaborate, simply emphasize the monument’s proximity to the abovementioned “weapon of Ashur.” These texts imply that in addition to the monuments having a political message for the local populations, in urban contexts they also served as an important cultic focus for the visiting Assyrian populations as well. Supplementing the texts, archaeological evidence addresses more specific issues of monument placement and function in temple

146

a. shafer

settings, although all of our evidence comes from Assyrian rather than foreign centers. This evidence reveals that, at least in some cases, the monuments occupied a central position in the temple interior and confirms that they were themselves important ritual objects. For example, our most securely contextualized monument is from the site of Tell el-Rimah, where the royal stela stood in the temple’s inner cella, right next to the cult platform (Oates 1968, pl. 32a). There, oriented so that the king’s gesture pointed directly toward the cult statue, the stela may have functioned as a votive offering to the deity, to stand in perpetual supplication for the king. An equally plausible interpretation is that because the king’s image was visible to the temple visitor, it may have also received offerings itself. Although not erected on Assyria’s periphery, another example of a monument that may have functioned in the same manner is the Great Monolith of Ashurnasirpal II, discovered in the Ninurta Temple at Nimrud. Two factors suggest that the monument may have served as a cult object: its presumed original location in the temple, and the discovery of an “altar” at its base (Layard 1853, 302-304; Mallowan 1966, I: 87). As its inscription suggests, the monument may have been erected to be viewed and even read regularly by learned scholars, temple personnel, or other Assyrian officials. Furthermore, placed next to a doorway leading into the temple cella, the king’s figure is oriented so that it points toward the cella, and therefore, much like the Rimah Stela, points toward the cult image itself. Perhaps in this case the location and orientation of the royal monument reveals notions of spatial movement and approach, so that the king’s image would receive ritual attention first, as a precursor to the activities inside. Despite what we learn from the above examples, it is important to remember that ritual activity associated with the monuments was not usually performed in formalized settings. Moreover, evidence suggests that some of the ritual activity was performed by subsequent rulers who revisited the sites, generation after generation.20 We learn this from the peripheral monument texts themselves, which contain conclusions that directly address future visitors to the site, asking that the monument be treated with care. Addressing an unnamed viewer, 20 See, for example, Ashurnasirpal II’s monument at the Subnat source (Grayson 1991, 200-201). The most dramatic example of royal Assyrian revisitation, however, is without question the site at the Nahr el-Kelb, where a total of six Assyrian reliefs were carved in the cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean Sea (Weissbach 1922).

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

147

the text usually consists of two main parts: a blessing for those who treat the monument properly, and a curse against those who might wish to destroy it. Usually, the blessing asks that the monument be heeded in some way, by reading it and preserving its inscription. More striking, however, is its emphasis on the performance of ritual. In several cases the viewer is asked to perform rituals on the monument, including washing the monument with water (mê.ME’ liramik), anointing it with oil (àamna.ME’ lipàuà), and performing sacrifices (niqâ liqqi). While the exact purpose of the rituals is never made explicit, clearly they are meant to propitiate the deities in some way, since the consequences of the proper ritual activity are said to be divine recognition and favor. Of course, in some important ways, the monument text conclusions describe a ritual activity similar in form and function to that represented much earlier on the Balawat Gates (figures 4, 5). On the one hand, they outline the specific activities such as ritual ablution and sacrifice. Equally important, however, is what these texts reveal about monument longevity. More specifically, as an analogue to the way the Balawat images show the monument’s creation, the monument texts show the way that rituals effected a re-birth or renewal, when former kings’ military accomplishments were both acknowledged and relived by future generations. Ideally, the visitor to the site—the agent for this renewal of tradition—would be an immediate dynastic successor. In this way, the monument would represent and effect communication from one king to another, thus directly invoking Assyrian tradition and legacy. In this process of continued communication, the Assyrian empire, which the monument helped delineate, would be viewed as perpetually reconstituted.

The Making of Imperial Space In the same way that the monument inscriptions reveal intended connections between successive generations of rulers, they also embody an important connection to the Assyrian palace center. More specifically, like the monument images, the monument texts—especially with their references to ritual blessings—have an important parallel in the Assyrian capitals. There, these same types of ritual prescriptions appear in building inscriptions or “foundation documents,” whose very

148

a. shafer

classification as such reveals their function as architectural markers. Written on tablets, cylinders, prisms and other objects, these inscriptions were systematically buried in structural foundations as a means to ensure a building’s perpetuity, not only through their communication with future ruler-builders, but also through their very literal spatial function as a record of the building’s form (Ellis 1968; Curtis and Reade 1995, 94-96). In the process of translating this text idiom from the center to the periphery, the Assyrians ensured a strong symbolic association between the empire’s center and its borders. By extension, the peripheral ritual activities—including the making of the monument itself—might be understood as the activities necessary for the ‘building’ of the Assyrian imperial space. While the notion that these monuments were very literally delineating Assyria’s spatial footprint is convincing, there is yet another layer of discovery at hand. If we take a moment to examine the monument iconography further, we are able to shift our focus from a description of the monuments in a physical sense to a deeper understanding of how they were originally experienced. In general, because of the great gulf of time and space that separates us from the ancient world, we, as modern viewers, forget to envision the possible full range of a monument’s meaning, especially as it relates to its contextual presence. In the case of the Assyrian monuments on the periphery, it appears that it was not the physical object itself that held intrinsic value, but rather, the power lay in its making and commemoration. Further iconographical comparisons with several other Assyrian images provide a window onto how the peripheral monuments—and perhaps, by extension, Assyrian monuments in general—were viewed and experienced. First, as discussed above, the peripheral monument image clearly had direct connections with the stylized tree scene on orthostat B-23 (figure 3), not only in literal terms of its depiction of the king’s figure, but also in its symbolic reiterative associations with abundance. With the B-23 connections in mind, another important image from Nimrud is the glazed brick panel from Fort Shalmaneser (figure 6) (Reade 1963; Mallowan 1966, II: fig. 373). Here, we see an enlightening reworking of some of the same elements found on orthostat B-23. For example, in the lower central part of the brickpanel image appear two mirror images of the Assyrian king dressed in a long fringed robe and pointing with the familiar raised right hand. Although this scene is highly reminiscent of that on B-23, there is a

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

149

significant difference. Here, there is no longer a stylized tree between the royal figures; instead, the tree has grown in size and appears in the area directly above. As such, the tree attains a new prominence in the overall composition and assumes a new form, so that its branches now envelope two symmetrical addorsed rampant bulls, emblems of the faunal wealth of the land, and by extension, of royal prowess.21 In this process of iconographical transposition, what was in B-23 the object of the king’s gesture—the tree—now in the brick panel transcends the royal scene as its framing member. Meanwhile, the king’s reduplicated and now object-less image remains below as an echo of its former composition. Still making reference to its original location, the tree, in the process of its transposition, incorporates the two bulls, which, placed directly above the royal figures, occupy a parallel visual and metaphorical position. Perhaps more than the internal cross-references within the upper and lower scenes themselves, the framing elements are what enrich the overall message of this visual map, indicating that the Assyrian king—now the object of his own gesture—is himself a manifestation of Assyria’s divinely-bestowed abundance. More specifically, around the central tree scenes appear a series of five tree-shaped bands, which contain, among other elements, pomegranates and buds, and palmettes and caprids, and as such, represent the tree yet one additional step removed, in a more fully abstracted form.22 Not only framing the central scenes but enveloping them, the abstracted tree-bands convey the notion that just like the rampant bulls, the tree also incorporates the Assyrian king within its branches, now not as its guardian, but as the very manifestation of the tree’s eternal abundance. The brick-panel scene thus constitutes a variation on the elements that comprise the orthostat B-23 scene, showing more explicitly that the tree and king represent nearly interchangeable parts. These metaphorical associations are mapped not simply through one reconfiguration, 21 The stylized tree was usually flanked by either animal, human, or supernatural figures. The animals, by definition, seem to have connoted reproductive potential and perhaps instinct. The bull in particular, however, was associated directly with the king (Parpola 1993). 22 Moreover, these abstracted bands contain elements that would never be seen on one single stylized tree alone; instead, they seem to represent an array of types. Such a combination of tree elements seems to be the result of the tree’s long history (Parpola 1993), and I would argue that the tree’s longevity serves as a metaphor for the king’s desire to engage dynastic continuity and thus legitimacy.

150

a. shafer

but through two, until what was once the object of the king’s gesture becomes the divine canopy that frames and protects his rule. Now our reading of the peripheral monument image (figures 1, 2) also becomes more complex. In particular, especially as we look to the Fort Shalmaneser brick panel, we begin to understand the importance of the peripheral monument’s raised frame. It is the raised frame that assumes perhaps the most important visual role in the entire image, not just because it contains the image, but because it is the mechanism by which the image is recast, taking elements from several different monument types and recombining them. Therefore, the peripheral monument frame acts much like the brick-panel’s abstracted outer tree-bands, especially its outermost plain band. Not only is it a mechanism for image reconfiguration, but it also serves—as a reference to the tree—to emphasize the king as a manifestation of Assyria’s divine abundance. When we return to orthostat B-23, we now notice a metaphorical connection between the figure of the king and the figure of the sacred tree. It is perhaps easy to overlook the implications of the fact that the image on B-23 was located in Ashurnasirpal II’s throneroom directly behind the Assyrian king’s throne (Meuszynski 1981, pl. 1, plan 3). There, when the king assumed his position to receive visitors, his person visually merged with the tree behind, revealing the metaphorical parallels between king and tree, and thus the king’s contribution to the tree’s abundance. Moreover, with the king in this position, the outer edges of the tree behind would have appeared to both emanate from and envelope the king, functioning as a symbolically eloquent canopy or frame for his royal person. With this moment of visual sophistication in mind, it is helpful to remember that palace iconography functioned on yet another, spatial level as well. Irene Winter (1983) has discovered how the imagery of orthostat B-23 served the crucial role of orienting the visitor’s approach and movement through the throneroom. In her reconstruction and analysis of the throneroom reliefs, Winter was able to suggest that the throneroom stood as a microcosmic representation of the real territorial state of Assyria. Moreover, she demonstrated how the tree scene stood not only as the focal point of the room and culmination of the surrounding narratives, but also that another version of the scene—located directly opposite the throneroom entrance—oriented and guided the palace visitors physically and psychologically toward

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

151

the king. In addition, other reduplicated stylized trees were carved in the corners of throneroom, thus delineating and anchoring the four corners of this microcosmic realm. As for the relationship between these images and the real-time experience of the space, we unfortunately have no evidence. What Winter has convincingly argued, however, is that the images were arranged in a deliberate way to direct movement and to affect the viewer’s experience. With this visual organization in place, it must have been the moment of the king’s presence that forged the ultimate symbolic connection between the microcosm of the palace and the macrocosm of the Assyrian territorial state. In other words, it must have been the real-life occupancy of the space that made the monuments and their message come alive. Indeed, it certainly was spectacular to witness the king in direct relationship with his own image, for this was the moment the king appeared simultaneously as the creator and the created. This dual role is, once again, suggested by the Fort Shalmaneser brick panel (figure 6). There, as the tree becomes abstracted and widens to become the image frame, the two identical royal figures remain, now standing in a mirror-image, reflexive-action stance, thus acknowledging simultaneously the other and themselves. Returning to B-23 (figure 3), we can imagine that a similar transformation must have taken place, but only when the king himself was present. Then, seated on his throne in front of the tree, the king became the object of creation as the two royal figures behind must have seemed to gesture toward him. In taking his seat upon the throne, therefore, the king asserted himself as both the creator of his own images, and also, as the ultimate created object himself. Likewise, the images on the Balawat gates reinforce this assertion that originally, it was the ritual presence of the king that gave the peripheral monument power. As Band I reveals (figure 5), it was the king’s gesture before his own image that must have been the most spectacular moment of all. Here, at the slow culmination of an elaborate procession, the king stands in a reflexive moment before his own image. He acknowledges much more than simply an abstracted version of the sacred tree; rather, he honors the very moment when the tree and the king are both transformed and materialized. Most important, this is the moment when the king is no longer oriented toward something outside of himself, but is himself fully realized and acknowledged as both leader and creator.

152

a. shafer

In this sense more than any other, this moment of royal ritual was the moment when the Assyrian peripheral monument carried its fullest meaning. It was the moment when the king’s central role in Assyria’s growth and abundance very literally transformed a landscape into the realm called Assyria. It was the moment, therefore, when the king and the land, when the idea and its materialization, became one.

References Albenda, Pauline. 1986. The Palace of Sargon, King of Assyria. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisations. Börker-Klähn, Jutta. 1982. Altvorderasiatische Bildstelen und vergleichbare Felsreliefs. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag P. von Zabern. Collon, Dominique. 1987. First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Curtis, John, and Julian Reade. 1995. Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ellis, Richard. 1968. Foundation Deposits in Ancient Mesopotamia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Grayson, Kirk. 1991. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC I (1114-859). RIMA 2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Grayson, Kirk. 1996. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858-745 BC). RIMA 3. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Jacobsen, Thorkild, and Seton Lloyd. 1935. Sennacherib’s Aqueduct at Jerwan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. King, L. W. 1915. The Bronze Reliefs from the Gates of Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, B.C. 860-825. London: British Museum. Layard, Austin Henry. 1853. Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. New York: Barnes. Loud, Gordon. 1938. Khorsabad II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Magen, Ursula. 1986. Assyrische Königsdarstellungen—Aspekte der Herrschaft. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag P. von Zabern. Mallowan, Max. E. L. 1966. Nimrud and its Remains. 3 vols. London: Collins. Marcus, Michelle. 1987. Geography as an Organizing Principle in the Imperial Art of Shalmaneser III. Iraq 49: 77-90. Meuszynski, Janus. 1981. Die Rekonstruktion der Reliefdarstellungen und ihrer Anordnung im Nordwestpalast von Kalhu (Nimrud). Mainz am Rhein: Verlag P. von Zabern.

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

153

Oates, David. 1968. The Excavations at Tell al-Rimah, 1967. Iraq 30: 115-138. Oates, Joan and David Oates. 2001. Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Parpola, Simo. 1993. The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy. JNES 52: 161-208. Porter, Barbara. 1993. Sacred Trees, Date Palms, and the Royal Persona of Ashurnasirpal II. JNES 52: 129-139. Quaegebeur, J., ed. 1993. Ritual and Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East. Leuven: Peeters. Reade, Julian. 1963. A Glazed-Brick Panel from Nimrud. Iraq 25: 38-47. Russell, John. 1991. Sennacherib’s Palace Without Rival at Nineveh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shafer, Ann. 1998. The Carving of an Empire: Neo-Assyrian Monuments on the Periphery. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University. Tasyürek, Ozgün A. 1975. Some New Assyrian Rock-Reliefs in Turkey. Anatolian Studies 25: 169-180. Watanabe, C. 1992. A Problem in the Libation Scene of Ashurbanipal. In Cult and Ritual in the Ancient Near East, ed. H. I. H. Mikasa, 91-104. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. Weissbach, F. H. 1922. Die Denkmäler und Inschriften an der Mündung des Nahr-el-Kelb. Berlin and Leipzig: Vereinigung wissenschaftlicher Verleger. Winter, Irene. 1983. The Program of the Throneroom of Assurnasirpal II. In Essays on Near Eastern Art and Archaeology in Honor of Charles Kyrle Wilkinson, ed. P. Harper and H. Pittman. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ———. 1989. The Body of the Able Ruler: Toward an Understanding of the Statues of Gudea. In DUMU-E2-DUB-BA-A: Studies in Honor of Ake W. Sjöberg, ed. H. Behrens, D. Loding, and M. Roth. Philadelphia: University Museum. ———. 1996. Sex, Rhetoric, and the Public Monument: the Alluring Body of NaramSîn of Agade. In Sexuality in Ancient Art, ed. N. B. Kampin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997. Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology. In Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995, Helsinki, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 359-381. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project.

154

a. shafer

Figure 1. Kurkh stela of Shalmaneser III (British Museum; © Copyright The Trustees of the British Museum)

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

155

Figure 2. Rock relief of Esarhaddon at Nahr el-Kelb, Lebanon (after Weissbach, 1922, pl. XI)

Figure 3. Slab B-23, Northwest Palace, Nimrud (British Museum; © Copyright The Trustees of the British Museum)

156 a. shafer

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

Figure 4. Line drawing of Balawat Gates, Band X

157

Figure 5. Line drawing of Balawat Gates, Band I

158 a. shafer

assyrian royal monuments on the periphery

159

Figure 6. Reconstruction drawing of glazed brick panel above the south doorway of Fort Shalmaneser Room T3 (after Oates and Oates 2001, 183: fig. 112; courtesy of Julian Reade)

160

a. shafer

the godlike semblance of a king

161

THE GODLIKE SEMBLANCE OF A KING: THE CASE OF SENNACHERIB’S ROCK RELIEFS Tallay Ornan1 The deification of rulers in first-millennium Assyria is far less traceable and clear than the short-lived royal deification during the late third and early second millennium in Mesopotamia (Sallaberger 1999, 152-154; J. G. Westenholz and A. Westenholz 2006): neither were the names of the Neo-Assyrian kings prefixed with the dingir determinative nor were temples built for them as was the case with their predecessors. Nevertheless, indications of a process of the elevation of Neo-Assyrian kings and hints at the increased status of the Assyrian kings by lending them divine-like properties are encountered in monumental Neo-Assyrian art. As phrased by Irene Winter (1997, 376), while in the Neo-Assyrian period the king does not claim to be a god, he is not averse to claims of having been divinely shaped, . . . to being seen as the very likeness of a god.

Focusing on the divine-like properties of the king as manifested in art in a Festschrift in honor of Irene Winter is, of course, not a coincidence. This issue was examined by Winter in some of her various contributions by which I was profoundly inspired. Among these are her seminal papers on Ur III glyptics (1986, 1987), on the Gudea statues (1992), and on the Neo-Assyrian royal image (1997) that initially motivated me to investigate the intricate subject of king and god in Mesopotamian art. Although I never had the opportunity to be Irene’s formal student, I consider myself as one, and this contribution is a small token presented to her with love and deep gratitude. Indeed, we can detect several artistic devices that convey a tendency to promote the monarch in Neo-Assyrian imagery. Among these pictorial means is, for example, the gradual removal of protective divinities from the proximity of the king on Assyrian wall reliefs, leaving him as the sole elevated figure within the composition and 1

I am most grateful to Claudia Suter, Joan Westenholz and Irit Ziffer for reading an earlier draft of this paper and for their comments and insightful remarks.

162

t. ornan

granting him roles previously carried out by these secondary divinities (Ornan 2005a). Another manner in which the king was elevated and was represented as if he were a god was by showing him enthroned while facing to the left—a stance usually reserved for the representation of major Mesopotamian deities—as is shown, for example, in some depictions of Sennacherib (Barnett et al. 1998, pls. 343, 412). Among these visual means of elevation we may also include the contrast in scale between the ruler and the divine presence—carved in very small emblematic form—on royal steles, where the huge gap in dimensions no doubt emphasized the status of the king to the onlooker (Ornan 2005b, 135-136). My aim here is to shed light on yet another pictorial device for the upgrading of the royal image in official Assyrian art, namely the depiction of the ruler alongside and close to a major god in anthropomorphic shape. I maintain that this manner of representation makes use of the physical likeness between the earthly king and the heavenly one in order to elevate the former. The physical semblance emerging between king and god increased the royal image by conveying, perhaps somewhat indirectly, that the king was like a god. As will be shown, the visual similarity of god and king can be matched with some textual occurrences where, indeed, physical similarity or likeness of king and god are used in descriptions aimed at the elevation of the king. The monuments to be examined here are Assyrian rock reliefs dated to the reign of Sennacherib, located in northern Assyria and associated with the irrigation systems built by this king, which carried water to Nineveh and probably also fed its agricultural hinterland. Of the two compositions rendered on these monuments—the king gesturing before divine symbols or venerating human-shaped deities—I will focus on the latter.2 Of the four hydraulic engineering systems attributed to Sennacherib, sculpted rock reliefs were found only in association with the later two archaeologically documented systems. These rock reliefs accompanied the so-called Northern System, which carried water from northwest of Nineveh, probably using the water of the Rubar Dohuk and the Bandwai rivers, and the Khinis System situated to the north

2 A thorough discussion of Sennacherib’s steles and rock reliefs depicting the king worshipping divine symbols is given by Ann Shafer who, however, does not deal with the reliefs treated here (Shafer 1998, 9, 44 n. 105, 88-89, 97-98, 284-289).

the godlike semblance of a king

163

east of Nineveh (Boehmer 1997; Bagg 2000, 207-215; Kreppner 2002, 371; Ur 2005, 325-339; Wilkinson et al. 2005, 28-30). Associated with the Northern System are three groups of rock reliefs. The most northern and the better preserved one consists of four reliefs sculpted on cliffs on the bank of the river Rubar Dohuk opposite Maltai (Bachmann 1927, 23–27, pls. 25–32; Boehmer 1975; Börker-Klähn 1982, 210–211, nos. 207–210; Bagg 2000, 211; Ur 2005, 327-328). Three worn reliefs are located at Faida, situated some fifty kilometers north of Mosul, on the main road to Zacho at the northeastern side of Jebel el-Qosh, southeast of Girrepan (Reade 1978, 159-162; Börker-Klähn 1982, 208, nos. 200-201; Boehmer 1997; Bagg 2000, 210-211; Ur 2005, 328-330). A curved rock relief was also found at ’iru Maliktha, situated some ten kilometers east of Faida. The theme depicted on the latter monument does not adhere, however, to the veneration of human-shaped deities discussed here as it presents the more common Neo-Assyrian theme of a royal worship before divine symbols (Reade 1978, 164-165; 2002, 309; Börker-Klähn 1982, 208-209, no. 202; Boehmer 1997; Shafer 1998, 327-329; Bagg 2000, 211; Ur 2005, 330-331). While the reliefs of the Northern System are attributed to the reign of Sennacherib only on stylistic grounds, the attribution of the Khinis System’s single group of reliefs to Sennacherib is confirmed by the so-called Bavian Inscription, which summarizes the accomplishments of the four hydraulic systems of Sennacherib and, in particular, tells about the construction of the Khinis System and the sculpted monuments that adorned it (Jacobsen and Lloyd 1935, 36-39; Frahm 1997, 151-154).3 The report about the hydraulic activities of Sennacherib is followed in the Bavian Inscription by its main theme, which describes in an unusual literary form the flooding of Babylon and its devastation in 689 by Sennacherib (Hallo 2003, 305 and see below). The Bavian Inscription is related to fourteen rock reliefs carved on a western cliff within a gorge at Bavian; the three that illustrate Sennacherib

3 The detailed report of the Bavian Inscription accords well with other inscriptions of Sennacherib, who expanded the literary scope of the Assyrian military exploits to include building and technological achievements in a way never previously recorded in Assyrian royal propaganda (Tadmor 1999, 61). The importance of the building activities carried out during the reign of Sennacherib is also made clear by the construction works depicted on wall reliefs in the Southwest Palace at Nineveh (Russell 1991, 94– 116).

164

t. ornan

with anthropomorphic deities are dealt with here.4 These well preserved reliefs are found on the bank of the Gomel River, some sixty kilometers northeast of Mosul, opposite the village of Khinis located on the western bank of the river (Börker-Klähn 1982, 206–208, nos. 186–188; Ur 2005, figs. 15, 16). The interest in these particular monuments of Sennacherib lies in their thematic deviation from other Assyrian rock reliefs and steles. In contrast to the common pictorial theme depicting Assyrian rulers worshipping divine symbols on Assyrian monuments, including those of Sennacherib himself, the above-mentioned rock reliefs show the king gesturing in front of human-shaped deities (Börker-Klähn 1982, 207; Ornan 2005b, 79-86). The question then is why Sennacherib discarded the royal veneration of divine symbols more common in Neo Assyrian art in favor of the adoration of anthropomorphic deities for these monuments. The iconographic modification reflected on these rock reliefs deserves a special examination since, as noted above, the representation of (small) divine emblems with the king on Neo-Assyrian monuments is one of the pictorial means used for the exaltation of the royal image, and it seems inconceivable that Sennacherib would have abandoned this kind of propagandistic message. Winter (1982, 367) offers some explanation for the unique presentations depicted on these works of art, in which she deals with the impact of the western territories conquered by Assyria on some pictorial and architectural Assyrian constructs. She suggests that the theme in question, in particular the display of deities on animals and fantastic quadrupeds, was one of the motifs the Assyrians borrowed from Syrian iconography. Indeed, it is not only the representation of deities on animals, but also their very representation in anthropomorphic shape that can be considered as an inspiration of Syrian imagery, since this was the common manner prevalent in Syria during the late second and early first millennium. The representation of deities on animals reflects artistic traditions already encountered in Syria at least as early as the Late Bronze Age and in particular in thirteenth century Hatti (Winter 1982, 367; Ornan 2005b, 75-79; Collins 2005, 15-22, 4 A similar theme was also probably depicted on the so-called Great Rider relief (Bachmann 1927, 16-21, pl. 20; Börker-Klähn 1982, 206, no. 186) where two large figures of an Assyrian king facing each other can be traced. Above these figures is a small row of deities mounted on beasts. The positioning of the two probable royal figures recalls the compositions rendered on the other nearby rock reliefs discussed below.

the godlike semblance of a king

165

38-42). Western influence is not the only possible explanation for these representations. The tradition of rendering deities in human form was well rooted, of course, in Mesopotamia from the Old Akkadian period until the mid-second millennium, and thus the appearance of anthropomorphic deities on monuments dating to the reign of Sennacherib can be viewed as a reintroduction, in a sense a revival of old themes generated by the encounter of Assyrian artists with western models. However, the anthropomorphic form selected for the depiction of the divine on the discussed monuments of Sennacherib should be regarded as a unique artistic expression when compared to other monumental Assyrian works of art of the first millennium. A reexamination of these rock reliefs of Sennacherib reveals that, in spite of the fact that they diverge from other monumental displays then current, they nevertheless fit the official Assyrian propaganda that exalted the king. Moreover, it can be argued that the incentive for the adoption of the anthropomorphic rendering of deities was to bring together divine and royal images in order to increase the status of the king by demonstrating his physical proximity to the gods and, more importantly, his likeness to the divine. The depiction of a deity and a ruler side by side was probably intended to evoke the idea that god and king not only looked the same but also shared similar characteristics. The intention to elevate the king by visually comparing him to a god is demonstrated by the nuances shown in the four compositional layouts selected for the monuments in question. In the first type the king is shown twice, on either side of a row of deities. This type was selected for the two relief groups of the Northern System: the reliefs at Faida and Maltai. Of the three ill-preserved reliefs found at Faida, two depict a procession of six human-shaped deities (Reade 1978, 161-162; Boehmer 1997, 248). Four almost identical and much better preserved rock reliefs were found at Maltai (figure 1; Boehmer 1975; Börker-Klähn 1982, 210-211, nos. 207-210). They present the small figure of Sennacherib as a worshipper facing right towards a line of five large figures of gods and two goddesses mounted on animals and fantastic beasts. An identical figure of the king, facing left, is depicted at the end of the row of deities creating a composition of divine figures flanked by two identical, antithetically-placed royal figures; I refer to this format as an “antithetical layout.” The message is rather clear here and conveys that the king is the only human who is shown in the presence of the great gods of Assyria.

166

t. ornan

Although he does not stand on a beast as the crowd of deities, his similarity to the gods is implied by the fact that he too carries an attribute in his right hand. This lofty rank of the king is further enhanced through two rather subtle, yet sophisticated, pictorial devices. One is the distinction between the seven deities and the single worshipper, which emphasizes the latter. The second is by applying an element of surprise that makes the royal figure even more noticeable. At first glance the spectator may perceive the figure of the king shown on the right as one of the deities since he turns to the same direction as they do, and only then, it seems, does the onlooker realize that the last figure of the divine row in fact depicts the king again. The emphasis on the king is accentuated even more on the Maltai rock reliefs in his reappearance, although in miniature dimensions, in more than one recurrence of the theme. The worshipping ruler is seen within the ring held by the three first deities: Aààur, Ninlil and Sin. This unique display of the king is also repeated on the Khinis Great Relief (Boehmer 1975, 47-49, 51; Bachmann 1927, pls. 9-12).5 The manner in which the king is shown in these instances—as a small figure “decorating” an object held by a deity—is rather unique, since customarily the situation is reversed. In Assyrian imagery it is usually the king who is adorned with the emblems of the divine presence—diminutive godly symbols worn as protective jewels by the king (Winter 1997, 372; Ornan 2005b, 142-143). By this rendering the physical nexus of the king to the gods is strongly demonstrated. Furthermore, it may be conjectured that by integrating the royal figure within a divine attribute he could have been perceived as if he were a secondary supernatural protective divinity. This suggestion seems plausible since on the support of Ninlil’s throne at Maltai, the royal figures reappear alongside benevolent demons (Bachmann 1927, pl. 29, relief II; Boehmer 1975, 49). Whereas all the rock reliefs of the Northern System display a similar layout, the reliefs of the Khinis System represent three different compositions. An abbreviated version recalling the antithetical layout of the reliefs of the Northern System is rendered on the so called Great Relief (figure 2; Bachmann 1927, 7-10, pls. 8-9; Jacobsen and Lloyd 1935,

5 According to Boehmer (1975, 47) a royal image was also depicted within the ring held by the god on the heavily reconstructed mural from room 12 of Residence K at Khorsabad (Loud and Altman 1938, 84-85, pls. 31, 88, 89).

the godlike semblance of a king

167

pl. 33; Börker-Klähn 1982, 206-207, no. 187). Here only the figures of Aààur and Ninlil mounted on beasts and facing each other are shown and, similar to the longer version of Maltai, two identical figures of Sennacherib flank the scene. Although the compositional correspondence to the reliefs of the Northern System is apparent, the reduced number of major deities here implies the added importance of the king since his figure is one of only a select few to be represented and, furthermore, displayed in the company of Aààur and Ninlil, the supreme divine pair. Another type of the antithetical layout typified, in this case, by an inverted positioning of the royal and divine figures within the composition, is represented on the side relief of the solid natural block found partly sunk in the Gomel River, which formed part of the “Gate” monument at the canal head of the Khinis System (figure 3; Bachmann 1927, 14-16, pl. 15; Jacobsen and Lloyd 1935, pl. 34A; Börker-Klähn 1982, 207, no. 188). Here it is the worshipping royal figure that occupies the central place whereas the two deities, Aààur (on a muàhuààu and a lion griffin) and Ninlil (on a lion) are shown flanking the king on either side. Similar to the above noted compositions, the “Gate” side relief also lacks total symmetry since the three participants are shown in profile and a slight emphasis towards the figure of Aààur is insinuated by the king looking in that god’s direction. This pictorial encounter of Sennachrib with Aààur and Ninlil is shown here in the upper register of two scenes. The lower register shows a huge herolike frontal figure holding a sickle sword in his right hand and a small lion in his left. At his two sides are two large aladlammus depicted in profile and looking outward. The entire scene and in particular the hero grabbing the lion brings a palatial entrance to mind such as façade “n” of the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad (Albenda 1986, pls. 16-17). However, it seems that the combination of the two registers here was not aimed at alluding to Sargon’s palace but rather, again, at elevating the king. The scheme of (two) registers one above the other is a known ancient Near Eastern pictorial means for describing three dimensional architectural elements in a two-dimensional articulation: the lower register presents the outer part of the building, at times, the entrance, while the upper register stands for its inner and most important architectural component (compare to the Mari wall painting, Barrelet 1950, 19-20). The godly presence in the upper register of the side relief of the Khinis System Gate hints, then, at a shrine

168

t. ornan

in which the focus of attention is the king who occupies the central place. This central positioning of the king almost directly above the hero grabbing the lion on the lower register creates as yet another visual simile, which grants the king a heroic supernatural quality. A complete symmetrical layout of the theme of Sennacherib and the gods is achieved on the front relief of the above-mentioned “Gate” block of the Khinis System canal head. The lower right side of this carved panel of the block “Gate” is sunk into the river. The head and front legs of a frontal-looking aladlammu, whose body is engraved on the lower right part of the “Gate” side relief, is shown on this front panel. This protective hybrid is matched with another aladlammu sculpted on the right side whose body is presumably found on a third relief, now hardly traceable, carved on a third panel of the “Gate” block (figure 4; Bachmann 1927, 16, pl. 17; Jacobsen and Lloyd 1935, pl. 34B; Börker-Klähn 1982, 207, no.188 right). Similar to the compositions of the Northern System and the Khinis Great Relief, the double figure of the king is also depicted on both sides of this front panel of the “Gate” block. It is worth mentioning that this type of the antithetical layout is echoed in seventh century Neo-Assyrian royal correspondence where one finds several references to the positioning of two royal figures on either side of the images of major deities such as Bel in the cella at the city of Aààur, Iàtar at Arabela, Sin at Harran or Taàmetu at Borsippa (Cole and Machinist 1998, xiv). The siting of the royal figure on either side of a god or group of gods reflected through texts and pictures further accentuates the promotion of the king since it reiterates a known Mesopotamian construct of placing a pair of minor divinities on either side of a major deity; thus, the possibility that the king could have been perceived as a minor divinity is more than plausible (for example, the Well Relief from the city of Aààur; Orthmann 1975, pl. 194). The layout of this relief of the “Gate’s” front panel, however, diverges from all the other compositions of Sennacherib’s rock reliefs of both the Northern and the Khinis Systems, as here only one deity, most probably Aààur, is flanked by two kings, and the three figures are represented frontally, and thus a total symmetry is achieved. This symmetrical display not only acts as a pictorial device bringing the divine and royal figures closer to the spectator but also creates a sense of balance, which enhances the message that god and king are as if alike. Moreover, the similarity apparent between king and god

the godlike semblance of a king

169

is even increased here by the same type and height of the pedestal selected for the divine and royal figures. While on the previous reliefs the worshipping king appropriately stands on the ground and the deities are mounted on beasts, on the front relief of the canal head “Gate” the divine and earthly participants stand on similar rectangular shaped pedestals recalling the age-old Mesopotamian sockels on which godly images were positioned (CAD s.v. n medu; CAD s.v. àubtu; Seidl 1989, 110-115), and thus the divine-like nature of the king is again suggested. The more varied compositional repertoire representing Sennacherib and anthropomorphic deities apparent on the Khinis reliefs fits the chronological sequence offered for the Northern and the Khinis Systems. It may be postulated that the unified theme introduced during the construction of the Northern System, dated between 694-691, was further developed during the later building of the Khinis System around 688 (Bagg 2000, 208, 210) into three different pictorial layouts of Sennacherib and his gods, in which the message that the king and the god resemble one another was more forcefully suggested. The iconographic manipulation of depictions of Sennacherib and the god, in physical proximity or with similar gestures that stressed their likeness, has some forerunners. Although divine human-shaped deities are usually missing from Assyrian palatial sculpted decoration, when occasionally they do appear, a conscious parallelism can be traced between divine and royal representations. This is manifested on the south wall of throne-room B in the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, where the figures of Aààur and the king are rendered with a great deal of resemblance except for scale—the king is much larger than the god. For example, on upper slabs 3 and 11 the two are shown in the same position of shooting an arrow (Westenholz 2000, 116; Layard 1849, pl. 13). This kind of resemblance is also manifested on upper slab 5 and lower slab 7 of the same room, though with minor differences. While both figures hold the bow in the triumphal gesture in their left hand and extend their right arms, on slab 5 the king holds arrows while the god salutes with an open palm. Similarly on slab 7, where the king faces an official, the god wields a ring in his right arm while the king carries a bow (Layard 1849, pl. 21). The parallelism between god and king explicitly equates these two figures but at the same time implicitly raises the king, as after all, he is the larger of the two prominent figures in the scene.

170

t. ornan

It does not seem to be a coincidence that the resemblance between king and god, manifest on some of the rock reliefs of Sennacherib, was represented earlier, though in a different manner, on the reliefs of Ashurnasirpal. As Westenholz (2000, 110-111 with n. 56) points out, Ashurnasirpal was also the first king since Naram-Sin of Akkad to reuse the term tamàÊlu, meaning semblance, which implies shared physical and possibly other properties between god and king, and the appearance of this term belongs among the characteristics of imperialistic propaganda. The comparison between the physical likeness of god and king is, for example, insinuated in Ashurnasirpal’s report about the installation of the royal image in the Ninurta temple at Nimrud in front of the image of Ninurta: “I created my royal monument with a likeness of my countenance of red gold (and) sparkling stones (and) stationed (it) before the god Ninurta my lord” (Grayson 1991, 291, lines 76-78 and compare 295, lines 13-14). The red golden face of the king highlights the resemblance between god and king since a “red face” (zÊm¿àu ruààûti) was considered an exclusively divine trait (CAD s.v. zÊmu; Hurowitz 2003, 105; Woods 2004, 86-86, lines 18, 44).6 The unique and conscious choice of Sennacherib to represent himself alongside human-shaped deities in order to demonstrate his tamàÊlu—his divine likeness, can be corroborated, for example, by a textual reference found in the royal inscription K 1356. In this inscription Sennacherib tells of the pictorial heroic theme that he had commissioned for the bronze bands decorating the doors of the akÊtu house at the city of Aààur. The passage in question reads: ßalam Aààur (AN.’ÁR) àa ana libbi (’À) Ti§mat ßalti illiku (DU-ku) ßalam Sîn-aÉÉ¿-eriba (IdXXX-PAP.ME’SU) àar (MAN) m§t (KUR) Aà+àur (line 26). According to Frahm (1997, 224) the passage describes two separate images, one of Aààur and one of Sennacherib, that were put side by side: “The image of Aààur who goes into the midst of Tiamat for battle, the image of Sennacherib, king of Assyria” (English translation by Uehlinger 2003, 292; for a different interpretation see Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 207-209). Although we do not know whether the description in K 1356 was indeed represented in an actual pictorial narrative showing Aààur fighting Tiamat, the text, nevertheless, transmits the notion of the equation between god and king and thereby matches the compositional layouts rendered 6

For the physical likeness of the king and the gods in Middle and Neo-Assyrian records see Parpola 1993, 168 n. 33 with bibliography.

the godlike semblance of a king

171

on the rock reliefs of Sennacherib’s water systems (Uehlinger 2003, 291). That this kind of metaphorical royal propaganda was adopted during Sennacherib’s reign is reinforced by the account of the battle of Halule in 691, where the poetic language turns the earthly clash between Assyria and the Babylonian-Elamite alliance into a divine combat between a supernatural hero and monstrous rivals (Weissert 1997, 197). Although the theme of the veneration of anthropomorphic deities also appears on some smaller works of art from the reign of Sennacherib, such as a stele and a model plaque from the city of Aààur or on the so-called Seal of Destinies of the god Aààur, its main occurrences are on the monuments accompanying the irrigation systems of Sennacherib (Börker-Klähn 1982, 209, no. 205; Andrae 1977, 230, 232, fig. 210; Wiseman 1958, 14-17; George 1986; Ornan 2005b, 81-83, figs. 98-102, 131). The fact that the veneration of anthropomorphic deities was typical of the pictorial programs accompanying the remote hydraulic systems north of Nineveh suggests that it was not widely adopted into Neo-Assyrian imagery during the reign of Sennacherib and that Sennacherib too, like other Assyrian monarchs, retained the more common subject matter of venerating divine symbols. The consistency of the move away from the display of major human-shaped deities on Sennacherib’s monuments is proven by the absence of such images from the carved decoration at the Southwest Palace at Nineveh (Ornan, forthcoming). However, that this theme played a significant ideological role within the context of Sennacherib’s hydraulic systems (compare to Ur 2005, 342; Wilkinson et al. 2005, 30-32) is indicated by the fact that the Khinis monuments showing it are much larger than the accompanying small rock reliefs depicting the adoration of divine symbols (BörkerKlähn 1982, 207, nos. 189-199; Shafer 1998, 284-289). It seems that this type of subject matter, in which the elevation of the king reached its climax by the explicit demonstration of his similarity to the divine, was deliberately chosen for the representational program of the hydraulic constructions.7 The purpose of the complex water systems created by Sennacherib was not only to improve Nineveh’s water supply, as is recorded in the 7

On the Assyrian control over natural water sources and its pictorial and textual use in royal propaganda, especially under Shalmaneser III, see Shafer 1998, 91-98.

172

t. ornan

Bavian Inscription, but also to enhance the irrigation infrastructure of the agricultural hinterland beyond Nineveh (Ur 2005). These engineering accomplishments of Sennacherib had, most probably, far reaching consequences for the huge population living in Assyria in the late eighth and early seventh century, as these intensive construction works improved the conditions of the population of Nineveh by ensuring its livelihood (Ur 2005, 343; Wilkinson et al. 2005, 26-27). I would suggest that the major change in the physical surroundings caused by the modifications of the water courses—a “divine-like” intervention in the order of nature itself—may have encouraged royal ambitions to render the figure in charge of these systems as if, indeed, he were a god. Moreover, the representation of a godlike Sennacherib fits very well the main theme of the Bavian Inscription, which as mentioned, reports the flooding of Babylon and its devastation. Such an unprecedented destructive action, whose terrible outcome haunted Mesopotamian history for generations to come, is paralleled in this inscription with the beneficial and resoration activities of Sennacherib toward Nineveh (Van De Mieroop 2003). This grand scale of the manipulations of watery sources causing life or death for hundreds of thousands of people echoed mythic events and intensified the divine aspiration of Sennacherib. References Albenda, P. 1986. The Palace of Sargon King of Assyria. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations. Andrae, W. 1977. Das wiedererstandene Assur. 2nd ed., revised and expanded by B. Hrouda. Munich: C. H. Beck. Bachmann, W. 1927. Felsreliefs in Assyrien, Bawian, Maltai und Gundük. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs. Bagg, A. 2000. Assyrische Wasserbauten, Landwirtschaftlische Wasserbauten im Kernland Assyriens zwischen der 2. Hälfte des 2. und der I. Hälftedes I. Jahrtausends v. Chr. Baghdader Forschungen 24. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Barrelet, M.-Th. 1950. Une peinture de la cour 106 du Palais de Mari. In Studia Mariana, ed. A. Parrot, 9-35. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Barnett, R. D., G. Turner, and E. Bleibtreu. 1998. Sculptures from the Southwest Palace of Seannacherib at Nineveh. London: British Museum. Boehmer, R. M. 1975. Die neuassyrischen Felsreliefs von Maltai (Nord-Irak). Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 90: 42-84.

the godlike semblance of a king

173

———. 1997. Bemerkungen bzw. Ergänzungen zu Gerwan, Khinis und Faidhi. BaM 28: 245-249. Börker-Klähn, J. 1982. Altvorderasiatische Bildstelen und vergleichbare Felsreliefs. Baghdader Forschungen 4. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Cole, S. W., and P. Machinist, eds. 1998. Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. State Archive of Assyria XIII. Helsinki: Helsinki University. Collins, B. J. 2005. A Statue for the Deity: Cult Images in Hittite Anatolia. In Cult Images and Divine Representation in the Ancient Near East, ed. H. H. Walls, 13-42. ASOR Book Series 10. Boston: American School of Oriental Research. Frahm, E. 1997. Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften. AfO Beiheft 26. Wien: F. Berger & Söhne. George, A .R. 1986. Sennacherib and the Tablet of Destinies. Iraq 48: 133-146. Grayson, A. K. 1991. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium I (1114-859). RIMA 2. Toronto: University of Toronto. Hallo, W. W., ed. The Context of Scripture II, Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World. Leiden: Brill. Hurowitz, V. A. 2003. The Sun-Disk Tablet of Nebobaladan, King of Babylon (BBSt 36). In Eretz-Israel, Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies 27, Hayim and Miriam Tadmor Volume, ed. I. Eph‘al, A. Ben-Tor, and P. Machinist, 91- 109 (in Hebrew with English summery, 286*). Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society. Jacobsen, Th., and S. Lloyd. 1935. Sennacherib’s Aqueduct at Jerwan. OIP 24. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kreppner, F. J. 2002. Public Space in Nature: The Case of Neo-Assyrian Rock Reliefs. AoF 29: 367-383. Layard, A. H. 1849. Monuments of Nineveh. Vol. I. London: John Murray. Loud, G., and C. B. Altman. 1938. Khorsabad. Part II, The Citadel and the Town. OIP 40. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ornan, T. 2005a. Expelling Demons at Nineveh: On the Visibility of Benevolent Demons in the Palaces of Nineveh. Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, London, 7-11 July 2003, ed. D. Collon and A. George, vol. 1. Iraq 64: 83-92. ———. 2005b. The Triumph of the Symbol: Pictorial Representation of Deities in Mesopotamia and the Biblical Image Ban. OBO 213. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. ———. Forthcoming. In the Likeness of Man, Reflections on the Anthropocentric Perception of the Divine in Mesopotamian Art. In What is a God, ed. B. Nevling Porter. The Casco Bay Assyriological Institute Transactions no. 2. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Orthmann, W., ed. 1975. Der alte Orient. Propyläen Kunstgeschichte 14. Berlin: Propyläen.

174

t. ornan

Parpola, S. 1993. The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Philosophy. JNES 52: 161–208. Pongratz-Leisten, B. 1994. Ina àulmi Êrub: Die kulttopographische und ideologische Programmatik der akÊtu-Prozession im Babylonien und Assyrien in I. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Baghdader Forschungen 16. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Reade, J. 1978. Studies in Assyrian Geography. Part 1: Sennacherib and the Waters of Nineveh and Part 2. RA 72: 47-72; 157-180. Reade, J. 2002. Shiru Maliktha and the Bandwai Canal System. In Of Pots and Plans: Papers on the Archaeology and History of Mesopotamia and Syria presented to David Oates in Honor of his 75th Birthday, ed. L. al-Gailani Werr, J. Curtis, H. Martin, A. McMahon, J. Oates, and J. Reade, 309-318. London: Nabu Publications. Russell, J. M. 1991. Sennacherib’s Palace Without Rival at Nineveh. Chicago: University of Chicago. Sallaberger, W. 1999. Ur III-Zeit. In Mesopotamien, Akkade-Zeit und Ur III-Zeit, W. Sallaberger and A. Westenholz, 121-390. OBO 160/3. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Seidl, U. 1989. Die babylonischen Kudurru-Reliefs. OBO 87. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Shafer, A. T. 1998. The Carving of an Empire: Neo-Assyrian Monuments on the Periphery. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University. Tadmor, H. 1999. World Domination: The Expanding Horizon of the Assyrian Empire. In Landscapes, Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East, ed. L. Milano, S. de Martino, F. M. Fales, and G. B. Lanfranchi, 55–62. History of the Ancient Near East 3. Padua: Sargon. Thureau-Dangin, F. 1924. Les sculptures rupestres de Maltaï. RA 21: 185-197. Uehlinger, Ch. 2003. Clio in a World of Pictures-Another Look at the Lachish Reliefs from Sennacherib’s Southwest Palace at Nineveh. In ‘Like a Bird in a Cage’: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE, ed. L. L. Grabbe, 221-305. JSOT Supp. 363. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Ur, J. 2005. Sennacherib’s Northern Assyrian Canals: New Insights from Satellite Imagery and Aerial Photography. Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, London, 7-11 July 2003, ed. D. Collon and A. George, vol. 1. Iraq 64: 317-345. Van De Mieroop, M. 2003. Revenge, Assyrian Style. Past & Present 179: 3-22. Westenholz, J. G. 2000. The King, the Emperor, and the Empire: Continuity and Discontinuity of Royal Representation in Text and Image. In The Heirs of Assyria (melammu symposia I), ed. S. Aro and R. M. Whiting, 99-125. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Westenholz, J. G. and A. Westenholz. 2006. Cuneiform Inscriptions in the Collection of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem: The Old Babylonian Inscriptions. Leiden: Brill. Weissert, E. 1997. Creating a Political Climate: Literary Allusions to Enåma Elià in Sennacherib’s Account of the Battle of Halule. In Assyrien im Wandel der Zeiten, Proceedings of the XXXIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Heidelberg 6.-10. Juli 1992,

the godlike semblance of a king

175

ed. H. Waetzoldt and H. Hauptmann, 191-202. Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient 6. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag. Wilkinson, T. J., E. Barbanes Wikinson, J. Ur, and M. Altaweel. 2005. Landscape and Settlement in the Neo-Assyrian Empire. BASOR 340: 23-56. Winter, I. J. 1982. Art as Evidence for Interaction: Relations Between the Assyrian Empire and North Syria. In Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn, Politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr., Proceedings of the XXVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Berlin, ed. H.-J. Nissen and J. Renger, 355382. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. ———. 1986. The King and the Cup: Iconography of the Royal Presentation Scene on the Ur III Seals. In Insight through Images, Studies in Honor of Edith Porada, ed. M. Kelly-Buccellati, 253-268. Bibliotheca Mesopotamia 21. Malibu: Undena Publications. ———. 1987. Legitimation of Authority Through Image and Legend: Seals Belonging to Officials in the Administrative Bureaucracy of the Ur III State. In The Organization of Power, Aspects of Bureaucracy in the Ancient Near East, ed. M. Gibson and R. D. Biggs, 69-106. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 46. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. ———. 1992. ‘Idols of the king’: Royal Images as recipients of Ritual Action in Ancient Mesopotamia. Journal of Ritual Studies 6/1: 12-42. ———. 1997. Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology. In Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995, Helsinki, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 359-381. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Wiseman, D. J. 1958. The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon. Iraq 20: 1-28. Woods, C. E. 2004. The Sun-God Tablet of Nabu-apla-iddina Revisited. JCS 56: 23-103.

Figure 1. Rock relief from Maltai, the northern hydraulic system (Thureau-Dangin 1924, 187)

176 t. ornan

the godlike semblance of a king

177

Figure 2. The Great Relief, the Khinis hydraulic system (after Bachmann 1927, fig. 8, redrawn by P. Arad)

178

t. ornan

Figure 3. Side relief of the “Gate” head, the Khinis hydraulic system (after Bachmann 1927, fig. 13, middle, redrawn by P. Arad)

Figure 4. Front relief of the “Gate” head, the Khinis hydraulic system (after Bachmann 1927, fig. 13, left, redrawn by P. Arad)

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

179

CEREMONY AND KINGSHIP AT CARCHEMISH Elif Denel In a series of groundbreaking articles, Irene J. Winter (1981, 1982, 1983, 1989) addressed the relationship between monuments and portable luxury goods of northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia as elements of kingship strategies in the Near East during the early first millennium BC. In these investigations, Winter highlighted Carchemish and its impact on the broader cross-cultural developments of the period. By the ninth century BC, when the Assyrians systematically began to report their increased military interactions with northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia, expressions of sociopolitical differentiation and kingly status had already emerged and developed at Carchemish and had even become influential in the wider Near Eastern cultural scheme (Winter 1982, 365; 1983). Following Winter’s lead in seeking connections between material culture and social structures in the region, I focus here on the inner organization of the kingdom of Carchemish. Using a combination of archaeological remains and textual sources, I investigate the links between the monumental infrastructure of the city of Carchemish and the political and social dimensions of the system of kingship established in the kingdom of Carchemish. In particular, I argue that the manipulation of the monumental urban infrastructure at Carchemish—the creation and installation of monumental inscriptions and visual representations and the configuration of public spaces—constituted an integral part of elaborate rituals or ceremonies of kingship that were designed to legitimate individual rule, maintain local and regional power, and diminish threats to the office and status of kingship. To that end, I first argue that public areas of Carchemish functioned as settings for ceremonies of kingship. In this process, royal ancestor worship developed as a key element in conceptual and ceremonial strategies of power. I then focus on the reigns of three rulers, Suhis II, Katuwas, and Yariris, in order to illustrate how each king developed distinct strategies and manipulated the pre-existing monumental urban framework to establish his legitimacy in the changing conditions particular to his reign.

180

e. denel

After wider interregional mechanisms of political and economic control disintegrated in the twelfth century BC (Liverani 1987), modes of expressing power and status that had developed in the Bronze Age continued to be used by ruling elites who survived the transformation of this historical phase at Carchemish to maintain substantial regional authority.1 Nevertheless, changes that occurred throughout the Early Iron Age in the political and ideological center of the settlement illustrate differences in strategies of power under the authority of certain rulers. These differences reflect purposeful reconfigurations of familiar expressions of power and status in response to existing historical dynamics and political objectives. In this process, the orthostats and stelae carved in limestone and basalt monumentalize kingship ceremonies. It was by means of such formal events that rulers configured and reconfigured social and political concepts, power relations among members of the elite class, and their authority over the sociopolitical order. As a rare example of a relatively well-excavated and documented Iron Age center in the wider region of northern Syria and southeastern Anatolia, the ruins of Carchemish show that the ruling elites controlled substantial wealth and manpower to complete large scale and complex public works. The strategic location of the settlement on a major crossing of the Euphrates River must have contributed to the city’s emergence as a political and economic authority in the first millennium BC. In fact, Winter (1983) has shown that at this time Carchemish became a major participant in interregional exchange systems of elite goods. According to Winter, the wealth that accumulated in the hands of the highest elites through production and exchange became manifest in the form of art, inscription and architecture defining the public sphere of the city. Thus, a small and well-differentiated group with substantial economic and social power controlled the generation of an elaborate royal culture at Carchemish. Archaeological remains show that a series of walls around and within the city created a strong system of protection. This feature emphasizes restriction of access to certain areas as a major architectural and social concern in Carchemish. Excavations conducted on behalf of the 1 This observation has emerged mainly on the grounds that the descendents of Hittite royalty who took control of Carchemish in the fourteenth century BC remained in power into the first millennium BC. They also claimed the title of Great King, which had originally and exclusively designated Hittite kings at Hattusha (Hawkins 1995).

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

181

British Museum during the first half of the twentieth century, first by D. G. Hogarth and later by Leonard Woolley, uncovered a 120hectare area of the settlement (Hogarth 1914; Woolley 1921, 1952). The inner fortification system, which Woolley (1921, 51) identified as an earlier city wall, stands on an artificially built earthen mound and gives access from the Outer Town to the Inner Town through two entrances, the West Gate and the South Gate. A highly formalized section of the site called the Lower Palace Area, located in the long occupied Inner Town, forms the focus of this study (figure 1). A series of decorated and inscribed buildings, walls and elaborate gateways highlights the highly monumental and exclusive nature of this sector of the settlement, which lies directly below the Citadel Mound.2 Although two buildings, the Temple of the Storm God and the Hilani, were excavated in their entirety, very little evidence of the architectural plans of other structures has been recovered in this area. As a result, the excavators have distinguished the architectural units in this area on the basis of their decorative schemes, identifying them with such descriptive labels as the Processional Entry, Royal Buttress, Herald’s Wall and Long Wall of Sculpture. These designations suggest that the excavators relied on artistic representations also to speculate on the nature of formal events conducted in the architectural spaces of the Lower Palace Area. A series of decorated gates further emphasizes the exclusive character of this sector. The Water Gate controls entry into the Lower Palace Area from the western bank of the Euphrates in the east. The King’s Gate connects the Lower Palace Area with the Inner Town in the south. This gate consists of a broad area to its north that includes imagery of processions on a substantial wall known as the Processional Entry. The western extent of the broad area beyond the Temple of the Storm God remains unexcavated, thus the gate system and its relationship to the surrounding buildings is only partially understood. The Great Staircase in the north provides a monumental passage between this area and the higher ground of the Citadel Mound, where buildings are almost entirely destroyed by erosion and later building activities (Woolley 1952, 210-214). Another smaller gate immediately 2 Woolley (1952, 158-159) recognized remains of the royal palace on the terraces covering the slope of the Citadel Mound, where almost all buildings had been greatly eroded and destroyed.

182

e. denel

to the south of the Royal Buttress within the King’s Gate and in line with the eastern wall of the Processional Entry leads into what may have been a wing of the palace or another official structure.3 These gates set apart the Lower Palace Area as a highly exclusive location reserved for a distinguished sector of the society during the formal events of political ceremonies. Consequently, the aspect of ceremony with which this paper is concerned is mainly political. It involves the ability of societies to establish power relations and sociopolitical order through symbolic acts conducted in the formalized areas of built environments. These acts operate in societies to “construct, display and promote the power of political institutions (such as king, state, the village elders) or the political interests of distinct constituencies and subgroups” (Bell 1997, 128). They further involve the reorganization of culturally embedded meanings and values through rites and rituals to meet changing political circumstances (Kertzer 1988, 175). Inherent in the nature of a ritual act that is relevant to this study is thus its power to transform social attitudes, habits and beliefs (Bell 1992, 26) in an overarching framework of tradition and continuity. As such, it is this transformative nature of ritual that enables it to function as an effective social mechanism for establishing and maintaining political power relations. Furthermore, ceremonies rely on shared values and goals to articulate a community as coherent, ordered and legitimate through symbols and symbolic actions that are embedded in the perceived order of the cosmos (Bell 1997, 129). Ceremonies, therefore, provide a conventional platform for powerful members of the elite class to maintain their social differentiation. The archaeological evidence from the settlement of Carchemish provides insight into the operation of such a mechanism in the sociopolitical system of the kingdom of Carchemish. With its monumental spaces lined with artistic representations and monumental inscriptions, the Lower Palace Area of the settlement provided a physical setting for rites and rituals in broad ceremonial events. These contributed to the production of royal culture at Carchemish; that is, how the ruling elite controlled this mechanism 3 Separated by the 15-meter wide path that leads west from the Water Gate, the architectural relationship between the terraces of the Lower Palace and the structure immediately to the east of the King’s Gate is unclear. See Woolley’s description (1952, 192-193), which does not specify how this structure was linked with the Lower Palace on the ascending ground to its north.

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

183

of social differentiation. Four types of evidence point to the performance of rituals for political purposes within monumental spaces of the Lower Palace Area. These are indentations carved in stone that functioned as receptacles for libations and other offerings, images on orthostats that depict actual acts of offering, representations of processions, and inscriptions that refer to the installation of offerings and dedications. Perhaps the most obvious archaeological markers of ritual acts at and around Carchemish are what David Ussishkin (1975) calls hollows or cup marks. These are a series of circular indentations cut into a variety of stone objects including statue bases and dedication tables (or altars). Such circular cuttings are found in a wide range of ritual contexts in Late Bronze Age Anatolia. The cemetery of OsmankayasÌ near BoÅazköy (Bittel, et al. 1958), a lion protome at the Lion Gate of BoÅazköy (Ussihkin 1975, 91-95), rock outcrops within the settlement of BoÅazköy (Neve 1996) and on the processional way that leads to YazÌlÌkaya (Neve 1977/1978), the open-air sanctuaries of YazÌlÌkaya (Ussishkin 1975, 91) and Fraktin (Ussishkin 1975, 85-86), and a relief of Muwatalli on a rock cropping by the Ceyhan River near the village of Sirkeli (Ussishkin 1975, 86-89) contain a group of hollows or cup marks that designate an area of libation and dedication in Hittite religious activity.4 Some altars from Carchemish and its vicinity contain rectangular compartments alongside circular ones; such altars were common in the nearby Yunus cemetery (Woolley 1939), as well as in different areas of the settlement of Carchemish (Woolley 1921, 93-93, fig. 27; 1952, 181-182, fig. 69) (figure 2). Two such altars were discovered in situ in the Lower Palace Area of Carchemish in front of the images of the Sun and the Moon Gods (Woolley 1952, pls. 31a, B33; Ussishkin 1975, 102, fig. 20)5 (figure 1). Representations of these deities are carved on a large orthostat on the Great Staircase overlooking the wide space between the staircase, the Long Wall of Sculpture and the Herald’s Wall. Another stone block with carved indentations was found disturbed near a lion protome outside the South Gate of the Inner Town. This block may have been originally associated with 4 See Hoffner (1967) on the widespread utilization of dedication pits in the second millennium BC as a particularly significant element of Hittite religion. 5 Ussishkin (1975, 101-102) recognized that what Woolley (1952, 159, 171) had mistakenly called a “basalt impost” was in fact a second altar or table offering placed in front of the images of the two gods.

184

e. denel

the lion protome or brought to its findspot at some point in time from the vicinity of a destroyed statue in the northeast chamber of the gate (Woolley 1921, pl. 12). Such indentations on stone blocks mark areas of ritual activity and distinguish certain representations as foci in rites and rituals. Orthostats in the Water Gate decorated with scenes of feasting (Woolley 1921, pl. B30b) and libation offering (pl. B30a) reflect certain elements of actual rites and rituals. Initially dated to the Late Bronze Age, current opinion agrees that the Water Gate orthostats belong in the initial phase of the Early Iron Age (Hawkins 1976-1980, 436). Scenes of libation and other forms of ritual activity are found at such centers as Alaca Höyük and Malatya and resemble the representations of Carchemish. These date to the end of the Bronze Age or the transition period from the Late Bronze into the Early Iron Age (Akurgal 1962, 118, 130; Mellink 1974). The survival of Bronze Age traditions in the monumental configuration at Carchemish suggests that the conduct of ritual activity within city gates was an existing tradition. Thus, the decoration of gates must have emerged in the first millennium BC as a kingship strategy that was founded on an existing tradition. It is possible that gates did not necessarily function in antiquity as areas where communal feasts were actually held; yet as areas of passage, they provided built environments for artistic display of beliefs and views, which feasts and libations also transmitted through their activities. A seated figure and its base carved with a series of circular hollows indentations show that the King’s Gate was also a likely setting for such activities. Thus, images, statues and the carving of indentations designate cultural significance of the gate in ritual activity. Numerous studies have highlighted the material and conceptual aspects of the city gate in many Near Eastern cultures (Mellink 1974; Ussishkin 1989; Mazzoni 1997; Haettner Blomquist 1999) and have emphasized its character as a physical and conceptual source of access between the outside world and the inner realm of the community. In addition, the evidence for ritual activity at gate structures associates the city gate with the royal ancestor cult. Perhaps the conduct of such a culturally significant action as ritual in such a conceptually meaningful area of the settlement developed to emphasize the ownership of the royal family and the long lasting authority that it exercised over the city. Not all images at Carchemish acted as direct recipients of dedications or depicted the very act of dedication. Two types of representations surround open spaces in the Lower Palace Area: self-contained

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

185

images displaying the iconography of ritual and power, and representations of processions that extend on long stretches of adjoining orthostats. Of these two, images of procession represent the act of bringing dedications and thus complement the act of actual dedication in rites and rituals. Therefore, they highlight the overarching ceremony that consists of several steps including the actual bringing and display of the offerings. Representation of soldiers, chariots and deities on the Long Wall of Sculpture (Woolley 1952, pls. B37-B46) and soldiers, palace attendants, priestesses and animal bearers on the Processional Entry (Hogarth 1914, pls. B1-B5; Woolley 1921, pls. B17a, B19-B24) are ordered in a formalized progression typical of processions (figure 3). Musicians and dancers on the gate next to the Royal Buttress (Woolley 1921, pls. B17b, B18) refer to incantations and performances that often form components of rites and rituals and consequently emphasize the festive and ceremonial nature of the processions. The self-contained images, on the other hand, highlight the religious and mythological traditions of the society in which ritual acts are by nature integral (Bell 1992, 1997). In some distinct cases, such as the arrangement of the Herald’s Wall (Hogarth 1914, pls. B9-B17; Woolley 1952, pl. 42), images are removed from their original contexts and reorganized on a new architectural construction (Orthmann 1971, 31-32). The mythological themes on the majority of these orthostats convey traditional messages of strength that entrench kingly power and authority in the past. Although they may not have originally contributed to the formal events of ceremonies, the reuse of these representations on the southern border of the wide space in the Lower Palace Area indicates the operation of a pre-calculated procedure to incorporate them into this area and into the formal events conducted here. Consequently, emblematic images together with representations of processions define ceremonial space and complement the formal acts conducted in the political heart of the city. The fourth type of evidence that points to ritual activities in monumental spaces of Carchemish consists of actual statements of dedication in monumental inscriptions. Written in Luwian hieroglyphs, most inscriptions found at the site commemorate building activities, celebrate military victories, and honor deities, kings and the royal family. Carved on stone stelae and architectural orthostats during the reigns of different rulers, these inscriptions mention sacrifices and offerings made during the inauguration of buildings and monuments and the subsequent installation of regularized celebrations. In his inscription

186

e. denel

on the Long Wall of Sculpture, for instance, Suhis II celebrates the city gods and his ability to reinstall them in their proper places after an enemy disturbance by establishing regular sheep, bread and libation offerings for the images of the gods and the newly erected statue of himself (Hawkins 2000, 88-89 A1a). On an orthostat slab of the King’s Gate his descendent, Katuwas, mentions “ARASI-bread,” annual bread offerings (Hawkins 2000, 98), to honor his (re)building of the Temple of the Storm God (Hawkins 2000, 95 A11a §11-12)6 and other similar offerings in addition to oxen and sheep to other gods of the city to commemorate his construction of women’s quarters probably in the royal palace (Hawkins 2000, 103-104 A11b+c). Katuwas also declares instituting annual offerings of bread, ox and sheep for the seated image by the King’s Gate (Hawkins 2000, 101 A4d). In addition to conveying specific messages, the material display of inscription is a powerful element in kingship strategies. The ritual inauguration of monumental sculpture and architecture was often followed by regular food offerings so as to integrate the beliefs and ideologies of the king into a pretext of tradition. The monumental and formal nature of the Lower Palace Area suggests that this sector of the settlement was not available to all segments of the society. A set of wooden doors restricted access into this area from the outside through the Water Gate in the east (Woolley 1921, 104). Massive cedar doors (Woolley 1952, 198-199) and a small guardroom on the southwest corner (Woolley 1952, 192) reveal the operation of a highly secure control system in the more monumental King’s Gate. One would expect less security at this gate, which regulates entrance from within the settlement, where the potential for threat to the political sector would be relatively minimal. Therefore, this over-emphasis on the protective nature of the King’s Gate suggests a purposeful display of power rather than a real necessity for protection. The evidence for sloping and grooving of the pavement in the gate supports this suggestion as it reveals planning for wheeled access into the Lower Palace Area (Woolley 1952, 199). The 6 While Katuwas, who reigned in the tenth or early ninth century BC, claims to have built the temple himself, a stele found in the courtyard of the temple and dedicated to Great King Ura-Tarhunzas, who may have ruled Carchemish in the late eleventh or early tenth century BC, suggests a much earlier date for its construction (Hawkins 2000, 80 A4b). See Hawkins (2000, 98) on a discussion of what Katuwas calls “building” that might in fact be a renovation of the temple.

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

187

monumental nature of this sector also indicates that wheeled traffic must have been restricted. Images of chariots and foot soldiers carved on the surrounding walls also raise the possibility of a military presence here. Since the Lower Palace Area is inappropriate by nature to house the military power of the kingdom, the presence of chariots and soldiers here must be symbolic; if physically present, then only in limited numbers and during the formal events of political ceremonies. When the royal family, members of other elite families, palace and temple attendants, foot soldiers and charioteers are collectively considered as the main participants of ceremonial events, the Lower Palace Area with irregular dimensions does not seem broad enough to contain extremely large masses of participants. Thus, not all members of the society could collectively enter the ceremonial sector of the settlement during rituals. Ceremonial participation would probably have been restricted to those who contributed to instituting sociopolitical order and who could potentially generate a real threat from within the community to the operation of societal systems. Elites rarely possess undisputed authority. Although Hittite authority had disappeared, high elites of Carchemish based their legitimacy on descent from the Hittite royalty as they reconfigured power relations and established political offices appropriate for their new political structure. The material evidence for the Late Bronze Age is limited at the archaeological site (Hawkins 1976-1980, 435); yet historical sources transmit a long history for the city as the main center of Hittite control over northern Syria in the Late Bronze Age (Hawkins 2000, 73-74). In such a volatile historical setting, the ruling class especially needed to appeal to tradition and ritual, as Bell (1992, 194) has pointed out, to redefine and legitimize its newly acquired status every time a new generation replaced the previous one. Winter (1992, 2) has noted that ritual and monumental art are particularly effective in assisting controlling factions in such processes, by means of which they could secure their privileges and convey their authority to the masses. Conceptual, conceptual elements and performative aspects of rituals sustain a certain degree of flexibility in order that they may effectively respond to social, political and economic variables in the framework of societal unity and continuity. When Suhis I appropriated the seat of kingship probably in the eleventh century BC, a calculated sense of historicity and tradition in kingship strategies replaced the preexisting

188

e. denel

close association between the royal family of Carchemish and their Hittite predecessors. The evidence of cup marks, depictions of actual rites in ritual performance, representations of processions, and contents of monumental inscriptions mark distinguished spaces of Carchemish as settings for elaborate rituals that connect the current political order with the distant past and redefine tradition during the reign of each king. In this respect, the formalization and re-formalization of ceremonial space illustrates developments in ritual performance as kingly strategies to maintain authority over the sociopolitical order of Carchemish. To investigate the relationship between ceremonial space and changing concerns of the Carchemishean kings, I now concentrate on three rulers, Suhis II, Katuwas, and Yariris, who ruled between roughly the tenth and the beginning of the eighth century BC. An inscribed orthostat among the artistic representations of the Long Wall of Sculpture designates Suhis II as the creator of this installation on the exterior of the wall surrounding the Storm God Temple. The decorative program of the king emphasizes the stretch of the wall that adjoins the Great Staircase, the monumental entrance leading to the top of the citadel from the Lower Palace Area. The Long Wall of Sculpture not only defines the ceremonial function of its surrounding area, but also places particular emphasis on Suhis II as its creator.7 This inscription commemorates this king’s reconstruction of sanctuaries and reinstallment of the city gods to their proper places after an enemy “hacked down” and “overturned” their images during an incursion into the city in the tenth century BC (Hawkins 2000, 88 A1a §3-4). Representations of the Long Wall of Sculpture consist of an array of deities followed by a series of chariots and foot soldiers facing the direction of the Great Staircase. Military figures include archers in chariots over the naked bodies of the fallen enemy (Woolley 1952, pls. B41, B42) and a procession of soldiers holding spears in one hand and decapitated heads of the enemy in the other (Woolley 1952, pl. B46). A clear reflection of the kingly power and unusual skill to conserve social, political and cosmic order, such representations

7 The king may have carried out additional constructions; yet this decorated and inscribed wall forms the sole surviving archaeological evidence with such elaborate decoration that is securely associated with his building activities.

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

189

also ensure the continuation of divine protection after a potentially fatal threat to the existing order of the city and the kingdom at large. As constant reminders of his achievements, artistic images actively memorialize the king’s exceptional abilities to carry out this endeavor and to restore order to Carchemish. As such, these images were also engaged in the ritual activity of ceremonies conducted in the open space in front of the Long Wall. These ceremonies celebrated, among other things, the king’s vital position in restoring order to the city and preserving the social and political systems of the kingdom. The clearest evidence for ritual in ceremonial activity consists of two altars on the platform supporting the images of the Sun and the Moon God (Woolley 1952, pl. B33) (figure 1). These figures signify the entrance of the Great Staircase as a location across from the Long Wall of Sculpture where libations were poured into the receptacles of the altars probably in the presence of an audience gathered in the open space of the Lower Palace Area. The two images are carved on a large orthostat in standing position on a crouching lion facing away from the opening of the Great Staircase. The orthostat lines the exterior of a room where a statue base flanked on either side with bull protomes had once supported a statue (Woolley 1952, pl. B53). A deep indentation on the base that is carved in the manner of what Ussishkin (1975) calls a cup mark or a hollow designates the statue also as a recipient of libation offerings. The statue is currently lost and thus its identity is not clear. Whomever the statue represents, the room in which it stood forms a unit with the Long Wall, Great Staircase and the large ceremonial space expanding in front of these structures.8 Consequently, through his building activities, Suhis II not only memorialized his conservation of religious and political order in his realm, but also defined the ceremonial nature of the area in which rites and rituals to maintain order were carried out. As a result, the monumental scheme of the Long Wall of Sculpture highlights Suhis II as a successful king, even though material remains of the king’s own image are yet to be found in the archaeological record. The inscription on the Long Wall declares that the king in 8

Orthmann (1971, 501) dates the base and the orthostat on stylistic grounds to a phase slightly before the execution of the Long Wall of Sculpture. It is therefore possible that Suhis II constructed the Long Wall of Sculpture in order to complement these preexisting structures.

190

e. denel

fact installed his own representation and intended it to be included in rites and rituals honoring “this assemblage of the gods” (Hawkins 2000, 88-89 A1a §25-27). This statement suggests that an image of the king may have been carved in relief on a damaged segment of the Long Wall.9 It is also possible that a freestanding statue stood in the vicinity the Long Wall and the Great Staircase. The king, furthermore, mentions instituting rites for his own statue to be carried out along with those carried out for the deities: “(He) who (is a man) of sheep, let him offer a sheep to this statue. But (he) who (is a man) of bread, let him . . . bread and libation to it” (Hawkins 2000, 89 A1a §30-33). Although the statue is now lost, this inscription shows that Suhis II attempted to combine the cultic activities of the gods with those of the king in order to promote and elevate further the distinguished status of kingship. Images on the Long Wall of Sculpture, therefore, did not originally stand alone, but functioned in combination with other elements in its surrounding area. An innovation in kingship strategies, the king introduced ancestor worship into the ceremonial scheme of Carchemish when he created the decorative program of the Long Wall of Sculpture. Among the deities depicted here, Suhis II included a seated figure of his wife, “BONUS-tis” (figure 4). Although there is no evidence for a burial in the area of the Long Wall, the inscription shows that the image was funerary in nature: “I (am) BONUS-tis the Country-Lord Suhis’s dear wife. Wheresoever my husband honours his (own) name, he shall honour my own with goodness” (Hawkins 2000, 92 A1b). Ancestor cult was already an important element of ruling elite cultures of north Syria in the second millennium BC (Tsukimoto 1985). Nevertheless, the attempt of Suhis II to incorporate his wife among the deities reflects a new attempt to formalize ancestor cult in order to introduce the royal family into the realm of the deities. This act, which the king instituted during his lifetime, also prepared the grounds for his entry into the realm of the supernatural after his death. The ancestor

9 Upon the king’s claim that he made and erected a statue of himself (2000, 89 A1a §28-33), Hawkins (1972, 107, fig. 4) has suggested that an image of the king must have been included on the Long Wall of Sculpture, either as a discrete representation, like those of the deities, or as a smaller figure introducing the hieroglyphic figures of the inscription carved in the style of the image from the inscriptions of Katuwas (Woolley 1921, A13d) or Yariris (Hogarth 1914, pls. A6, B6).

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

191

cult of the queen, therefore, stands as a pretense for the king’s own dynastic aspirations to elevate the state of kingship onto the even higher plane of the gods. In addition to this strategy to secure the king’s power in the social, political and cosmic order of Carchemish, the emphasis Suhis II placed on the ancestor cult possibly relates to his ancestors’ seizure of control from the previous ruling family. Several sources suggest that Suhis I, the grandfather of Suhis II, usurped the throne from the Great Kings, who descended from the Hittite royal family (Hawkins 1995). A major source on the change of power at Carchemish is an eleventh or tenth century BC stele with an inscription honoring Ura-Tarhunzas, the “Great King, Hero, King of the land of Karkamià” (Hawkins 2000, 80 A4b). Another piece of evidence that complements this information is a later reference made by Katuwas, the son of Suhis II, to his suppression of a rebellion lead by the “20-TATI,” the kinsmen of Ura-Tarhunzas (Hawkins 2000, 95 A11a §5, 103 A11b §4). Located in the courtyard of the Temple of the Storm God, the stele of UraTarhunzas identifies the dedicator as the priest of the goddess Kubaba and the son of a “ruler,” who is named Suhis. On the basis of the genealogical references made in monumental inscriptions, Hawkins links this individual with Suhis I, the father of king Atuwatamanzas and the grandfather of Suhis II (Hawkins 1995, 78). Later references made by Katuwas to the trouble caused by the grandsons of UraTarhunzas suggests a significant social and political resistance to the order and authority of his kingship. This probably emerged in response to a fundamental power transformation that occurred at Carchemish with the deposition of Ura-Tarhunzas. The family of Ura-Tarhunzas seems not to have lost all its influence, but retained substantial social and economic ability to contest the authority of the descendents of the usurper. Inscriptions further show that the royal title changed at the same time as when political power was fundamentally altered in the kingdom. The descendents of Suhis I took the titles of “Ruler” and “Country Lord” instead of continuing the earlier tradition of “Great King” (Hawkins 1995). This is an act that reflects a deliberate attempt to break away from the Hittite roots of kingship. Consequently, the formalization of the ceremonial space at the settlement of Carchemish and the elevation of royal status into the realm of the gods are elements of the kingship strategy that Suhis II developed to establish his legitimacy and maintain his authority as the grandson of a usurper. Such a calculated act suggests that threats to the legitimacy of the

192

e. denel

king’s authority did not entirely disappear after Suhis I appropriated the seat of kingship. The son of Suhis II, Katuwas, also undertook major building projects into the late tenth or early ninth century BC and complemented the artistic and architectural rearrangements of his father. In addition to renovating the Temple of the Storm God, the King’s Gate, and the royal palace, he created a substantial portion of the city’s surviving decorative program. Of these, the Processional Entry stands out as it further elaborates on the emphasis Suhis II had placed on military leadership and protection of the sociopolitical and religious order as chief elements of kingship at Carchemish. Images of marching soldiers, priestesses and bearers of sacrificial animals line the western wall of a massive public complex that is known mainly through its decorative scheme. Yet, these images highlight, like the Long Wall of Sculpture, the ceremonial function of the open space they surround. Images of soldiers from the north and priestesses and sacrificial animal bearers from the south converge toward one another. These processions culminate with a scene that was centrally positioned on the Royal Buttress. Later inscriptions and images of Yariris have replaced what once covered the surface of the walls here; thus the scene that formed the apex of these processions in Katuwas’ reign is no longer available. Nevertheless, it must have had substantial significance, since Yariris chose this place in the early eighth century BC to display the composition that describes the nature of his kingship (Hogarth 1914, pl. A6). An inscription that was reused as a ramp in the King’s Gate might have once lined the doorjamb of the gate next to the Royal Buttress (Woolley 1952, 203). This inscription, along with others, depicts Katuwas as a powerful military leader, builder and worshipper of the gods (Hawkins 2000, 103-104 A11b+c). Like his father, Katuwas placed particular emphasis on installing a ceremonial procession, by which means he claimed to have (re)instituted or renewed the cults of certain deities: “I myself beheld my lord Karhuhas’s and Kubaba’s procession, and I myself seated them on this podium” (Hawkins 2000, 103 A11b §16-17). The statue base (Woolley 1952, pl. B53a) in front of the soldier figures (figure 3) may have once supported the image of Katuwas, which he claims in a monumental text to have erected in the city (Hawkins 2000, 122 A25a). Whether the statue of this base actually depicted Katuwas is not certain,10 but the strategic position 10

Hawkins (2000, 77) considers Suhis II for the identity of the statue next to the

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

193

of the base in front of the marching soldiers suggests an emphasis on the king’s leadership in the procession honoring the gods. Katuwas also elaborated on Suhis’ notion of ancestor worship as a strategy in establishing his royal power. He renovated the King’s Gate and installed a colossal image next to it, which he identified as “Atrisuhas” (figure 5). The figure is seated on a throne holding a double axe and a mace in his hands. Erected on a lion base, it faces the Storm God Temple and the Great Staircase in the north. A horned helmet in the style of the gods’ also crowns the head of the statue. On the basis of the Luwian inscription on the skirt of the statue, Hawkins (2000, 101 A4d) recognized that the term “atri-” designates “(image) soul” and the image represents the image or soul of the deceased father or grandfather of Katuwas: “For this god Atrisuhas with the gods (he) who does not [offer] annual bread, an ox and two sheep, against him may Atrisuhas come fatally!” The inscription further shows that Katuwas established an ancestor cult by the King’s Gate and took the attempt of Suhis II to include the royal family in the realm of the gods a step further by representing his father or grandfather as an actual god. As such, Katuwas complemented the emphasis Suhis II placed on the preservation of the religious order in the kingdom by describing in art and text his kingly image as an installer of ceremonies and leader in processions. He thus continued his father’s enterprises to manipulate preexisting public spaces to formalize the ceremonial nature of the Lower Palace Area. With an increased emphasis on the royal ancestor cult, Katuwas at least conceptually intensified the power of the living king by portraying him as a future deity. Both his and his father’s strategies brought the tradition of ancestor cult into the political sphere of Carchemish, perhaps in order to present the royal ancestor cult to the society as an established convention so that he lays emphasis on the historicity of kingship and ensures the continuity of its social Royal Buttress, while Orthmann (1971, 41) points out that the base shows distinct stylistic similarities with the base of the seated figure of Atrisuhas that securely dates to the reign of Katuwas. Unfinished lower body parts of the soldiers behind the base show that the base was already in its current position by the Royal Buttress when the orthostat behind it was decorated; thus, both bases might have been reused during the reign of Katuwas. This does not preclude the possibility that the incomplete soldier figures depict a progression in the execution of a single decorative scheme. Whether or not these bases predate Katuwas, the reconfiguration of the decorative scheme in the Lower Palace Area of Carchemish emphasizes the king’s role in kingship strategies as an organizer and leader of ceremonies.

194

e. denel

significance. The rearrangement of early orthostats on the Herald’s Wall reflects this aspect of antiquity and permanence of kingship.11 By means of incorporating traditional and religious artistic representations into the monumental urban framework of the city, Katuwas ensured their display in ceremonies and indirectly emphasized his kingly image as the protector of preexisting religious values. Such highly calculated schemes indicate an emergence at that time of a particularly strong need in kingship strategies to emphasize the distinguished status of the king, possibly in response to a strong and pervasive threat to the office of kingship and the order it represents. Katuwas’ claim of exiling the descendents of Ura-Tarhunzas provides evidence for internal competition for power. Even after UraTarhunzas was deposed from the throne, his descendents were still socially, economically and politically effective enough to plot rebellion in Carchemish (Hawkins 2000, 95 A11a §5-6, 103-104 A11b+c §4, §30). Perhaps the deification of the king emerged as a reaction to this ubiquitous threat in the community, in order to show the king as both physically and conceptually superior to all living members of the society. In this process, Katuwas relied on ceremony like his father. He modified ceremonial spaces of Carchemish in which Early Iron Age rulers modified the notion of their kingship during the course of their reigns. This process primarily addressed the members of the elite class, who posed the greatest potential to challenge the authority of the ruling family. Thus, ceremonies were designed to demonstrate the ultimate power and authority of the king by stressing his ability to maintain the sociopolitical and religious order in life, and ultimately to reach state deification upon his death. When Yariris ruled Carchemish as a regent several generations later, he also relied on the preexisting organization of ceremonial space and the ancestral aspect of kingship to legitimate his unusual background. Yariris, who controlled Carchemish early in the eighth century BC, probably did not come from royal descent. He was a eunuch and a high attendant in the court of king Astiruwas. He was also probably the founder of a new dynasty (Hawkins 1986, 263-265; 2002, 229-232). He managed the court for a while probably due to

11 A fragmented stele in the vicinity the Herald’s Wall supports the association of this wall with Katuwas’ construction (Woolley 1952, 176, 187, 273; Hawkins 2000, 113114 A12).

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

195

the untimely death of Astiruwas until the king’s son, Kamanis, came of age to take possession of kingship. Accordingly, his status was unique and potentially open to appropriation of power. Yet he remained in control, as he proclaimed in his monumental inscription, only until Kamanis was ready to take the seat of kingship. During his reign, he preserved the ceremonial space of Carchemish and inserted several monuments to commemorate his own power and to establish his legitimacy. The most significant of these is the composition he placed on the Royal Buttress to incorporate a row of attendants into the processional scheme of the Processional Entry (Hogarth 1914, 28, pls. A6, B6, A7; Woolley 1921, viii, pl. A15b, b*; 1952, 266, 275, pl. A24; Hawkins 2000, 124-125 A6, 129 A7, 130-131 A15B, 134-135 A24a). All of these figures depict beardless adults, probably intending to represent a group of eunuchs.12 Although eunuchs played an important role in the administration of numerous Near Eastern societies, the reign of Yariris reflects a period of increased power in the administration of Carchemish. The archaeological evidence for rites and rituals at this time is not so prolific; yet visual and textual sources suggest a continued emphasis on the rites and rituals of important city gods. Thus, Yariris adopted a strategy to legitimize his status and authority that emphasized his close association with the deities and protection of the religious order. On the Royal Buttress, Yariris presents the principles of his authority at Carchemish; he depicts himself as a proper guardian for the royal children, a builder, and a protector of the religious and political orders at Carchemish. Previous rulers, Suhis II and Katuwas, had established ceremonies to communicate their superior status as a source of legitimacy. Yariris emphasized his subservient position to the royal family. Although he clearly occupied the seat of kingship, the Royal Buttress emphasizes his protective and educational role in raising the children of the king as a main aspect of his authority. Because he was not a son of the king, his acquisition of power implies

12 On the basis of artistic representation, Reade (1972) has shown a distinction between bearded and beardless officials in the Assyrian royal court, where the beardless males constitute almost a formulaic representation of eunuchs. The peculiar appearance of Yariris that bears a close resemblance to Assyrian eunuchs and the interpretation of the term “wasinasi-” in monumental texts as “eunuch” have lead to the conjecture that the royal court of Carchemish comprised a substantial group of eunuchs at least in the 8th century BC (Hawkins 1986, 263-265; 2000, 128, 135; 2002, 231-232).

196

e. denel

the occurrence of unconventional circumstances. As a justification of his unusually acquired status, he claimed that it was the deities of the city who granted him the duty to control Carchemish (Hawkins 2000, 124 A6 § 2, 130 A15b §2). At the same time, he asserted the intellectual skills that provided him a unique disposition to maintain leadership; he boasted about his outstanding ability to speak twelve languages and to write in the scripts of Carchemish, Sura, Assryia and Taimani (Hawkins 2000, 131 A15 §131) and claimed the widespread fame of his name (Hawkins 2000, 124 A6 §4-8). The nature of kingship strategies, therefore, seems to have changed during the period of Yariris from an emphasis on the divine power and authority of kingship to an emphasis on divine protection over the political order and preservation of the kingdom. Yariris’ insertion of a procession of eunuchs into the preexisting images on the Processional Entry (Hogarth 1914, pls. B4-B5) illustrates an attempt to raise the significance of the eunuch class in the political order of the city. It seems that Yariris maintained the ceremonial function of the Lower Palace Area and placed particular importance on the ceremonial participation of the eunuchs among royal attendants. In other words, Yariris elevated the social and political status of the eunuchs. He conveyed this development in the monumental sphere of the kingdom in the form of both visual and verbal representation as demonstrated by the curse formula of the inscription on the Royal Buttress: “. . . …or who shall erase my name, or who shall take away on the one side (a child) from the children, or on the other side (a eunuch) from the eunuchs, (for) him may Nikarawas’ dogs eat up his head!” (Hawkins 2000, 125 A6 §29-32). When Yariris took to the task of controlling Carchemish, he faced the challenge of justifying his unusual background as a ruler and legitimizing his authority in an environment of a well-developed and prominent ideology of kingship. As a non-descendent of the royal family, he could not rely on royal ancestor worship to promote his authority, even if it was not gained by force. Furthermore, as a eunuch, he could not produce a direct descendent to carry on his legacy. He promoted the eunuch class, from where he had originated, in order to elevate his own status. He also stressed his stance to protect the royal family so as to emphasize that he had no intentions to appropriate power. The pose of Yariris holding on to young Kamanis’s arm carved on the orthostat B7a of the Royal Buttress highlights his

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

197

proclamation of the protective position he undertook in the political order of the kingdom until he was ready to give power back to an appropriate heir to the throne. Thus, Yariris incorporated himself into the preexisting political system at Carchemish not as an intruder, but as a protector. He also inserted himself into the ceremonial structure of kingship, but stressed the consent of divine authority as the source of his power rather than descent from royal ancestors. In conclusion, archaeological remains draw attention to the ceremonial aspect of kingship strategies at Carchemish. During the course of ceremonial events, religious rites and rituals enabled messages of power, authority and legitimacy of the ruling elites to be conveyed within a framework of tradition. Strategies of specific kings involved the modification of ceremonies and ceremonial space consistent with social dynamics specific to their reigns. Ancestor worship emerged as a powerful constituent of such strategies. The royal family legitimized its high social status through incorporating the worship of royal ancestors into such ceremonies honoring the city gods. Suhis II and Katuwas, who reigned during the tenth and ninth centuries BC, placed particular emphasis on the ancestor cult, in response to lasting threats to the office of kingship generated from within the elite class. The deification of deceased ancestors further elevated the distinguished status of the living king. The ultimate deification of the king may have been intentional to generate discouragement among the likely challengers of authority and the sociopolitical order of Carchemish. When Yariris, a eunuch, came to power, he emphasized his protection of the royal family and preservation of the sociopolitical order of kingship. He further asserted the temporary nature of his rule. In contrast to the increasingly formalized ceremonial space at Carchemish, such attempts in kingship strategies to augment the power of the king reveal that this period was politically and socially unstable and the seat of kingship formed a source for constant internal competition. References Akurgal, Ekrem. 1962. The Art of the Hittites. New York: H.N. Abrams. Bell, Catherine. 1992. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

198

e. denel

———. 1997. Ritual, Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bittel, K., W. Herre, H. Otten, M. Röhrs, and J. Schaeuble. 1958. Das Hethitischen Grabfunde von Osmankayası. Berlin: Verlag Gebr, Mann. Haettner Blomquist, Tina. 1999. Gates and Gods: Cults in the City Gates of Iron Age Palestine, An Investigation of the Archaeological and Biblical Sources. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. Hawkins, J. David. 1976-1980. Karkamià. RlA 5: 426-446. ———. 1986. Rulers of Karkamis: The House of Astiruwas. In IX. Türk Tarih Kongresi, Ankara 21-25 Eylül 1981, Kongreye Sunulan Bildiriler, Cilt I, 259-271. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu. ———. 1995. ‘Great Kings’ and ‘Country Lords’ at Malatya and Karkamià. In Studio Historiae Ardens. Ancient Near Eastern Sudies Presented to Philo H. J. Houwnik ten Cate on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. T. P. J. van den Hout and J. Roos, 73-85. Leiden: Nederlands Historish-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul. ———. 2000. Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions. Vol. I, pt.1. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ———. 2002. Eunuchs among the Hittites. In Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East, Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2-6, 2001, part 1, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 217-233. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Hoffner, Harry A. J. 1967. The Second Millennium Antecedents to the Hebrew ‘ÔB. Journal of Biblical Literature 86: 385-401. Hogarth, David G. 1914. Carchemish: Report on the Excavations at Jerablus on Behalf of the British Museum, Part I, Introductory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kertzer, David I. 1988. Ritual, Politics, and Power. New Haven: Yale University Press. Liverani, Mario. 1987. The Collapse of the Near Eastern Regional System at the End of the Bronze Age: The Case of Syria. Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World, edited by M. Rowlands, M. Larsen, and K. Kristiansen, 66-73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mazzoni, Stephanie. 1997. The Gate and the City: Change and Continuity in SyroHittite Urban Ideology. In Die orientalische Stadt. Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch, 1. Internationales Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Geschellschaft von 9.-10. Mai 1996, ed. G. Wilhelm, 307-338. Saarbrücken: Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag. Mellink, Machteld J. 1974. Hittite Friezes and Gate Sculptures. In Anatolian Studies Presented to Hans Gustav Güterbock on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. K. Bittel, Ph. H. J. Houwink ten Cate, and E. Reiner, 201-214. Istanbul: Nederlands HistorischArchaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten. Neve, Peter. 1977/1978. Schalensteine und Schalenfelsen in BoÅazköy-]attuàa. Istanbuler Mitteliungen 27/28: 61-72.

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

199

———. 1996. Schalensteine und Schalenfelsen in BoÅazköy-]attuàa. Istanbuler Mitteilungen 46: 41-56. Orthmann, Winfried. 1971. Untersuchungen zur späthethitischen Kunst. Saarbücker Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 8. Bonn: R. Habelt. Reade, Julian. 1972. Neo-Assyrian Court and Army: Evidence from the Sculptures. Iraq 34: 87-112. Tsukimoto, Akio. 1985. Untersuchungen zur Totenflege (kispum) im alten Mesoptoamien. Kevelaer: Butzon and Bercker. Ussishkin, David. 1975. Hollows, ‘Cupmarks,’ and Hittite Stone Monuments. Anatolian Studies 25: 85-103. ———. 1989. The Erection of Royal Monuments in City-Gates. In Anatolia and the Ancient Near East. Studies in Honor of Tahsin Özgüç, edited by K. Emre, et al., 485-496. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu. Winter, Irene. J. 1981. Is there a South Syrian Style of Ivory Carving in the Early First Millennium BC? Iraq 43: 101-130. ———. 1982. Art as Evidence for Interaction: Relations between the Assyrian Empire and North Syria. In Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn. Politische und kulturelle Wechselbesienungen im Alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. XXV. Rencontre Assyriologque Internationale, Berlin 3. bis 7. Juli 1978. vol. II, ed. H. J. Nissen, and H. Renger. 355382. Berlin: Reimer. ———. 1983. Carchemish àa kiàad puratti. Anatolian Studies 33: 177-197. ———. 1989. North Syrian Ivories and Tell Halaf Reliefs: The Impact of Luxury Goods upon ‘Major’ Arts. In Essays in Ancient Civilization Presented to Helen J. Kantor, ed. J. A. Leonard and B. B. Williams, 321-332. Chicago: Oriental Institute. ———. 1992. ‘Idols of the King’: Royal Images as Recipients of Ritual Action in Ancient Mesopotamia. Journal of Ritual Studies 6: 13-42. Woolley, C. Leonard. 1921. Carchemish: Report on the Excavations at Jerablus on Behalf of the British Museum, Part II, The Town Defenses. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1939 The Iron-Age Graves of Carchemish. Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 26: 11-37. ———. 1952. Carchemish: Report on the Excavations at Jerablus on Behalf of the British Museum, Part III, The Excavations in the Inner Town and the Hittite Inscriptions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Figure 1. Sketch plan of the Lower Palace Area with the statue bases B25, B53a and B34 (reprinted and adapted, by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum, from Woolley 1952, pl. 41a)

200 e. denel

ceremony and kingship at carchemish

201

Figure 2. Drawings of altars or dedication tables collected from different areas of Carchemish (reprinted and adapted, by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum, from Woolley 1921, 94 figure 27)

Figure 3. Processions of soldiers and eunuchs next to the Royal Buttress and the statue base B53a (reprinted, by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum, from Hogarth 1914, pl. B1b)

202 e. denel

Figure 4. Relief of wife of Suhis II, BONUS-tis, on the Long Wall of Sculpture (reprinted and adapted, by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum, from Woolley 1952, pl. B40b)

ceremony and kingship at carchemish 203

204

e. denel

Figure 5. Statue of Atrisuhas next to the King’s Gate (reprinted by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum, from Woolley 1921, pl. B25)

the temple and the king

205

THE TEMPLE AND THE KING: URARTIAN RITUAL SPACES AND THEIR ROLE IN ROYAL IDEOLOGY1 TuÅba Tanyeri-Erdemir The Urartian kings, who ruled a large territory covering presentday eastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, and Armenia between the ninth and seventh centuries B.C., were among the most dynamic builders of the ancient world. We know from numerous inscriptions that they were actively involved in the erection of a large number of massive fortresses adorned with palatial structures, temples, and gigantic storage facilities. Among the edifices built by Urartian kings, temples and open-air shrines appear to have played an important role for the establishment and perpetuation of royal ideology and dynastic continuity. Various aspects of Urartian temples, such as their origin (Ussishkin 1994), possible architectural reconstructions (Kleiss 1963/64; Kleiss 1976, 40; Kleiss 1989; Naumann 1968; Akurgal 1968, 14 [for Toprakkale]; Özgüç 1966, 41 [for AltÌntepe]), whether or not they were tall tower temples, and whether they were the ancestors of Achaemenid “fire-temples” (Stronach 1967), have been previously investigated extensively. What has been assumed most of the time, and never really explored, is the role that these temples played in Urartian governance and the ways in which they secured the governing dynasty’s power and legitimacy over the populace. In this paper, I investigate Urartian sacred building tradition with a particular focus on the possible role of open-air shrines and temples in the governance strategies of Urartian kings. 1 It is a pleasure to dedicate this article to Prof. Irene Winter. She has been, and will always be, an inspiration, in all aspects of my life. I have always admired her ability to train the brains and hearts of the next generation of scholars with patience, respect, and much needed understanding. I will try, as best as I can, to emulate her brilliance as a teacher, her apt criticisms as an advisor and her caring heart as a human. I would like to thank Oscar White Muscarella, Paul Zimansky, Elif Denel, Ömür Harmanâah, Jack Cheng, Aykan Erdemir and Irene Winter for critically reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Altan ÇilingiroÅlu for allowing me to participate in the Ayanis excavations.

206

t. tanyeri-erdemir

Pierre Bourdieu ([1991] 1994, 166) defines symbolic power as “a power of constructing reality.” It is a, power of constituting the given through utterances, of making people see and believe, of confirming or transforming the vision of the world, and thereby, action on the world and thus the world itself, an almost magical power which enables one to obtain the equivalent of what is obtained through force (whether physical or economic). ([1991] 1994, 170)

Thus, symbolic power is a very important part of ruling mechanisms, in terms of creating and establishing a world-view amongst subjects of an empire, which would in return ensure the might of the king himself. Bourdieu suggests that symbolic power would be implemented through the symbolic systems of religion, language, and art ([1991] 1994, 164-166). Therefore, in the Urartian case, we could suggest that open-air shrines displaying royal inscriptions and the lavishly decorated temples would constitute likely locales for the production of symbolic power. Consequently, we could assume that the choices pertaining to the architectural layout and the decoration of these buildings must have been very important. It is highly likely that the architecture of these symbolically charged spaces was carefully planned to highlight the role of the royal elite in the imperial religion. Likewise, the artifacts and features used in their embellishment must have been intentionally selected and deliberately placed. Therefore, the changes over time in architectural layout or decorative schemes of temple contexts, if we can detect them, would carry important clues regarding the changing ideological concerns and policies of the ruling elite. Among sacred architecture constructed by the Urartian kings, two types of ritual spaces2 seem to be particularly favored: 1) open-air 2 In addition to these two major categories, there are also “shrines of the stelae” such as the example in Karahan (Salvini 1992). One could also suggest that the royal tombs cut into the rock outcrop of the Tuàpa citadel (the citadel of Van) (Tarhan 1994) and other such places that house rock-cut tombs scattered in the Urartian landscape could have been locales of important religious rituals, perhaps reinforcing the dynastic continuity of the ruling elite. However, there is little archaeological and epigraphic evidence to illustrate what sorts of rituals, if any, were enacted in these places. This is why they have been left out of the present study. Oktay Belli also includes “rock-marks” in sacred spaces of the Urartian kingdom (Belli 2000). These are grooves cut into the living rock that are found in the vicinity of several Urartian citadels in the Lake Van basin. There are several problems with his suggestion. First, these “rock-marks” cannot be securely dated given the lack of archaeological or epigraphic finds associated with them.

the temple and the king

207

shrines of the ninth century B.C. that were built in the form of threetiered niches cut into rock outcrops, with an inscription carved into the flattened surface of the rock3 and commonly located at the foot of massive outcrops in the countryside; and 2) Urartian standard temples4 that are characterized by a square plan with reinforced corners, thick walls, and a very small square cella.5 The massive stone walls were topped with mudbrick walls. The extensive mudbrick wash encountered around all the excavated Urartian temples suggests that they were significantly tall buildings, although it is hard to guess exactly how high they were. Standard temples were, without exception, always located within the walls of the citadels. Their locations were carefully chosen with a deliberate consideration of the site’s topography and the temple’s architectural relation to the rest of the edifices in the citadel. The vantage point from the temple grounds, as well as the Second, even if one assumes that they are Urartian, we do not have any evidence to suggest a ritual activity associated with them. They could have fulfilled a different, possibly utilitarian function. 3 Three rock-cut niche monuments have been attested: MeherkapÌsÌ (Salvini 1994), YeâilalÌç (Sevin and Belli 1976/77) and Hazinepiri KapÌsÌ (Belli and Dinçol 1980). 4 Nine standard temples have been excavated to date. These are the temples at the sites of YukarÌ Anzaf (Belli 1992a, 1993), Patnos/Anzavurtepe (Balkan 1960), KayalÌdere (Burney 1966), Arin-Berd (Forbes 1983, 71), Çavuâtepe main citadel, Çavuâtepe upper citadel (Erzen 1976/77, 1978b), AltÌntepe (Özgüç 1966), Toprakkale (Erzen 1967), and Ayanis (ÇilingiroÅlu 2001). Two others are known from inscriptions at Körzüt (Dinçol 1976) and Karmir-Blur (Salvini 1967, 1979a). 5 This temple type is also called a “tower temple,” a “tall temple,” a “square temple,” or a susi in the literature. The standard temple, however, is not the sole temple form attested in Urartu. Three buildings with significantly different constructions have been identified as temples in Armavir by the excavator, mainly based on the finds. There is, however, significant dispute over this identification. Forbes (1983, 74) holds the position that there is not enough evidence to suggest that these buildings were temples, whereas Smith (1996, 247-248) states that there can be different temple forms other than the standard temple. There is one building excavated in Erebuni that shows a plan similar to a Mesopotamian bent-axis temple plan. We cannot dismiss the idea that there might be also other buildings or spaces of cultic significance that cannot be yet architecturally identified as temples. Nevertheless, the dominant temple type in Urartu is the standard temple. Susi is the Urartian word attested in the dedicatory inscriptions of several standard temples. After the excavation and publication of the temple inscription from Karmir-Blur, Salvini (1979a) made a convincing argument stating that the word susi should refer to the Urartian standard temple. This interpretation of the term is widely accepted and used in literature. While I agree with the identification of the term, I prefer to use “standard temple” instead of susi, because susi is not exclusively used for standard temples in the 9th century B.C., as can be seen in the YeâilalÌç inscription. YeâilalÌç is a rock-cut niche monument, the inscription on which refers to it as a susi (Sevin and Belli 1976/77, 383).

208

t. tanyeri-erdemir

visibility of the temple from major habitation areas of lower towns also appear to have played a role in choosing an appropriate locale for the temple. Archaeological evidence collected from excavated sites strongly suggests that Urartian temples were perhaps the most lavishly decorated buildings in any given Urartian citadel; hence they constitute the most important loci of imperial arts. At the outset, we need to consider the nature of the Urartian state and Urartian imperial religion. From its first emergence in the ninth century onwards, Urartian religion appears to have been an imperial religion aimed at serving the interest of the royal elites. As previously noted by several scholars the introduction of a unified cult of Haldi, the head of the Urartian pantheon, and a ritual practice organized around the Urartian pantheon throughout the diverse geographic and cultural lands under the control of the empire are highly unlikely to be the outcome of a cultural unity of the subject peoples under the rule of the state, but rather a synthetic and a conscious production of the Urartian governing authorities (Taffet and Yakar 1998; Zimansky 1995). Haldi dominates royal inscriptions both on stone and on dedicatory objects, and is the deity to whom an overwhelming number of temples and ritual spaces are dedicated. He is also the only deity attested in all provinces of the empire and seems to have been intimately connected with the Urartian king. The cult of Haldi, as has been suggested by Mirjo Salvini (1987), appears to have been implemented during the reign of Iàpuini, the third king of Urartian dynasty (ca. 825-810 B.C.). Haldi’s name does not appear in any Urartian inscriptions before Iàpuini’s reign, and the cult disappears abruptly with the collapse of the Urartian Empire. There is some evidence in the epigraphic and archaeological record to suggest that Urartian authorities employed an accommodating religious policy to incorporate the already existing cults and deities under the control of the empire. The MeherkapÌsÌ inscription lists a large number of deities, presumably of different origins, and some from geographically diverse regions of the empire (Salvini 1994). Additionally, a number of standard temples, like the temple of Irmuàini at Çavuâtepe (Erzen et al. 1963; Dinçol 1978/80), are dedicated to regional deities. This could indicate an effort on behalf of the empire to accommodate local religions, to incorporate them into the state religion, and to unify them in a single pantheon under the divine leadership of Haldi. It can also be seen as a conscious attempt to secure the loyalty

the temple and the king

209

of the subject peoples by articulating the substrata of already existing belief systems as part of an official, organized state religion. Hazinepiri KapÌsÌ, an inscribed rock-niche monument built during the reign of Iàpuini, is the earliest version of such shrines (Belli and Dinçol 1980). It is cut into the living rock at the foot of a rock outcrop, a few meters higher than the surrounding ground level. It has a shallow rectangular niche, with an inscription on the flattened rock façade, and a flat platform again cut out of bedrock. This flattened platform could have acted as a stage for various activities, presumably cultic rituals, to be performed in front of the inscribed niche, and would have provided visual access for any audience standing at the foot of the rock outcrop. Hazinepiri KapÌsÌ appears to have been the model for two subsequent monuments, namely the YeâilalÌç and MeherkapÌsÌ monuments, which were both built during the co-regency of Iàpuini and his son Menua in late ninth century B.C. Similar to Hazinepiri KapÌsÌ, both of these monuments are built at commanding positions at the foot of prominent rock spurs. Again, both shrines are located in the extraurban landscape and are not located at the base or immediate vicinity to any major citadels. Instead of a simple sunken niche like the Hazinepiri KapÌsÌ, the inscriptions are framed by three-tiered rectangular niches. The content of the inscriptions as well as the features around them show some variation. YeâilalÌç shrine has stairs cut into the bedrock leading up to the platform in front of the rock-cut niche. There are six slots for standing stone inscriptions (Sevin and Belli 1976/77). The inscription records that some reforms were made in order to regulate the sacrifices to various gods and states that several animals should be sacrificed for Haldi and his consort Uarubani (Sevin and Belli 1976/77, 371). MeherkapÌsÌ is perhaps the most renowned monument for the study of Urartian religion. Its inscription lists 80 deities of the Urartian pantheon and provides explicit information on the number of animals to be sacrificed for each deity (Salvini 1994; König 1953; 1955, 51-56, no. 10). The deities appear to be arranged hierarchically, and the number of sacrifices a deity is allotted decreases with the rank of the deity in the list. All three rock-cut inscribed niche shrines are situated in prominent locations that have the potential to accommodate considerable audiences. MeherkapÌsÌ and YeâilalÌç also feature rock cut channels

210

t. tanyeri-erdemir

on the platform that suggest that ritual activities requiring drainage, such as animal sacrifices or libations, could have been performed in front of these niches and would have been highly visually accessible to the audience standing below. The platforms, by contrast, are fairly small, which suggests that performative participation in the rituals was restricted to only a few individuals. These aspects of the architecture of the monuments suggest that the king’s performance could have been enacted as a spectacle of the state, defining his role as the arbiter between the divinities and his subjects. The king’s performance in these rituals in front of these open-air shrines might have been particularly important especially if we consider that this indeed coincided with the first few decades that the Urartian religion was constructed and introduced. If we agree with Salvini’s suggestion that the cult of Haldi and the state religion of Urartu were introduced towards the end of the ninth century B.C., we can imagine that this period would have been vital in the establishment and popularization of the newly launched imperial religion. The concept of kingship could have been re-defined through a display of the king’s role in religion. The visual display of ceremonies in front of a large group of spectators might have been one way of popularizing and introducing the cultic rituals and worship. Additionally, the king’s performance in these rituals would have helped to define his kingship and strengthen his legitimacy. At the end of the ninth century B.C., there was a remarkable shift in Urartian sacred architecture. The earliest identified standard temple was built during the co-regency of Iàpuini and his son Menua at Patnos (Balkan 1960, 1964). This was soon followed by the erection of standard temples at Anzaf (Belli 1992a, 1992b) and Körzüt (Dinçol 1976) built by Menua, and possibly the building of KayalÌdere temple (Burney 1966) around the turn of the century. After the end of the ninth century B.C., no new open-air shrines in the shape of three-tiered inscribed niches were built (table 1). The emergence of this new form of sacred architecture and the abandonment of the older form of open-air niches more or less contemporaneously suggest that there might have been a significant change in the performance of rituals. It is possible that the older open-air shrines of Hazinepiri KapÌsÌ, Meher KapÌsÌ, and YeâilalÌç may have been in continuous use for the enactment of ritual performances till the fall of Urartu; however, the conspicuous absence of such monuments around the

the temple and the king

211

newly built fortresses of the eighth and seventh centuries suggests that this sort of ritual architecture might have fallen out of fashion after the emergence of the first standard temples. With the emergence of these standard temples, royal rituals appear to have moved inside the massive fortifications. The similarity between the open-air shrines of MeherkapÌsÌ and YeâilalÌç and the façades of standard square temples is striking and has been investigated previously by Taner Tarhan and Veli Sevin (1975). The gates of standard square temples display the same threetiered frames.6 The proportions of threshold widths and depths are also comparable (Tarhan and Sevin 1975, 408). Additionally I would like to stress that in both, there seems to be a marked preference for frontality. Moreover, linguistically, in the Urartian language the words KÁ (gate) and susi are used interchangeably for the standard temples and three-tiered rock niches, which further suggests that they might have represented similar – if not identical – concepts, and perhaps to a level that was indistinguishable to the ancient audience.7 This being the case, we need to point out significant differences between the rock-cut shrines and the temples. The most prominent difference is that the rock-cut shrines are located in the landscape and could have accommodated a relatively larger audience for the enactment of rituals, whereas only a limited audience could be hosted in the courtyards of the temples. Although it is impossible to know who watched and participated in these rituals, we can assume that access to them was significantly restricted following the relocation of sacred spaces inside the fortification walls. Let us consider possible ceremonial and ritual activities that might have taken place in the Urartian standard temples. The cellas of the Urartian temples are relatively small (table 2).8 The cella walls have 6 However, one should also note that the shape of the upper parts of the temple gates is still unknown. Based on the representations of Urartian citadels in art, some scholars prefer to reconstruct it as an arched gate. Similar three-tiered door frames have also been attested in civil architecture and tombs (Tarhan and Sevin 1975, 408). 7 The inscription on YeâilalÌç niche identifies that monument as a susi (Sevin and Belli 1976/77, 383), while the temple inscription of Körzüt states it to be a KÁ (Dinçol 1976, 24-25). 8 The cellas of Urartian temples are square rooms usually measuring around 5 x 5 m. The temples at Patnos and KayalÌdere are 5 x 5 m (Burney 1966); the upper citadel temple and the Irmuàini temple at Çavuâtepe are both 4.5 x 4.5 m (Erzen 1976/77); AltÌntepe temple is 5.20 x 5.20 m (Özgüç 1966); and the Ayanis temple is 4.58 x 4.62 m (ÇilingiroÅlu 2001).

212

t. tanyeri-erdemir

generally survived to a considerable height but none of the excavated temples offer us any clues for understanding the structure of the roof.9 There is, however, indirect evidence to support the presence of some form of roof.10 We should imagine the cellas to be fairly small and very dark spaces. This being the case, we could suggest that the interiors of the Urartian temples would not be suitable for performing ceremonial functions involving more than a few people. The lavish exteriors of the standard temples, by contrast, could act as a powerful backdrop for ritual acts (figure 1). The emphasis on frontality in religious architecture and consequently practice appears to have started as early as the ninth century B.C. As discussed previously, the rock-cut niches of MeherkapÌsÌ and YeâilalÌç, dated to the ninth century B.C., display significant similarities to the façades of standard Urartian temples. They both have similar three-tiered frames. Hence, it is probably safe to assume that there might have been some continuity in the performative acts of rituals enacted in front of the three-tiered open-air shrines and the façades of the standard temples. There is sufficient archaeological evidence to suggest that the exteriors of the temples in general, and the frontal axis in particular, were significant for ceremonial activities. Features identified as altars, possibly for sacrifice or presenting dedications, are found in front of the temples at the sites of Ayanis, AltÌntepe, KayalÌdere, and Toprakkale.11 With the exception of Toprakkale, for which the archaeological 9 Some scholars, building on the image of the temple at Mußaßir from Sargon II’s relief, envisage a pyramidal roof (Kleiss 1963/64), whereas others have opted for a flat roof (Akurgal 1968, 13-17, pl. 1). Özgüç opted for a flat roof in the reconstruction of the temple at the site of AltÌntepe, but he stated that a small window could have been placed on the roof (Özgüç 1966, 4-5). 10 Without a solid roof it would be hard, if not impossible, to maintain the massive mudbrick walls. The contents and decorations of the cella would suffer significant damage from the elements. This might have been particularly important in a harsh climate with a significant amount of snowfall. If we presume that the ancient climate was similar to what is experienced in eastern Turkey, Armenia, and western Iran today, we should account for environmental factors affecting architectural decisions. 11 For Ayanis, see ÇilingiroÅlu 2001, 45. This is a large circular feature (3.50 m in diameter) constructed of small and medium-sized stones. The center of the circle is in alignment with the gate of the temple. There is evidence of red and white paint around this structure. For AltÌntepe, see Özgüç 1966, pl. VI; pl.IX/2. Please note that the plan in pl. VI shows this feature as a rectangular structure, but it is clear from the photograph in pl. IX/2 that this is a circular construction made of stones, very much like the example at Ayanis. For KayalÌdere, see Burney 1966, 71. This is a rectangular feature, mea-

the temple and the king

213

evidence related to the find-spot of the altar is unclear, all others are placed in alignment with the front door of the temple. The presence of these features in the temple courtyards strongly suggests that the ritual activities were performed in front of the temples. The temple courtyards vary in size but they are significantly larger than the temple cellas and could have hosted several tens of individuals if they were to be included in the ceremonies, as participants or as audience. Through time, we can also observe that the temples became more and more spatially secluded and self-contained (table 1). The temples at YukarÌ Anzaf and KayalÌdere built in the late ninth and early eighth centuries B.C. were abutting the fortification walls, and the temple courtyards could be reached directly by a ramp leading from the city gates (Belli 1992a, 1993; Burney 1966). The temples built by Argiàti I (786-764 B.C.) and Sarduri II (764-734 B.C.) in the eighth century are located farther away from the city walls, towards the center of the citadels. The temples at Arin-Berd and Çavuâtepe, built by Argiàti I and Sarduri II respectively, have some indication that they might have had colonnaded courtyards. The Çavuâtepe upper citadel temple was enclosed in a temenos wall, and three round column bases were excavated to its west (Erzen 1978b, 3). The AltÌntepe temple, which is dated to the late eighth or early seventh century B.C., was located in a compound with high walls and a colonnaded courtyard (Özgüç 1966). The seventh-century temple of Haldi built by Rusa II recently excavated at Ayanis, illustrates that the temple was enclosed in a wall and was surrounded by massive pillars, instead of columns (ÇilingiroÅlu 2001). The Ayanis temple courtyard had two entrances one of which was blocked sometime during the lifetime of the temple. Both of the entrances were fairly small and neither had direct access to the façade of the temple. The temple grounds were always located at the highest spot of the citadels and at secure locations. In the absence of epigraphic data informing us about the details of possible ceremonial activities, suring 2.00 x 1.35 m. It is the same size as the temple gate and is in perfect alignment with it. The excavator called this feature a “stele base” but in Urartu, stele bases usually have a slot for erecting the inscribed stone. Thus, I believe this feature could best be identified as an altar. For Toprakkale, see the photo published in Rassam (1897, 377), which shows a stone-basin in the shape of a key-hole. In the photograph, the feature is seen to the right of the entrance to the temple, however, there is no indication whether it had been moved by the excavators. As opposed to the ones discussed above, this altar is a heavy, but potentially moveable object.

214

t. tanyeri-erdemir

it is hard, if not impossible, to imagine who was allowed and to what degree into the courtyards and in the cellas of the temples. However, the architectural layout indicates that access was restricted. It could further be suggested that permission to enter the temple grounds would have been highly prestigious, perhaps only granted to the priestly class, high aristocracy, or otherwise important individuals in the society. Therefore access to the sacred temple context would be a marker of distinction. We can, however, argue with certainty that at least one individual was granted access to all temples in the lands of Urartu: the king himself. From epigraphic evidence, we understand that the king was actively involved in making sacrifices and dedicating armor and other objects to Haldi in the temple grounds.12 Whatever role he might have played in the Urartian religion, it was highlighted and promoted in the symbolically charged temple grounds. The dedicated objects displayed in such sacred contexts are inherently related to the construction of meaning of that space. Examples of imperial armor and weapons were displayed in great numbers on the exterior walls and on the pillars of the Urartian temple courtyards (figure 1). These include shields, quivers, helmets, arrows, spears, daggers, swords, and armbands. Some of these artifacts are decorated and/or inscribed. The formula frequently employed in these inscriptions states the name of the king, his patronymic, and a dedication, which is always to the god Haldi.13 We know from epigraphic sources that the Urartian pantheon was fairly large and included a myriad of male and female deities. The fact that armor and weapons were exclusively dedicated to Haldi suggests that this deity must have had a strong military association. The overwhelming numbers of dedicatory armor in sacred contexts not only create an effective display of military power of the ruling dynasty and their Urartian armies, but also underline the military aspect of Haldi. In any case, such a 12 For sacrifices, see the display inscriptions of the temples at the sites of KarmirBlur and Ayanis (Diakonoff 1991; Salvini 2001a, 253-261). In both of these inscriptions an extensive list of sacrifices for gods and goddesses is listed. For an example of an active act of dedication, see the inscription on the imperial shield dedicated at Ayanis: “To Haldi, (his) lord, Rusa, the son of Argiàti, made and dedicated this shield for his life; he put it in Rusahinili Eidurukai” (Salvini 2001b, 272, inscription inv. no. AyBr 1, Van Museum inv. no. 11.1.97, cat. no. 58). 13 See for example, the inscriptions on bronze armor excavated from the temple grounds at Ayanis (Salvini 2001b).

the temple and the king

215

spectacular display of military power might have been very important for an imperial structure in which a majority of the lands was gained through military conquest and annexation. In a related manner, the temple grounds appear to have been important in establishing and maintaining the legitimacy of the ruling dynasty. The written record indicates that the Urartian king’s claim to the throne was through patrilineal succession. In this respect, the governing system in Urartu would best fit Max Weber’s definition of patriarchialism, in which “a particular individual governs who is designated by a definite rule of inheritance” (1978, 231). An unbroken dynastic lineage spanning two centuries and including eight kings can be traced in the inscriptions through the use of patronymics with each king’s name.14 How then, did the temple grounds help establish this dynastic continuity? Language is a powerful tool in the construction of symbolic power. Hence, we should suspect that the inscriptions, both monumental and dedicatory, must have played a vital role, as they would have been carefully and deliberately constructed by the ruling authority. For instance, in the beginning of the monumental inscription on the façade of the temple at the site of Ayanis, Rusa II states that: “When Haldi gave me the kingship, I set myself on the father’s place of the kingship (= the throne).”15 Two things are highlighted in this powerful sentence: first, that kingship is granted by a divine source; and second, at the same time, it is an institution passing from father to son. The intimacy between the god Haldi and the king, as well as his patriarchial bloodline, is further emphasized by the conspicuous use of objects bearing such formulaic statements: “To Haldi, his lord, Rusa, the son of Argiàti, dedicated.”16 14

The kings are Sarduri I, Iàpuini, Menua, Argiàti I, Sarduri II, Rusa I, Argiàti II, and Rusa II. The dynasty started in the mid-9th century B.C. and continued up to the end of the reign of Rusa II in the late 7th century B.C. The dynastic succession is not clear after the termination of Rusa II’s reign. 15 “ài-da-ú-ri i-ú Dhal-di-ià-me LUGÁL-TÚ-hi a-ru-ni na-ha-di LÚAD-si-ni e-si LUGÁL-TÚ-hi-i-ni,” here translated by Salvini (2001a, 259: sect. I, l. 4). An almost identical phrase is attested in a similar susi inscription from Karmir-Blur “LUGÁL-TÚhi a-ru-ni na-ha-[di LÚAD-si-ni?] e-si LUGÁL-TÚ-hi-ni” (ll. 3-4, Karmir-Blur inscription, UKN 448, as published in Artunjan 2001, 348: text no. 424, ll. 3-4). 16 “Dhal-di-e EN-’Ú mru-sa-a-àe mar-già-te-hi-ni-àe uà-tú-ni” (as translated by Salvini 2001b, 275). This is the most basic version of the dedicatory inscription, which is found on a spearhead (AyBr 13), on two bronze foundation discs (AyBr 14 a-b), four bronze and one iron sikkatu type nails (AyBr 15a-d; AyBr 16). More elaborate versions are

216

t. tanyeri-erdemir

The use of the patronymic is a common formula that frequently appears on display inscriptions and displayed objects. We should also note that there are instances in which the king does not identify himself with his father’s name. One such artifact is the candelabrum excavated from Toprakkale (Lehmann-Haupt 1907, 29-31, fig. 63; Friedrich 1961). Furthermore, patronymics of the kings are not used on the 97 inscribed bronze bowls found at the site of Karmir-Blur.17 Both the candelabrum and the bronze bowls bear the word úriàhusini on them, which is usually translated as “inventory” of a king.18 In either case, the objects were excavated from storage contexts. We cannot fully eliminate the possibility that these objects were stored there for safekeeping; however, such objects (candelabra and bronze bowls) have never been attested in excavated temple contexts up to now. It is possible that inscriptions of ownership were inherently different from dedicatory inscriptions. We might perhaps suggest that the use of the patronymic was not as imperative on objects not intended to be displayed in sacred contexts. Moreover, the patronymic appears to have been used only for the members of the royal family. All other individuals attested on tablets and seals are identified either through the place they are from or their occupations.19 While the number of individuals that appear in the textual record is very small, the stark

attested on imperial shields (such as AyBr 1, which is followed by a lengthy curse formula) (Salvini 2001b). 17 These bronze bowls were found stacked in a pithos (Piotrovsky 1952, 49-63). They are inscribed with the names of Urartian kings, Menua, Argiàti, Sarduri, and Rusa. The bowls also have incised decorations on them. A tower with a tree on top is depicted on almost all of them. Some additionally have a small lion’s head, bull’s head, or an eagle’s head. Barnett included these images in his study of Urartian hieroglyphics (1974). For the time being, in light of available evidence, it is hard to argue whether they are indeed hieroglyphics. 18 The inscription on the candelabrum became visible after conservation. See Friedrich (1961) for the inscription on candelabrum. For the Karmir-Blur bowls, see Piotrovsky 1952, 49-63. 19 The tablets and bullae excavated from Toprakkale, Karmir-Blur, Bastam, Ayanis, and YukarÌ Anzaf contain names of various individuals. In the tablets from Ayanis individuals are commonly identified with their town or region of origin. For example, in CB AY-4, Nulagi is identified as a person from the city of Karmir-Blur, in CB AY5, Zanprina is identified as a person from the city of Qul (Salvini 2001c, 282). In a tablet recently excavated from YukarÌ Anzaf (YAK 2002 5.C.332), Gulili is identified as a porter (Belli and Salvini 2003, 147). For more examples see Salvini 1979b, 1979c, 1988, 2001c; Belli and Salvini 2003.

the temple and the king

217

difference in the identification of the members of the royal family and others is significant to note.20 This abundant use of the patronymic in association with the name of the most powerful deity in terms of granting kingship in the temple grounds might be interpreted as an attempt to secure the legitimacy of Rusa II’s rule. Dynastic continuity has a fragile balance that needs to be reinforced. In history, there are examples of drastic measures taken to ensure the continuity of patriarchial succession. For instance, fratricide was practiced in the Ottoman Empire to secure dynastic succession and minimize possible fragmentation of power (`nalcÌk [1973] 2002, 59-64). We do not know whether the Urartian rulers were involved in such practices, but the success of the dynasty indicates that there must have been effective ways of ensuring the continuity. The frequent and abundant use of the patronymic of the king in association with the god Haldi’s name in the temple grounds might have been an effective act, reminding the subjects of the legitimacy of the king, both as his divine right and as his inheritance. In practice, this might have been akin to the European royal family portraits of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries A.D., which were instrumental in displaying the royal bloodline, underlining the legitimacy of the dynasty, and hence helping establish its continuity (Schama 1988). Along the same lines, the display of memorabilia from earlier kings might have also been important. We know that inscribed weapons of Rusa II’s forefathers were brought to the site of Karmir-Blur.21 Furthermore, in Ayanis, a new foundation of Rusa II, a helmet inscribed with the name of the earlier king Argiàti II and a shield possibly inscribed with the same king’s name were excavated (Salvini 2001d, 279, 280). In either case, we do not know whether the artifacts were displayed or kept in the storehouses permanently. However, in the case of Karmir-Blur, it is highly probable that at least some of these objects were on display in the temple grounds, and they were taken down and stored in the basement for safekeeping during the siege of the site. I would like to suggest that the selection of artifacts to be 20 Only the members of the royal family are included in the display inscriptions carved in stone. Names of individuals have only been attested in clay tablets, bullae, and seals. The number of clay tablets excavated to date is fairly limited, and consequently the number of individuals mentioned is fairly small as well. 21 These include a large number of shields, quivers, and helmets belonging to Menua, Argiàti I, Sarduri II, and Rusa I (Piotrovsky 1969).

218

t. tanyeri-erdemir

displayed on the temple grounds, as well as the excessive use of the patronymic both on objects and on stone inscriptions, can be seen as an attempt to secure dynastic continuity. What then, can we say about the production of symbolic power in Urartian sacred spaces? In the formative period of Urartian state religion, in the ninth century B.C., the open-air shrines served as places to help introduce and popularize the state religion and define the king’s role in the religious realm. From the eighth century B.C. onward, the most prominent form of sacred space was moved into the citadels and took the form of a standard temple. The moving of the temple grounds, as well as the ritual ceremonies associated with them, must have marked an important juncture pointing to a change in the ideological realm in terms of the hierarchical position and perhaps the role of the ruling elite in the society. The seclusion and inaccessibility of the temple grounds suggest that the access to the rituals must have been more restricted than before. And the gradual increase in this inaccessibility throughout the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. might consequently signify that there was a continuing increase in the social hierarchy, making the king’s and the ruling elite’s status distinct. As Irene Winter noted in reference to the Assyrian kings’ active involvement in the selection of their imagery for sculptures, like official art in any political system, the overall output functions to represent the state as its governors would wish it to be seen. When the system is highly hierarchical, it must, whether by direct reference or by allusion, reinforce those aspects of the hierarchy that keep subordinate social tiers in place; and that means, in one way or another, reinforcing the role(s) at the top of the hierarchy. (Winter 1997, 376, emphasis hers)

I would suggest, as it is the case with official art in Winter’s formulation, imperial sacred architecture in Urartu was highly instrumental in the production and reinforcement of social hierarchy. The increased inaccessibility and seclusion of standard temples, coupled with their visual grandeur, could have been an effective way of marking the distinction of the king from the rest of the populace while, at the same time, dazzling the common folk living in the outer town with the glorious but unreachable, towering image of the temple.

the temple and the king

219

References Akurgal, Ekrem. 1968. Urartäische und altiranische Kunstzentren. Türk Tarih Kurumu YayÌnlarÌndan VI. Seri No.9. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu BasÌmevi. Artunjan, N. V. 2001. Korpus urartskich klinoobraznych nadpisej. Erevan: Izdatel’stvo “Gitujun.” Balkan, Kemal. 1960. Patnos YakÌnÌnda Anzavurtepe’de Bulunan Urartu TapÌnaÅÌ ve Kitabeleri. Anatolia V: 133-131. ———. 1964. Patnos’ta Keâfedilen Urartu TapÌnaÅÌ ve Urartu SarayÌ. Atatürk KonferanslarÌ 1: 235-243. Barnett, R.D. 1950. The Excavations of the British Museum at Toprak Kale, near Van. Iraq 12: 1-43. ———. 1974. The Hieroglyphic Writing of Urartu. In Anatolian Studies Presented to Hans Gustav Güterbock on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. K. Bittel and H. J. Houwink Ten Cate, 43-55. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in Het Nabije Oosten. Belli, Oktay. 1992a. Van-Anzaf Urartu Kaleleri KazÌsÌ. Arkeoloji ve Sanat 54/55: 13-27. ———. 1992b. 1991 YÌlÌ Anzaf Urartu Kaleleri KazÌsÌ. KazÌ SonuçlarÌ ToplantÌsÌ 14/1: 441-468. ———. 1993. AâaÅÌ ve YukarÌ Anzaf Urartu Kaleleri KazÌsÌ (1991-1992). Arkeoloji ve Sanat 58: 3-32. ———. 1998. Anzaf Kaleleri ve Urartu TanrÌlarÌ. İstanbul: Arkeoloji ve Sanat YayÌnlarÌ. ———. 2000. DoÅu Anadolu’da Urartu KrallÌÅÌ’na Ait AnÌtsal Kaya İâaretlerinin AraâtÌrÌlmasÌ. In Türkiye Arkeolojisi ve İstanbul Üniversitesi (1932-1999), ed. O. Belli, 403-408. Ankara: Baâak MatbaacÌlÌk. Belli, Oktay, and Ali M. Dinçol. 1980. Hazine Piri KapÌsÌ ve AâaÅÌ Zivistan Taâ OcaklarÌ. Anadolu AraâtÌrmalarÌ 8: 167-188. Belli, Oktay, and Mirjo Salvini. 2003. Two Clay Documents from Upper Anzaf Fortress Near Van. SMEA 45/2: 141-152. Bourdieu, Pierre. [1991] 1994. In Language and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Burney, C. A. 1966. A First Season of Excavations at the Urartian Citadel of KayalÌdere. Anatolian Studies 16: 55-111. ———. 1992. The God Haldi and the Urartian State. In Hittite and Near Eastern Studies in Honour of Sedat Alp, ed. H. Otten, 107-110. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu BasÌmevi. Burney, C. A. and G. R. J. Lawson. 1958. Urartian Reliefs at Adilcevaz, on Lake Van, and a Rock Relief from the Karasu, near Birecik. Anatolian Studies 8: 211-218.

220

t. tanyeri-erdemir

ÇilingiroÅlu, Altan A. 2001. Temple Area. In Ayanis I: Ten Years’ Excavations at Rusahinili Eiduru-kai 1989-1998, ed. A. ÇilingiroÅlu and M. Salvini, 36-65. Documenta Asiana VI. Rome: Istituto per gli Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici. Diakonoff, Igor M. 1991. Sacrifices in the City of Teiàebâ (UKN 448) - Lights on the Social History of Urartu. AMIran n.f. 24: 13-21. Dinçol, Ali Muzaffer. 1976. Die neuen urartäischen Inschriften aus Körzüt. Istanbuler Mitteilungen 26: 19-30. ———. 1978/80. Urartaische Inschriften aus Çavuâtepe-Sardurihinili. Anadolu 21: 95-104. Erzen, Afif. 1967. 1959-1961 YÌllarÌ ArasÌnda Toprakkale AraâtÌrmalarÌ. In VI Türk Tarih Kongresi, 53-71. Türk Tarih Kurumu YayÌnlarÌ, 9. Seri, No. 6. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu BasÌmevi. ———. 1976/77. Çavuâtepe YukarÌ Kale ve Toprakkale 1976 Dönemi KazÌlarÌ. Anadolu AraâtÌrmalarÌ 4-5: 1-25. ———. 1978a. Çavuâtepe I. Türk Tarih Kurumu YayÌnlarÌ no. V/37. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu BasÌmevi. ———. 1978b. Çavuâtepe YukarÌ Kale ve Toprakkale 1977 ÇalÌâmalarÌ. Anadolu AraâtÌrmalarÌ 6: 1-7. Erzen, Afif, Emin Bilgiç, Yusuf Boysal, and Baki ÖÅün. 1963. Van Çevresi 1963 ÇalÌâmalarÌ. Türk Arkeoloji Dergisi 12/2: 34-36. Forbes, Thomas B. 1983. Urartian Architecture. BAR International Series 170. Oxford: BAR. Friedrich, von Johannes. 1961. Der urartäische Kandelaber in Hamburg und seine Keilinschrift. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morganländischen Gesellschaft 111: 285-287. `nalcÌk, Halil. [1973] 2002. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600. London: Phoenix Press. Kleiss, Wolfram. 1963/64. Zur Rekonstruktion des urartäischen Tempels. IstMitt 13/14: 1-14. ———. 1976. Urartäischer Architektur. In Urartu: Ein wiederentdeckter Rivale Assyriens, ed. Hans-Jörg Keller, 28-44. Munich: Präistorischen Staatssammlung. ———. 1989. Zur Rekonstruktion des urartäischen Tempels. IstMitt 39: 265-271. König, Friedrich W. 1953. Die Götterwelt Armeniens zur Zeit der Chalder-Dynastie (9.-7. Jahrhundert v. Chr.). Archiv für Völkerkunde 8: 142-171. ———. 1955. Handbuch der chaldischen Inscriften I. AfO, Beiheft 8. Graz. ———. 1957. Handbuch der chaldischen Inscriften II. AfO, Beiheft 8. Graz. Lehmann-Haupt, C. F. 1907. Materialen zur Kultur und zur Herkunf der Chalder, vornehmlich aus den Ausgrabungen auf Toprakkaläh bei Van. Berlin: Abhandlungen der Königl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zur Göttingen. Philologish-historische Klasse. N.f. IX, 3.

the temple and the king

221

Naumann, Rudolf. 1968. Bemerkungen zu urartäischen Tempeln. IstMitt 18: 4557. ÖÅün, Baki. 1961a. Kurze geschichte der Ausgrabungen in Van die Türkischen Versuchsgrabungen auf dem Toprak-kale 1959. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morganländischen Gesellschaft 111: 254-282. Özgüç, Tahsin. 1961b. AltÌntepe KazÌlarÌ. Belleten 98: 253-290. ———. 1966. AltÌntepe I: Architectural Monuments and Wall Paintings. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu YayÌnlarÌ, V. Seri, No. 24. ———. 1969. AltÌntepe II: Tombs, Storehouses and Ivories. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu YayÌnlarÌ, V. Seri, No. 27. Piotrovsky, Boris B. 1952. Karmir-Blur II: Archeologiceskie Raskopki v Armenii 2. Erevan: Iztadelstvo Akademii Nauk Armjanskoj SSR. ———. 1969. Urartu, trans. James Hogarth. Munich, Geneva and Paris: Nagel Publishers. Rassam, Hormuzd. 1897. Asshur and the Land of Nimrod Being an Account of the Discoveries Made in Ancient Ruins of Nineveh, Asshur, Sepharvaim, Calah, Babylon, Borsippa, Cuthah and Van, Including a Narrative of Different Journeys in Mesopotamia, Assyria, Asia Minor, and Koordistan. New York: Eaton & Mains. Salvini, Mirjo. 1967. 3 neue urartäische Inschriften aus Karmir-blur. Orientalia 36: 443-449. ———. 1979a. Das Susi-Heiligtum von Karmir-Blur und der urartäische Turmtempel. AMIran 12: 249-269. ———. 1979b. Die urartäischen Tontafeln. In Bastam I: Ausgrabungen in den urartäischen Anlagen 1972-1979, ed. W. Kleiss, P. Calmeyer, S. Kroll, M. Salvini, U. Seidl, and C. Strauss, 115-132. Teheraner Forschungen Band V. Berlin: Gebr. Mann. Verlag. ———. 1979c. Zu den beschrifteten Tonbullen. In Bastam I: Ausgrabungen in den Urartäischen Anlagen 1972-1979, ed. W. Kleiss, P. Calmeyer, S. Kroll, M. Salvini, U. Seidl, and C. Strauss, 133-136. Teheraner Forschungen Band V. Berlin: Gebr. Mann. Verlag. ———. 1987. La Formation de l’etat urarteen. Hethitica 8: 393-411. ———. 1988. Die urartäischen Schriftdenkmäler aus Bastam (1977-1978). In Bastam II: Ausgrabungen in den Urartäischen Anlagen 1977-78, ed. W. Kleiss, J. Boessneck, M. Hopf, M. Kokabi, S. Kroll, M. Salvini, U. Seidl, A. Selmeier, U. Willerding, and P. Zimansky, 125-144. Teheraner Forschungen Band V. Berlin: Gebr. Mann. Verlag. ———. 1992. Reflections About the Urartian Shrines of the Stelae. In Hittite and Other Anatolian and Near Eastern Studies in Honour of Sedat Alp, ed. H. Otten, 543-548. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu BasÌmevi. ———. 1994. The Historical Background of the Urartian Monument of Meher KapÌsÌ. In Anatolian Iron Ages 3, ed. Altan A. ÇilingiroÅlu and David H. French, 205210. British Institute of Archaeology Monograph No. 16. Ankara: British Institute of Archaeology.

222

t. tanyeri-erdemir

———. 2001a. Monumental Stone Inscriptions. In Ayanis I: Ten Years’ Excavations at Rusahinili Eiduru-kai 1989-1998, ed. A. ÇilingiroÅlu and M. Salvini, 251-270. Documenta Asiana VI. Rome: Istituto per gli Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici. ———. 2001b. Royal Inscriptions on Bronze Artifacts. In Ayanis I: Ten Years’ Excavations at Rusahinili Eiduru-kai 1989-1998, ed. A. ÇilingiroÅlu and M. Salvini, 271-278. Documenta Asiana VI. Rome: Istituto per gli Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici. ———. 2001c. Inscriptions on Clay. In Ayanis I: Ten Years’ Excavations at Rusahinili Eiduru-kai 1989-1998, ed. A. ÇilingiroÅlu and M. Salvini, 279-320. Documenta Asiana VI. Rome: Istituto per gli Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici. ———. 2001d. Progetto Urartu: Inscribed documents of the Campaign 2001 in Ayanis. SMEA 43/2: 275-280. Schama, Simon. 1988. The Domestication of Majesty: Royal Family Portraiture, 1500-185. In Art and History: Images and Their Meaning, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb, 155-183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sevin, Veli, and Oktay Belli. 1976/77. YeâilalÌç Urartu Kutsal AlanÌ ve Kalesi. Anadolu AraâtÌrmalarÌ 4-5: 367-401. Smith, Adam T. 1996. Imperial Archipelago: The Making of The Urartian Landscape in Southern Transcaucasia. Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona. Stronach, David. 1967. Urartian and Achaemenian Tower Temples. JNES 26: 278288. Taffet, Avia, and Jak Yakar. 1998. Politics and Religion in Urartu. Bulletin of the Middle Eastern Culture Center in Japan: Essays on Ancient Anatolia in the Second Milleium B.C. 10: 133-151. Tarhan, Taner M. 1994. Recent Research at the Urartian Capital Tushpa. Tel Aviv 21/1: 22-57. Tarhan, Taner, and Veli Sevin. 1975. Urartu TapÌnak KapÌlarÌ ile AnÌtsal Kaya Niâleri ArasÌndaki BaÅÌntÌ. Belleten 39/155: 389-412. Ussishkin, David. 1994. On the Architectural Origin of the Urartian Standard Temples. Tel Aviv 21: 144-155. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. 2 vol. Ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press. Winter, Irene J. 1997. Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology. In Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995, Helsinki, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 359–381. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Zimansky, Paul E. 1985. Ecology and Empire: The Structure of the Urartian State. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization no. 41. Chicago: Oriental Institute Press. ———. 1995. Urartian Material Culture as State Assemblage: An Anomaly in the Archaeology of Empire. BASOR 299: 103-115. ———. 1998. Ancient Ararat: A Handbook of Urartian Studies. New York: Caravan Books.

Figure 1. Suggested reconstruction of a 7th century B.C. Urartian standard temple based on the architectural and archaeological data from Ayanis, showing a possible decorative scheme of the temple grounds

the temple and the king 223

224

t. tanyeri-erdemir

Table 1. Three tiered rock-cut niche shrines and standard temples built by Urartian kings (temple plans not drawn to scale)

the temple and the king Table 2. Comparative dimensions of Urartian standard temples (measurements given in meters)

225

226

t. tanyeri-erdemir

workmanship as ideological tool

III “Legitimization of Authority”: Ideological Contexts

227

228

j. aker

workmanship as ideological tool

229

WORKMANSHIP AS IDEOLOGICAL TOOL IN THE MONUMENTAL HUNT RELIEFS OF ASSURBANIPAL Jülide Aker The animal hunts of Assurbanipal, especially the large scale lion hunts in Room C of his North Palace, are celebrated for several reasons as the highpoint of Assyrian visual production (for example, Groenewegen-Frankfort 1951, 180-181; Moortgat 1969, 157; Frankfort 1977, 189-190).1 The expression of action, the animation of the figures, makes earlier hunt scenes look stiff and lifeless, as if they were assembled from cardboard cutouts. Furthermore, the naturalistic rendering of the animals, the increasing correspondence of the anatomy of the horses, dogs and lions, to animals observed in nature, together with greater variation in their facial expressions and poses, endows them with an inner life lacking in the animals featured in earlier works. And, of course, the reliefs are celebrated also for their workmanship, the consummate carving that has given rise to forms that express movement, dramatic tension and emotional range thought to be lacking in most other Assyrian visual production. Here, I concentrate on this latter aspect of the lion hunt reliefs in Room C, in particular on the quality of the carving, the degree of embellishment given to forms, and the competence of their execution. I intend first to show that there are clearly discernible differences of quality and competence in the carving of forms across the reliefs in Room C. Additionally, the degree of detail given to forms seems to vary; some forms are articulated from their grossest aspect to their smallest and shallowest surface details, while in others only those aspects that would have been necessary for their identification and differentiation from others are articulated. I then argue that the way these areas of differing workmanship are distributed across this particular cycle of reliefs resulted from an intentional deployment of variously skilled craftsmen. Indeed, the specific pattern of deployment evident in variations in

1

I am indebted to Jack Cheng, Edward H. Cohen and Marian Feldman for their careful reading of this paper, which has greatly benefited from their comments.

230

j. aker

the quality of the carving, I suggest, was meant to enhance some of the ideological effects intended by the planners of the room. Two sections of reliefs from Room C serve to illustrate the consummate level of workmanship observed in these reliefs, as well as the resulting impact upon the viewer for which the reliefs are celebrated. These sections show the king spearing a lion from his chariot and the famous dying lioness paralyzed by arrows and dragging her hindquarters (figures 1, 2). In this article, I concentrate on three aspects of workmanship: carving, embellishment of forms and competence.2 Carving articulates forms by separating them from the background and other forms in order to represent their distinctive identities. In other words, carving encompasses the way in which the surface of the relief is physically worked to suggest form. The quality of this articulation can be judged in part by the variety in the manipulation of the surface to shape or suggest form, the selection of forms, and their combination. In the lion hunt reliefs, forms are articulated so as to present a clear crisp outline. This is achieved by carving the edge deeply and narrowly into other forms or the background. Within these crisp outlines, forms, such as human and animal bodies, are carved to stand out in shallow and uniform relief for the most part, while only a few select details are further articulated, as for example the muscles and bone of the forearm and the ears and nostrils of the king and his attendants, the shoulder and thigh muscles and the ears, eyes, and paws of the lioness. These anatomical details are represented by combinations of rounded, high-relief projections, shallow undulations, flat and curved planes with sharp edges, crisp ridges, and incised lines. These various treatments can be found, for example, in the volumetric 2 The visual impact of aspects of workmanship, in particular, carving and embellishment of forms, would have been greatly affected by the presence of paint on the reliefs. Paint may have added some details, emphasized others or obscured some of the delicacy of the surface treatment of the reliefs (for paint as a signifying element, see Marcus 1981, 64, 77-78). Thus, if painted, the hunt reliefs may have communicated to the ancient viewer different meanings from what is proposed below. From the surviving evidence, it is unclear whether color was used sparingly on Assyrian reliefs to emphasize or add some details or liberally to produce an effect closer to glazed bricks and wall paintings (Reade 1979, 18; Paley 1976, 10). Furthermore, traces of paint were found on some of Assurbanipal’s reliefs (North Palace, Room B; Curtis and Reade 1995, 90) but evidence for its existence is much rarer than on reliefs from earlier reigns. In the absence of any trace of paint from Room C reliefs, it is hard to determine if paint was used on the reliefs and to gauge its impact on the surface qualities of the reliefs. Accordingly, I am proceeding as if none existed.

workmanship as ideological tool

231

treatment of the brow and deeply recessed eye of the lioness, in the nearby softer waves of the planes of her ear and its sharply delineated edge, and in the incised line that represents the powerful muscles of the upper foreleg (figure 3). Emphasis on isolated anatomical details triggers the imagination of the viewer to conjure the rest of the form in a convincing and emotionally resonant anatomical likeness. For example, the volumetric treatment of a few forms in contrast to the flatter carving of the rest of the body draws the viewer’s eye to the lioness’ face, forepaws, and the extremity of her hindquarters. The combination of these three areas in her body highlights the tense muscles of her face, the grip of the claws of her forepaws, and the anatomically nearly incoherent huddle of her lower extremity, thus expressing the strain of the lioness as she drags her paralyzed hindquarters. The articulation of this strain elevates the passage from the visual notation of a fact to an expression of pain and suffering. The second aspect of workmanship for which the Room C reliefs are celebrated is the way forms are embellished to show a range of details from their gross mass to their shallowest surface features. The passage that shows the king spearing a lion from his chariot illustrates the extreme degree to which detail is given to forms while maintaining their visual coherence as distinct entities. For example, the tunic of the charioteer is decorated all over with geometric and floral patterns and figurative scenes executed in light incision (figure 4). The decoration is organized into panels that cover different zones of the body: the upper arms, the shoulders and the torso. From afar, the lightly incised patterns organized into distinct panels coalesce into an impression of texture that helps to identify the tunic as a decorated garment, while up close the impression of texture resolves into individual rosettes, leaves, squares and cross-hatches, beads, and the like. That these visual effects do not interfere with the viewer’s perception of the charioteer’s body in profile is remarkable, because the underlying forms of the forward mass of the right shoulder, the hollow of the underarm, and the curve of the chest are indicated solely by the outline of the right shoulder and the right arm and a slight concavity along the bottom edge of the arm where its outline ends across the torso. Such embellishments, the details of forms, are effected in high relief as well as shallow incision, and it is the strategic alternation of these techniques that helps maintain the legibility of such intensely worked passages. For example, the high rounded form

232

j. aker

of the plain arm bands worn by the charioteer calls attention to these jewels against the shallow relief of the arm and the flat surface of the garment decoration. A much more complicated passage is the representation of the king’s face and body in profile, where high and shallow relief alternate to describe an extreme wealth of detail that ranges from the king’s ear to the silky fringe that decorates the ends of the streamers that hang from his headgear (figures 5, 6). Here the viewer can see the arm and wrist band of the king in nearly threedimensional form rendered to the smallest detail of the central vein of each petal of their rosettes. One can examine the decoration of the king’s tunic and his belt, and discern even the ornamentation of his one-piece armguard and glove. The passage where the king draws back his bow shows such tiny details as the cuticle of his thumb and the shallow grooves (or the ridges of wound thread) that provide a handle grip at the riser of the bow. The third aspect of workmanship upon which I focus is competence. Here I mean not the mastery of techniques of carving discussed above but mastery in the rendering of forms and their relationship to one another, the degree to which forms are represented correctly and the reliefs are free of various kinds of mistakes. Again, the passage that shows the king spearing a lion from his chariot illustrates the extraordinary competence of the carvers. Here, four figures, the charioteer, the king, and his two bodyguards—a beardless man holding the king’s bow and a bearded man readying his spear to defend the king if necessary—are overlapped and tightly compressed into the cab of the chariot to a degree unprecedented in Neo-Assyrian monumental reliefs. Until Assurbanipal, figures were hardly overlapped, and when they were they were few and engaged in simpler activities. In this case, the overlap causes a severe fragmentation of the body parts of the two bodyguards who stand next to the king. The skill of the carvers is revealed in the way they manage to keep the overlapping parts and the gear of all four figures in their correct anatomical position and within the correct spatial plane in relation to one another. On a smaller scale, though no less impressive, is the passage that shows the charioteer holding the reins of the horses. He holds three straps in each hand and distributes each strap between the first four digits. In addition, he holds a whip with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. Here, the carver not only managed to show correctly the way a charioteer would hold multiple straps of

workmanship as ideological tool

233

reins in each hand, but also, by representing both hands in profile and slightly apart, he grants the viewer two different perspectives of the charioteer’s grip. Such is the workmanship and impact of passages like that of the dying lioness and the king spearing lions from his chariot that the reliefs are generally and deservedly praised as consummate examples of the high point of Assyrian relief carving in monumental format. Frequently accompanying this praise is the assumption that the entire relief cycle was brought to the same exquisite finish and executed with the same skill and competence of workmanship. Such, in fact, is not the case. There are a number of passages in this relief cycle that contain mistakes and that show neither the same complexity of detail and embellishment of forms nor the same skill in carving as those discussed above and usually selected as representative of the workmanship and power of the entire work. Assumptions regarding the quality of workmanship in the carving of the hunt reliefs arise from the fact that a monumental program of decoration which survives in over 30 meters of length and consists of several different episodes of action is often considered in and represented by a few select scenes. Such selectivity not only prevents understanding the full scale and impact of the reliefs in their actual physical configuration within a specific architectural space, but also causes us to overlook many of the critical junctures in the visual and discursive content of the cycle, thereby limiting our interpretation of the work.3 It was Irene Winter’s pioneering article on Assurnasirpal II’s throne room reliefs (1981) that demonstrated the importance of considering Assyrian relief cycles in their entirety and within their physical as well as cultural and historical contexts. In this respect, my study here follows the lead of those who have since attempted to understand Assyrian reliefs as deliberate, concerted programs of ideologically motivated visual statements which encompass rooms, palaces, and even the production of an entire reign (for example, Russell 1987, 1998; Marcus 1987). To date, most of this work has concentrated on the discursive content of the reliefs, such as narrative structure, or their formal aspects, such as compositional strategies (for example, 3 For an example of the impact of this method of study upon interpretation, see Bersani and Dutoit (1985) whose work could have benefited from a greater awareness of the physical and visual context of the excerpted details of forms and actions upon which they concentrated and the larger whole to which such details belonged.

234

j. aker

Russell 1993; Albenda 1997). Here, I am examining an aspect of visual production, workmanship, that has long fallen out of favor with the majority of art historians as an aspect of connoisseurship, a field of visual study that is acknowledged as necessary for its value in determining such issues as authenticity, chronology, or authorship but has nevertheless been dismissed of late as leading the scholar to little else in understanding the cultural and social context of image production. In this limited study, I hope to show otherwise. A careful examination of all aspects of visual production, including quality of workmanship, has the potential to yield information and to lead to interpretations with cultural, social and historical implications. I also hope that in this way I might make up for my neglect of issues and methods of connoisseurship in the early stages of my training, a neglect for which I was soundly and rightly criticized at the time by my advisor, Irene Winter. I am grateful to her reminder and example that the foundations of our own work rest on the achievements of earlier scholars and that much can be gained from the application of a sound method of study even if it is out of general favor.4 Returning to the level of workmanship displayed in the lion hunt reliefs of Room C in Assurbanipal’s palace, it should be noted that the entirety of the relief cycle does not display the same level of exquisite carving as the two areas discussed above. For one, there is considerable surface damage to the reliefs. Some of this damage was caused by the looters of the palace who gouged out the eyes of some of the figures in the reliefs, and much of it was caused by the corrosive effect of damp earth against the limestone of the reliefs as the palace lay buried for over a couple of millennia. Perversely, though, this later damage acts as a veil over the work such that the visual impact of less skillfully carved areas is obscured and the modern viewer is led into imagining a surface uniformly brought to the same high level of finish as the areas that display a high quality of carving. This damage distracts the modern viewer from noticing the differences that exist among different areas of the reliefs in the quality of carving, the finish of surfaces and the competence in the rendering of forms. 4 Winter’s respect for earlier work and methods is evident in, for example, her review of the 1972 reprint of Henrietta Groenewegen-Frankfort’s Arrest and Movement (1951) and her use of insights gained from Groenewegen-Frankfort’s formalist analysis as a springboard for her own work (Winter 1999).

workmanship as ideological tool

235

Looking beyond the distracting effect of this later damage, a careful examination reveals differences in the embellishment of forms as well as differences in the quality and competence of their carving. A number of passages can be identified where the carving can be described as indifferent if not downright incompetent. Problems in workmanship fall into three categories: there are mistakes, both of omission and commission, in the representation of forms; in some areas the quality of the carving itself appears shockingly poor; and some passages appear unfinished. Some of the mistakes are more obvious than others. Mistakes of omission, such as missing details and irregularities, are barely noticeable, perhaps because they occur primarily in regularly repeated forms. For example, one of the attendants holding a temporary screen around the chariot of the king is missing his belt (Barnett 1976, pl. 5, slab 5, 3rd figure from left), the uppermost pair of the three stacked pairs of attendants performing the same duty is missing the sticks tucked under their arms (Barnett 1976, pl. 5, slab 6), two of the helmeted spear bearers standing to attention on either side of the horses brought to the chariot are missing their swords (Barnett 1976, pl. 6, slab 7, lower register, 1st figure from left; slab 8, upper register, 4th figure from left), and three of the archers from the pairs of soldiers who line the boundary of the arena are also missing their swords (Barnett 1976, pl. 6, slab 9, 5th, 7th and 9th figures from the top). Equally hard to detect are the occasional lapses in correspondence between sections that were meant to mirror each other. For example, among soldiers who stand to attention as the king’s horses are brought, the rosettes that decorate the inner band of the round shields depicted on the upper register are missing from their counterparts on the lower register (Barnett 1976, pl. 6, slab 7). In those same paired lines of soldiers, the number of helmeted spear bearers depicted on each register does not match; there are seven of them on the top register and only six of them on the bottom register (Barnett 1976, pl. 6, slabs 7, 8). Likewise, framing the beginning of one of the hunt scenes, only nine pairs of archers and spear bearers are shown to form the boundary of the arena, whereas there are 10 such pairs to mark the end of the scene (Barnett 1976, pls. 6, 9, slabs 9, 17). Sections of such repeated forms, especially the rows of soldiers, seem additionally beset with irregularities in spacing; some are farther apart and others much closer. The repetition of forms

236

j. aker

executed in large scale over a wide expanse of space, however, tends to fool the viewer’s eye and mask these problems. Poor handling of spatial relationships is harder to overlook. While mistakes of omission can be ascribed to haste or carelessness rather than to lack of skill, mistakes in the representation of spatial relationships denote a certain lack of competence on the part of carvers who executed these parts of the reliefs.5 Mistakes of this kind can be found in the four vignettes of dog handlers who control the hounds used to drive the lions (Barnett 1976, pl. 7, slab 10). Each handler is shown holding a spear in his right hand, on the side of his body closest to the picture plane, and the leash of the dog in his left hand, on the side that lies further away in the depth of the picture space (figure 7).6 The carvers attempted to introduce liveliness to this section by varying the poses of the handlers and the dogs, and in the process they seem also to have introduced some problems in the spatial relationship of the forms. In their proper order in depth, the spear should appear closest to the viewer with the dog the farthest away and the handler situated in between. Yet, in almost each case, the overlap of forms describes an impossibility in which the body of the dog appears in front of its handler and an awkward if not equally improbable accommodation is made for the spear. In the uppermost vignette, the spear is positioned between the dog and the man; as a result the figures appear somewhat tangled, for the man’s left arm seems to reach diagonally across his body to the dog placed on his right, and the spear in his right hand seems caught in between. The lowermost vignette shows the spear in its correct spatial plane, overlapping the dog, but then the man who seems to have been positioned behind the dog has his foot in front of the spear in a configuration that would have been impossible to maintain. The two middle vignettes appear to have resolved these issues more successfully: the upper one positions the spear to lie horizontally in the correct spatial plane by showing it overlapping the leash of the dog and the body of the handler, while the lower one stretches out the forms horizontally so that the man and the dog are overlapped only 5 Mistakes in the spatial representation of overlapping forms is to be distinguished from passages where forms are correctly but ambiguously distributed in depth. The latter are not mistakes but deliberate optical plays, the resulting ambiguities of which were intended to be meaningful. The representation of the bodies in the chariot cab, discussed below, is one example of this kind of play. 6 Surface abrasion obscures this arrangement for the lowest of the vignettes.

workmanship as ideological tool

237

minimally. Neither, however, is wholly free of problems. The upper one places the man behind the dog, while in the lower one the man’s foot and the dog’s hind paw are brought close enough together to introduce some uncertainty into their spatial relationship, while the spear is unambiguously and awkwardly placed behind the man’s foot. To these larger displays of ineptitude can be added the smaller lapses that betray the lack of some carvers’ understanding of the structure of forms and anatomy of the body parts they depicted. Anatomical details of the arms and calves of many of the smaller-scale figures seem to become patterns abstracted from the actual form they are supposed to describe. This is especially evident in the figures of the screen bearers and soldiers who line the edges of the arena and stand at attention near the preparation area. There are other areas in the lion hunt reliefs that betray a combination of incompetence and indifference. These areas are marked by the absence of the multi-layered, finely executed detail and embellishment found in the passages depicting the king and his closest companions in the chariot and of the sensitive modeling exemplified by the carving of the lions and horses. For example, in the line of soldiers who form the human boundary of the arena, the carvers have represented only the bare minimum of gear and features (bows, spears, swords, belts, headbands, hairstyle) necessary to identify the regimental association of the figures (figure 8). These forms are minimally described and lack the elaboration and ornamentation employed in other areas. That the scale of the figures is too small to depict forms with any degree of elaboration cannot be advanced as the sole reason for this lack of detail, for the figures of the king and his companions demonstrate the degree to which skilled workmanship could represent fine details in a small area. That the gear of some of these figures might have been much humbler or cruder in nature—foot soldiers possessing plain shoulder straps as opposed to decorated ones, for example—is another possible explanation, but it does not account for the crudeness with which these forms have been articulated. The curls at the nape and beards of some of these same figures, for example, are represented by cross-hatchings of incised lines and not modeled into little round three-dimensional mounds as on other figures nearby. The same cursory representation of curls can be found among the spectators and the soldiers who stand at attention. Elsewhere, unskilled carving reveals itself in forms that are coarsely and unnaturally robust in their

238

j. aker

articulation. For example, the headbands and shoulder straps of the archers who stand behind the shield and the spear-bearing soldiers at the edge of the arena appear puffy, not flat (figure 8). Likewise, the details of the boots of the soldiers standing at attention by the king’s chariot, especially details of those on the lower register, are so crudely carved that the tongue, straps and heels have become three-dimensional forms independent of and unrelated to one another, and the boots appear to be a collection of these forms rather than a continuous and supple surface that covers the foot and the calf. In the worst cases, such poor carving manages barely to denote the identity of the form it described but cannot connote its character or nature. Along with such poorly carved areas are others that are left unfinished. Unfinished sections of the reliefs are localized in the area that shows the spectators climbing a hill covered with trees and surmounted by a monument. Here the outlines of the crown, trunk and branches of some of the trees are blocked out, but the finer details in the form of needles and leaves are missing (Barnett 1976, pl. 6, slabs 8, 9). Likewise, at least one human figure, a bearded, unarmed man wearing a short tunic, is unfinished (hillside, uppermost row, 1st figure from left). His belt, the waves of hair on the crown of his head, the laces of his boots, the weave of his stockings and the strands of the tassel that dangles between his legs are left unarticulated (figure 9). The North Palace is assumed to have been unfinished at the time of Assurbanipal’s death and therefore it can be argued that the carvers may have run out of time; but this seems unlikely given that the rest of the room is completed and that time sufficed to bring some areas to an extremely high level of finish. So much so, that the reliefs seem to have been inspected and that some corrections (most noticeable in the shortening of some of the lions’ tails) were made. Incomplete areas of the North Palace are marked not by partially carved reliefs but by blank stretches of limestone facing. It is more likely that a combination of carelessness on the part of the carvers and indifference on the part of their supervisors was responsible for the way these areas look. Below I argue that such carelessness and indifference may not have been accidental or random. The problems of workmanship identified thus far suggest that a number of sculptors possessing different levels of skills were employed to carve the reliefs in Room C. In the remainder of this paper, I pursue

workmanship as ideological tool

239

the implications of the pattern that emerges from a consideration of the distribution of these variations in the quality of workmanship . In two areas of the reliefs, where the same subject is depicted on the upper and lower sections, the upper half seems predominantly better carved than the lower half even when mistakes such as omitted gear or improbable distribution of forms in depth are taken into account. In these upper zones, best evident in a comparison of the boots and legs of the soldiers standing at attention by the chariot and the bodies of the mastiffs used to drive the lions, the modeling is subtler and shows greater technical variety. Moreover, the sculptors seem to have better understood and represented the forms they were carving. Two explanations come to mind. The upper half of the reliefs fall within a zone that is at the eye level of the average adult viewer, about five feet tall, and therefore they are more visible and more likely to be examined by individuals walking across the room. Accordingly, better sculptors might have been deployed to carve these upper zones. An additional reason for delegating the upper zones to more accomplished sculptors may have to do with the hierarchic structure of a workshop in which senior members would have been granted the double privilege of visibility of their handiwork and easier working conditions, while the lower zones may have been relegated to apprentices and lower skilled carvers whose inferior workmanship was less likely to be noticed by viewers and who would have had to put up with the discomforts of working close to the floor. However, this difference in quality between upper and lower zones can be observed in only two areas of the reliefs, and the impact of possible workshop conditions and procedures upon the carving of the reliefs seems minimal.7

7

Michael Roaf (1983) was able to identify different groups of sculptors who carved the Persepolis reliefs. However, the Persepolis reliefs, in particular the processions that he examined, consisted of repetitive forms deployed across a fairly wide expanse. By contrast, the reliefs under study cover a much smaller area and are localized in a single room. The sculptors working in the North Palace may have belonged to more than one workshop but when the focus is limited to the material in Room C, there is not enough comparative data to distinguish the work of hands that belong to different workshop traditions. Roaf (1983, 27) also demonstrated that in some cases a master carver had carved the heads of the figures while his assistants executed the rest of the bodies. The Persepolis reliefs with their uniform ceremonial processions seem particularly suited to this kind of labour division, but it seems not have been practiced in Room C, where one craftsman seems to have been responsible for carving the entirety of a figure or groups of figures.

240

j. aker

Instead, the carving of the reliefs seems to have been governed by a much different consideration. It is clear that the best carved areas depicted the king, while the poorly carved areas include primarily lower-ranked individuals. A closer look at the entire relief program shows that the quality of workmanship in the carving of forms reveals greater gradation than simply good or bad and was directly correlated to physical and social distance from the king. That is, various degrees of quality of carving, elaboration of detail, and level of attention and skill (together with other formal devices) combine to articulate a precise hierarchy of status among the forms and figures represented. Most exquisitely carved and at the top of this ranked order is, not surprisingly, the king. Equally beautifully carved as the king and shown at almost the same scale but with slightly less elaborate ornamentation of their gear and clothing are the members of the chariot crew. The crew consists of the charioteer and two others, possibly taàlÊàå, “third men” who act here as bodyguards to the king. They wear rings on their arms and wrists and fillets on their heads, but lack the earrings shown dangling so prominently from the king’s ears. The crew’s garments are decorated but with simpler, predominantly geometric patterns, and fewer floral and figurative panels. At the same scale as the chariot crew are the three men who are backing the horses into the harness of the chariot. The quality of workmanship—evidenced by the tour de force carving of boots and stockings—seems as good as that lavished on the chariot crew. They wear similar jewelry and fillets, and their sword belts and shoulder straps are finely decorated. However, in contrast to the chariot crew, they wear plain undecorated tunics and thus appear somewhat lower in rank. A wide gulf in quality of carving and level of ornamentation separates these figures from the rest who lack jewelry, fillets, and decorated garments, and who are represented at a noticeably smaller scale and with less skill. Nevertheless these figures do separate themselves into a well differentiated rank order. Stationed hierarchically below the chariot crew and the horse handlers are the attendants who are preparing, testing and bringing gear to the king (Barnett 1976, pl. 5, slabs 3, 4). These figures are divided into three registers (therefore executed at a relatively large size) and spread out so that the unique and necessary contribution of each to the preparation of the king for the lion hunt can be clearly articulated (figure 10). While the figures are plainly

workmanship as ideological tool

241

dressed and devoid of jewelry, the competent, high quality carving evident in the fineness of their face, hair, arms, hands, legs and feet further elevates these figures above others who, based on dress and accessories alone, may appear to be of similar rank. Executed at about the same quality of competent carving and level of detail, and also largely devoid of ornamentation, are the five outlying riders who are carrying spare equipment and spurring and driving the lions with whips in the hunt scenes (Barnett 1976, pls. 9, 10, 13, slabs 15-17, 26, 27). The man who releases the lions from their cages is hardly remarkable in any aspect of workmanship, good or bad, but like the riders he is distinguished by the obvious dangers of the service he performs for the king and like them is isolated and prominently placed (Barnett 1976, pl. 10, slab 16). The soldiers who are standing at attention in two files by the chariot in the preparation scene, the grooms who are leading additional horses in between these two files, and the attendants who hold screens to enclose the chariot compositionally act as counterparts to the attendants fetching gear on the other side, and at first glance they seem to be placed at the same rank (Barnett 1976, pls. 5, 6, slabs 6-8). They are represented at the same scale and they too wear plain tunics and lack jewelry, and they have undecorated gear. However, this initial impression of parity is undermined by the uneven and generally poorer quality of carving most evident in a comparison of their limbs, hair and beard, where anatomical details veer into abstract patterns and hair and beard are rendered frequently by sketchy cross-hatchings. These figures are additionally marred by carelessness that resulted in missing gear. In comparison, the quality of workmanship evident in the carving of the dog handlers ranks somewhere between that of the attendants fetching gear and of the soldiers standing at attention. The figures are ambitiously varied in their posing. They are few and isolated in the picture field and therefore prominently displayed perhaps in acknowledgement of their role in facing and driving lions on foot with nothing but spears and mastiffs. The most cursorily and coarsely carved figures are those of the archers and shield bearers who form the human boundary of the arena. They are executed at a small size that precludes much elaboration of details, let alone ornamentation of dress and gear. The low quality of carving and the inexperience of the carvers are evident from the accidental omissions and the modeling that gives a three-dimensional

242

j. aker

appearance to flat surfaces. One area of the reliefs stands out for the extraordinary indifference with which it seems to have been carved. This section shows a number of unarmed, bearded and beardless individuals variously converging upon the hill, climbing it or nearing its summit. They are executed at the same small scale as the soldiers who form the boundary of the arena. While not as poorly carved as the soldiers, the rendering of the spectators’ beards and hair curls, some of which are on the verge of devolving into cross-hatching, shows that the quality of the carving is also not particularly good. But it is the fact that the carving of this section was left unfinished that distinguishes it from all others. Here forms were blocked out but, as noted above, finer details of some of them—the leaves and needles of the trees, the beard, hair, belt, boot laces and stockings of at least one figure prominently positioned near the top of the hill—were left unfinished. This careful differentiation of groups by regulating the amount of skill and care devoted to their carving suggests that aspects of workmanship were used by the planners of the reliefs as a visual tool for communicating meaning above and beyond that of representing forms. More specifically, I would argue that, in the monumental lion hunts of Assurbanipal, quality of workmanship functioned as a deliberate ideological tool that articulated and enforced rank and social status in the same way other formal and iconographic means (such as size, placement, relative position, gesture, hair, beard, dress, jewelry, weapons, headgear and footwear) were used in Assyrian reliefs to express hierarchy (for example, Marcus 1981). The ideological nature of the deployment of workmanship across these reliefs is perhaps best evident in the way some figures were slighted by this means while others were honored beyond their apparent rank. In particular, the exquisite carving and intricate embellishment of the chariot crew elevated these middle ranking officers above all others nearly to the level of the king. Conversely, high ranking officials and officers identifiable by their long tunics with tasseled hems and fringed shawls (Marcus 1981, 53-57) were marginalized by being placed among the passive spectators and depicted in a size smaller than the dog handlers and the nearby foot soldiers standing at attention. This marginalization is emphasized by the mediocre workmanship given to their forms and their placement in a section of the reliefs so undervalued as to be left unfinished. Without the distracting effect of surface erosion, the

workmanship as ideological tool

243

deliberate neglect of the area would have been all the more glaring during Assurbanipal’s times. The denigration of these high ranking figures was further underscored by their lack of jewelry and weapons of rank, the paucity of their numbers, and their considerable physical distance from the king and his activities.8 An explanation for the attention lavished on the chariot crew in particular may be found in the efforts of late Sargonid kings to deal with the political instabilities of their times. Following the upheavals of the deaths of Sargon II and Sennacherib and the assassination attempts on Esarhaddon, a number of surviving records such as queries to gods and loyalty oaths document the growing concern of the Sargonid kings for the safety of their persons and the longevity of their reigns. From administrative records it appears that the kings employed a number of strategies designed to foster loyalty. These consisted of incentives in the form of gifts of tax exemptions, land grants (and sources of income), and status items such as bracelets and decorated garments, as well as deterrents such as the withdrawal of royal favor and the attendant loss of wealth and position in court. These same records suggest that the kings, Assurbanipal among them, directed a considerable portion of their patronage toward some of the middle ranking officers in the king’s immediate service, in particular, charioteers and “third men”, bodyguards who were physically the closest to the king and charged with ensuring his safety. These officers are documented to have held their posts for long periods, amassed immense wealth, and, judging by their appearance in witness lists, gained considerable status within the court, possibly at the expense of other, higher ranking officers and officials and family members who were incidentally likely to pose the greatest threat to the continuity of the king’s reign.9 I have argued elsewhere that the lion hunt reliefs in Room C constituted one of the strategies of patronage by which Assurbanipal tried to enlist and ensure the loyalty of the middle and low ranking members of his court and army upon whom he was most dependent. The expansion of the hunt narrative, to include the king’s preparations and multiple scenes from the course of the hunt itself, allowed 8 By contrast, see procession scenes of Assurnasirpal II and Sargon II where such figures, bejeweled and embellished with gear and weapons, were placed in positions of prominence across from the king (Marcus 1981). 9 This process is explained and documented in detail in my forthcoming dissertation on the monumental lion hunt reliefs of Room C in Assurbanipal’s North Palace.

244

j. aker

the reliefs to show a great range of auxiliary figures as participating actively in the event. The reliefs would suggest to viewers that the role of these individuals, to the extent that they support and protect the king, is found worthy of acknowledgement and celebration in this monumental form of representation. The inclusion of images of spectators and the specification of a physical context would have further concretized the specificity of people and actions represented in the domain of the actual rather than the ideal. And at a time when the Assyrian king no longer personally led his army into battle, the lion hunt, or more properly speaking, its representation, provided a worthy venue for displaying the heroic exploits and invaluable service of the middle and lower ranking palace and army personnel, especially that of the chariot crew.10 For example, scale and quality of carving work together in the representation of the charioteer so that his status is clearly indicated by his jewelry and decorated garments and gear, while his service and his skill are articulated and emphasized in the nearly three-dimensional treatment of his hands that hold the reins (figure 11). Here the reliefs allow the viewer to observe the precise way in which the charioteer holds the six straps that control and direct the horses, and the nearly three-dimensional treatment of the hands and fingers communicates the immense power and skill possessed by the charioteer to perform that task. In this tiny passage, the reliefs articulate, underscore, and justify the king’s patronage of his charioteer. I argue that deployment of workmanship across the reliefs was one tool used together with other formal and iconographic tools to ideological ends. In part, quality of carving allowed the reliefs to document the king’s favor and efforts to secure the loyalty of his subjects by articulating such items of status as arm and wrist bands and decorated garments that were given to charioteers, bodyguards and others directly responsible for the safety of the king in one way or another (such as those harnessing the horses to the chariot). In part, it also functioned as a means by which an additional form of patronage, in this case the gift of commemoration in monumental format, could be regulated and used to greatest ideological effect. Variations 10 The location of the reliefs, their placement in a corridor within a section of the palace open to most members of the court, and the psychological processes by which the reliefs were meant to act upon their viewers, including the middle and lower ranking palace and army personnel, are discussed in my dissertation.

workmanship as ideological tool

245

in the quality of carving enabled those who planned Room C, where agency would ultimately rest with the king, to articulate and bestow precise and minute differences of status among a wide range of functionaries and place all individuals into a hierarchic order of rank. Thus, I would argue that variation in the deployment of skill and competence, which translates into quality and detail of carving, appears as a deliberately wielded ideological tool in the monumental hunt reliefs of Room C. Accompanying the king’s patronage, but hardly documented in the written record, might be changes in court protocol, which would have accommodated the elevation of the charioteers and bodyguards and other middle ranking officers in the king’s personal service to higher positions of status and honor. I suggest that these hunt reliefs may have constituted an expression of such changes in court protocol, and, in the very act of placing the charioteers and bodyguards immediately next to the king and honoring them with a representational treatment nearly equal to that of the king, may have also functioned as active mechanisms for effecting these very changes. By extension, the reliefs would have functioned partly as a form of flattery to those shown participating in the hunt and partly as an incentive for others (spectators in the reliefs or the viewers before them) by articulating the point that acceptable avenues of advancement and glory lay only in the service of the king. In this analysis of workmanship as an ideological tool for achieving social stratification, the extraordinarily high quality of workmanship lavished upon the horses and the lions would appear to put these animals at the level of the king and his closest companions. In fact, these animals are distinguished from each other by other qualities of workmanship, that is, by the amount of detail and embellishment given to each animal; differing amounts of detail both distance the lions from the humans and bring the status of the horses within the human domain into proper focus. First, to address the matter of the lions, high quality of carving has been used to make the faces and bodies of the animals emotionally expressive, an aspect that is not relevant to the topic at hand and that is treated in greater detail in my forthcoming dissertation. The detail given to lions is sparse. The reliefs show extended claws, a few veins in the legs, the flow of blood from wounds, and the individual strands of the triangular clumps of fur of the manes. By contrast, a great amount of detail and embellishment is given to the horses (figure 12). Most obviously, the horses

246

j. aker

are equipped with highly complicated tack for harnessing them to the chariot. The tack consists of a bridle, bits, frontlet, blinkers, headstall, poll crest, nape strap with bells, thong, neck strap, breast and girth bands. This tack, in itself thoroughly decorated with floral and geometric patterns, functions both as ornamentation and as a sign of the rank for the horses much like the dress and gear of the human beings shown on the reliefs. An indication of domestication, the tack transforms the horse from a mere animal into a being that shares the human realm. Furthermore, the fineness of the tack’s ornamentation, rendered with some relief to make it stand out, indicates that the king’s chariot horses occupy a fairly high rank in the network of animate and inanimate tools of kingship that extend from the king and serve him. That the condition of domestication is not just a matter of donning gear but one that permeates the subjectivity of the horses is indicated by their precise grooming: the mane is combed and clipped to present an unbroken sweeping outline against the neck, a shock of hair over the brows is given a blunt cut, and the tail is combed, crimped into waves, and plaited at the end into a small loop. Furthermore, each strand of hair on the horses is indicated in shallow relief precisely to articulate the artificial patterning that the grooming imposes on the animal’s body (figure 13). By contrast, the mane of the lions—unruly, uneven in length, and therefore ungroomed—curl into small, triangular tufts. The horses, harnessed to the king’s chariot, are embellished to the same degree and for the same reason that any other gear and accessory of the king is embellished. Thus, their status is clarified with the use of ornamentation and embellishment. And like everything that extends from the king and becomes part of his representation, the horses are carved to show a considerable range in depth of relief, from high to shallow. This variation in depth of relief reveals ever finer levels of detailing as the viewer comes closer to the reliefs. Whatever is part of the civilized domain and of high status has this kind of elaborate embellishment that accrues on its form in multiple layers of increasing complexity. In the lion hunt reliefs of Room C, such embellishment, the representation of which is only possible with high quality carving, increases as one goes up the chain of hierarchy in the human domain, and, I would argue, is an aesthetic quality that hints at the increasing wholesomeness of those occupying upper echelons where

workmanship as ideological tool

247

perfection appears in the extreme complexity of the embellishment of the king’s form. The reliefs also placed some limits upon the prestige bestowed upon those represented. The middle ranking officers, for example, while prominently displayed, elaborately embellished, placed next to the king, and exquisitely carved, are featured only as tools of the king. Their role in the hunt is passive. The bodyguards protect the king by deterring and deflecting the lions that attack the chariot, but they never kill the lions. The scale of representation, combined with skill of carving, allowed the sculptors to represent clearly the tips of the spears, which touch but do not penetrate the bodies of the lions (figure 13). In clear contrast, all the weapons used by the king plunge into the bodies of the lions. Furthermore, the guards’ bodies are not only situated behind the king but do not achieve the physical unity and therefore the conceptual clarity given to the king. They are so closely overlapped by the king that parts of their bodies become chopped up, and their arms appear as extensions of the king. And, notwithstanding the skillful resolution of all these body parts in different planes of representation, the abilities of the bodyguards appear subsumed into the person of the king. Likewise, the charioteer, even when placed in front of the king in some scenes, appears as an extension of the king’s body, so that his work is partially claimed under the agency of the king. Indeed, a variety of formal and discursive means are used to ascribe some agency and power to the middle and lower ranking members of the king’s personnel, while, at the same time, they contain and limit that agency within precisely defined bounds. In conclusion, I suggest that the obvious gradation of quality of workmanship functioned as a double-edged ideological tool that, on the one hand, conferred prestige upon those represented and, on the other, circumscribed them into a precise rank order that would have underscored their place within a hierarchy. Ultimately, the reliefs assert that the agency of the king’s dependents, for all its glory and for all that it enables, is a function of occupying a position within a hierarchic power structure controlled by the king. The dependency of the king upon the performance of his followers is mirrored by these individuals’ greater dependency upon the king for their status and power. The hierarchy of power and the supremacy of the king are maintained in the reliefs by articulating, through various means—dress, scale and proximity to the person of the king, as well as quality of

248

j. aker

workmanship lavished on the representational form—a specific status that locks each individual within a particular place in this network. Most Assyrian ideological productions identify kingship exclusively with the king, in whom the person and the office are united.11 In the monumental hunt reliefs of Room C, kingship appears as an institution that extends beyond the person and the office of the king to encompass his loyal followers, even though the king is nevertheless the dominant element. I do not think that the reliefs in Room C represent the emergence of a radical change in our understanding of Assyrian kingship. The inflection given to the nature of kingship in Room C is a minor variation that seems to have been presented through the visual domain alone and addressed to a specific segment of the palace and army personnel who might have been more sensitive and receptive to a vision of kingship that raised the profile of their role and status within the core of the empire. Furthermore, the Assyrian ideology of kingship, like all ideologies, could hardly have been so monolithic that it would have manifested no variations or even occasional contradictions in all its formulations and strategies in the course of the empire.

References Aker, Jülide. Forthcoming. Rhetoric of Transgression: Assurbanipal’s Babylonian Policy and Transformations in the Visual Domain. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University. Albenda, Pauline. 1997. Assyrian Wall Reliefs: A Study of Compositional Styles. In Assyrien im Wandel der Zeiten. XXXIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Heidelberg 6.-10. Juli 1992, ed. H. Waetzoldt and H. Hauptmann, 223-226. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag. Barnett, Richard David. 1976. Sculptures from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (668-627 B.C.). London: The British Museum. Bersani, Leo, and Ulysse Dutoit. 1985. The Forms of Violence: Narrative in Assyrian Art and Modern Culture. New York: Schocken Books. Curtis, John E., and Julian E. Reade, eds. 1995. Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum. Exhibition catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Frankfort, Henri. 1977. The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient. 4th rev. ed. London: Penguin Books.

11

See for example, Irene Winter’s analysis of statues of Assyrian kings (1997).

workmanship as ideological tool

249

Groenewegen-Frankfort, Henrietta A. 1951. Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East. London: Faber and Faber Ltd. Marcus, Michelle I. 1981. A Study of the Types of Officials in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs: Their Identifying Attributes and Their Possible Relationship to a Bureaucratic Hierarchy. M.A. thesis, Columbia University. ———. 1987. Geography as an Organizing Principle in the Imperial Art of Shalmaneser III. Iraq 49: 77-90. Moortgat, Anton. 1969. The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia: The Classical Art of the Near East. Translated by M. DuMont Schauberg [orig. pub. 1967]. London: Phaidon. Paley, Samuel Michael. 1976. King of the World: Ashur-nasir-pal II of Assyria 883-859 B.C. New York: Brooklyn Museum. Reade, Julian E. 1979. Assyrian Architectural Decoration: Techniques and Subject Matter. Baghdader Mitteilungen 10: 17-49. Roaf, Michael. 1983. Sculptures and Sculptors at Persepolis. London: British Institute of Persian Studies. Russell, John Malcolm. 1987. Bulls for the Palace and Order in the Empire: The Sculptural Program of Sennacherib’s Court VI at Nineveh. Art Bulletin 69: 520-539. ———. 1993. Sennacherib’s Lachish Narratives. In Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, ed. P. J. Holliday, 55-73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. The Program of the Palace of Assurnasirpal II at Nimrud: Issues in the Research and Presentation of Assyrian Art. AJA 102: 655-715. Winter, Irene J. 1974. Review of Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East, by Henrietta Groenewegen-Frankfort. JAOS 94: 505-506. ———. 1981. Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in NeoAssyrian Reliefs. Studies in Visual Communication 7/2: 2-38. ———. 1997. Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology. In Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7-11, 1995, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 359-381. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. ———. 1999. Tree(s) on the Mountain: Landscape and Territory on the Victory Stele of Naram-Sîn of Agade. In Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East. Papers Presented to the XLIVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Venezia, 7-11 July 1997, ed. S. Milano, S. de Martino, F. M. Fales and G. B. Lanfranchi, 64-72. Padua: Sargon srl.

250

j. aker

Figure 1. Assurbanipal in his chariot, spearing lions, Room C, slabs 23, 24, British Museum (WAA 124853-4) author photo

Figure 2. Dying lioness, Room C, slab 26, British Museum (WAA 124856) author photo

workmanship as ideological tool 251

Figure 3. Detail of dying lioness, Room C, slab 26, British Museum (WAA 124856) author photo

252 j. aker

workmanship as ideological tool

253

Figure 4. Charioteer, Room C, slabs 23, 24, British Museum (WAA 124853-4) author photo

Figure 5. Assurbanipal’s face, Room C, slab 24, British Museum (WAA 124854) author photo

254 j. aker

workmanship as ideological tool

255

Figure 6. Assurbanipal in his chariot, Room C, slab 24, British Museum (WAA 1248854) author photo

256

j. aker

Figure 7. Dog handlers, Room C, slab 10, British Museum (WAA 124863) author drawing

workmanship as ideological tool

257

Figure 8. Detail of the line of soldiers edging the arena, Room C, slabs 9, 10, British Museum (WAA 124862-3) author photo

258

j. aker

Figure 9. Unfinished trees and figure on spectator’s hill, Room C, slabs 8, 9, British Museum (WAA 124861-2) author photo

workmanship as ideological tool

259

Figure 10. Detail of attendants fetching gear, Room C, slab 4, British Museum (WAA 124884) author photo

Figure 11. Charioteer’s hands, Room C, slabs 23, 24, British Museum (WAA 124853) author photo

260 j. aker

Figure 12. Chariot horse, Room C, slab 5, British Museum (WAA 124858) author photo

workmanship as ideological tool 261

262

j. aker

Figure 13. Assurbanipal and bodyguards with weapons, Room C, slab 20, British Museum (WAA 124850) author photo

workmanship as ideological tool

263

Figure 14. Tips of weapons, Room C, slab 20, British Museum (WAA 124850) author photo

264

j. aker

darius i and the heroes of akkad

265

DARIUS I AND THE HEROES OF AKKAD: AFFECT AND AGENCY IN THE BISITUN RELIEF1 Marian H. Feldman Irene Winter’s innovative thinking on so many aspects of Near Eastern art has inspired all fortunate to have studied with her. For me, her expansion of the concept of “style” to embrace affect and agency has provided particularly fertile grounds. Because style must exist in order to give content visible form and thus no discrete boundary can separate style from subject matter, style can encompass more than an unconscious reflection of cultural or personal ethos. Style can also be intentionally deployed for purposes of meaning and response. Winter has addressed this connotative and rhetorical aspect of style, what she characterizes as “affective” in its ability to generate emotional responses, in relation to one of Mesopotamia’s most famous monuments: the victory stele of Naram-Sin (c. 2250 BCE). In a reconsideration of this monument, Winter (1996) has pursued the affective qualities conveyed in the overwhelmingly physical rendering of Naram-Sin’s body, suggesting that the newly divinized ruler strategically deployed stylistic forms associated with a heroic ideal, which was literally embodied in Naram-Sin’s perfectly formed and alluring figure. As a tribute to Irene, I would like to explore the concept of “style-as-meaning” in the case of a much later work, the relief of Darius I (522-486 BCE) at Bisitun in western Iran, which will lead me back, ultimately, to Naram-Sin’s alluring body. The Bisitun relief, executed at a critical juncture during Darius’ consolidation of power, stands apart from other large-scale, royal Achaemenid monuments in its representation of military triumph and its extensive textual recounting of historical events. Despite its unusual content, the monument has been taken to signal the beginning 1 As is fitting for a tribute from a student to her teacher, this paper owes much to my own students at the University of California, Berkeley. In particular, I would like to thank Shane Black, Catherine Demos, Sabrina Maras, Meliza Orantes, Jennifer Wister and my research assistant Jean Li. In addition, colleagues David Stronach, Ann Shafer and Stephanie Reed have contributed critical feedback.

266

m.h. feldman

of the classical Achaemenid style that finds its fullest expression at Persepolis. Indeed, most scholarship on the Bisitun relief divorces the content from the style. And because Achaemenid art seems to appear abruptly, fully formed with few indigenous precedents, scholars tend to concentrate on disentangling the diverse influences that led to its genesis. Thus, the relief’s subject matter of victorious triumph has been associated with a Mesopotamian iconographic tradition, traceable from Assyria and a series of western Iranian rock reliefs back to Naram-Sin’s stele. Many of the stylistic elements of Darius’ anatomy and clothing, however, have been attributed instead to Greek influences (Boardman 2000, 104-11; Curtis 2005, 117; Farkas 1974, 2937; Frankfort 1946, 6-14; Luschey 1968, 63-94; Richter 1946, 15-30; contra: Nylander 1970, 121-38; Root 1979, 182-226). In such studies, “style” has been understood solely as an aspect of form, useful primarily for comparative ends in order to trace the mixed ingredients that comprised Achaemenid art. “Meaning,” on the other hand, has been derived from a narrowly defined concept of iconography that focuses only on motif. In this way, it has been easy to identify “Greek style” existing in an otherwise Near Eastern iconography without worrying about the implications of this coexistence. If, however, we consider style as a carrier of meaning, then this dichotomy should be reexamined, asking not only whence does the style derive, but what associative connotations might it have held for Darius, his court and his subjects. As Winter (1998, 72) has pointed out, “the key to ‘styleas-meaning’ lies. . .in cultural context and in the emotional response invoked/provoked by the work.” Considered in this light, I would like to propose that the style of the Akkadian empire, exemplified by Naram-Sin’s stele and connoting a semi-divine heroic, might have been deployed by Darius in his Bisitun relief as a way to link himself to the great Mesopotamian empire of the past. The Bisitun (or Behistun) relief, carved into the living rock of the Zagros mountains, rises approximately 100 meters above a highway leading from central Mesopotamia (Babylon) to the Iranian plateau and the Median capital of Ecbatana (Hamadan) (figure 1).2 Carved early in the reign of Darius I, probably before 519/518 BCE, it is

2 The monument measures approximately 7 m high by 18 m wide (sculpted area: approx. 3 m high by 5.5 m wide); Stronach and Zournatzi (1997, 330-31) for general references.

darius i and the heroes of akkad

267

unique among Achaemenid monumental works of art. The monument consists of a trilingual inscription in Elamite, Babylonian Akkadian, and Old Persian that frames a roughly rectangular-shaped sculpted representation depicting Darius triumphant. Both text and image work together to express Darius’ legitimacy and divine favor. The text recounts the complicated story of Darius’ succession to Cambyses as king of Persia (Schmitt 1991). According to the inscription, before leaving to campaign in Egypt, Cambyses secretly murdered his brother, Bardiya, whereupon another character, Gaumata, stepped in and impersonated Bardiya. After Cambyses died far from Persia, Darius claims that he killed the imposter and assumed the throne. A series of revolts ensued, which Darius put down over the course of the first few years of his rule. General consensus now interprets this narrative as justification for what appears to be Darius’ murder of the legitimate successor to the throne (Kuhrt 1995, 655). The image at Bisitun presents an encapsulation of Darius’ dispatch of Gaumata and quelling the revolts, and reaffirms the divine sanction of his actions. Slightly off center to the left, Darius with a bow in one hand stands with his left foot planted squarely on the prone body of Gaumata who raises his hands in supplication and kicks up one foot as if in anguish. Before Darius stand nine rebels, connected to one another by shackles and with their hands tied behind them. Each is identified by a trilingual label and distinguished by clothing and hairstyle. Two armed attendants follow Darius, one holding an upright spear, the other a bow and quiver. In the center of the relief, over the bound rebels, hovers the torso of a male figure rising out of a winged disc. Wearing a horned headdress that in Mesopotamia signals divinity, the entity faces Darius, raising its right hand while holding a ring in its left hand.3 As an illegitimate ruler, Darius, following in the tradition of great usurpers of the past, took pains to stress his divine selection, ascribing his rule to the favor of Ahuramazda. He also carefully controlled his royal persona both through texts, such as the Bisitun inscription, and images. In the Bisitun text, Darius claims to have sent copies of it throughout his empire, and preserved examples survive from Elephantine (Aramaic text) and Babylonia (both text and image) (Greenfield 3

The relief was carved in several stages that included later additions of the rightmost captive, the Akkadian text and the Old Persian text (Hyuse 1999, 45-66).

268

m.h. feldman

and Porten 1982; Seidl 1976, 1999a, 1999b). The homogeneity of royal representations during the reign of Darius attests to the strict control over their production, while the persistence of the canonical repertoire through his successors’ reigns provides a good measure of their effectiveness. The Bisitun relief supplies one of the only historical accounts from the Achaemenid empire and is the only monumental rendering of domination.4 Nowhere else is such a blatant image of royal physical triumph put forth at such large scale in the public sphere. The extensive narrative of court intrigue and rebel insurrections represents the only such document, monumental or otherwise, known from Achaemenid sources. While the impetus for such a monument—that is, Darius’ desire to legitimize his rule—seems reasonably settled, a quest for its artistic precedents has dominated scholarly inquiries. Since the early twentieth century, scholars have traced the inspiration for Bisitun to a series of carved rock reliefs in the vicinity that date to the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium and that display both thematic and compositional similarities with Bisitun (Hrouda 1976; Börker-Klähn 1982, nos. 29-34).5 The best preserved example, found at Zohab near Sar-i Pul approximately 100 kilometers to the west of Bisitun, retains an inscription of a local Lullubi ruler, Annubanini (Börker-Klähn 1982, no. 31) (figure 2). It depicts the armed ruler stepping upon the fallen body of his enemy, while to his right, Ishtar extends a ring in her right hand and secures in her left the bonds of two naked kneeling captives. A star or sun symbol occupies the space between Annubanini and Ishtar. Below the main scene, to the left of the inscription, six more bound and naked captives move to the right. The geographical proximity to Bisitun of these rock reliefs strengthens the argument that Darius adopted from them the concept of a victory monument carved in the living rock. Moreover, the rock reliefs form a discrete local tradition, which suggests that Darius intentionally drew upon the form and content of the earlier reliefs in their indigenous setting. He may have considered them Elamite or perhaps Median, and thus sought to ally himself to these earlier Iranian

4

For such scenes on seals, see Boardman 2000, 158-59. In particular, six reliefs (four at Sar-i Pul, one near Darband-i Sheikan and one at Darband-i Gawr) show much the same scene, though with variations. 5

darius i and the heroes of akkad

269

kingdoms through the use of a peculiarly western Iranian tradition (Root 1979, 195). The Bisitun monument, however, is by no means a copy of these reliefs. Certain details may be associated with one or another, for example the bound captives or the poses of the defeated enemy. Nonetheless, variations occur at Bisitun that indicate that no one rock relief, nor even the group as a whole, supplied the entirety of either formal or stylistic elements. The early rock reliefs have, in turn, been associated with the stele of Naram-Sin, the best known example of the motif of a victorious ruler stepping upon his vanquished enemy. The triumphant pose and overall conception of the rock reliefs are closely related to the stele, which commemorates the Akkadian ruler’s victory over mountain peoples of this very region, including the Lullubi. The stele has been studied and described so often that only a cursory overview is given here (figure 3).6 At the apex stands Naram-Sin, wearing a horned headdress and holding a bow and axe in one hand and a mace or arrow in his other. With his left foot he steps upon two apparently dead enemies. At least three rows of soldiers scale the mountain below him to the left, while pleading or dead enemy occupy the space to the right. Three celestial symbols fill the uppermost part of the relief. In an intriguing turnabout, the very people debased by Naram-Sin in his stele—the Lullubi—later appropriated his visual formula for their own purposes in the Zagros rock reliefs, hinting at the range of “affect” such a scene could carry.7 However, Margaret Cool Root is certainly correct to treat with caution any strictly linear developmental sequence beginning with Naram-Sin, through the Zagros rock reliefs to Bisitun (Root 1979, 199). As none are direct copies of any preceding ones, it is more fruitful to consider multiple interacting trends within the Mesopotamian and western Iranian traditions as contributors to Darius’ relief, and under the rubric of “trends” I would include “style.” Specific motival details at Bisitun have been associated with NeoAssyrian and, less frequently, Neo-Babylonian precedents (Sarre and Herzfeld 1910, 189-98; Luschey 1968, 84-90; Farkas 1974, 32; Root 1979, 202-18). For example, the squared beard and hairstyle of Darius,

6

See below for further discussion and references. The dates of the rock reliefs are debated, but they almost certainly post-date Naram-Sin (Börker-Klähn 1982, 137). 7

270

m.h. feldman

which are quite different from later renderings at Persepolis, have been compared to those of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. The torso extending from the winged disc has often been linked to the ninth century reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, although examples in Neo-Assyrian cylinder seals that continue into the seventh century offer perhaps better comparisons (Luschey 1968, 85; Collon 2001, 79-82). Herzfeld is one of the few to draw on Neo-Babylonian comparisons, for example the boundary stone of Marduk-apla-iddina II (c. 715 BCE), which he uses as comparanda for the rounded curls at the back of Darius’ neck (Sarre and Herzfeld 1910, 195) (figure 4). As with the rock reliefs and Naram-Sin’s stele, no one Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian extant work provides a precise model; Ashurbanipal’s hair forms a square bunch at the nape of his neck that looks altogether different from Darius’ softly rounded clump of curls, as noted by Herzfeld. Probably the most debated and discussed issue regarding precedents, however, relates to the style of the Bisitun relief, especially the rendering of Darius’ figure and clothing, and the extent to which Greek arts of the late sixth century contributed to Achaemenid sculpture. Two features in particular have occupied the center of this discussion: the execution of the drapery of Darius’ robe and the profile shoulder (figure 5). It is important to note that the discussion has been complicated by issues surrounding the chronology of art production from Cyrus to Darius, the resulting stylistic development derived from this chronology, and considerations regarding the role of the Bisitun relief within the development of Achaemenid sculpture as a whole. The crux of the problem lies in the dating of the reliefs of Palace P at Pasargadae, which originally were considered part of Cyrus’ oeuvre, but now have been placed convincingly well into the reign of Darius, after the Bisitun relief and just prior to Persepolis (Stronach 1978, 95-99). This chronological sequence rests partly on the redating of the “Cyrus inscription” from Pasargardae to the reign of Darius (Stronach 1978, 100-101; 1997a, 48-49 with n. 11), but principally on an accepted evolutionary development of the rendering of pleats and folds in the drapery of the Achaemenid court robe. Attributing the Palace P reliefs to Darius and consequently assigning the introduction of the Achaemenid robe to his reign, places the Bisitun rendering at the very beginning of the sequence. Within this debate is a related issue, that of comparing Bisitun to Greek examples in contrast to comparing the Pasargadae Palace P reliefs or Persepolis reliefs to Greek

darius i and the heroes of akkad

271

examples. The drapery and plasticity evident at Bisitun is markedly different from that at Palace P and Persepolis in a way that does not seem due to differences in scale or location, as a number of scholars have remarked (Luschey 1968, 88; Farkas 1974, 32-33). Most notable is the lightness in rendering the drapery of the Achaemenid robe at Bisitun in such a way that the material stretches thinly across the back leg and buttocks, revealing the well defined musculature swelling beneath it, especially evident in the figure of Darius whose stance accentuates the tautness of his skirt. This is in contrast to the sharply edged geometric stylizations of the zig-zagging pleats and deeply cut precision of the symmetrically arranged folds seen in the later robes (compare to Farkas 1974, 84). Several scholars maintain that the drapery and true profile stance can only be explained through Greek influences, best illustrated on the reliefs of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi dated to around 525 BCE (figure 6). For Luschey (1968, 86-90) and Farkas (1974, 32-37, 83-115), this translates into the presence of Greek sculptors who executed the Bisitun relief. Boardman (2000, 110, 125), however, sees clear Greek precedence but little to convince him of actual Greek sculptors. This opinion echoes Nylander (1970, 138), who in his discussion of the Palace P reliefs from Pasargadae states that “the form and style of the draped figures are profoundly un-Greek,” and thus he considers it unlikely that any Greeks actually performed sculptural tasks. One can in fact make arguments against many of the purportedly Greek elements—the plasticity of the bodies and the use of a true profile shoulder—which find precedents in Near Eastern arts of the Late and Neo-Babylonian periods, such as the steles of Nabonidus (555-539 BCE) or the boundary stone of Marduk-apla-iddina II (c. 715 BCE; Nylander 1970, 128-32; Root 1979, 215-16; Börker-Klähn 1982, nos. 263, 264, 266; Calmeyer 1994, 137) (figure 4). However, there is no need to deny Greek models for the omega-shaped pleats and zig-zagging sleeve edges seen in the Achaemenid robes of the canonical imperial style established by Darius. Rather, I maintain that they are not the sole prototype for the particular rendering of drapery seen at Bisitun. In all these discussions, with the notable exception of Margaret Cool Root, the investigation of the style of drapery and plasticity has unfolded apart from any consideration of meaning. Yet, following Winter (1998, 56 with n. 3), style is both complementary to and generative

272

m.h. feldman

of messages provided by content. In addition, we must acknowledge the element of agency in the manipulation and organization of form, form being the materialization of content. We can turn to Root’s scholarship on Achaemenid art for an initial exploration into affect and agency at Bisitun. In her discussion, Root (1979, 191) argues that the idea of the relief guided the selection of images with an interest in creating “a series of calculated allusions to antique traditions.” With regard to the use of Assyrian elements, for example the divine winged disc, she claims that this was not due simply to the fortuitous survival of Assyrian sculptors or to any peculiarly tenacious nature of the Assyrian art tradition, but rather to Darius’ strategic attempt to imbue the monument with “associations with archetypal power” (Root 1979, 213). In a radical departure from traditional scholarship, she includes style among those aspects of conscious selection, noting that style can impose nuances of feeling or meaning, which in turn can be manipulated to produce desired effects (Root 1979, 214). In other words, Root is getting at the affective properties of style and their potential to serve as a vehicle of meaning, effectively restoring agency to the person of Darius. I might add that this scenario of strategic stylistic deployment does not exclude the possibility that Greek sculptural skills were tapped in order to achieve it, either directly through Ionian sculptors brought from western Anatolia or by Persian sculptors who were sent there in order to learn these techniques. And in fact, it fits well with the notion that Darius not only conveyed his message of conquest and incorporation through the depiction of elements from the various cultural units of his empire, but also through the actual process of production and labor similar to that detailed in the “Foundation Charter” that describes the building of Darius’ palace at Susa with manpower and materials from throughout the Persian realm.8 Yet if we see meaning in style, what exactly was the specific style of Darius’ figure at Bisitun trying to say? Though she focuses primarily on Assyria, Root’s argument (1979, 213-24) that specific traditions were meaningful to the Achaemenids encourages us to examine more 8 DSf exists in several versions in Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian and dates to early in the reign of Darius. For brief discussion with references, see Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, no. 190. At Persepolis, the reality of employing diverse peoples is confirmed by thousands of administrative texts from the reign of Darius (see Kuhrt 1995, 650 with references).

darius i and the heroes of akkad

273

closely the stylistic associations evident in the figure of Darius. Rather than seeking meaningful expression through connections with Greek style, I believe we can more profitably look back in time to the stele of Naram-Sin and the artistic style of the Akkadian period, which carried through Old, Middle and Neo-Assyrian traditions. Despite the long temporal span between the creation of the stele and the Bisitun relief, some scholars have commented on the stylistic, in addition to the motival and compositional, similarities between them.9 When we focus on the figure of the ruler in the two monuments, the visual connections are especially striking (figures 5 and 7). While their different attires locate Darius and Naram-Sin within their respective cultural and temporal spheres, the rendering of the drapery and the articulation of the back leg and buttocks display remarkable affinity. In the case of Naram-Sin, the definition of his legs appears so forcefully that the tightly wrapped skirt practically recedes from view. His garment is tied in a loose knot on his hip, from which radiate softly undulating folds analogous to those on either side of the lower part of Darius’ robe. The stele of Naram-Sin has been the subject of numerous studies, including several by Irene Winter (1996, 1999, 2002, 2004; also, Börker-Klähn 1982, no. 26; Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, no. 109). For the most part, these studies have examined the monument within what could be considered its original and intended context, that is, as a victory stele made under the patronage of Naram-Sin as the king of Akkad during the twenty-third century BCE. Situating Naram-Sin’s voluptuously sculpted body in the context of the language of legendary heroes such as Gilgamesh, the early ruler of Uruk, Winter (1996) argues that the style of sexuality and allure serves as a potent vehicle for identifying Naram-Sin with a heroic ideal. The adoption of this ideal at the time of Naram-Sin’s rule, and perhaps also its lack of success in the periods immediately following, may be partly ascribed to his unprecedented act of self-divinization, which is signaled on the stele both visually by the horned headdress and linguistically by the divine determinative before his name.

9 Most notably, Nylander (1970, 129), who vis-à-vis the Achaemenid sculptures writes, “. . . it is enough to consider the stele of Naramsin, which shows a fairly high relief with a careful modelling of volumes and even an interest in the relation between body and clothes.”

274

m.h. feldman

The physical realization of Naram-Sin’s body can also be understood as a culmination or an extreme example of a trend in Akkadian art towards concreteness and actuality. Throughout the period, both large- and small-scale arts display a strongly plastic style of rendering bodies, particularly musculature, in a very concrete and volumetric manner. This includes an interest in certain kinds of materiality, most notably, that of the drapery of textiles in monumental royal statuary, and an occasional depiction of the anatomy lying beneath. The depiction of materiality is in no way comprehensive, nor does it present a “realistic” or illusionistic representation of the whole. Yet, it can be exquisite in its translation of an exceptionally tactile aspect. On two statues of Manishtushu, one of diorite the other of limestone and both excavated at Susa, the conical surface of the royal robe is broken by soft folds of drapery falling diagonally across the front of the skirt (Moortgat 1969, pls. 141, 142).10 The statue of an unidentified man, perhaps a ruler, found at Assur depicts the rounded musculature of the arm and stylized shoulder blade through a tautly stretched wrap (Harper, et al. 1995, no. 22). This concrete physicality also occurs on the small scale, best seen in cylinder seals, such as one belonging to a scribe of Shar-kali-sharri, the successor of Naram-Sin (Moortgat 1969, pl. F: 1). What this actualization of physical forms means on a widespread level during the Akkadian period is somewhat difficult to assess and would require an extensive discussion not possible in this study. I believe, however, that this visual development may be linked to what Nissen (1988, 165-97) has described as the establishment of an ideology of centralized kingship that sought to emphasize the material world in order to downplay the power of local, city-affiliated temple institutions. By concretizing the body of the ruler, the Akkadian kings sought to establish their physical presence and dominance.11 But how then can I argue for a stylistic connection between two works of art made nearly two thousand years apart? Could Darius have had first-hand experience of Naram-Sin’s stele? And might it (or the Akkadian style in general) have especially resonated with him because of a long-standing collective memory of the Akkadian empire? I hope to provide a qualified yes to these questions by following the 10 The limestone statue retains its base, which is decorated with the naked, dead bodies of defeated peoples, suggesting that this sculpture should be considered, at least in part, a victory monument similar to Naram-Sin’s stele. 11 A suggestion also made by Michalowski (1993, 87).

darius i and the heroes of akkad

275

perambulations of Naram-Sin’s stele and by tracing the revival of the Akkadian tradition in later Mesopotamian history, in particular its distinctive style of physical concreteness, and the attendant associations with its legendary empire. We can track, to some extent, the geographic travels of the stele by means of the texts inscribed upon it and its archaeological context. The stele preserves a fragmentary three-column inscription of NaramSin’s, located to the left of the mountain peak.12 It reads, DINGIR

Naram-Sin, the powerful, [. . .about 10 lines missing or untranslatable. . .] in the mountains of the Lullubi assembled and a battle. . .[. . . about 15 lines missing or untranslatable. . .] dedicated to the deity . . . [about 10 lines missing]. (Gelb and Kienast 1990, 90-92; also Frayne 1993, 144)

On the empty space of the rising mountain peak, as if extending from the contorted form of a pleading enemy, flows an Elamite inscription, I (am) Shutruk-Nahhunte, son of Hallutush-Inshushinak, beloved servant of Inshushinak, king of Anshan (and) Susa, enlarger of my realm, protector of Elam, prince of Elam. At the command of Inshushinak, I struck down Sippar. I took the stele of Naram-Sin in my hand, and I carried it off and brought it back to Elam. I set it up in dedication to my lord, Inshushinak. (König 1965, 76, no. 22)

It seems likely that the stele was originally erected in the Ebabbar temple of the sun god Shamash at Sippar. The monument apparently remained on display at Sippar, probably in the temple courtyard, for over a thousand years until the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte carried it off around 1158 BCE.13 Reconstructing what happened to the stele once at Susa is somewhat problematic. Shutruk-Nahhunte’s inscription states that he set it up in the temple of the chief Elamite god, Inshushinak. How long it remained on view after that is less clear. Unfortunately, we know little about the final deposition of Naram-Sin’s stele at Susa, a situation that has led to general assumptions and inferences. The stele was discovered, 12 The inscription has suffered damage due to the flaking properties inherent in the stone (Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, 285-86). 13 We know from texts of the Old Babylonian period that Akkadian monuments and their inscriptions, accessible in temple courtyards, retained a powerful hold on later Mesopotamian imagination (Buccellati 1993, 58-71; Michalowski 1980, 236, 239).

276

m.h. feldman

along with several other Mesopotamian monuments, on the Acropole during the first two seasons of the French excavation led by Jacques de Morgan (1898 and 1899), when stratigraphic considerations were fairly rudimentary.14 Jéquier (1905, 9, 28-29), discussing the Code of Hammurabi, which was also excavated in this locale a few years later, claims the levels were too confused to be worth even attempting a stratigraphy. Another of the early archaeologists, Lampre, also acknowledged the notoriously imprecise method of recording (de Morgan 1900, 108). He notes that levels associated with Hellenistic remains ranged from one to four meters below the surface, while the Naram-Sin stele is recorded at three meters below the surface; thus, it might well have been excavated from a Hellenistic period level. Yet, it is Ashurbanipal’s sixth-century destruction of Susa, vividly portrayed in his annals, that is usually blamed for the seemingly haphazard and scattered manner in which the Mesopotamian monuments were discovered (Streck 1916, 51-61; Aynard 1957; Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, cat. no. 189; Kuhrt 1995, 500). In these accounts, the Assyrian king claims to have destroyed the ziggurat of Susa, smashing its shining copper horns, appropriating its divine statues and treasuries, and burning secret groves. Complete devastation is said to have ravaged the city and province. The hyperbole of Assyrian military annals is well known,15 and Elamite texts found at Susa, which date to the time following Ashurbanipal’s destruction and before the coming of Darius, attest to ongoing administrative and legal functions at the site (de Miroschedji 1985, 266; Potts 1999, 288-302, esp. 297). While Ashurbanipal’s annals make reference to “the treasures of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylonia that the ancient kings of Elam had looted and brought to Elam,” which appears to refer to those very monuments excavated on the Acropole, it seems unlikely that, had Ashurbanipal come upon such important monuments as the stele of Naram-Sin or the Code of Hammurabi, he would have left them to suffer his violent wrath, and indeed the text continues by 14 Mesopotamian monuments were found in trenches Morgan 7γ through 15γ (de Morgan 1900, 100-23, fig. 167; de Morgan 1905, 5-8; Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, 22, 24 n. 6, 123-27, fig. 41; also see plan in de Mecquenem 1911a; reprinted in de Mecquenem 1911b). 15 See, for example, Sennacherib’s recounting of the purportedly total destruction of Babylon, though we know that soon thereafter, Sennacherib’s successor, Esarhaddon, began renovations in the city, and the Babylonian Chronicle states simply that the city was captured (Kuhrt 1995, 585).

darius i and the heroes of akkad

277

recounting that he carried the treasures back to Assyria (Streck 1916, 51-52; Luckenbill 1927, 309). Textual sources tell of other violence at Susa in the centuries after Shutruk-Nahhunte brought the stele to the site, including the celebrated triumph of Nebuchadnezzar I (1125-1104 BCE) and the upheavals of the early Hellenistic period (Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, 162; Potts 1999, 252-55). Lampre reports that a Kassite period boundary stone, found in the same area as the stele, had been effaced by Hellenistic period use of the stone to polish weapons or tools, and fragments of such boundary stones turned up as fill in Hellenistic constructions (de Morgan 1900, 108). In short, given the poor state of the early excavations at Susa, the date and cause of the final deposition of Naram-Sin’s stele must remain an open question. A recently published tablet from an archive at Sippar, however, may provide circumstantial evidence supporting the continued accessibility of Naram-Sin’s stele into the Achaemenid period. This tablet contains a copy of the prologue of the Code of Hammurabi and specifically notes that the copy was according to the ancient stele (narû) erected in Susa (Fadhil 1998; Charpin 2003). The Sippar archive contains tablets dating as late as the reign of Cambyses, and Charpin suggests that the Hammurabi stele copy, which is undated, should be placed within a chronological framework of the Achaemenid period (Frame 1984; al Jadir 1998; Charpin 2003). Given the proximity of Hammurabi’s stele to that of Naram-Sin’s, it seems quite possible that both of these monuments remained on view at Susa in the period immediately prior to Darius’ accession, if not later. The remains of the temple of Inshushinak lay to the east of the Mesopotamian finds, in the southeastern part of the Acropole, and evidence exists for the reuse of its bricks during the Achaemenid period, suggesting that the building was also preserved in some form during the time of Darius (Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, 126; Caubet 2003, 330). In this regard, it is worth remembering that Susa played an important role early in Darius’ creation of an imperial identity, perhaps in part because of its association with Elam. Darius built a large palace there, the architectural form of which signals his creative adoption of the Mesopotamian past as well as the invention of a new Achaemenid expression (Perrot 1981, 81; Boucharlat 1997, 57 with n. 1; 2001, 113-23). Yet, even if Darius could have seen Naram-Sin’s stele (presumably along with Hammurabi’s), would it (and its style) have resonated with

278

m.h. feldman

him? Certainly within Mesopotamia the Akkadian period provided a potent mytho-historical past based on the expansionist exploits of its great rulers, in particular Sargon of Akkad (c. 2330 BCE). Central for the subsequent historical imagining of Akkad is the “firstness” of the Akkadian imperial accomplishment, in particular the unification of Sumer and Akkad and the establishment of charismatic kingship (Michalowski 1980, 70; Westenholz 1985, 1997, 1-3).16 While the stele of Naram-Sin is the best preserved and most forceful rendering of the motif of a victor stepping upon a prone enemy, other examples exist from the Akkadian period. A fragmentary stele from Tello carved on both sides in several registers, probably to be attributed to the reign of Naram-Sin’s predecessor Rimush, depicts several vignettes of military combat (Foster 1985). In contrast to the Naram-Sin stele, the prone enemies are still alive, with knees bent and arms raised in various positions of pleading, a variation seen at Bisitun in the raised right leg of the pleading Gaumata, whose foot protrudes from behind Darius. Such variations indicate that a chance encounter with Naram-Sin’s stele on the part of Darius cannot fully account for the similarities found in the Bisitun relief. Indeed, they suggest instead that Darius was actively drawing upon a long-standing tradition in which the Akkadian rulers were associated with imperial conquest itself. This tradition included Naram-Sin’s stele, but significantly, also embraced a wider field of representational and stylistic meaning. We have already seen how the visual potency of victory created by the Akkadians found resonance among the small tribal kingdoms of the Zagros at the end of the third and beginning of the second millennium. Mesopotamian works also continued to quote both the motif and, importantly, the style of the Akkadian conquest imagery. These include the fragmentary “Mardin” stele, which probably dates to the reign of Shamshi-Adad I in the early part of the second millennium and depicts on one side an axe-wielding figure stepping upon a collapsing man (Orthmann 1975, 301, no. 182). A similar scene on a fragmentary fourteenth-century black marble lid from Assur employs a quite forceful rendering of sculptural physicality reminiscent of the bodies on Naram-Sin’s stele (Moortgat 1969, pl. 244). Both of these examples derive from the northern, Assyrian tradition, 16

In later traditions, Sargon is the glorified ruler, while Naram-Sin is seen as the cause of the empire’s demise.

darius i and the heroes of akkad

279

which early on established mytho-historical links to the Akkadian dynasty. For example, we know that Shamshi-Adad, who controlled a large territorial state in northern Mesopotamia and Syria at the end of the nineteenth century BCE, derived his own legitimation, at least in part, from the memory of Akkad (Michalowski 1980, 86).17 Claiming a direct line of kingship from Akkad, Shamshi-Adad rebuilt a temple to Ishtar at Nineveh that had been erected originally by the Akkadian ruler Manishtushu. Several of the kings of Assyria took the names of Sargon and NaramSin, beginning in the Old Assyrian period, but the best known is Sargon II of the Neo-Assyrian period (721-705 BCE) (Walker 1995, 231). Particularly relevant for this study is Sargon II’s implementation in his palace decoration at Khorsabad of both thematic and stylistic quotations of the Akkadian period (Stronach 1997, 310).18 The most visible of these are two colossal heroic figures grappling with diminutive lions. The two sculptures, which stood along the courtyard façade of the throneroom, are executed in such high relief that they appear almost fully three-dimensional. Both human and lion forms exhibit extreme physicality in the plastic modeling of their musculature and the projecting planes of their various body parts. The play between the Neo-Assyrian and Akkadian periods is further invoked in the differing hairstyles of the two heroes; one wears the long spiral curls of the nude belted hero well known from Akkadian glyptic, the other sports the standard Assyrian court fashion. A similar convergence of imperial ideology and an artistic style of physicality arose during the Middle Assyrian period, seen in the new annalistic glorification of territorial expansion and the exquisite glyptic of the period often described by scholars as “astonishingly vital” in its sculptural modeling. Frankfort goes so far as to say, “the affinities of these [Middle Assyrian] seals with those of the Akkadian Period are unmistakable, but this may well be due to a similar outlook rather than to tradition” (Frankfort 1996, 142). The fascination with the early Akkadian rulers also appears in Babylonia. Offerings to a statue of Sargon were instituted 17 See also Michalowski’s discussion (1980, 87) of offerings to Sargon and NaramSin instituted at Mari under Shamshi-Adad’s rule. 18 This section also draws upon work completed in a seminar and later an unpublished 2002 senior honors thesis on Sargon II’s use of the Akkadian past by Shane Black at the University of California, Berkeley.

280

m.h. feldman

at the Ebabbar in Sippar during Neo-Babylonian times and continued even into the early Achaemenid period.19 In addition, it seems that Elamite kings sought to legitimize their rule by drawing upon the traditions of Mesopotamia. The Middle Elamite Shutrukid dynasty achieved this through the acquisition and display of significant royal monuments like Naram-Sin’s stele (Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, 122). That the name of Naram-Sin held power even in twelfth-century Elam is evident in its inclusion in ShutrukNahhunte’s inscription and in the rededication of the monument to the chief Elamite god. The appeal of the Mesopotamian royal tradition is also apparent in the reworking of an appropriated Babylonian stele, in which the recarved figure of an Elamite king replaces the preexisting Mesopotamian figure receiving the rod and ring of kingship from a seated deity (Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, 122 n. 4, cat. no. 117). Elizabeth Carter suggests the responsible Elamite king was Shutruk-Nahhunte I, while Prudence Harper argues for a later date in the eighth century (Harper, Aruz, and Tallon 1992, 122 n. 4, 182). Should the later date be accepted, then an argument can be made for the continuation of both interaction by and resonance for the Neo-Elamites with Mesopotamian royal imagery. This Elamite connection with Mesopotamia might have served as a critical bridge for the Achaemenids, since it is now becoming clearer that, however we define the early Achaemenid state, its identity drew in some profound way on Elamite traditions (Alvarez-Mon 2006). A Mesopotamian presence at Susa itself during the Akkadian period is evident in Old Akkadian tablets with Akkadian personal names found at the site, linking the city, to which nearly a thousand years later the stele of Naram-Sin would be taken, directly with the great empire (Michalowski 1993, 75-76). Regardless of whether Darius might have had access at Susa to the stele of Naram-Sin, which remains at least a strong possibility, there is indirect evidence through the appropriation of earlier Mesopotamian imperial arts and architecture for a similar incorporation of stylistic associations that ultimately goes back to the concrete materiality of the Akkadian kings. That the physicality of the body, especially the back leg and buttocks, straining through the fabric of the robe is a stylistic feature found in Achaemenid monumental art 19

CT 55: 469; CT 56: 442, 451; CT 57: 59, 117, 242, 256, 307, 312, 617 (Frame 1984, 750-51; Joannès 1992, 162; Bongenaar 1997, 209, 230 with n. 205).

darius i and the heroes of akkad

281

only at Bisitun may be due to the uniqueness of Bisitun as the only “victory monument” in the tradition of Naram-Sin’s stele. Given the potency of the Akkadian rulers’ heroic myth in the historical imagination of later Mesopotamia and Elam and the possibility of Naram-Sin’s stele being accessible to Darius while at Susa, we might rethink the stylistic aspects of the Bisitun relief in light of Winter’s argument for the affective properties of style. Moreover, given the care with which Darius crafted his imperial image for political and propagandistic purposes, we need to ask what purpose would be served (what affective associations sought) by the insertion of “Greek” stylistic elements into a highly charged statement of imperial control. Since the elements traditionally assigned to Greek influences (fluid drapery revealing anatomy underneath and true profile shoulders) have precedents in the arts of Mesopotamia, it seems unnecessary to look to Greece or western Anatolia, aside from the possible procurement of sculptors with the technical knowledge to execute such traits. If style can generate affect—and we know how strategic Darius was in the manipulation of his art and architecture for affective purposes—it seems that the style of the Bisitun relief, probably the most critical public monument of Darius’ early years, must also have held significance and would not have been left to the vagaries of captive Greek artists surreptitiously inserting their “native experience and imagination” (Boardman 2000, 110). With regard to possible Greek or Greek-trained artists working in Persia, perhaps what we have is a happy confluence of an ancient Mesopotamian style, which appealed to Darius because of its imperial references, with the ability to execute such a style drawn from a distant part of the empire, namely western Anatolia. Acknowledging style as an important ingredient in meaning, we should accept that these elements would have been consciously deployed as part of Darius’ creation of an imperial image. And what would be more to the point than referencing the first great empire of the Near East, that of Akkad, through both content and style, while reconstituting both to be uniquely Achaemenid? Of course, the stylistic similarities between the body of Darius and the body of Naram-Sin could be only a coincidence, though a striking one, as would also be the fact that the stele of Naram-Sin lay at Susa, a critical locale for Darius in the early years of his reign. Yet, given the more blatant references to the Assyrian imperial tradition in hair style, beard and winged disc, it seems hardly surprising that the style of rendering

282

m.h. feldman

the body and clothing of the ruler would also tap into an older and prestigious tradition of conquest and expansion, befitting the overall subject of the Bisitun relief. Indeed, one might understand the Bisitun relief as providing both spatial and temporal resonance for Darius. Spatially, it drew upon the wide diversity of the conquered territories that were incorporated into his empire, a strategy used with yet more finesse at Persepolis. Temporally, the relief plumbed the great Mesopotamian tradition of empire from Neo-Babylonian times, through Assyria, back to the legendary and alluring heroes of Akkad. References Aynard, J.-M. 1957. Le prisme du Louvre AO 19939. Paris. Alvarez-Mon, Javier. 2006. The Arjan Tomb: At the Crossroads of the Elamite and the Persian Empires. Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley. Boardman, John. 2000. Persia and the West: An Archaeological Investigation of the Genesis of Achaemenid Art. London: Thames and Hudson. Bongenaar, A. C. V. M. 1997. The Neo-Babylonian Ebabbar Temple at Sippar: Its Administration and its Prosopography. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut. Börker-Klähn, Jutta. 1982. Altvorderasiatische Bildstelen und vergleichbare Felsreliefs. Baghdader Forschungen 4. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. Boucharlat, Rémy. 1997. Susa under Achaemenid Rule. In Mesopotamia and Iran in the Persian Period: Conquest and Imperialism, 539-331 BC, Proceedings of a Seminar in Memory of Vladamir G. Lukonin, ed., J. Curtis, 54-67. London: British Museum Press. ———. 2001. The Palace and the Royal Achaemenid City: Two Case Studies—Pasargadae and Susa. In The Royal Palace Institution in the First Millennium BC: Regional Development and Cultural Interchange between East and West, ed. I. Nielsen, 113-123. Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens 4. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Buccellati, Giorgio. 1993. Through a Tablet Darkly: A Reconstruction of Old Akkadian Monuments Described in Old Babylonian Copies. In The Tablet and the Scroll: Near Eastern Studies in Honor of William W. Hallo, ed. M. E. Cohen, D. C. Snell, and D. B. Weisberg, 58-71. Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press. Calmeyer, Peter. 1994. Babylonische und assyrische Elemente in der achaimenidischen Kunst. In Achaemenid History VIII, Continuity and Change, ed. H. Sancisi-Weerdunburg, A. Kuhrt, and M. C. Root, 131-147. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. Caubet, Annie. 2003. Le temple d’Inshushinak de Suse et l’architecture monumentale en ‘faience.’ In Culture through Objects: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of P. R. S. Moorey, ed. T. Potts, M. Roaf, and D. Stein, 325-332. Oxford: Griffith Institute.

darius i and the heroes of akkad

283

Charpin, D. 2003. Les soldats d’Assurbanipal ont-ils détruit le Code de Hammu-rabi lors du sac de Suse? NABU: 87-88. Collon, Dominique. 2001. Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum, Cylinder Seals V, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Periods. London: The British Museum Press. Curtis, John. 2005. Greek Influence on Achaemenid Art and Architecture. In The Greeks in the East, ed. A. Villing, 115-123. The British Museum Research Publication Number 157. London: The British Museum. Fadhil, Abdulillah. 1998. Der Prolog des Codex Hammurapi in einer Abschrift aus Sippar. In XXXIVème Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, 6-10/VII/1987, Istanbul, 717-729. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi. Farkas, Ann. 1974. Achaemenid Sculpture. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten. Foster, Benjamin R. 1985. The Sargonic Victory Stele from Telloh. Iraq 47: 15-30. Frame, Grant. 1984. Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid Economic Texts from the Sippar Collection of the British Museum. JAOS 104: 745-752. Frankfort, Henri. 1946. Achaemenian Sculpture. AJA 50: 6-14. ———. 1996. The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient. 5th rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Frayne, Douglas R. 1993. Sargonic and Gutian Periods (2334-2113 BC). RIMA, Early Periods, vol. 2. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Gelb, I. J. and B. Kienast. 1990. Die altakkadischen Königinscriften des Dritten Jahrtausends v. Chr. Freiburger Altorientalische Studien 7. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Greenfield, Jonas C. and Bezalel Porten. 1982. The Bisitun Inscription of Darius the Great: Aramaic Version. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, pt. 1, vol. 5, Texts I. London: Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum. Harper, Prudence O., Joan Aruz, and Francoise Tallon, eds. 1992. The Royal City of Susa: Ancient Near Eastern Treasures in the Louvre. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Harper, Prudence O., Evelyn Klengel-Brandt, Joan Aruz, and Kim Benzel, eds. 1995. Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Ashur on the Tigris, Antiquities in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Herzfeld, Ernst. 1920. Am Tor von Asien: Felsdenkmale aus Irans Heldenzeit. Berlin: D. Reimer. Hrouda, B. 1976. Sarpol-i Zohab. Iranische Denkmäler 7/II/C. Berlin: D. Reimer. Hyuse, Philip, 1999. Some Further Thoughts on the Bisitun Monument and the Genesis of the Old Persian Cuneiform Script. Bulletin of the Asia Institute n.s. 13: 45-66. al Jadir, Walid. 1998. Decouverte d’une bibliotheque dans le temple de la ville de Sippar (Abu Habbah). In XXXIVème Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, 6-10/VII/1987, Istanbul, 707-715. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi.

284

m.h. feldman

Jéquier, G. 1905. Fouilles de Suse, 1899-1900, 1900-1901, 1901-1902. In Délégation en Perse 7, recherches archéologiques 2, M. J. de Morgan, 9-41. Paris: E. Leroux. Joannès, Francis. 1992. Les temples de Sippar et leur trésors a l’époque néo-babylonienne. RA 86: 159-183. Kent, Roland G. 1953. Old Persian Grammar, Texts, Lexicon. 2nd rev. ed. New Haven: American Oriental Society. König, Friedrich Wilhelm. 1965. Die elamischen Königinschriften. AfO supplement 16. Graz: E. Weidner. Kuhrt, Amelie. 1995. The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330. Vol. 2. London and New York: Routledge. Luckenbill, Daniel David. 1927. Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia. Vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Luschey, Heinz. 1968. Studien zu dem Darius-Relief von Bisitun. AMIran n.s. 1: 63-94. de Mecquenem, R. 1911a. Constructions élamites du tell de l’acropole de Suse. In Délégation en Perse 12, recherches archéologiques 4, J. de Morgan, 65-78. Paris: E. Leroux. ———. 1911b. Vestiges de constructions élamites. Receuil de travaux relatifs a la philologie et a l’archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes 33: 38-55. Michalowski, Piotr. 1980. New Sources Concerning the Reign of Naram-Sin. JCS 32: 233-245. ———. 1993. Memory and Deed: The Historiography of the Political Expansion of the Akkad State. In Akkad, The First World Empire: Structure, Ideology, Traditions, ed. Mario Liverani, 69-90. Padua: Sargon srl. de Miroschedji, Pierre. 1985. La fin du royaume d’Ansan et de Suse et la naissance de l’empire perse. ZA 75: 265-306. Moortgat, Anton. 1969. The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia. London: Phaidon. de Morgan, Jacques. 1900. Mémoires de la délégation en Perse, vol. I, recherches archéologiques 1, fouilles a Suse en 1897-1898 et 1898-1899. Paris: E. Leroux. ———. 1905. Délégation en Perse 7, recherches archéologiques 2. Paris: E. Leroux. Nissen, Hans J. 1988. The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000-2000 B.C. Translated by Elizabeth Lutzeier, with Kenneth J. Northcott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nylander, Carl. 1970. Ionians in Pasargadae: Studies in Old Persian Architecture. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. Orthmann, Winfried. 1975. Der alte Orient. Propyläen Kunstgeschichte 14. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag. Perrot, Jean. 1981. L’architecture militaire et palatiale des Achéménides à Suse. In 150 Jahre Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 1829-1979, Festveranstaltungen und Internationales Kolloquium 17-22 April 1979 in Berlin, 79-94. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern.

darius i and the heroes of akkad

285

Potts, D.T. 1999. The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Richter, Gisela. 1946. Greeks in Persia. AJA 50: 15-30. Root, Margaret Cool. 1979. The King and Kingship in Achaemenid Art: Essays on the Creation of an Iconography of Empire. Acta Iranica 19. Leiden: Brill. Sarre, Friedrich and Ernst Herzfeld. 1910. Iranische Felsreliefs. Berlin: E. Wasmuth. Schmitt, Rüdiger. 1991. The Bisitun Inscriptions of Darius the Great: Old Persian Text. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, pt. I, vol. I, Texts I. London: Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum. Seidl, Ursula. 1976. Ein Relief Dareios’ I. in Babylon. AMIran n.s. 9: 125-130. ———. 1999a. Ein Monument Darius’ I. aus Babylon. ZA 89: 101-114. ———. 1999b. Eine Triumphstele Darius’ I. aus Babylon. In Babylon: Focus mesopotamischer Geschichte, wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne, Internationales Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, 24.-26. Marz 1998 in Berlin, ed. Johannes Renger. Vol. 2: 297-306. Saarbrücken: Saarbrücker, Drukerei und Verlag. Streck, Maximilian. 1916. Assurbanipal und die letzten assyrischen Könige bis zum Untergange Niniveh’s. Vol. 2. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs. Stronach, David. 1978. Pasargadae: Report on the Excavations conducted by the British Institute of Persian Studies from 1961 to 1963. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. 1997a. Anshan and Parsa: Early Achaemenid History, Art and Architecture on the Iranian Plateau. In Mesopotamia and Iran in the Persian Period: Conquest and Imperialism, 539-331 BC, Proceedings of a Seminar in Memory of Vladamir G. Lukonin, ed. J. Curtis, 35-53. London: British Museum Press. ———. 1997b. Notes on the Fall of Nineveh. In Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7-11, 1995, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 307-324. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Stronach, David and Antigoni Zournatzi. 1997. Bisitun. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, ed. Eric Meyer, 330-331. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. B. F. 1995. Mesopotamian Chronology. In Ancient Near Eastern Art, D. Collon, 230-238. Berkeley: University of California Press. Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. 1985. Heroes of Akkad. JAOS 103: 327-336. ———. 1997. Legends of the Kings of Akkade, The Texts. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Winter, Irene J. 1996. Sex, Rhetoric, and the Public Monument: The Alluring Body of Naram-Sin of Agade. In Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, ed. N. B. Kampen, 11-26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

286

m.h. feldman

———. 1998. The Affective Properties of Styles: An Inquiry into Analytical Process and the Inscription of Meaning in Art History. In Picturing Science, Producing Art, ed. C. A. Jones and P. Galison, 55-77. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 1999. Tree(s) on the Mountain: Landscape and Territory on the Victory Stele of Naram-Sin of Agade. In Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East, Papers Presented to the XLIV Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Venezia, 7-11 July 1997, ed. S. de Martino, F. M. Fales, G. B. Lanfranchi, and L. Milano, pt. 1: 1-10. Padua: Sargon srl. ———. 2002. How Tall was Naram-Sin’s Victory Stele? Speculation on the Broken Bottom. In Leaving No Stones Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen, ed. E. Ehrenberg, 301-311. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. ———. 2004. The Conquest of Space in Time: Three Suns on the Victory Stele of Naram-Sîn. In Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen, ed. J. G. Dercksen, 607-628. Leuven: Peeters.

Figure 1. Bisitun Relief (after H. Luschey 1968, pl. 26; courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute)

darius i and the heroes of akkad 287

288

m.h. feldman

Figure 2. Drawing of Sar-i Pul relief of Annubanini (after Potts 1999, fig. 9.3; courtesy of D. T. Potts)

darius i and the heroes of akkad

289

Figure 3. Stele of Naram-Sin, Musée du Louvre, Paris (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Art Resource, NY)

290

m.h. feldman

Figure 4. Boundary stone of Marduk-apla-iddina II, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Bildarchiv Presussischer Kulturbesitz/ Art Resource, NY)

darius i and the heroes of akkad

291

Figure 5. Bisitun Relief, detail of Darius (after H. Luschey 1968, pl. 28; courtesy of the German Archaeological Institute)

292

m.h. feldman

Figure 6. Siphnian Treasury, detail of Apollo and Artemis from the Gigantomachy, Archaeological Museum, Delphi (Nimatallah/ Art Resource, NY)

darius i and the heroes of akkad

293

Figure 7. Stele of Naram-Sin, detail of Naram-Sin, Musée du Louvre, Paris (Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Art Resource, NY)

294

m.-a. ata±

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

295

THE MELAMMU AS DIVINE EPIPHANY AND USURPED ENTITY Mehmet-Ali Ataç* Eléna Cassin’s La splendeur divine: Introduction à l’étude de la mentalité mésopotamienne (1968) is one of Irene Winter’s favorite essays on ancient Mesopotamian thought. As a student of ancient Mesopotamian art, I came to know this work through her exhortations. Winter’s fondness for this book is particularly apparent in her own work on Mesopotamian aesthetics, where radiance is often seen among the principal aesthetic qualities of artistic, architectural, and sacral phenomena (Winter 1994, 124; 1995, 2573). As a tribute to Winter’s teaching, I shall discuss in this essay the notion of divine radiance, Sumerian me-lám, Akkadian melammu, as it relates to aspects of ancient Mesopotamian cosmology and metaphysics. These aspects of radiance are meant to expand on some of the points already put forward in Cassin’s essay and revisited in Winter’s studies. While my essay is inspired by Cassin’s observations and Winter’s emphasis on her work, it is also an attempt to focus more closely on the cosmology and mysticism of divine radiance and epiphany in ancient Mesopotamian religion, which have not been fully dealt with so far in Assyriological scholarship. The melammu is essentially a dazzling radiance of a fearful sort associated with certain divine beings and objects. In deities, it manifests itself as an “aureole or nimbus which surrounds the divinity.” 1 This radiance extends to “everything endowed with divine power or sanctified by divine presence: the holy weapons and symbols of the gods * I would like to thank Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Andrew Cohen, Alice Donohue, Benjamin Studevent-Hickman, and Pamela Webb for valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay. 1 A. L. Oppenheim (1943, 31) refers to the word melammu as “an interesting and difficult” term, defining it basically as “a characteristic attribute of the gods consisting in a dazzling aureole or nimbus which surrounds the divinity” depicted in art for the first time in the Neo-Assyrian period. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (s.v. melammu) defines the term on the most basic level as “radiance, supernatural awe-inspiring sheen (inherent in things divine and royal).”

296

m.-a. ata±

as well as their chapels and temples have all such a melammu” (Oppenheim 1943, 31). The melammu can also be thought of as an almost independent magical object, an accessory that imparts tremendous cosmic power to its possessor (Cassin 1968, 64). It can sometimes be manipulated by the principal divinities who may bestow it on someone or something, and/or cause its loss or withdrawal (Oppenheim 1943, 31). Associated with melammu is another concept, puluÉtu, which can be literally translated as “fear” or “terror,” but should again be understood as a manifestation of superhuman power (Cassin 1968, 4; Oppenheim 1943, 31). In fact, neither melammu nor puluÉtu should be taken in the malevolent sense. In this essay, I shall argue that in ancient Mesopotamian literature, there are certain instances in which the one exposed to the sight of such an awe-inspiring radiance or dazzling manifestation of divine power undergoes a challenging religious experience that results in a transformation of ordinary human faculties. I shall further argue that the mythical instances that entail one divine agent’s usurping another’s melammu all allude in one form or another to shifts in cosmic power structure. While developing my arguments, in order to enrich the domain of inquiry, I shall appeal to parallels from the mythology and literature of ancient Greece, whose intellectual and historical connection to the Near East has long been acknowledged (West 1971, 1997; Burkert 1992, 2004; Penglase 1994; Dalley 1998; Lanfranchi 2000). I shall hence use these Greek parallels in order to enhance my attempt to probe the semantics of certain episodes from ancient Mesopotamian literature and myths relevant to the phenomenon of the melammu.

The Melammu as Divine Epiphany In Tablet IX of the Standard Babylonian Version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh’s encounter with the Scorpion Beings at the twin mountains Mashu, the entrance to the netherworld and the beginning of the sun god’s nocturnal path, perhaps marks the beginning of a religious experience of the kind introduced above, though expressed in the poem in rather cryptic terms. The Scorpion Beings’ cynical and questioning attitude toward Gilgamesh sets a seemingly negative tone in this particular episode of the Epic, creating the impression that they are actually hostile to the hero. In fact, the formulaic portrayal

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

297

of these beings in the poem does nothing but cast an unsympathetic shadow on them: There were scorpion-men guarding its gate, whose terror (puluÉtu) was dread, whose glance was death, whose radiance (melammu) was fearful, overwhelming the mountains— at sunrise and sunset they guarded the sun. (IX 42-45; George 1999, 71)

One can take all of this seemingly negative rhetoric, however, as a veneer for a deeper level of reading in which the Scorpion Beings act as examiners who receive the adept at the ends of the earth, at the gateway to the path that ultimately discloses to him the “secrets of the gods.”2 The fact that the Scorpion Beings recognize Gilgamesh as “flesh of the Gods” who is one-third human and two-thirds divine is an indication not only that Gilgamesh is of a nature capable of enduring this challenging ordeal (Cassin 1968, 60), but also that the Scorpion Beings themselves are after all special divine beings who have the capacity to recognize the adept and guide him on the path. As Cassin (1968, 60) also observes, it is on account of Gilgamesh’s two-thirds divine nature 2 “Said Uta-napishti to him, to Gilgamesh:/ ‘Let me disclose, O Gilgamesh, a matter most secret,/ to you I will tell a mystery of gods” (XI 8-10; George 1999, 88). The same examining attitude can also be seen in the disposition of the “barmaid” Siduri toward Gilgamesh after his nocturnal journey as described in X 13-16 (George 1999, 76): “For sure this man is a hunter of wild bulls,/ but where does he come from, making straight for my gate?/ Thus the tavern-keeper saw him, and barred the gate,/ barred her gate and went up to the roof.” This initial hostile and unadmitting attitude of Siduri later changes, and the barmaid then disburses advice to Gilgamesh on his quest to find Utnapishtim: “Gilgamesh, there is Ur-shanabi, the boatman of Uta-napishti,/ and the Stone Ones are with him,. . ./ Go then, let him see your face!/ If [it may be] done, go across with him,/ if it may not be done, turn around and go back!” (X 88-91; George 1999, 79). Like the Scorpion Beings, Siduri can also be considered as one of the agents on the path of “examination,” initially barring the gate of admission into a restricted realm that ultimately leads to the Mysteries, but later on acting as an advisor on that path. In this regard, just as there are gates and compartments in both the Egyptian and Mesopotamian netherworlds, the gate that Siduri initially locks to bar Gilgamesh’s passing can be seen as marking a new compartment or phase in Gilgamesh’s journey in the greater netherworld that starts with Mount Mashu. On the Epic as an account of “initiation,” see also Prévot 1986. On an ancient Greek visual configuration that implies a similar relation between the entrance to the netherworld, where “Day and Night share the same house, but are never there at the same time, since one leaves as the other returns, to wait indoors her turn to circle the earth,” and the “initiate,” in this case Heracles, about to descend into the netherworld to become “immortal,” see Pinney and Ridgway 1981, 141-144.

298

m.-a. ata±

that he is able to approach the Scorpion Beings notwithstanding the fearful aura they emanate: Gilgamesh saw them, in fear (puluÉtu) and dread he covered his face, then he collected his wits, and drew nearer their presence. The scorpion-man called to his mate: “He who has come to us, flesh of the gods is his body.” The scorpion-man’s mate answered him “Two-thirds of him is god, and one third human.” (IX 46-52; George 1999, 71)

One can compare this episode with one in the Iliad in which Achilles is the only one who can withstand the awesome elaborateness of his new shield commissioned by his mother, the goddess Thetis, from Hephaistos, the ancient Greek god of fire and the forge: The goddess spoke so, and set down the armor on the ground before Achilleus, and all its elaboration clashed loudly. Trembling took hold of the Myrmidons. None had the courage to look straight at it. They were afraid of it. Only Achilleus looked, and as he looked the anger came harder upon him and his eyes glittered terribly under his lids, like sunflare. (XIX 12-17; Lattimore 1961, 392)3

Indeed, one could think that Gilgamesh’s encounter with the Scorpion Beings is already an initial state of epiphany. The hero has already come a long way by reaching the entrance to the netherworld, and the Scorpion Beings themselves allude to the fact that his having made it to their presence is already a remarkable accomplishment: The scorpion-man called out, saying a word [to King Gilgamesh,] flesh of the gods: “[How did you come here,] such a far road? [How did you get here,] to be in my presence?

3 The extraordinarily radiant nature of the armor of Achilles is clear from passages that describe its production by Hephaistos: “First of all he forged a shield that was huge and heavy,/ elaborating it about and threw around it a shining/ triple rim that glittered, and the shield strap was cast of silver” (XVIII 478-480; Lattimore 1961, 388; and XVIII 616, where the armor is referred to as shining [marmaironta]). A comparable description of a weapon can also be found in a bilingual incantation from the mÊs pî series, 4R 1818* (K 4624), no. 3., 29ff, tentatively translated by Kinnier Wilson (1979, 50-51): “(This is the story of) the Weapon which was cast(?) out/ of brilliant light, suited only for (divine) kingship,/ of the lofty Mace worthy only for a King’s hand,/ Which was so surrounded by fiery radiance that no one could come near it.”

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

299

[How did you cross the seas,] whose passage is perilous?” (IX 52-59, George 1999: 71-72)

Even though the Standard Babylonian text is fragmentary at this point, we do gather that not only do the Scorpion Beings allow Gilgamesh to pass, but they also wish him well on his journey. Clearly, their initial cynical and examining attitude has given way to a more sympathetic and supportive one, perhaps owing to the candidate’s now proven qualifications through his withstanding the fearful radiance of these solar creatures:4 “Go, Gilgamesh!......... May the mountains of Mashu [allow you to pass!] “[May] the mountains and hills [watch over your going!] Let [them help you] in safety [to continue your journey!] [May] the gate of the mountains [open before you!]” Gilgamesh [heard these words,] what [the scorpion-man] told him [he took to heart,] he [took] the path of the Sun God. . . (IX 131-138; George 1999, 73)

An even more powerful instance of divine epiphany in ancient Mesopotamian literature can be found in the Neo-Assyrian poem known as the Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince (VAT 10057; Livingstone 1989, 68-76). It describes the night vision of one Kumma, who may be Ashurbanipal, though this is not certain (Livingstone 1989, xxviii).5 In the vision, the prince comes face to face with the netherworld god Nergal, an episode that should be understood as a unique instance of divine epiphany in Neo-Assyrian literature.6 It is again

4 The solar nature of the Scorpion Beings is also noted by Wiggermann (1992, 148149), who indicates that “the scorpion(-man) is in origin a simple mythological scorpion fulfilling, like the Egyptian Éprr, ‘beetle,’ a cosmic task (watching over the rising and setting of the sun) with its pincers.” 5 For a more focused analysis of this text, see Ataç 2004, which has certain overlaps in content and approach with the present essay. The text is therefore dealt with here rather synoptically in order to avoid repeating the analyses carried out in the other publication. 6 Epopteia, seeing, was the highest level of initiation in the ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries as well (Foley 1994, 39). “The term visio beatifica (beatific vision) was coined to designate the supreme goal (telos), of Christian existence. In medieval usage it signifies the immediate sight of God, videre Deum; those who obtain this vision are transported into a state of eternal beatitude. In this case the word vision, visio, must be taken as a real seeing, not as a subjective illusion” (Kerényi 1991, 95).

300

m.-a. ata±

noteworthy that this epiphany is of a fearful sort and takes place in the netherworld: When I raised my eyes, (I saw) the valiant Nergal seated on a regal throne, apparelled with the royal tiara; with both hands he grasped two grim maces, each with two . . . heads.” ................... I looked at him and my bones shivered! His grimly luminescent splendor (melammuàu ezzuti) overwhelmed me, I kissed the feet of his great divinity and knelt down. (Livingstone 1989, 72)

In fact, the entire poem is almost a celebration of the netherworld and its monarchy, as after the experience is over and the prince survives the ordeal, he goes among Assyrian people praising the “mighty deeds” of the Lord of the netherworld Nergal and his queen, Ereshkigal: “He cried ‘Why have you decreed this for me?’ and in his pain he praised before the peoples of Assyria the mighty deeds of Nergal and Ereàkigal, who had come to the aid of the prince” (Livingstone 1989, 76). The idea of a dark and fearful stage that precedes or accompanies mystical illumination is not at all foreign to some other, much later, religious traditions either. In fact, the latter might even be thought to shed light on our understanding of ancient texts that involve divine manifestation and epiphany such as those dealt with here. For example, the Islamicist Henry Corbin (1978, 100), writing on Iranian Sufism and its sources, talks about a “black light” which constitutes the highest spiritual stage and marks the most perilous step in the enlightenment process, “the stage immediately preceding the ultimate theophany.” This black light is an attribute of Majesty which sets the mystic’s being on fire; “it is not contemplated, it attacks, invades, annihilates, then annihilates annihilation” (Corbin 1978, 108). This darkness, the “black light” or the divine Night is the Essence that causes the light to be revealed, not to be confused with the darkness further below, the demonic darkness which withholds the light.7 Similarly, the Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591 7 Likewise, there are regions in the Egyptian netherworld where only the damned must dwell, which the sun god does not even approach during his nocturnal journey, “and which are never illuminated by a ray of light nor penetrated even by the voice of the creator god” (Hornung 1971, 168). Overall, one can postulate that there is after all an affinity, or some kind of proximity, between these two kinds of “darkness,” in addition to a distinct separation.

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

301

CE) formulates this crucial phase in the development of the adept in what he calls the “Dark Night of the Soul,” a phenomenon that first purges and ultimately illuminates the candidate seeking admission to the highest Mysteries.8 Admittedly, the Mesopotamian rhetoric is far too aloof and clinically neutral in tone regarding such philosophical speculation, and yet this quality might rather be a matter of choice of presentation on the part of an intellectual tradition that kept such discussion behind the scenes. Perhaps of an analogous “chthonic” or netherworldly source is Demeter’s epiphany in the Hymn to Demeter, the poem often thought to contain the theological background and etiology of the Eleusinian Mysteries (Foley 1994, 84).9 When one reads the poem as a story or 8 John of the Cross’s doctrine of the “Dark Night” is expressed in a poem, The Dark Night, consisting of eight stanzas on which the saint also wrote a commentary “preserving in its style something of the poem’s lyricism and symbolic language” (Kavanaugh 1987, 43, 46). A few quotations from this commentary in the translation of Kavanaugh might help make clearer the parallel that I draw between this work and the ancient literary incidents, especially Gilgamesh’s encounter with the Scorpion Beings and the Underworld Vision: “Souls begin to enter this dark night when God, gradually drawing them out of the state of beginners (those who practice meditation on the spiritual road), begins to place them in the state of proficients (those who are already contemplatives) so that by passing through this state they might reach that of the perfect, which is the divine union of the soul with God” (Bk 1, ch. 1: 1; Kavanaugh 1987, 163). “This night, which as we say is contemplation, causes two kinds of darkness or purgation in spiritual persons according to the two parts of the soul, the sensory, by which the senses are purged and accommodated to the spirit; and the other night or purgation will be spiritual, by which the spirit is purged and denuded as well as accommodated and prepared for union with God through love” (Bk 1, ch. 8: 1; Kavanaugh 1987, 178). “The first purgation or night is bitter and terrible to the senses. But nothing can be compared to the second, for it is horrible and frightful to the spirit” (Bk 1, ch. 8: 2; Kavanaugh 1987, 179). “Yet a doubt arises: Why, if it is a divine light (for it illuminates souls and purges them of their ignorances), does one call it a dark night? In answer to this, there are two reasons why this divine wisdom is not only night and darkness for the soul, but also affliction and torment. First, because of the height of the divine wisdom, which exceeds the capacity of the soul. Second, because of the soul’s baseness and impurity; and on this account the wisdom is painful, afflictive, and also dark for the soul” (Bk 2, ch. 5: 2; Kavanaugh 1987, 201). “Hence when the divine light of contemplation strikes souls not yet entirely illumined, it causes spiritual darkness, for it not only surpasses them but also deprives and darkens their act of understanding. . . For this great supernatural light overwhelms the intellect and deprives it of its vigor” (Bk 2, ch. 5: 3; Kavanaugh 1987, 201). 9 Kevin Clinton (1992, 14), however, posits that “we should not look first to the Homeric Hymn for an accurate account of the cult myth of the Eleusinian Mysteries,” for this is “a poem whose accuracy concerning the mysteries is in doubt.”

302

m.-a. ata±

plot on the literal level, Demeter, disguised as an old woman, is taking care of the child of the household in which she has taken refuge. While she is in the process of making the child immortal by means of placing it in fire every night, she gets caught by the child’s mother Metaneira, and the process is irremediably interrupted. On account of her anger at being interrupted, Demeter discards her disguise and manifests herself in full divine splendor to Metaneira and her sisters: Thus speaking, the goddess changed her size and appearance thrusting off old age. Beauty breathed about her and from her sweet robes a delicious fragrance spread; a light beamed far out from the goddess’s immortal skin, and her golden hair flowed over her shoulders. The well-built house flooded with radiance like lightning. She left the halls. At once Metaneira’s knees buckled. For a long time she remained voiceless, forgetting to pick up her dear only son from the floor. (Hymn to Demeter 275-283; Foley 1994, 16).10

On another level, however, this episode can be understood as standing for the epopteia, the sight of the divine, which only a relatively small group of initiates was thought to have experienced at a later stage of the Eleusinian Mysteries.11 Indeed, Metaneira’s reaction to the epiphany of Demeter, consisting of speechlessness, fear, and awe, is precisely symptomatic of this experience (Foley 1994, 52)12 that ultimately transforms and illuminates: “Blessed (olbios) is the mortal on earth who has seen these rites,/ but the uninitiated who has no share in them never/ has the same lot once dead in the dreary darkness” (Hymn to Demeter 480-482; Foley 1994, 26). In the Hymn to Demeter, the goddess’s epiphany per se is put forward in very pleasant terms. However, we should keep in mind the fact 10

This ultimate epiphany of Demeter before Metaneira is prefigured earlier in the poem by the goddess’s initial entrance into the latter’s house: “But the goddess walked to the threshold: and her head reached the roof and she filled the doorway with a heavenly radiance. Then awe and reverence and pale fear took hold of Metaneria, and she rose up from her couch before Demeter, and bade her be seated” (188-190). 11 According to Kerényi (1991, 14), “the Homeric Hymn refers to the secret of the Mysteries in circumlocutions that must have been perfectly clear to the initiate.” 12 The radiance of the Greek gods is a well-known and long-recognized phenomenon, especially in relation to epiphany. See, for instance, Donohue 1997, 44. Whether netherworldly or not, the full splendor of the Greek gods is physically destructive for those who are not of the same divine nature. An example of a mythical human being who is destroyed by the intense radiance of the gods in classical mythology is Semele, mother of Heracles (Ovid, Metamorpohoses, III 250-315).

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

303

that its effect on Metaneira is utterly frightening, and further that Demeter is angry during her epiphany as well as still in mourning for her daughter who is held in the netherworld (302-304). These factors might be considered to hint at a splendor surrounding the goddess of the same fearful and awe-inspiring type that characterizes some of the mythical incidents from both the ancient Near Eastern and Greek sources introduced above. After all, Demeter is the goddess of grain and agriculture, mainly earthbound phenomena. Moreover, Persephone’s integral association with the netherworld places Demeter in contact with that realm as well. Again, if one transcended the literal plot of the myth and the poem, one would see that rather than a merely unfortunate disaster, Persephone’s abduction to and residence in the netherworld are what constitute one of the kernels of the Eleusinian Mysteries, which themselves take place at night in a dark and solemn setting (Mylonas 1974, 258),13 with their ultimate promise of “illumination” and “salvation.” Finally, there even exists a venerable notion of the lord of the netherworld in his role as the ravisher of Persephone in Greek mythology as well.14 Hades was further associated with the concept ploutos, wealth, which was the “abundance that comes from barley and wheat” (Clinton 1992, 53). I would hence venture to suggest that it is again the special rare light of the netherworld that shines on the initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the kind of light that especially Demeter emits in her epiphany. Perhaps, another example of this sort of transcendental light that belongs in origin to the netherworld is the light of Hephaistos. The smith-god’s forge is not on Mount Olympos but thought to be inside the earth, located beneath active volcanoes, especially Aetna, where the Cyclopes were assigned to him as his workmen (Graf 2003). Hence, not only is Hephaistos’s main resource subterranean fire, but also the artifacts he fashions, such as the thunderbolt of Zeus and the shield of Achilles, have a potent radiance that challenges or even

13 The rites were said to take place in darkness until a great light shone at their culmination (Plutarch, Moralia 81e; Inscriptiones Graecae II2 3811; Hippolytos, Refutatio omnium haeresium 5.8.40; Foley 1994, 68). 14 For instance, Foley (1994, 35) sees lines 15-32 of the Hymn to Demeter as emphasizing “the august importance of the bridegroom Hades, whose description is augmented with elaborate compound adjectives: ‘And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her— the Son of Cronos, He who has many names.’”

304

m.-a. ata±

destroys the unprepared and can only be handled by the expert. In ancient Mesopotamia as well, it is again the netherworld god Nergal’s privilege to bestow divine radiance on the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680-669 BCE). In one of his inscriptions the king declares that when he was crowned king, he was given the crown (agû) by Anu, the throne (kussû) by Enlil, the weapons (kakkê) by Ninurta, and last but not least the “splendor” (àalummatu) by the very lord of the netherworld, Nergal (Borger 1956, 81, reverse I, l. 52; Cassin 1968, 7).15 It is noteworthy that while the most tangible regalia are bestowed on the king by gods by whom kingship is usually defined in royal inscriptions, such as Enlil, Ashur, or Ninurta,16 the “splendor” is the gift of Nergal, another possible indication that this special kind of divine radiance might have a degree of affinity with the netherworld. Further evidence for the association of divine or transcendental light with the netherworld can be found in the sun god’s descent to this realm at night in both ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian religion (Heimpel 1987; Goebs 1998; Hornung 1997). In Babylonian cosmology, not only does the sun traverse the netherworld at night but also the stars travel across this realm during the day. According to certain Old Babylonian texts such as the Prayer to the Gods of the Night and the Sunset Prayer, this cosmic region is also conceived of as “heaven’s interior,” or the “lap of heaven,” “utul àamê,” “an interior that remains invisible to human eyes, being located as it is beneath the horizons,” (Heimpel 1987, 130-131; Steinkeller 2005, 18-22) as well as a “solar cella in an unseen portion of heaven above the sky” (Horowitz 1998, 251). By the same token, the word for the Egyptian netherworld, duat, is written with a star-symbol determinative, later 15 Further, in ll. 36-37 of the same text, Esarhaddon states that Nergal, “the most powerful of the gods,” bestowed on him dazzling brightness and a luminous halo (Cassin 1968, 7 n. 32). The connection between luminescence and the netherworld can also be seen in the image of the netherworld gods, the Anunnaki, bearing torches in the Flood Story contained in the Standard Babylonian Version of The Epic of Gilgamesh (XI 102-105): “the god Errakal was uprooting the mooring poles,/ Ninurta, passing by, made their weirs overflow./ The Anunnaki gods carried torches of fire,/ scorching the country with brilliant flashes” (George 1999, 91; Cassin 1968, 76). It is noteworthy that “in later texts Nergal is also described as the god of light and fire” (Kvanvig 1988, 423). In this regard see also von Weiher 1971, 73-76. 16 Note, for instance the royal titulary in the version of the Standard Inscription translated in Paley (1976, 125): “Ashur-nasir-pal, chief-priest of Ashur, the chosen one of Enlil and Ninurta, the favorite of Anu and Dagan, the divine weapon of the Great Gods, the potent king, the king of the world, the king of Assyria.”

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

305

the ideogram. The oldest Egyptian texts understood the duat as the original realm of stars, which, in Egyptian cosmology, was thought to be placed in the netherworld (Hornung 1977; Wilkinson 1992, 131). In short, in both of these ancient traditions of cosmology, there is a co-extensiveness between a heaven that is under the earth and one that is beyond the sky, either way invisible.17 Peter Kingsley has also drawn attention to the presence of similar notions in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, which again has an acknowledged indebtedness to Near Eastern antiquity (Kingsley 1995, 54; West 1971; Burkert 2004, 50). Empedocles, for instance, stated that the fire that eventually rose up to become the sun had its origins in the earth, implying that the sources of daylight and illumination are ultimately derived from the dark depths of the netherworld (Emp. B62; Kingsley 1995, 51). Kingsley (1995, 55-56) further notes the emphasis on the same concepts in the Alchemical tradition that preserved and maintained the basic associations between the sun, earth, and netherworld. Alchemists from the end of antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were so concerned with the paradoxical discovery of light in the depths of darkness that they abolished all the distinctions between upper and lower, celestial and terrestrial (Kingsley 1995, 55). For them fire was only secondarily a celestial phenomenon, in origin it came from the center of the earth. They called it the “sun in 17 Traces of an idea of an “inner heaven” beyond the visible sky can be found in Plato’s Phaedo (109 B-D) as well, in Socrates’ speech before his death: “For I believe there are in all directions on the earth many hollows of very various forms and sizes, into which the water and mist and air have run together; but the earth itself is pure and is situated in the pure heaven in which the stars are, the heaven which those who discourse about such matters call the other; the water, mist and air are the sediment of this and flow together into the hollows of the earth. Now we do not perceive that we live in the hollows, but think we live on the upper surface of the sea, and, seeing the sun and the stars through the water, should think the sea was the sky, and should, by reason of sluggishness or feebleness, never have reached the surface of the sea, and should never have seen, by rising and lifting his head out of the sea into our upper world, and should never have heard from anyone who had seen, how much purer and fairer it is than the world he lived in” (Fowler [1914] 1995, 374-377). What Plato refers to as this “purer and fairer” region may be considered as the equivalent of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian netherworld and “inner heaven” in their transcendental capacity, as no paradisiacal “heaven” exists in these ancient Near Eastern religions. What seems to be a paradox, namely that the netherworld can be co-extensive with “Heaven’s interior,” might then be more easily resolved. Along similar lines, when the Mesopotamian archetypal sage Adapa ascends to the “sky,” he encounters there Dumuzi and Ningiàzida, both in essence gods of the netherworld in Mesopotamian religion, as the keepers of the “Gate of Heaven” (Parpola 1993, xix; James 1966, 10; Izre’el 2001, 4).

306

m.-a. ata±

the earth,” the “subterranean” sun. This earthly or invisible sun was on the one hand the “fire of hell,” the “black sun,” the “darkness of purgatory,” and on the other it was the origin not only of the visible sun but also of the light of the stars (Kingsley 1995, 56). The Melammu as Usurped Entity It is perhaps within the foregoing framework that one should also understand the presence of the melammu in the netherworld, as well as its attachment to divine beings of a “monstrous” or “demonic” character such as Huwawa/Humbaba,18 Imdugud/Anzû, Asag/Asakku, and the Mischwesen generated by Tiamat in her cosmic struggle against Marduk in the Babylonian poem of creation Enåma Elià (I 140-142; Labat 1935; Heidel 1951; Dalley 2000). All these beings are in essence antagonistic to heroes and hero-gods, Bilgames/Gilgamesh, Ningirsu/Ninurta, and Marduk respectively. In each case during these heroic struggles, however, the adversarial being is in possession of melammu, and in the case of Tiamat’s army, both melammu and puluÉtu.19 For example, when Anzû is in possession of the Tablet of Destinies, he also has melammu.20 Similarly, when Ninurta defeats the monster Asag, he also deprives him of his melammu (Lugal-e 289-293). In the Sumerian poem Bilgames and Huwawa, the monster Huwawa has seven “radiances” that protect him. In the poem, these radiances are conceptualized as cedar trees that Bilgames and Enkidu fell one by one and cut into logs in order to conquer the monster (George 1999, 156-158). When deprived of all of his seven “auras,” Huwawa pleads for his life. Even though Bilgames is inclined to spare him, Enkidu kills the monster lest he might prove too dangerous for them should he remain alive. The two heroes present the decapitated 18 The work that relates Gilgamesh’s stripping Huwawa/Humbaba’s “radiances” or “auras” to defeat him is one of the episodic Sumerian poems that ultimately formed the plot of the Standard Babylonian Version. This poem is known today as Bilgames and Huwawa, a favorite copy-text in Old Babylonian scribal schools (George 1999, 149166). 19 “Elle vêtit d’horreur (puluÉtu) des dragons terrifiants,/ Qu’elle chargea d’éclat surnaturel (melammu) et fit semblables à des dieux” (Enuma Elish I 136-137; Labat 1935, 9091). 20 Standard Babylonian Anzû, Tablet II: 37; Old Babylonian Version, Tablet II: reverse 82, obverse 2.

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

307

head of Huwawa to the god Enlil who in return reproaches them for not treating the monster with courtesy (George 1999, 160). In Enåma Elià (I 67-68), Enki/Ea decides to kill Apsû on account of the latter’s intention to annihilate the young gods owing to their noisiness. Before Enki/Ea slays Apsû, he first unfastens the latter’s belt, takes off his crown, and then takes away his radiance, melammu, and puts it on himself, hence usurping it.21 As already mentioned, in Enåma Elià (I 136-137, II 23-24, III 85-86), upon creating her children, Tiamat dresses them with puluÉtu and imparts melammu on them, rendering these beings like gods.22 Perhaps it is precisely on account of this particular quality that the sight of the Scorpion Beings poses a primordial challenge to the uninitiated beholder, the Scorpion-Man being among the very creatures generated by Tiamat in her struggle against Marduk (Enåma Elià II 32). There are significant clues in the poems centered on these myths regarding the implicit venerability of all of these monster-like beings, adversarial on the surface, but also enigmatically cognate with the heroes or gods against whom they struggle. The fact that they embody this special kind of divine radiance may be taken as further indication that these are, after all, archaic divinities that perhaps contain the melammu in its pristine capacity. In all of the myths cited, the god or the hero in a way usurps a potent cosmic entity, be it the Tablet of Destinies or the melammu itself, from these adversarial “monsters,” depriving the latter of this tremendous cosmic potency and making it his own whence he derives his new invincible sovereignty. Further, as we have seen, in Enåma Elià, one way for Enki/Ea to depose a god more archaic than he, is to rob him of his melammu. From this standpoint, both the Tablet of Destinies and the melammu, as both Cassin and Winter note, are almost accessory-like magical objects conceptualized as the embodiment of power over the cosmos (Cassin 1968, 64; Winter 1994, 126). What one sees in these myths is perhaps a representation of the shift in cosmic power structure from older numinous entities to later heroes and gods, a theme of which the ancients were never tired expressing and re-expressing in different forms and guises. In the case of the Tablet of Destinies, it is Imdugud/Anzû who steals it from Enlil; however, this act can be 21 22

Labat 1935, 84-85. Labat 1935, 90-91, 98-99, 116-117.

308

m.-a. ata±

understood as a revolt on the part of an archaic divine being against a new coercive cosmo-political order.23 The fact that the melammu is an inherent quality of both Huwawa and Asag leads one to think that this kind of radiance is primordial and initially at home where these beings reside, the ends of the earth, the limits of the cosmos, the kur, or the netherworld.24 Given the cosmic potency of this radiance, its presence in these lands can be thought to point toward the now deteriorated superiority of these regions and their agents, the old cosmos, to the new system which is now about to overcome the former in conquest. The attack is successful, and the lands of former radiance are now grim outlandish places associated with chaos, whereas the heroes and gods of the new system are now in possession of these lands’ vanished glory. The usurpation of the melammus of Huwawa and Asag by Bilgames and Ninurta respectively can in this light be understood as the coming to an end of one cosmic era and the beginning of another, as Lugal-e (70-95) signals very clearly by marking this juncture by a “flood” (van Dijk 1983, 31-35). The melammu is also an attribute of the king in his conceptualization as the representative and likeness of the gods (Oppenheim 1943, 31). From the Akkadian period onwards the radiance, which essentially belonged to the divine realm, was also assumed by the ruler (Cassin 1968, 66). The tradition continues through the Old Babylonian, Kassite and the Assyrian periods. For instance, the Assyrian king Adad-nirari II (911-891 BCE) in describing his accession to the throne indicates that he has received not only the scepter and kingship from the gods, 23 There seem to be two versions of this myth. In the Sumerian poem “Ninurta’s Pride and Punishment,” the possessor of the Tablet of Destinies seems to have been Enki, from whom Anzû steals it. As for the Akkadian “Myth of Anzû,” the me has been stolen by Anzû from Enlil. As a result, Enlil’s kingship is lost and chaos takes over (Kramer 1984, 231-234; Kramer and Maier 1989, 120, 140; Black and Green 1997, s.vv. “tablet of destinies,” “Imdugud”). What the Sumerian text makes very clear, however, is the fact that the me, the già-hur, as well as the Tablet of Destinies are all dropped into the netherworld by Anzû when Ninurta attacks the bird (Kramer 1984, 231). Later on, a struggle seems to take place between Ninurta and Enki, and not between Anzû and Enki. One can again postulate that these three aforementioned entities, mysterious and obscure as they are, can be considered as the magical powers of a lost mythical age that eventually become encrypted in the netherworld. 24 On a discussion of kur as a Sumerian word meaning “netherworld” as well as “mountain” and “foreign country,” see Katz 2003, 63-112. On the relation between kur and ki-bala, the “mountainland” and the “Rebel Land(s)” respectively, see Kinnier Wilson (1979), which is “an attempt to interpret in a consistent way the numerous stories of the gods and heroes who did battle there in the legendary twilight of man’s early beginning in Mesopotamia.”

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

309

but also the melammu of royalty (Cassin 1968, 71).25 One can see here how this special kind of radiance is also a quality bestowed on the king by the gods who hold it in their possession, which in turn places the king in a privileged position analogous to that of these very gods who have accomplished victories against “monstrous” rebel gods. From this standpoint, the melammu, so long as it is in kings’ possession, is also a most potent weapon against the enemy, causing the latter’s paralysis even upon the approach of the king toward rebel cities (Cassin 1968, 73-74).26 The fact that Esarhaddon’s radiance is given to him by the netherworld god Nergal, however, could not be more significant in demonstrating that ultimately the origin of this primitive divine radiance might be the netherworld. This fearful radiance is what characterizes not only the Scorpion Beings at the entrance of this realm, but also Huwawa and Asag in their lands of “Edenic” wilderness penetrated by the hero or the hero-god.27 It is also the same primordial radiance that shines on the Assyrian crown prince when he descends to the netherworld and “illuminates” him with new knowledge of a fearful sort. This very light is not only the light of divine epiphany that, when displayed, overwhelms and transforms 25

On the conferral of the melammu on kings, see also Winter 1994, 126. Yet, the king could also lose this divine support; “when his melammu disappears it becomes known that he is no longer king ‘by the grace of God’” (Oppenheim 1943, 31). By the same token, Kinnier Wilson (1979, 5) concludes that all the divine weapons that were used by many of the hero-gods against their rebellious adversaries were ultimately given to the kings, “who might then go forth against the Rebel Lands of other days and use them again.” Kinnier Wilson (102) further mentions Cassin’s remark (1968, 74) on how in texts the royal weapons were sometimes described in the same way as those of the gods, again concluding that “the weapons were in fact the same.” 27 A similar defiance of authority can also be seen in the Sumerian poem Inanna and Ebih. For a recent translation of this poem see Meador 2000, 91-102. Meador (2000, 90) views the meaning of the poem as “the fundamental struggle in the psyche between the backward pull of the idealized world of paradisiacal bliss and the forward impetus toward states of competence, autonomy, and independence.” Furthermore, she thinks of Ebih as an embodiment of “Edenic” notions of purity and harmony. Along similar lines, Wim van Binsbergen and Frans Wiggermann (1999) argue that the structure of the universe prior to the coercive divine rule of deities such as Marduk and Enlil and the realm outside “divine rule,” the “demonic,” share a tendency to rise against the prerogatives of the gods of “order.” Although in each case the rebellion is suppressed, its very occurrence shows that such an “order” is not beyond question, and that order in this sense is not completely secured. “In other words, the way in which the ‘un-captured’ elements appear in the symbolic system reveals their continuing existence as a feared anti-social force and a threat to the hegemonic order” (van Binsbergen and Frans Wiggermann 1999, 22). Van Binsbergen and Wiggermann (1999, 21) also distinguish between a later governmental order, which they refer to as “theistic,” and the previous primordial phase, which they refer to as “holistic.” 26

310

m.-a. ata±

the candidate who is seeking admission to the Mysteries, but also a potent magical entity that imparts tremendous cosmic power on the divine agent who manages to hold it in custody.

References Ataç, Mehmet-Ali. 2004. The ‘Underworld Vision’ of the Ninevite Intellectual Milieu. Nineveh: Papers of the XLIXe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, London, 7-11 July 2003, ed. D. Collon and A. George. Iraq 66: 67-77. Black, Jeremy, and Anthony Green. 1997. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary. Austin: University of Texas Press. Borger, Riekele. 1956. Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, Königs von Assyrien. Graz: Selbstverlage des Herausgebers. Burkert, Walter. 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Translated by Margaret E. Pinder and Walter Burkert. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press. ———. 2004. Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Cassin, Eléna. 1968. La Splendeur divine: Introduction à l’étude de la mentalité mésopotamienne. Paris: Mouton & Co. Clinton, Kevin. 1992. Myth and Cult: The Iconography of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Stockholm: Paul Åströms förlag. Corbin, Henry. 1978. The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. Translated by Nancy Pearson. Boulder, Colorado: Shambala. Dalley, Stephanie, ed. 1998. The Legacy of Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———, trans. 2000. Myths from Mesopotamia: The Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donohue, Alice A. 1997. The Greek Images of the Gods: Considerations on Terminology and Methodology. Hephaistos 15: 31-45. Foley, Helene. 1994. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fowler, Harold North. [1914] 1995. Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. George, Andrew. 1999. The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. London: Penguin Books. Goebs, Katja. 1998. Expressing Luminosity in Iconography: Features of the Solar Bark in the Tomb of Ramesses VI. Göttinger Miszellen 165: 57-67.

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

311

Graf, Fritz. 2003. Hephaestus. In The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. 3rd rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hanson, J. Arthur, trans. 1989. Apuleius, Metamorphoses. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Heidel, Alexander. 1951. The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Heimpel, Wolfgang. 1987. The Sun at Night and the Doors of Heaven in Babylonian Texts. JCS 39: 127-151. Hornung, Erik. 1971. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. Translated by John Baines. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 1977. Dat. In Lexikon der Ägyptologie, ed. Wolfgang Helck and Eberhard Otto. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. ———. 1999. The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Horowitz, Wayne. 1998. Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. Izre’el, Shlomo. 2001. Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power of Life and Death. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. James, E. O. 1966. Tree of Life: An Archaeological Study. Leiden: Brill. Katz, Dina. 2003. The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources. Bethesda, Maryland: CDL Press. Kavanaugh, Kieran, ed. and trans. 1987. John of the Cross: Selected Writings. Translated from the Spanish. The Classics of Western Spirituality. New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: Pauline Press. Kerényi, Carl. 1994. Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kingsley, Peter. 1995. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kinnier Wilson, J. V., with the assistance of Herman Vanstiphout. 1979. The Rebel Lands: An Investigation into the Origins of Early Mesopotamian Mythology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kramer, Samuel Noah. 1984. Ninurta’s Pride and Punishment. Aula Orientalis 2: 231-234. Kramer, Samuel Noah and John Maier. 1989. Myths of Enki, the Crafty God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kvanvig, Helge. 1988. Roots of Apocalyptic: The Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and the Son of Man. Neukirchner Verlag. Labat, René, trans. 1935. Le Poème babylonien de la création. Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient.

312

m.-a. ata±

Lanfranchi, Giovanni B. 2000. The Ideological and Political Impact of the Assyrian Imperial Expansion on the Greek World in the 8th and 7th Centuries BC. In The Heirs of Assyria: Proceedings of the Opening Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project Held in Tvärminne, Finland, October 8-11, 1998, ed. Sanna Aro and R. M. Whiting, 7-34. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Lattimore, Richmond, trans. 1961. The Iliad of Homer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Livingstone, A. 1989. Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea. SAA 3. Helsinki: The NeoAssyrian Text Corpus Project. Meador, Betty De Shong. 2000. Inanna: Lady of Largest Heart, Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna. Austin: University of Texas Press. Mylonas, George E. 1974. Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Oppenheim, A. Leo. 1943. Akkadian pul(u)h(t)u and melammu. JAOS 63: 31-34. Paley, Samuel P. 1976. King of the World: Ashur-nasir-pal II of Assyria 883-859 B.C. New York: The Brooklyn Museum. Parpola, Simo. 1993. Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars. SAA 10. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Penglase, Charles. 1994. Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod. London and New York: Routledge. Pinney, Gloria Ferrari, and Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway. 1981. Herakles at the Ends of the Earth. The Journal of Hellenic Studies 101: 141-144. Prévot, Dominique. 1986. L’Épopée de Gilgamesh: un scénario initiatique? In Homo Religiosus 13. Les Rites d’Initiation. Actes du Colloque de Liège et de Louvain-la-Neuve. 20-21 novembre 1984, ed. Julien Ries, 225-241. Louvain-la-Neuve: Centre d’Histoire des Religions. Steinkeller, Piotr. 2005. Of Stars and Men: The Conceptual and Mythological Setup of Babylonian Extispicy. In Biblical and Oriental Essays in Memory of William L. Moran, ed. Agustinus Gianto, 11-47. Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico. van Binsbergen, Wim and Frans Wiggermann. 1999. Magic in History: A Theoretical Perspective, and its application to Ancient Mesopotamia. In Ancient Magic and Divination I: Mesopotamian Magic, Textual, Historical, and Interpretative Perspectives, ed. T. Abusch and K. van der Toorn, 1-35. Groningen: Styx Publications. van Dijk, J. 1983. LUGAL UD ME-LÁM-bi NIR-GÁL: Le récit épique et didactique des Travaux de Ninurta, du Déluge et de la Nouvelle Création, Texte, Traduction et Introduction. Leiden: Brill. von Weiher, Egbert. 1971. Der babylonische Gott Nergal. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Verlag Butzon und Bercker Kevelaer. West, M. L. 1971. Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

the melammu as divine epiphany and usurped entity

313

Wiggermann, F. A. M. 1992. Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts. Cuneiform Monographs 1. Groningen: Styx & PP Publications. Wilkinson, Richard H. 1992. Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture. London: Thames and Hudson. Winter, Irene J. 1994. Radiance as an Aesthetic Value in the Art of Mesopotamia (with Some Indian Parallels). In Art: The Integral Vision, A Volume of Essays in Felicitation of Kapila Vatsyayan, ed. B. N. Saraswati, S. C. Malik and M. Khanna, 123-132. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld. ———. 1995. Aesthetics in Ancient Mesopotamian Art. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson. Vol. 4, 2569-2580. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

314

m.-a. ata±

between human and divine

IV “Sex, Rhetoric and the Public Monument”: Gendered Contexts

315

316

c.e. suter

between human and divine

317

BETWEEN HUMAN AND DIVINE: HIGH PRIESTESSES IN IMAGES FROM THE AKKAD TO THE ISIN-LARSA PERIOD Claudia E. Suter In tribute to Irene Winter’s contribution on women (1987), in which she traced back the office of Nanna’s high priestess to Early Dynastic (ED) times based on visual evidence, it is my pleasure to offer her a study on images of high priestesses from the Akkad (Akk) to the Isin-Larsa (IL) period (c. 2334-1763 BCE). During this time, high priestesses are well attested in texts. So far, however, little attention has been paid to their images. In part, this may be due to controversial identifications and the lack of a basic classification of female figures in these periods. The best criterion for identifying human figures in Mesopotamian imagery is an associated text. Dedicatory inscriptions on statues or figurative images carved in relief identify the donor whom the statue represents or who figures in the carved image, while seal inscriptions identify the seal owner and sometimes also his or her superior, both of whom may be depicted on the seal. By tracing similarities of attire and scene context between textually identified figures and those that are not, anonymous figures begin to take on identity, as Winter demonstrated. Despite some confusion in previous scholarship, high priestesses can be distinguished from other women by their attire and hairstyle. They wear unique headdresses, flounced robes, and their long hair loose, while other women wear fringed or pleated robes and their hair tied up. The latter are identified in associated texts as royals or their servants.1 Having made the distinction between high priest1 These observations are based on a survey of female figures in sculpture and glyptic from the Akk to IL period. Terracotta objects were not considered because the figures they depict remain anonymous and represent more types than concrete individuals. Due to space limitations, I shall present the evidence on court ladies in another contribution, in which I show that Frances Pinnock’s hypothesis (1998) does not hold up to the evidence. I thank Julia Asher for letting me use her file on statues, and Markus Hilgert for sharing with me the manuscript of his paper “Aspects of en-ship: Revisiting Paraphernalia, Royal Politics, and the Sacred Marriage” given at the Oriental Institute of

318

c.e. suter

esses and court ladies, one can begin to analyze their images. While texts provide a vital basis for iconographic interpretation, images can inform us of common knowledge about which texts remain mute. In the following, I will first outline my understanding of the role and activities of high priestesses, then scrutinize textually identified images, discuss their attire and regalia, consider anonymous images comparable to the identified ones, and finally assess what the images add to our knowledge.

Role and Activities High priestesses stood at the head of major temples and were among the highest dignitaries in the realm.2 Their office was exclusive to one holder at a time and their tenure was lifelong. They were chosen by extispicy and then ceremonially enthroned, events deemed important enough to be commemorated for eternity by naming years after them. Many high priestesses were daughters of a ruler. Like rulers, they could receive ceremonial names, rich funerals, regular offerings thereafter, and they shared regalia with them. There are several titles that designate high priestesses: the most important is en = ¿num, others include ereà-dingir = ¿ntum and égizi. Although differently titled high priestesses have similar functions, there are also differences determined by local traditions and changes over time. Our knowledge comes from diverse sources (administrative texts, seal inscriptions, dedicatory inscriptions, year names, lexical and literary texts) and is too complex to expound in the scope of this study. I will only point out some differences between en and ereà-dingir, since both appear in images. While en were introduced in the Akk period and ceased to exist after the IL dynasties, ereà-dingir are attested from ED into the Middle Babylonian (MB) period. Although most en were female, the office was not exclusive to women. En were assigned only to the highest-ranking deities, who were often, but not the University of Chicago in May 2000. I also thank them as well as Miguel Civil, Eva A. Braun-Holzinger, Joan G. Westenholz, Marian Feldman, and Julia Assante for commenting on earlier drafts of both these contributions, and Yannick F. Hill for improving my English. 2 For an excellent new overview with up-to-date bibliography, see now Sallaberger and Huber Vulliet 2003-2005, 626-640.

between human and divine

319

always, of the opposite sex,3 while ereà-dingir served both gods and goddesses of somewhat less importance.4 En had a residence at their deity’s temple called Gipar.5 In contrast to en and égi-zi, ereà-dingir do not seem to have taken on ceremonial names or regalia. Despite these differences, some ereà-dingir were apparently assimilated with en (Steinkeller 1999, 128-129).6 When looking at daily activities of high priestesses, one must bear in mind that Mesopotamian temples were not only places of worship, but also economic enterprises. Not all temple personnel were engaged in the cult, while rites were also performed by “non-clerics” such as king and queen. In fact, there is no general Sumerian or Akkadian term for priest and the demarcation of clerics is tricky (Sallaberger and Vulliet 2003-2005, 618-619). Conversely, the term “high priestess” cannot adequately encompass or do justice to the ancient concept that underlay the differently named offices. This considered, it may not come as a surprise that the textually attested activities of high priestesses do not differ much from those of royal wives: 3 Although this principle has generally been accepted, it is hard to ascertain, since the sources rarely indicate the en’s gender (Renger 1967, 133). Aside from the possibility that the en of Inana was a woman (Sallaberger 1999, 150 with n. 95), there is at least one case in which the en of a god was definitely male: KA-kugani, en of Enlil, who is mentioned in the inscription of his wife’s seal: “KA-kug-ga-ni, en-den-líl-lá, dinana-ka, dam-ni” (RIME 3/2: 1.2.2025). In contrast to all other translations, Steinkeller (1999, 127 n. 83) inverted gender. However, Inanaka must be a woman, since the seal image depicts the presentation of a court lady to a goddess (Haines 1956, 269 fig. 18; Richard Zettler personal communication). KA-kugani’s tenure may have been unusual (J. G. Westenholz 1992, 305-306), yet it demonstrates the danger of generalizing. 4 See Steinkeller 1999, 126-127 nn. 79-83 (en-priestesses), 120-121 nn. 54-58, 128 n. 91 (ereà-dingir). 5 Only the Gipar of Nanna’s en at Ur was excavated. Royal inscriptions and the Lament for Sumer and Ur further attest to Gipars of Nanna’s en at Gaeà, of Ningublaga’s en at Ur, of Inana’s en at Uruk, of Nanàe’s en at Ningin, and of Enki’s en at Eridu. For bibliographical references and sources, see Steinkeller 1999, 106-107. The interpretation of a building in Uruk as Gipar rests on a misinterpretation of the title lukur (Sallaberger 1999, 182-183). 6 Although Steinkeller assumed this probably for the wrong reasons (see note 16), such a general trend seems to have existed. The alleged interchange of ¿nat dEn-líl with ereà-dingir dEn-líl for Tuta-napàum does not hold because ¿ntum is the Akkadian equivalent of ereà-dingir and not attested as female form of en (Cooper 1993, 87 with n. 42). However, while Tuta-napàum refers to herself as ereà-dingir of Enlil, other sources document an en of Enlil for this and later times (J. G. Westenholz 1992, 302), and I find it unlikely that the year names ia and ib of Naramsin—one mentioning an en of Enlil, the other an ereà-dingir of Enlil—should refer to different high priestesses (cf. Cooper 1993).

320

c.e. suter

both directed a remarkable staff in charge of their household, which in the case of high priestesses was that of a temple.7 In the Ur III period, they were select beneficiaries of royal donations, and their estates may have depended on the crown.8 They participated in regular cult festivals9 and engaged in various rituals, including some in honor of the king.10 Royal wives, too, could receive rich funerals and regular offerings thereafter. The main difference between these elite women appears to be that high priestesses held an office with its accompanying paraphernalia while royal wives held only status. As dignitaries at the top of the hierarchy, high priestesses had more in common with kings. In order to understand their role, one has to scrutinize en in its historical context. En, or “lord,” designated the earliest form of sovereign leadership. It is plausible that the ruler figure in Uruk period imagery represents EN, the highest official in archaic administration and most frequently attested word in the Uruk IV-III texts.11 Based mainly on later reflections in literary texts, Heimpel (1992, 8-17) suggested that en-ship was characterized by divine election, that is, the ruler was elected by clergy in the guise of the city’s patron deity, and that this form of leadership was gradually superseded by hereditary kingship (nam-lugal).12 The change must have taken place sometime during the ED period in which en still figures as 7

For staff and estate management of high priestesses in general, see Renger 1967, 130; for particular cases, see also Foster 1982, 38 (Akk pd. ereà-dingir of Ilaba at Girsu); Charpin 1986, 214-215 (IL pd. en -priestesses of Nanna at Ur). For economic activities of royal wives, see Foster 1987, 53; Van de Mieroop 1989; Sallaberger 1999, 185. 8 For example, máà-da-ri-a (Sallaberger 1993, 160-170). Hilgert (see note 1 of this article) was tempted to postulate a pronounced or even complete economic dependence of Ur III en-ship on the resources of the royal household. 9 For example, at the major festivals in Ur during the Ur III period (Sallaberger 1993, 176). 10 High priestesses prayed to the gods for the well being and long life of the king (RIME 4: 1.5.6 ll. 20-22; RIME 4: 2.14.20 ll. 15-25). Royal wives took care of the laments for deceased husbands. In general, the cultic duties of high priestesses centered on the god to whom they were assigned while those of royal wives centered predominantly on goddesses and women’s cult feasts (Sallaberger 1999, 184-185). There was, however, overlapping: Ur III royal wives also worshipped Nanna, while high priestesses also worshipped Inana. 11 Most images are illustrated in Schmandt-Besserat 1993; for additional seals, see Rova 1994, nos. 53, 82, 387, 560, 566, 603-607, 782, 786. For EN in texts, see Englund 1998, 70. 12 The claim to divine election of kings from the ED period on can then be explained as an endeavor to legitimize the new form of leadership by integrating the old principle.

between human and divine

321

royal title but is already contrasted with lugal (Steible 1982, Lukin. 2, 4, Enàak. 1, 5). En of Uruk is then a secondary title of Urnamma, who was from Uruk (Sallaberger 1999, 132), and of Isin kings, who mimicked Ur III royal ideology.13 In literary texts, en is frequently used also in reference to gods and heroes. Under whose reign en was introduced as a “clerical” title depends on when Sargon’s daughter Enheduana took on her ceremonial name (Steinkeller 1999, 125 n. 77). Her tenure lasted into Naramsin’s reign. If Sargon installed her as zirru, traditional title of Nanna’s high priestess, which Enheduana uses in the one inscription that has survived from her time (RIME 2: 1.1.16), it may well have been Naramsin who introduced en for Nanna’s high priestess and extended this title to high priestesses of other gods. This would accord with the general picture showing Sargon still indebted to late ED tradition while Naramsin created a new image of kingship. A second wave of new en occurred in the Ur III period, probably under the reign of ’ulgi, who revived several features of Naramsin’s royal ideology. The choice of the title en may have been intended to revive the earliest form of leadership based on the principle of divine election, albeit in a new form. It is indeed intriguing that the standard headdress of high priestesses looks identical to that worn by the Uruk ruler figure (see section on attire below). The rulers who installed high priestesses had hegemonical claims, or else followed in the footsteps of a powerful predecessor. It has been suggested that the political agenda of the office was to establish loyal power bases in the major centers of the realm in order to counterbalance the influence of the local elite (Steinkeller 1999, 124). Perhaps the underlying reasons were of a pragmatic nature. The temples in these major centers controlled large parts of the local economy. By putting them in the hands of high priestesses who were royal children, their production came de facto under the control of the crown. The dissemination of high priestesses would then have formed part of other well known endeavors of Akk and Ur III kings to attain power by controlling the economy in their realm. Such an agenda would explain not only the dependence of high priestesses’ estates on the royal household, but also the harsh treatment Enheduana experienced when

13

The sources are given in Steinkeller 1999, 105 n. 4.

322

c.e. suter

the local ruler liberated himself from Akk rule (ETCSL14 4.07.2), as well as the abduction of other en by conquering enemies.15 There is an undeniable connection between en and human spouses of deities. Both kings and en-priests/esses can be called the spouse (dam) of a deity. The only texts that explicitly describe a sexual union between a human and a deity are the royal hymns ’ulgi X and IddinDagan A. In both cases, the king unites with Inana in the guise of her husband Dumuzi. Based on these texts, a number of references in other royal hymns and in love lyrics, as well as the royal epithet “beloved spouse of Inana,” can be understood as allusions to the king’s union with Inana (Cooper 1993, 85). Had we only these poetic texts, we could argue that this union was an invention of the Ur III kings in their endeavor to sanction divine kingship, as the epics around the mythical kings of Uruk probably were to a large extent (Michalowski 1988, 21). However, there are also royal inscriptions attesting to ED rulers and Naramsin of Akkad as husbands of Inana (Cooper 1993, 83-84), as well as to high priests/esses as spouses of their deity, namely an ED priest of Nanàe at Ningin (Steible 1982, Urnanàe 24 iii 3-6), and three en-priestesses of Nanna at Ur: Enheduana (RIME 2: 1.1.16), Naramsin’s daughter Enmenana (RIME 2: 1.4.33), and Urbaba’s daughter Enanepada (RIME 3/1: 1.6.12-13). Marriage entails mutual obligations. That of a human to a deity established close ties between human and divine spheres. As head of the human society, kings shared with priests the role of mediating between these spheres. Cooper (1993, 90) suggests that the main purpose of the king’s marriage to Inana was regulations between people and gods. The marriage of high priestesses to their gods extended this network of social ties between royal family and pantheon, not unlike diplomatic marriages of princesses to foreign rulers cemented mutual obligations with other states (Cooper 1993, 91). The marriage of a king or high priest/ess to a deity must be understood in symbolic terms, since “sacred marriage rites” appear to be a scholarly construct (Assante 2003, 27-31).

14

Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk) In The Lament for Sumer and Ur (ETCSL 2.2.3 ll. 151-153; 183-184; 191-192; 204205; 249-250; 345); compare The Lament for Urim (ETCSL 2.2.2 ll. 348-358). ETCSL translates en in these texts with en-priest, although the office holders serving the mentioned deities were usually female in all but one case (en of Nanàe). 15

between human and divine

323

To sum up, I believe that the primary task of high priestesses was running their god’s estate, at least in representation, not unlike Uruk period EN were the highest officials in archaic administration, and Ur III kings chief of state administration. This does not exclude the performance of cultic duties. Because “clerical” en were not exclusively assigned to deities of the opposite sex and ereà-dingir also served goddesses, the spousal function vis-à-vis a deity cannot have been their main characteristic,16 as little as it was that of kings. The marriage of some high priestesses to their god is better understood as an effort in sanctioning the political agenda of their office on an ideological level. The symbolic elevation of a royal—be it king or high priestess—to the level of a deity’s spouse was to convey the close ties between royals and deities, that is, the divine favor granted to the ruling power. In essence then, “clerical” en-ship was an offshoot of kingship on the local level.17

Identified Images The first textually attested Mesopotamian high priestess is also the most famous today, Enheduana. Her image has survived on a fragmentary

16 Douglas Frayne’s attempt to link the installation of en and ereà-dingir with a “sacred marriage rite” of kings was conclusively disproved by Cooper (1993, 87-88) and Sallaberger (1995, 20-21). Steinkeller’s hypothesis (1999) that “clerical” en-ship evolved out of a convergence of Sumerian and Semitic traditions of male and female “priestly consorts” is problematic. The evidence is perhaps better explained in terms of particular local traditions. That for “Sumerian male priestly consorts” consists only of the mentioned dam of Nanàe, who seems to live on as àennu and en in the Ur III period (Steinkeller 1999, 119 n. 48). I am not convinced that Uruk rulers were “priest-kings” and that their political and cultic duties were later divided among ruler and en-priests/ esses, respectively. There is textual and visual evidence that kings continued to perform cultic duties after the Uruk period and the evidence for Ur III kings’ marriage to Inana is much more explicit than that of Uruk period rulers which solely rests on the Uruk Vase. The Semitic origin of female “priestly consorts” is equally difficult to support. DAM.DINGIR of Ebla seems more comparable to OB nadÊtu since there were several holding the same office at the same time (Archi 1998, 52-53). On the other hand, archaeological and textual evidence speak in favor of a continuity of the office of Nanna’s high-priestess at Ur from the ED to the IL period (Winter 1987; Zgoll 1997, 99-100) and this high-priestess is precisely the one who is wife of her god. Her original title, zirru, continued to be used side by side with en up to the Isin dynasty (RIME 2: 1.1.16; 2: 1.4.33; 3/1: 1.6.12-13; 4: 1.4.3; 4: 2.5.2). 17 This is what Hilgert (see note 1 in this article) suggests.

324

c.e. suter

stone relief from Ur’s Gipar (figure 1), now heavily restored.18 The object, which appears to have been vertically pierced, remains enigmatic, whether it was disk-shaped or not. The inscription on its back, restored with the help of an OB copy, commemorates Enheduana’s construction of a throne-room in Inana-Zaza’s temple.19 Enheduana wears a flounced robe that covered both shoulders. Her hair falls loose down her back with a tress in front of her ear and is crowned by a circlet.20 She follows a bald-headed, shaven male figure who pours a libation before what has been restored as a four-stepped ziqqurat but may equally well have been a deity enthroned on a platform.21 The libator probably represents lagar/l, the male assistant of en-priestesses (Sallaberger and Huber Vulliet 2005, 628). Behind Enheduana follow two poorly preserved figures who may have represented the local ruler and his wife, as seems to be the case in the lower register of the ED door plaque that depicts a comparable scene (Winter 1987, fig. 2). If Nanna’s high priestess was in charge of installing the local ruler in his office (Zgoll 1997, 102), then this is what the scene on these reliefs may represent. An image of Tuta-napàum, high priestess of Enlil and daughter of Naramsin, is preserved on the seal, now lost, of her servant AmanAàtar (figure 2).22 Its inscription reads: “Tuta-napàum, ¿ntum of Enlil: Aman-Aàtar, daughter of Uhub of the Zabirum clan (?), (is) her maidservant.”23 The image depicts the maidservant in audience before her superior much like the estate manager Dada stands before his 18 CBS 16665 (Woolley 1955, pl. 41d). For a close-up photo of the unrestored fragment with Enheduana, see Legrain 1927, 240. A good reproduction of the restored relief is in Orthmann 1975, pl. 101. For descriptions, see Winter 1987, 190-193; BraunHolzinger 1991, varia 5. For its inscription, see RIME 2: 1.1.16. 19 According to Miguel Civil’s talk at the 51st Rencontre in Chicago in 2005, bára was not a dais, but designated royal quarters, the place where the throne stood. 20 On reproductions of the unrestored relief, Enheduana’s headdress looks more like a polos, similar to that worn by ED women from Mari, who are generally interpreted as priestesses (Asher-Greve 1985, 81). A polos would fit with the fact that this relief’s inscription presents the only mention of Inana-Zaza outside of Mari (J. G. Westenholz 1989, 540 n. 6). Her head and the bubble above it are, however, not related. 21 Compare Winter 1987, figs. 3-4. This may have been Nanna or Inana-Zaza. 22 Whereabouts unknown. A. Westenholz and Oelsner 1983, 214-215; Collon 1987, no. 530; RIME 2: 1.4.2017; Steinkeller 1993; A. Westenholz 1999, 73, 88. On Tutanapàum, see also J. Westenholz and A. Westenholz 1983. 23 The interpretation of Aman-Aàtar’s characterization in lines 3-4 is controversial. The most sensible solution to me seemed to emend a DUMU in front of MUNUS and understand it in terms of her origin.

between human and divine

325

queen Tuta-àar-libbià (Boehmer 1965, fig. 657). She wears a fringed robe and her hair tied up, like court ladies, and holds an enigmatic object.24 Tuta-napàum sits on a throne in the shape of a recessed temple gate. It is placed on a platform in front of a tree, which may indicate an outside setting, perhaps the temple courtyard. She wears the same flounced robe and the same hairstyle as Enheduana (figure 1), but a unique crown.25 The seal of a scribe of Enmenana, another daughter of Naramsin who succeeded Enheduana in her office, is preserved in ancient impressions (figure 3).26 The formulation of its inscription, “Naramsin, god of Akkad: Enmenana, en of Nanna, his child: Lu-[...], scribe, (is) her servant,” indicates that the seal was a custom-made gift of the king to his daughter’s servant (Zettler 1977, 33). The image shows a seated couple, both in flounced robes and horned crowns, extending drinking cups to one another. Behind each stands a minor goddess. The seated position combined with cups and attendants signifies a banquet. The crescent on his crown identifies the seated male as Nanna. His throne is stylized as a mountain. Because of the unusually well identified Nanna on a custom-made seal of his high priestess’ servant, Richard Zettler (1977, 35) suggests that his partner represents Enmenana, while other scholars identify her with Ningal (Selz 1983, 525; Braun-Holzinger 1998-2001b). Perhaps both interpretations are correct, since both are Nanna’s spouses: Ningal in the divine sphere, Enmenana on earth (RIME 2: 1.4.33). The flounced robe is as characteristic for high priestesses as for goddesses, while loose hair is more typical of high priestesses (see section on attire below). The only detail that denotes a goddess is the multiple horned crown. The headdress of high priestesses, however, was not yet standardized in the Akk period and Naramsin broke up the dichotomy between divine and human spheres (Hansen 2002, 104-106).

24 Although female musicians entertaining an enthroned audience are depicted in ED and Akk imagery, I hesitate to interpret this object as a musical instrument (cf. Collon 1987; RIME 2; A. Westenholz 1999, 88), because its shape does not correspond to any known instrument. Even if it resembles a rope hanging from a hook, the evidence for an ordination rope (J. G. Westenholz 1992, 303) is not convincing either. 25 It cannot be a prototype of the 1st millennium BCE mural crown (Börker-Klähn 1997, 229) because the latter was invented for neo-Assyrian queens (Ornan 2002, 474477). 26 E”EM L.1094 (Boehmer 1965, fig. 725; RIME 2: 1.4.2020).

326

c.e. suter

In view of the way he represented himself,27 it seems a small step toward showing his daughter on a par with the god whose spouse she was, especially since the seal dates to the time when he had adopted the title “god of Akkad.” The blurring of divine and human spheres was probably intentional: the ancients may have seen Enmenana as much as Ningal in Nanna’s partner. A banquet of a high priestess and her god may also be depicted on an Akk seal from the Royal Cemetery at Ur that belonged to an en of Utu.28 It depicts two seated figures facing each other and probably an attendant behind one of them. Unfortunately, the small size and low quality of the seal carving do not permit us to identify with any certainty gender, garments, and hairstyles of the figures.29 Another banquet of a high priestess and her god is depicted on the door plaque of Nigdupae, archivist of ’arrakum, a city north of Adab that flourished in ED and Akk times (figure 4).30 It is dedicated to Ningublaga and can be dated to the time when ’arrakum gained independence from Akkad (RIME 2, 249). The horned crown and raised right hand holding a cup must have belonged to Ningublaga. The woman facing him represents Geme-Mugsagana, Nigdupae’s wife, whose name and affiliation are written between her face and her cup. She wears a flounced robe and a large shawl over her head, partly covering her dress. Although no title is given, the fact that she

27

Naramsin was not only the first Mesopotamian king who deified himself but he went further in the representation of his deification than his successors for which posterity branded him as the calamitous king of Mesopotamian history. He is depicted not only with a horned helmet, but also with a heroized body (Winter 1996, figs. 1-3), and enthroned on a par with Iàtar (Hansen 2002, fig. 1-4). 28 Woolley 1934, pl. 214 no. 338; Steinkeller 1999, 126 n. 81. Neither findspot, laconic inscription, nor iconography and style indicate a date later than the Akk period, as Steinkeller would have it. For similar banquets in Akk glyptic, see Boehmer 1965, 115-117. 29 Another low quality seal from Ur (Legrain 1951, no. 353), which Joan Westenholz brought to my attention, bears the inscription: “SAL.EN” topped by what could be interpreted as two squarish moon crescents. The seal depicts a figure in a fringed robe and with a single horned crown petitioning before a seated female wearing a flounced robe and probably a horned crown. Between them is a water bird. One could identify either the petitioner or the seated female as the mentioned en of Nanna (?). In the first case, the seated female might represent Ningal, in the second, the petitioner would represent a servant. Neither scenario is satisfactory and it seems inappropriate to draw conclusions from such a low quality seal. 30 AO 4799 (Selz 1983, no. 487; Braun-Holzinger 1991, W 23; RIME 2: 8.1.2001).

between human and divine

327

is banqueting one-on-one with a god suggests that she was his priestess. En-priestesses of Ningublaga existed,31 and her marital status does not contradict this.32 Her attire further supports this interpretation—the only women who wear flounced robes are high priestesses. Large shawls are combined with tufted robes, the antecedent of the flounced robe, on late ED sculptures that in all probability represent priestesses.33 The last Akk item to consider is the seal of “Ninessa, en of Pisangunu, daughter of Lugal-TAR” (figure 5).34 It exhibits an unusual composition and mentions a mysterious king.35 Pisangunu was a minor god of the Uruk pantheon, and no other high priestesses are attested for him. Lugal-TAR may have adapted the custom of appointing a daughter as en to the cult of this local god when Akkad’s hegemony over the south disintegrated. The image shows two seated goddesses facing one another. The inscription added after the image was carved obscures their hand gestures. Behind the left throne stands a god with his hands on his waist. Behind the other throne, a human couple dressed in fringed robes approaches. The man holds his hands to the waist, while the woman gestures petition.36 This woman, however, cannot be Ninessa (cf. Selz 1983, 525), because she is dressed and coiffured like a court lady. Moreover, the doubling of the goddess would remain obscure. The human presentees are better explained as a local ruler and his wife, like in the libation scenes described above. If so, and if the god and the goddess seated before him represented 31 They are first attested under ’ulgi, but may well have existed before, since Ningublaga was worshipped at Ur since ED times; for the evidence see Richter 2004, 441443, and the Lament for Sumer and Ur (ETCSL 2.2.3 ll. 204-205). 32 The old thesis that high priestesses were submitted to celibacy cannot be sustained: according to Hilgert (see note 1 of this article), children are attested in all periods. 33 Namely statues from Mari: Asher-Greve 1985, nos. 400, 401, 445. While these women wear their shawl over a polos, Abda, daughter of Urnanàe of Lagaà, wears a shawl directly on her head over a tufted robe (Strommenger and Hirmer 1962, pl. 73). Because she is taller than her brothers and leading them, Asher-Greve (1985, 90-92) identified her with the priestess of the god for whom her father built the temple in which this plaque was installed. 34 AO 22309 (Boehmer 1965, fig. 670; Selz 1983, no. 583; RIME 2: 13.3.1001). 35 Frayne (RIME 2: 13.3.1001) considered reading TAR as ku5 and identifying lugal ku5 with king Kuda from Uruk mentioned in the Sumerian King List. However, Lugal-TAR is the name of an ED ensi of Uruk (Steible 1982, Lugal-TAR 1), and one cannot exclude that a namesake ruled Uruk at the end of the Akk period. 36 For this gesture, see Suter 2000, 260-261.

328

c.e. suter

Pisangunu and his divine wife, then it is tempting to see Ninessa in the “goddess” seated before the human couple. The left side may then represent Pisangunu and his divine wife. In this conjectural interpretation, the en-priestess would mirror the divine spouse she personified and the scene could capture the installation of Ninessa or that of local ruler through her intercession. Although high priestesses are abundantly attested in Ur III texts, I am aware of only three images with associated text for this period, all from recut seals.37 An envelope in the British Museum preserves an ancient impression of the seal of Geme-Lama, a well known ereàdingir of Baba in Lagaà (figure 6).38 The seal was of high quality and thoroughly recut. Followed by a Lama, Geme-Lama faces a seated goddess, presumably Baba, who offers her an overflowing vase, a symbol of prosperity. She wears a common fringed robe and her hair is tied up, like court ladies. Moreover, she is the only high priestess standing in audience before the deity whom she served. Her atypical representation can be explained by the likelihood that Ur III ereà-dingir of Baba were governors’ wives, standing in a tradition of local rulers’ wives in charge of Baba’s temple estate that goes back to the ED period (Sallaberger and Huber Vulliet 2003-2005, 636). K. Maekawa (1996, 172) suggested that they were essentially “secular women, not professional priestesses.”39 The seal of the brewer Lillum probably depicts an en of Inana (figure 7).40 If the first line of its inscription were an obscure title, the name of the office holder would be missing. If, however, we emend it to: en-MÙ’-ZA-zi dinana, then Lillum was the servant of 37 Several seals of high priestesses’ subordinates show either a combat scene (Fischer 1997, fig. 6, p. 126 n. 162) or the seal owner before a deity (Legrain 1951, no. 408 = RIME 3/2: 1.2.87; Fischer 1997, nos. 3, 10, 11, 24, p. 125 nn. 160-161, p. 127 nn. 166167). Other images of high priestesses’ and their subordinates’ seals preserved in ancient impressions remain unpublished (RIME 3/2: 1.2.92-93; UET 3 1155; Steinkeller 1999, 120 n. 54). 38 BM 18207A (Fischer 1997, no. 4). For the activities of this ereà-dingir, see the references in Fischer 1997, 125 n. 159. 39 A two-registered post-Akk seal from the Diqdiqqeh cemetery (Legrain 1951, no. 249) may already have belonged to such an ereà-dingir: it also depicts a presentation scene of a female to a goddess, and its inscription reads “ereà-dingir, wife of Lugaluàumgal.” A ruler of Lagaà under Naramsin and ’arkaliàarri bore this name (RIME 2: 1.4.2004; 2: 1.5.2004; 2: 12.3.2001). Unfortunately, the seal neither gives its owner’s name nor Lugal-uàumgal’s title, and the figures are rather crudely carved. 40 BM 89225 (Collon 1982, no. 448).

between human and divine

329

an en of Inana called En-MÙ’-ZA-zi.41 The original image rendered Lama’s introduction of a male petitioner to an enthroned king with cup. While Dominique Collon (1982, no. 448) assumed that the king was transformed into Inana, I see him transformed into a high priestess. Not only was his beard erased and long hair added onto the shoulder, but also the brimmed cap was made into a circlet. Like Aman-Aàtar’s seal (figure 2), this seal then depicts the servant of a high priestess before his superior.42 If my interpretation of text and image is correct, it lends support to Sallaberger’s insinuation that en of Inana were female in the Ur III period (note 3 of this article), and shows that this en of a goddess wore the same attire and hairstyle as those of gods. A similar image is depicted on the seal of Qiptiya, found in level III of the Kititum Temple at Iàchali and dating to the early IL period (figure 8).43 According to the inscription, Qiptiya was the daughter of an ereà-dingir. Unfortunately, the priestess’ name and that of her deity remain obscure. Image and inscription were recut. The left edge of the inscription’s case is still visible next to the new one. The original image depicted a subordinate before an Ur III king. The enthroned figure still sits on the typical stool and holds the cup. The original neckline of the flounced robe leaving one shoulder bare can be seen below the newly cut neckline of a flounced robe covering both shoulders. Face and area of the original beard are damaged. The brimmed cap was changed to a circlet and a bun was added at the nape. Again, the king was transformed into a high priestess. In front of her stands her daughter, the seal owner, dressed in a fringed robe with her hair tied up and held by a hairband. She exhibits a gesture characterisic of consorts before Ur III kings. The only presently known representation of an IL en-priestess is the restored statue of Enanatuma, en of Nanna and daughter of Iàme-Dagan (figure 9).44 It was found in the Gipar at Ur and is 41 As Markus Hilgert pointed out to me, in administrative texts it was common to omit the title between name and deity of an en as, for example, in the year name AmarSuen 5: mu En-unu6-gal dInana ba-hug (Hilgert 2003: 491ff.). 42 If I understand the footnote by Fischer (1997, 140 n. 259) correctly, she came to the same conclusion. 43 IM 27351 (Frankfort 1955, no. 913; see also Fischer 1997, 140). 44 CBS 16229 (Legrain 1927, 223-229; Woolley 1976, 223 (U.6352), pl. 55a; Spycket 1981, 252 n. 135, pl. 176; Braun-Holzinger 1991, st. 170; RIME 4: 1.4.13). The seal images of a child of Enanatuma (RIME 4: 1.4.14) and of Enanedu, en-priestess of

330

c.e. suter

dedicated to Ningal. Enanatuma sits on an inscribed cubic stool set on a platform with two holes on its bottom and copper nails around its edges. She wears a flounced robe covering both arms and holds her hands clasped in front of her body. The head was sculpted separately to fit into a hole in the shoulders. Enough of it survived to allow a restoration with a circlet on long loose hair. Several copper nails just above the circlet indicate that something was once attached to it. Face, necklace, and a lock on each side falling on the shoulder were restored after the femme à l’écharpe (Spycket 1981, pl. 136).

Attire and Regalia Except for the atypical Geme-Lama, all high priestesses wear a flounced robe. This robe was introduced in the Akk period. We can distinguish two types: the common one that leaves one shoulder bare, and another that covers both. The former is the standard garment of deities (Collon 1982, 27), which is occasionally also worn by kings.45 The rare type occurs with goddesses whose entire upper body is rendered frontally,46 perhaps because a single covered shoulder would look unbalanced from that angle. Although high priestesses are always rendered in profile in relief, most of them wear this rare variant (figures 1-2, 8-9); only those apparently visualized as spouse of their god (figures 3-5), and one recut from a royal figure (figure 7) wear the other.47 The choice of a primarily divine garment for Nanna (RIME 2: 2.13.32), remain unpublished, while the seal of a servant of Enanedu (Moortgat 1966, no. 322; RIME 4: 2.14.2021) represents Lama confronting Udug, like seals of court ladies of this period (RIME 4: 2.14.22; 4: 6.8.6?; 4: 6.12.7; 4: 27.2.2001; 4: 28.4.2002; 4: 32.1.1; 4: 32.1.2001). 45 Namely Naramsin on the stela from Pir Hüssein (Orthmann 1975, pl. 105) and Ur III kings on seal images (Winter 1986, 255; Fischer 1997, 131). While other scholars have not questioned the identification of the figure on the Pir Hüssein stela with Naramsin, Braun-Holzinger (1991, st. 14) interpreted it as a god because of the combination of flounced robe and divine weapons. Naramsin, however, did not follow established traditions, as his images show (see note 27 of this article). Moreover, the conical cap he wears on this stela is not a divine headgear, but probably the military headdress of Eblaite kings, which Naramsin adopted after his victory over this region (Matthiae 1980). 46 See Asher-Greve 2006, figs. 6, 10, 11, 17-20, 22. These images date to the periods under discussion and depict high-ranking goddesses. The situation changed in the OB period, in which Lama usually wears this type. 47 The two types of flounced robes can be traced back to ED garments, based on the premise that flounces descended from tufts (Strommenger 1971, 52-53). The tufted robe

between human and divine

331

high priestesses and some kings must have been intended to express their proximity to the gods. High priestesses usually wear long loose hair (figures 1-3, 5, 7). Only two ereà-dingir wear it tied up (figures 6, 8). Goddesses may also wear their hair loose but, as with the flounced robe covering both shoulders, this is a rare hairstyle for them, especially if they are rendered in profile.48 It seems, therefore, that a rare dress variant and hairstyle of goddesses was chosen for high priestesses to distinguish them not only from court ladies, but also from most goddesses. By Ur III times, long loose hair may have come to mark en, since Urningirsu, en-priest of Nanàe, is portrayed with the same long loose hair (Braun-Holzinger 1991, st. 157-158). In the Ur III and IL periods, the headdress of high priestesses was a circlet (figures 7-9). This was exclusive to them, and thus the only part of their attire that set them unambiguously apart from goddesses. In the Akk period, we encounter various headdresses: while Enheduana (figure 1) wears a circlet, Tuta-napàum wears an unique crown (figure 2), and Geme-Mugsagana a large shawl over her head (figure 4). In the aftermath of Naramsin’s elevation to divine status, high priestesses may even have adopted the horned crown when depicted with their divine spouse (figures 3, 5). This variety is not surprising, considering that the attire of many figures was not standardized until the neo-Sumerian period. ED priestesses seem to have worn various headdresses too, which probably reflected local traditions: the polos, for example, is found only in the region of Mari (Asher-Greve 1985, 79-82), while the circlet was the headdress of Nanna’s high priestess at Ur (Winter 1987, figs. 2, 4).49 leaving one shoulder bare is worn by male and female figures (Strommenger 1971, figs. 23 and 27), while the tufted robe covering both shoulders was reserved for women who are generally interpreted as priestesses (Strommenger 1971, fig. 20). If this interpretation is correct, our high priestesses inherited their standard garment in a further developed form from ED predecessors. 48 See Collon 1982, 30; Haussperger 1991, 88-89. Iàtar’s hairstyle, for example, depended on the view: in profile she is usually rendered with a bun, frontally with loose hair (Colbow 1991, 117). The explanation must be that a bun at the nape cannot be seen in frontal view and a female face without hair would look odd. 49 On the door plaque (Winter 1987, fig. 2; see also Asher-Greve 1985, 88-90), I would make a distinction between the headdress of the frontally seen woman in the lower register and that of the three women in the upper register. The former is a circlet, like that of later high priestesses, while the latter is a flat hairband identical to that of the woman at the left of the lower register, and of later court ladies.

332

c.e. suter

Although there is no Sumerian or Akkadian term for regalia, several items are regularly associated with leadership, whether of gods, kings, or high priests. They include paraphernalia such as crown, scepter, and throne, as well as parts of the attire such as garment, headdress, and jewelry (Krecher 1976-80). When insignia of en are mentioned in literary texts, they often leave open whether a god, a king (as en of Uruk), or a high priest/ess is meant. At least two paraphernalia are unambiguously attested for high priestesses, the aga-crown and the throne,50 and administrative texts attest to many differently named robes for them.51 The textual evidence is difficult to correlate with the images. The term aga designates function rather than form (Waetzoldt 1980-83b, 203). It is used in reference to crowns of deities, kings, and high priests. Images reveal that these crowns differed in shape: deities wear horned crowns; kings and high priestesses wear brimmed caps and circlets, respectively, from the neo-Sumerian period on, and various other headdresses before that.52 If we understand aga as a term for any headdress that served as regalia, the differently shaped headdresses of deities, kings, and high priestesses can all be seen as their respective regalia, but we cannot expect to recognize an aga by its form (cf. Asher-Greve 1995/96, 186). The same holds true for the throne: one term (giàgu-za) refers to thrones of deities, kings, and high priests, and the images show that their thrones differed in shape. Crown and throne accord with the visual evidence in so far as all high priestesses wear a headdress and most of them are depicted enthroned. With regard to garments, the situation is reversed: there are many terms in texts and only one type of robe in images. The flounced robe in which high priestesses are depicted was doubtless their ceremonial 50

The throne is documented for several en-priestesses and an égi-zi in Ur III and IL administrative texts (Renger 1967, 128 nn. 110-111; Sallaberger 1993, 147 n. 696; Sallaberger 1995, 20). The aga is the legitimate headdress of Enheduana’s en-ship in Exaltation of Inana (ETCSL 4.07.2 l. 107; one variant replaces aga with túg, “garment”) and also occurs, made of gold, in an Ur III text listing objects to be interred with an enpriestess (Sallaberger 1995, 15). 51 Hilgert (see note 1 in this article) observed that en of Nanna could choose from an array of nearly twenty different robes, including túgnì-lám, and several types of túggu-za (UET 3 1256 and 1717). 52 Several scholars described Enheduana’s headdress on the restored relief from Ur as a brimmed cap by analogy with the headdress of kings (Renger 1967, 126-127; Winter 1987, 192; Sallaberger 1995, 16). Sculptures, however, clearly show that high priestesses wear a circlet on their hair rather than a cap (figures 9-11, 14-15).

between human and divine

333

garment and this coincided with that of deities and some kings. Several robes attested for high priestesses in texts are also attested for deities and kings.53 There may have been several terms for what we identify as a flounced robe, referring to variations in cut, fabric or color.54 Images certainly rendered a simplified or idealized version of the variety of robes that existed in reality, as is the case of footware: high priestesses are always depicted barefoot, whereas an administrative text documents red leather boots for an en of Enlil (Hilgert 2003, no. 497).

Anonymous Images Thirteen anonymous statues qualify as representations of high priestesses by comparison with the identified images (table 1). They come from Ur, Uruk, Tello, Nippur, and Adab. Unfortunately, the contexts of the properly excavated ones were either not accurately recorded or not original. Only two finds help to date this group: IM 56505 was found in an Ur III context at Nippur with many tablets dating to the reign of Amarsin, while IM 18659 was found in the IL quarter of Ur. With the exception of the latter, Agnès Spycket (1981, 171) described them in her chapter on the Akk period, admitting that they could equally well date to the subsequent period. Based on stylistic considerations,55 I would attribute them largely to the neo-Sumerian period without excluding that one or another may date to the Akk or IL period.

53

So túgpalá, túgnì-lám, túgguz-za; see Waetzoldt 1980-83a, 21-22, 26-30. The problem is that many terms for garments are not sufficiently understood, while stone images cannot adequately render fabrics and colors. Renger (1967, 127) wanted to identify túgpalá, the garment that typically occurs in the context of regalia in literary texts, with the flounced robe of high priestesses in images. There is, however, another good candidate for the flounced robe according to Waetzoldt (1980-83a, 2122): túgguz-za, which measured ca. 3.5 by 3.5 m and weighed between 1.5 and 4 kg. 55 Their static, block-like appearance lacks any dynamic elements characteristic of Akk statuary. Frontal hair, eyebrows, and face of two well preserved heads (figs. 10-11) are comparable to the femme à l’écharpe (Spycket 1981, pl. 136). Four statues have an attribute on their lap, which is otherwise attested only for Gudea of Lagaà (Suter 2000, 58). 54

334

c.e. suter

Table 1. Anonymous Statues of High Priestesses Museum No & Fig

Provenience

Condition, Material & Height

Attributes

Bibliography

AO 40

Tello: palace: under pavement of court A Tello

Headless, chlorite 6.1 cm

tablet on lap

de Sarzec 1884, pl. 25:3; van Buren 1931, 72 n. 2; Spycket 1981, 171 n. 130

Head, alabaster 6.7 cm

-

AO 13211

Purchased 1908 or before

vessels on throne

AO 23995 = Fig. 10

Purchased 1862 in Baghdad

Headless, alabaster 15.5 cm; illegible inscription on shoulder Complete, alabaster 20 cm

Cros et al. 1910, pl. 83:1, 3, C; Spycket 1981, 202 n. 92 van Buren 1931, 72 n. 3; Spycket 1981, 172 n. 133, pl. 117

CBS 16228

Ur: Tomb Mound Tello: tell V

Head, marble 9.5 cm Headless, alabaster? 13 cm

-

Ur: Ninàubur shrine in IL quarter Nippur: scribal quarter

Complete, limestone 48 cm Headless, white stone 15.3 cm Lower body, limestone 13.3 cm

-

Headless, limestone

vessels on throne

-

vessels on throne

AO 12844

E‘EM 2381

IM 18659

IM 56505

IM

Uruk: nB houses on SW edge of Eanna UM L-29-214 Nippur (4th = Fig. 12 expedition)

Unknown

Adab

VA 4854 = Fig. 11

Purchased 1915 or before

Complete, 8.5 cm Complete, alabaster 11.3 cm

YBC

Purchased 1931 or before

Headless, limestone 15 cm

vessel in hands

tablet on lap

tablet on lap

-

tablet on lap

van Buren 1931, 73 n. 2; Strommenger and Hirmer 1962, pl. 142; Spycket 1981, 171 n. 128 Spycket 1981, 202 n. 93, pl. 138 Cros et al. 1910, 235 (drawing); van Buren 1931, 72 n. 131; Spycket 1981, 172 n. 131

Woolley 1976, pl. 58a; Spycket 1981, 254 n. 143, fig. 66 McCown and Haines 1967, pl. 145:2; Spycket 1981, 172 n. 132 Lenzen 1966, 38 no. W 21293, pl. 18a

Legrain 1927, 232-234; van Buren 1931, pl. XV; Spycket 1981, 172 n. 134, fig. 55 Banks 1912, 258 (photo) van Buren 1931, 71 n. 5; Jakob-Rost et al. 1992, no. 41; Spycket 1981, 171 n. 127 van Buren 1931, pl. XIV; Spycket 1981, 173 n. 135, fig. 56

between human and divine

335

Elizabeth van Buren’s article from 1931 is the only previous study of this group of statues. She identifies them as goddesses mainly because they wear flounced robes. Although Henri Frankfort countered this interpretation long ago (1939, 53 n. 20), many are still listed as goddesses (for example, Braun-Holzinger 1991, 226 n. 672). By comparison with the images of Enheduana (figure 1) and Enanatuma (figure 9), both Spycket (1981, 174) and Collon (1998, 21) have wondered whether they represent priestesses. For several reasons, I believe that indeed they do: their attire and hairstyle conform with identified high priestesses; those whose head is preserved wear a circlet not a horned crown; they hold their hands clasped like other statues representing their donor; together with Enanatuma they are the only statues depicted enthroned from the Akk to the IL period, aside from rulers (Braun-Holzinger 1991, 234). Moreover, their attributes can be linked to a high priestess’ office. The tablets some have on their lap exhibit several vertical lines intersected by one or two horizontal lines, apparently representing the cases or columns in which text was written. Because writing was invented and most frequently used for book-keeping, the tablet probably implies an administrative function56 and can be associated with the prime task of high priestesses as head of their deity’s estate. The containers carved on the throne of others are vessels for dairy use (van Buren 1931, 65-70) and can be expected to represent products of this estate or utensils used in production. The globular vessel held by one has the same shape as the so-called overflowing vase (van Buren 1931, 73). In neo-Sumerian times, deities present this symbol of prosperity to rulers for their services (Suter 2000, 63, 67, 203-204), and it is bestowed also on Geme-Lama (figure 6). The globular vessel must thus signify blessings of prosperity that this high priestess received from her deity for running his or her estate. Four more images can be added to the repertory of anonymous high priestesses: two statues, slightly different from the above,

56 If the tablets were to evoke temple construction, they would exhibit ruler, stylus, and possibly a plan (Suter 2000, 58). A tablet with propitious stars would probably have looked different, too—that of Nisaba explicitly had a stylus on it (ETCSL 2.1.7 ll. 134140)—and divination was not a prime task of Mesopotamian priests (Sallaberger and Huber Vulliet 2003-2005, 617). I also doubt that the tablet referred to the composition of poetry since most literary works were not written down until the OB period and Enheduana’s authorship is disputable (Suter 2000, 151-152).

336

c.e. suter

and two reliefs. The statues are from Ur, date to the IL period, and have generally been identified as goddesses, although they lack horned crowns. Both are dressed in flounced robes covering both arms. One is from the Gipar (figure 13).57 The top of her head is flat, and a groove around it with two holes above the ears indicates that a headdress, probably in metal, was attached. Shape and location of this groove indicate a circlet, not a horned crown. An aga made of gold is attested for an en-priestess in an Ur III administrative text (Sallaberger 1995, 15). Geese flank the female’s throne and her foot-stool is supported by two more water birds. Such a goose-throne is otherwise attested only for a goddess with the multiple horned crown.58 This goddess has, at different times, been identified with Baba, Nanàe, and Ningal. Because her image was widespread from the Akk to the IL period, Braun-Holzinger (1998-2001a, 162) argued that she cannot be one and the same in all places and proposed that the images from Girsu represented Nanàe.59 I suggest that similar images from Ur represented Ningal, with whom texts also associate water birds.60 Interestingly, zirru, the traditional title of Nanna’s en still used in IL times (see note 16 in this article), was adopted from Ningal, and can be translated as “hen bird” (J. G. Westenholz 1989, 541-544). The statue from Ur’s Gipar is then best identified with Nanna’s en who adopted the goose-throne from Ningal, whom she personified as Nanna’s wife. 57 IM 18663 (Legrain 1927, 229-232; Woolley 1976, 225 (U.6779), pl. 54; Orthmann 1975, pl. 164c; Spycket 1981, 234 n. 49, pl. 160). 58 On a door plaque from Nippur and on seals and terracotta plaques from Ur, Girsu, Uruk, and Nippur (Braun-Holzinger 1998-2001a, 161). Geese or other water birds—the representations do not always allow for a precise zoological classification— are associated also with a goddess on post-Akk seals that depict a presentation to a goddess in the upper register, and a row of water birds in the lower register and on neoSumerian seals that depict a water bird in front of an enthroned goddess (Braun-Holzinger 1998-2001a, 161). These birds, however, need not necessarily characterize the goddess. 59 For her connection with birds in texts, see Heimpel 1998-2001, 153. Two seals from Lagaà depicting a goddess on the goose-throne belonged to priests of Nanàe (Fischer 1997, no. 12, p. 122 n. 141 [ITT 5 pl. V: 10075 described]). A bird is also associated with an enthroned goddess on seals from Lagaà that belonged to servants of an ereà-dingir of Baba (Fischer 1997, 126-127); this goddess, however, is never depicted on the goose-throne. 60 See especially Nanna B (ETCSL 4.13.02). In the Lament for Urim, Ningal cannot be the bird of her city anymore because her city is being destroyed (ETCSL 2.2.2 l. 339). See also Steinkeller cited in Zgoll 1998-2001, 353.

between human and divine

337

The other statue is a standing female from the Hendursag Shrine with long hair down her back and two tresses on her chest.61 Since the shrine was dedicated to a god, this female cannot have been its cult statue. Yellow criss-cross bands were painted on the indented, disk-shaped top of her head, which exhibits three holes on the back. Leonard Woolley (1976, 239) suggested that the bands represent a hair-ornament while the holes held another upright ornament. This does not explain the notch created by the indented top. Because of the hair-ornament, it is unlikely that a horned crown was mounted on it (cf. Spycket 1981, 253). Instead, the holes may have held a golden circlet sitting on the notch. A fragmentary door plaque depicts a seated female wearing the flounced robe covering both arms and a circlet on her long hair (figure 14).62 All that remains of the inscription is the name of the goddess Ninsun, mother of Gilgameà, and symbolically also of Ur III kings. Stylistic considerations (Boese 1971, 136) and the mention of Ninsun indicate an Ur III date, as does the fact that door plaques are not known from later periods. Several scholars identified the female as Ninsun. Deities, however, are not labeled in Early Mesopotamian imagery. “Ninsun” must be the beginning of a dedicatory inscription, that is, the deity to whom the plaque was dedicated. Boese (1971, 136), followed by Börker-Klähn (in Orthmann 1975, pl. 117b), have observed the female’s similarity with Enanatuma (figure 9) and identified her as a priestess who may have participated in a banquet.63 Her partner would then have been the deity to whom she was assigned. If this was Ninsun or her husband Lugalbanda, she would represent an ereà-dingir.64 However, high priestess could dedicate plaques to deities other than their own (or their deity’s spouse) as when 61

IM 18658 (Woolley 1976, 239, pl. 55b (U.16425); Spycket 1981, 253 n. 138). AO 2761. For a good photo, see Strommenger and Hirmer 1962, pl. 129 rechts; for more bibliography, see Braun-Holzinger 1991, W 30. 63 Since the hand of her right arm is missing, it remains uncertain whether she was holding a drinking vessel. That she received a subordinate in audience, like royals and high priestesses on seal images, however, is unlikely on a door plaque, since presentation scenes in sculpture always depict the ruler before a deity. 64 Only ereà-dingir are attested for these deities. Visual tradition would speak for Lugalbanda as the participants of two-person banquets are more often of the opposite sex than of the same and there would be a precedent in the door plaque of Nigdupae (figure 4). Textual evidence, on the other hand, would speak for Ninsun: ereà-dingir of Ninsun are attested in Ur III and Isin times (Steinkeller 1999, 128 n. 91), whereas an ereà-dingir of Lugalbanda occurs only once in an OB inscription (RIME 4: 62

338

c.e. suter

Enheduana dedicated a relief to Inana-Zaza. She may, therefore, represent an en-priestess.65 The other relief is a fragmentary frieze of figures carved around a stone vessel (figure 15).66 On stylistic grounds, it can be dated to the late Ur III or early IL period. Two bald-headed, beardless men on the right and a woman on the left turn their backs on two percussionists playing a large drum. They are directed toward the focal point of the scene, now lost. The men wear fringed robes. One gestures petition, the other carries a cloth. The woman wears a plain robe and a necklace. Her long hair falls loose on her back and is crowned by a circlet. Except for the missing flounces, which may have been painted on, her attire, hairstyle, and jewelry are identical to those of the woman on the door plaque just described. She holds both arms raised, like a Lama. Although I know of no other human exhibiting this gesture,67 she cannot represent a Lama, since she does not wear a horned crown. When high priestesses prayed to the gods for the well being and long life of the king (see note 10 in this article), they interceded on his behalf, not unlike Lamas do on behalf of their protégé (Foxvog et al. 1980-83). Lama’s gesture is thus suitable for a high priestess. This one may have followed a king to a deity. The scene may then have captured a cult ceremony in which king, high priestess, and other members of the royal entourage participated.

Conclusions Based on images identified by an associated text, I hope to have established that one can identify high priestesses in imagery. They were marked by a garment and a headdress that were insignia of their office and they wore their hair loose down the back rather than 4.1.9); the OB ereà-dingir of Lugalbanda apparently replaced that of Ninsun (Richter 2004, 323). 65 As Joan Westenholz pointed out to me, the offerings for the installation of an en of Nanna of Karzida under Amarsin conclude with sacrifices for “the house of the mother of all en, Ninsun” (PDT II 767 ii 15). 66 AO 5682+6160 (Heuzey in Cros et al. 1910, 287-90 (without fragment of woman); Strommenger and Hirmer 1962, pl. 128; for a detailed description, see Suter 2000, 191). 67 A possible exception is the female on a terracotta plaque from Tello (Barrelet 1968, no. 482) who wears a circlet, too.

between human and divine

339

tied up in a bun. While the various shapes of their headdresses probably reflected local traditions in Akk times, the circlet of Nanna’s en became standard from neo-Sumerian times on. Differences between differently titled high priestesses have been noted. Significantly, neither ceremonial names nor insignia are attested for ereà-dingir. Geme-Lama (figure 6) is probably dressed and coiffured like court ladies and appears in a context typical for them because she stood in a tradition of local ruler’s wives heading Baba’s estate. This ereà-dingir was neither a king’s daughter nor a god’s wife and her tasks apparently coincided with those of a ruler’s wife. Other ereà-dingir were assimilated with en: Tuta-napàum (figure 2) refers to herself as ereà-dingir, whereas other texts document an en of Enlil in her time (see note 6 in this article), and she is depicted like an en. There is only one more identified image of an ereà-dingir from the periphery (figure 8): she occurs in a context attested for en and is distinguished from them only by her bun. Should the woman on Ninsun’s plaque (figure 14) represent an ereà-dingir, this one would be assimilated to en in appearance and occur in a context fit for high priestesses married to their god. The only possible en of a goddess (figure 7) looks like en of gods. Although meagre, the evidence suggests that, while all female en were entitled to the attire of a high priestess, this was not necessarily the case for all ereà-dingir. Perhaps only those of gods were assimilated with en, while those of goddesses had a similar status as court ladies. In any case, the title was not consistently used: local traditions and changes over time apparently played a factor in its definition. High priestesses adopted their garment and hairstyle from goddesses. Nevertheless, they looked different from most of them, since goddesses are much more often depicted with a flounced robe differently draped than that adopted by high priestesses, and with their hair tied up rather than loose. What distinguished high priestesses unambiguously from goddesses was their headdress. Even if some may have had a pair of horns attached (figures 9, 11), it would still have been distinct, not unlike Naramsin’s horned helmet differing from horned crowns.68 If an en of Nanna adopted the goose-throne from Ningal (figure 13), 68 Another possible representation of a deified king with horns on his cap is found on an IL seal (Collon 1986, no. 68). Whether the Mari governor Puzur-Eàtar wore horns or not remains problematic; Blocher (2003, 269) proposed that his cap was remodeled between 750 and 652 BCE.

340

c.e. suter

her headdress set her apart from the goddess. Similarly, the woman on the vessel (figure 15) exhibits a gesture otherwise reserved for Lama, yet her circlet set her apart from the goddess. Only in exceptional cases may the depiction of a high priestess have coincided with that of the goddess whom she personified: in the case of Enmenana, the image remains ambiguous (figure 3), while Ninessa might be depicted in a mirror-image with the divine wife of her god (figure 5). What do the images of high priestesses tell us about them? Most of their attributes—tablet, dairy vessels, and small pot symbolizing prosperity—evoked their aspect as head of their deity’s estate, while the goose-throne evoked this en’s aspect as her god’s wife. The former reflect the realist political plane of their office, the latter the ideological one. In contrast to other humans, high priestesses do not figure in the role of the presentee. They only chair presentation scenes, receiving subordinates in audience (figures 2, 7, 8). They share this function not only with deities, who predominantly preside over presentation scenes from the late ED through the IL period, but also with an Akk queen and with Ur III kings, who are frequently depicted as the head of state bureaucracy. Although high priestesses participate in cult ceremonies, they do not perform the rite. While other royals, such as Akk court ladies and Ur III kings, pour libations, Enheduana only presides over this act performed by her assistant (figure 1). Similarly, a late Ur III/early IL high priestess intercedes presumably on behalf of a king in a cult ceremony whose focal act is lost (figure 15). Then again, high priestesses banquet with their god (figures 3-5, 14).69 The most likely occasion for this event was their installation in office, so frequently commemorated in official state records, and publicly celebrated in grand feasts.70 Installation ceremonies of OB priestesses show analogies with marriage rites (Sallaberger and Huber Vulliet 69 I have not described anonymous high priestesses in glyptic, because I could not find clear examples of figures whose attire corresponds to that of identified high priestesses in this medium. Banquets of women with gods may qualify, but the seals depicting banquets of a human with a deity (Selz 1983, 526-527) tend to be of low quality, making it difficult to recognize the figures’ gender and attire. If, however, a high priestess could appear in the guise of her god’s divine spouse when banqueting with him (figs. 3, 5), she may be alluded to in banquets of divine couples (Selz 1983, 523-526) that remain anonymous because the seals lack an inscription and the figures are not given idiosyncratic attributes. 70 Based on administrative texts, Hilgert (see note 1 in this article) showed that this event could last at least seven days, during which large amounts of food and drink were consumed.

between human and divine

341

2003-2005, 622-623). Although the latter differed considerably from the high priestesses under discussion, some aspects lived on, including the spousal function vis-à-vis a god. We can expect, therefore, that this banquet implied the high priestess’ marriage to her god. Attire, attributes, and the context in which high priestesses are depicted, underscore their high rank in state hierarchy and support the claim that they were offshoots of kingship. They were the only humans aside from kings who were entitled not only to regalia, but also to attributes in images and to the enthroned posture in statuary. Kings and high priestesses shared these privileges with deities. The use of the same terms for regalia of kings, high priestesses, and deities in texts, and the use of attributes, the same robe, and the same posture for them in images, must have been intended to blur boundaries between the human and divine spheres. Kings and high priestesses mediated between these spheres, and both could symbolically be married to a deity. Although kings rarely transgressed borders and adorned themselves with horns of divinity, heroized bodies, and other divine attributes, it did occasionally happen in the aftermath of Naramsin’s elevation to divine status and the revival of royal deification under the Ur III kings (Suter forthcoming). Similarly, a few high priestesses may have attached a pair of horns to their headdress, adopted divine attributes, banqueted with their deity, and perhaps even completely slipped into the guise of their divine husband’s wife on that occasion. Presumably, they were neither introduced to a deity nor personally performed rites because they maintained a relationship on a higher level with their deity. They are indeed the only humans depicted in banquet with a deity: although ’ulgi is eulogized banqueting with Utu and Inana in poetry (ETCSL 2.4.2.01 ll. 79-83), no such banquet has survived in images.

Addendum To the catalogue of anonymous statues of high priestesses can now be added the high quality, 14 centimeter-high limestone head that was recently confiscated in Jordan. Vito Messina presented it at the ICAANE in Madrid, 2006, and its publication just appeared in Menegazzi (2005, 5, pls. 1, A, and cover).

342

c.e. suter References

Amiet, Pierre. 1976. L’Art d’Agadé au Musée du Louvre. Paris: Éditions des musées nationaux. Archi, Alfonso. 1998. The High Priestess, dam-dingir, at Ebla. In ‘Und Moses schrieb dieses Lied auf ’: Studien zum Alten Testament und zum Alten Orient: Festschrift für Oswald Loretz, ed. Manfried Dietrich et al., 43-53. AOAT 250. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Asher-Greve, Julia M. 1985. Frauen in altsumerischer Zeit. BiMes 18. Malibu: Undena. ———. 1995/96. Reading the Horned Crown: A Review Article. AfO 42-43: 181-189. ———. 2006. The Gaze of Goddesses: On Divinity, Gender, and Frontality in the Late Early Dynastic, Akkadian, and Neo-Sumerian periods. NIN 4. Assante, Julia. 2003. From Whores to Hierodules: The Historiographic Invention of Female Sex Professionals. In Ancient Art and its Historiography, ed. A. A. Donohue and Mark D. Fullerton, 13-47. Cambridge: University Press. Banks, E. J. 1912. Bismya. New York/London: Putnam’s Sons Knickerbocker Press. Barrelet, Marie-Thérèse. 1968. Figurines et reliefs en terre cuite de la Mésopotamie antique. Bibliothèque archéologique et historique de l’institute français d’archéologie de Beyrouth 85. Paris: Geuthner. Blocher, Felix. 2003. Wann wurde Puzur-Eàtar zum Gott? In Babylon: Focus Mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne, ed. Johannes Renger, 253-269. Colloquien der deutschen Orientgesellschaft 2. Saarbrücken: Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag. Boehmer, Rainer M. 1965. Die Entwicklung der Glyptik während der Akkad-Zeit. UAVA 4. Berlin: de Gruyter. Boese, Johannes. 1971. Altmesopotamische Weihplatten: Eine sumerische Denkmalsgattung des 3.Jt. v.Chr. UAVA 6. Berlin: de Gruyter. Börker-Klähn, Jutta. 1997. Mauerkronenträgerinnen. In Assyrien im Wandel der Zeiten, ed. Hartmut Waetzoldt and Harald Hauptmann, 227-234. HSAO 6. Heidelberg: Orientverlag. Braun-Holzinger, Eva. 1991. Mesopotamische Weihgaben der frühdynastischen bis altbabylonischen Zeit. HSAO 3. Heidelberg: C. Winter. ———. 1998-2001a. Nanàe: B: Archäologisch. RlA 9: 160-162. ———. 1998-2001b. Ningal: B: Archäologisch. RlA 9: 359. Charpin, Dominique. 1986. Le Clergé d’Ur au siècle d’Hammurabi. Hartes Études Orientales 22. Paris/Geneva: Droz. Colbow, Gudrun. 1991. Die kriegerische Iàtar: Zu den Erscheinungsformen bewaffneter Gottheiten zwischen der Mitte des 3. und der Mitte des 2. Jahrtausends. MVS 8. München: Profil Verlag.

between human and divine

343

Collon, Dominique. 1982. Catalogue of Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals II: Akkadian Post Akkadian—Uruk III Periods. London: British Museum. ———. 1986. Catalogue of Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals III: Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian Periods. London: British Museum. ———. 1987. First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East. London: British Museum. ———. 1998. Depiction of Priests and Priestesses in the Ancient Near East. In Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East, ed. K. Watanabe, 17-46. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Cooper, Jerold S. 1993. Sacred Marriage and Popular Cult in Early Mesopotamia. In Official Cult and Popular Religion in the Ancient Near East, ed. Eiko Matsushima, 8196. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Cros, Gaston, Léon Heuzey, and François Thureau-Dangin. 1910. Mission française de Chaldée: Nouvelles fouilles de Tello. Paris: Leroux. de Sarzec, Ernest, Léon Heuzey, Arthur Amiaud, and François Thureau-Dangin. 1884. Découvertes en Chaldée. Paris: Leroux. Englund, Robert K. 1998. Texts from the Late Uruk Period. In Mesopotamien: Annäherungen 1: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit, ed. J. Bauer, R. K. Englund, and M. Krebernik, 13-233. OBO 160/1. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Fischer, Claudia. 1997. Siegelabrollungen im British Museum auf Ur-III-zeitlichen Texten aus der Provinz von Lagaà: Untersuchungen zu den Verehrungsszenen. BaM 28: 97-183. Foster, Benjamin. 1982. Administration and Use of Institutional Land in Sargonic Sumer. Mesopotamia 9. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. ———. 1987. Women in Sargonic Society. In La Femme dans le proche-orient antique, ed. J.-M. Durand, 53-61. Paris: Editions de Recherche sur les Civilisations. Foxvog, Daniel, Wolfgang Heimpel, Ann D. Kilmer, and Agnès Spycket. 1980-83. Lama/Lamassu. RlA 6: 446-455. Frankfort, Henri. 1939. Sculpture of the Third Millennium B.C. from Tell Asmar and Khafajah. OIP 44. University of Chicago Press. ———. 1955. Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region. OIP 72. Chicago: Oriental Institute. Haines, Richard C. 1956. Where a Goddess of Love and War was Worshipped 4000 Years ago. ILN 18th August 1956: 266-269. Hansen, Donald. 2002. Through the Love of Ishtar. In Of Pots and Plans: Papers on the Archaeology and History of Mesopotamia and Syria presented to David Oates in Honor of his 75th Birthday, ed. L. al-Gailani Werr, J. Curtis, A. McMahon, H. Martin, J. Oates, and J. Reade, 91-112. London: Nabu Publications. Haussperger, Martha. 1991. Die Einführungsszene: Entwicklung eines mesopotamischen Motivs von der altakkadischen bis zum Ende der altbabylonischen Zeit. MVS 11. München: Profil Verlag.

344

c.e. suter

Heimpel, Wolfgang. 1992. Herrentum und Königtum im vor- und frühgeschichtlichen alten Orient. ZA 82: 4-21. ———. 1998-2001. Nanàe: A: Philologisch. RlA 9: 152-160. Hilgert, Markus. 2003. Cuneiform Texts from the Ur III Period in the Oriental Institute, 2: Drehem Administrative Documents from the Reign of Amar-Suena. OIP 121. Chicago: The Oriental Institute. Jakob-Rost, Liane, Evelyn Klengel-Brandt, Joachim Mahrzahn, and Ralf-B. Wartke. 1992. Das Vorderasiatische Museum. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Krecher, Joachim. 1976-80. Insignien. RlA 5: 109-114. Legrain, Léon. 1927. Sumerian Sculptures. Museum Journal 18: 217-246. ———. 1951. Ur Excavations 10: Seal Cylinders. London: British Museum. Lenzen, H. J. 1966. Die Kleinfunde. UVB 22: 31-44. Maekawa, K. 1996. The Governor’s Family and the ‘Temple Household’ in Ur III Girsu. In Houses and Households in Ancient Mesopotamia, ed. Klaas R. Veenhof, 171-179. Leiden: Pihans. Matthiae, Paolo. 1980. Appunti di iconographia eblaita, II. Studi Eblaiti 2: 41-47. McCown, Donald E., and Richard C. Haines. 1967. Nippur I: Temple of Enlil, Scribal Quarter and Soundings. OIP 78. Chicago: Oriental Institute. Menegazzi, Roberta, ed. 2005. An Endangered Cultural Heritage: Iraqi Antiquities Recovered in Jordan. Firenze: Le Lettere. Michalowski, Piotr. 1988. Divine Heroes and Historical Self-Representation: From Gilgamesh to Shulgi. Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies 16: 19-23. Moortgat, Anton. 1966. Vorderasiatische Rollsiegel. Berlin: Gebrüder Mann. Ornan, Tallay. 2002. The Queen in Public: Royal Women in Neo-Assyrian Art. In Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2-6, 2001, ed. Simo Parpola and Robert M. Whiting, 461-477. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Orthmann, Winfried, ed. 1975. Der alte Orient. Propyläen Kunstgeschichte 14. Berlin: Propyläenverlag. Pinnock, Frances. 1998. The Iconography of the Entu-Priestesses in the Period of the Ur III Dynasty. In Intellectual Life of the Ancient Near East, ed. J. Prosecky, 339-346. Prague: Academy of Science of the Czech Republique. Renger, Johannes. 1967. Untersuchungen zum Priestertum in der altbabylonischen Zeit. ZA 58: 110-188. Richter, Thomas. 2004. Untersuchungen zu den lokalen Panthea Süd- und Mittelbabyloniens in altbabylonischer Zeit. AOAT 257. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Rova, Elena. 1994. Ricerche sui sigilli a cilindro vicino-orientali del periodo di Uruk/Jemdet Nasr. Rome: La Sapienza.

between human and divine

345

Sallaberger, Walther. 1993. Der kultische Kalender der Ur III-Zeit. UAVA 7. Berlin: de Gruyter. ———. 1995. Eine reiche Bestattung im neusumerischen Ur. JCS 47: 15-20. ———. 1999. Ur III-Zeit. In Mesopotamien: Annäherungen 3: Akkade-Zeit und Ur III-Zeit, ed. Pascal Attinger and Markus Wäfler, 121-390. OBO 160/3. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Sallaberger, Walther, and Fabienne Huber Vulliet. 2003-2005. Priester: A: I: Mesopotamien. RlA 10: 617-640. Schmandt-Besserat, Denise. 1993. Images of Enship. In Between the Rivers and over the Mountains: Archaeologica Anatolica et Mesopotamica Alba Palmieri Dedicata, ed. M. Frangipani, H. Hauptmann, M. Liverani, P. Matthiae, and M. Mellink, 201-219. Rome: La Sapienza. Selz, Gudrun. 1983. Die Bankettszene: Entwicklung eines ‘überzeitlichen’ Bildmotivs in Mesopotamien, Teil 1: Von der frühdynastischen bis zur Akkad-Zeit. FAOS 11. Wiesbaden: Steiner. Spycket, Agnès. 1981. La Statuaire du proche-orient ancien. Handbuch der Orientalistik I/2. Leiden: Brill. Steible, Horst. 1982. Die altsumerischen Bau- und Weihinschriften. FAOS 5. Wiesbaden: Steiner. Steinkeller, Piotr. 1993. Comments on the Seal of Aman-Eshtar. NABU: no. 9. ———. 1999. On Rulers, Priests and Sacred Marriage: Tracing the Evolution of Early Sumerian Kingship. In Priests and Officials in the Ancient Near East, ed. K. Watanabe, 103-137. Heidelberg: C. Winter. Strommenger, Eva. 1971. Mesopotamische Gewandtypen von der frühsumerischen bis zur Larsa-Zeit. APA 2: 37-55. Strommenger, Eva, and Max Hirmer. 1962. Fünf Jahrtausende Mesopotamien. München: Hirmer. Suter, Claudia E. 2000. Gudea’s Temple Building: The Representation of an Early Mesopotamian Ruler in Text and Image. CM 17. Groningen: Styx. ———. Forthcoming. Poetic Imagery and Actual Depiction of Ur III Kings. In Your Praise is Sweet. A Memorial Volume Presented to Jeremy Allen Black by Colleagues, Students, and Friends, ed. H. Baker, E. Robson, and G. Zólyomi. Van Buren, Elizabeth Douglas. 1931. Two Statuettes of an Enthroned Goddess. Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 18: 63-78. Van de Mieroop, Marc. 1989. Women in the Economy of Sumer. In Women’s Earliest Records from Ancient Egypt and Western Asia, ed. Barbara S. Lesko, 53-66. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Waetzoldt, Hartmut. 1980-83a. Kleidung: Philologisch. RlA 6: 18-31. ———. 1980-83b. Kopfbedeckung: Philologisch. RlA 6: 197-203.

346

c.e. suter

Westenholz, Aage. 1999. The Old Akkadian Period: History and Culture. In Mesopotamien: Annäherungen 3: Akke-Zeit und Ur III-Zeit, ed. Pascal Attinger and Markus Wäfler, 17-117. OBO 160/3. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Westenholz, Aage, and Joachim Oelsner. 1983. Zu den Weihplattenfragmenten der Hilprecht-Sammlung. AoF 10: 209-216. Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. 1989. Eheduanna, En-Priestess, Hen of Nanna, Spouse of Nanna. In DUMU-E2-DUB-BA-A: Studies in Honor of Åke W. Sjöberg, ed. H. Behrens, D. Loding, and M. T. Roth, 539-556. Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 11. Philadelphia: University Museum. ———. 1992. The Clergy of Nippur: The Priestess of Enlil. In Nippur at the Centennial, ed. M. de Jong Ellis, 297-310. Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 14. Philadelphia: University Museum. Westenholz, Joan, and Aage Westenholz. 1983. Die Prinzessin Tutanapsum. AoF 10: 387-388. Winter, Irene J. 1986. The King and the Cup: Iconography of the Royal Presentation Scene on Ur III Seals. In Insight Through Images: Studies in Honor of Edith Porada, ed. M. Kelly-Buccellati, 253-268. BiMes 21. Malibu: Undena. ———. 1987. Women in Public: The Disk of Enheduanna, the Beginnings of the Office of EN-Priestess and the Weight of Visual Evidence. In La Femme dans le procheorient antique, ed. J.-M. Durand, 189-202. Paris: Editions de Recherche sur les Civilisations. ———. 1996. Sex, Rhetoric and the Public Monument: The Alluring Body of NaramSîn of Agade. In Sexuality in Ancient Art: Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, ed. N. B. Kampen, 11-26. Cambridge: University Press. Woolley, Charles Leonard. 1934. Ur Excavations 2: The Royal Cemetery. London: British Museum. ———. 1955. Ur Excavations 4: The Early Periods: A Report on the Sites and Objects prior in date to the Third Dynasty of Ur. London: British Museum. ———. 1976. Ur Excavations 7: The Old Babylonian Period. London: British Museum. Zervos, Christian. 1935. L’Art de la Mésopotamie de la fin du quatrième millénaire au XVe siècle avant notre ère. Paris: Cahiers d’Art. Zettler, Richard L. 1977. The Sargonic Royal Seal: A Consideration of Sealing in Mesopotamia. In Seals and Sealing in the Ancient Near East, ed. McGuire Gibson and Robert D. Biggs, 33-39. BiMes 6. Malibu: Undenda. Zgoll, Annette. 1997. Der Rechtsfall der En-hedu-Ana im Lied nin-me-àa-ra. AOAT 246. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. ———. 1998-2001. Ningal. RlA 9: 352-356.

between human and divine

347

Figure 1. Stone relief dedicated by Enheduana, h. 25.6 cm (courtesy University of Pennsylvania Museum)

Figure 2. Seal of Aman-Aàtar (after Collon 1987: no. 530)

348 c.e. suter

Figure 3. Seal of Lu-[. . .], h. 2.9 cm (after Boehmer 1965: Figure 725)

between human and divine 349

350

c.e. suter

Figure 4. Door plaque dedicated by Nigdupae, h. 25 cm (courtesy Louvre)

Figure 5. Seal of Ninessa, h. 3.1 cm (courtesy Louvre)

between human and divine 351

Figure 6. Seal of Geme-Lama, h. 2.9 (after Fischer 1997: no. 4)

352 c.e. suter

Figure 7. Seal of Lillum, h. 2.9 cm (courtesy British Museum)

between human and divine 353

Figure 8. Seal of Qiptiya, h. 2.2 cm (courtesy Diyala Project, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago)

354 c.e. suter

between human and divine

355

Figure 9. Statue of Enanatuma, h. 24 cm (courtesy University of Pennsylvania Museum)

356

c.e. suter

Figure 10. Statue of enthroned woman holding vessel, h. 20 cm (courtesy Louvre)

between human and divine

357

Figure 11. Statue of enthroned woman with tablet on lap, h. 11.3 cm (courtesy Vorderasiatisches Museum)

Figure 12. Statue of enthroned woman with vessels on throne, h. 15 cm (courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art)

358 c.e. suter

between human and divine

359

Figure 13. Statue of woman on goose-throne, h. 29 cm (courtesy University of Pennsylvania Museum)

360

c.e. suter

Figure 14. Door plaque dedicated to Ninsun, h. 14 cm (courtesy Louvre)

Figure 15. Carved stone vessel, h. 12 cm (courtesy Louvre)

between human and divine 361

362

c.e. suter

shulgi-simti and the representation of women

363

SHULGI-SIMTI AND THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN HISTORICAL SOURCES T. M. Sharlach Obviously, a central concern of art history is the question of representation, the translation of an idea into a visual medium. Irene Winter’s varied and always thought-provoking work as a scholar and as a teacher has encouraged the field to consider both Mesopotamian ideas and their representations in new ways. Although my own work on economic documents is in many aspects quite distant from her field of study, the lessons she taught me about academic rigor, the need for clear definition and, not least, negotiating academia as a female scholar, remain central. I have chosen, therefore, to present in the current venue not a traditional economic historian’s analysis of the technical aspects of an archive, or even an attempt to synthesize such an archive, but rather a presentation of what I see to be a set of problems we face when trying to represent women in the history of late third millennium Mesopotamia. I do not claim to have solutions to the problems raised here, but perhaps by identifying them in the open, we may be encouraged to consider the issues in new ways, which, I hope, might please the honoree. The issue of the representation of women, which Irene Winter discussed most notably in her article, “Women in Public: The Disk of Enheduanna, the Beginning of the Office of En-Priestess and the Weight of Visual Evidence” (1987), became an issue for me recently in my work on the archive of the royal wife Shulgi-simti, who died around 2050 B.C. This woman was one of the wives of Shulgi, the second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur and the architect of its most characteristic policies. The origins of this queen and most of the details of her life history are unknown (general introductions to the archive can be found in Sallaberger 1993, 18-25; 1999, 253-260; Sigrist 1992, 222-246; van de Mieroop 1999, 157-159). An archive associated with her, consisting of approximately 500 tablets written in the Sumerian language, spans a period of a little less than two decades. The texts largely consist of records of income

364

t.m. sharlach

and expenditure, as a rule dealing with livestock. The archive, though not excavated, probably came from the ancient site of Puzrish-Dagan (also known by its modern name, Drehem) on the basis of the date at which the tablets appeared on the market as well as clues in the texts such as month names and place names (Sallaberger 1993, 21). The tablets allow us a glimpse into the operation of Shulgi-simti’s organization (sometimes referred to by Assyriologists as a “foundation,” or institution run under her aegis though not necessarily by her personally). Income consisted of livestock of various sorts—mainly sheep, goats and various types of fowl—gathered from male and female courtiers and crown employees; it was handed over to male officials who worked for the foundation. The livestock is described as mu-DU Shulgi-simti, “delivery (to) Shulgi-simti,” as the three sample texts translated below demonstrate. Text One 1 ox, 9 grass fed sheep, 1 goat from Hubaya, general. 1 goat from Alla’s wife. 1 goat from Ur-nigin-gar’s wife, delivery (to) Shulgi-simti, Beli-tab received (the above.) (CST 42, Shulgi 33, month 5)1

Text Two 1 tu-bird, (from) Lu-urub, 58 tugur-birds (from the woman) Tezen-Mama, 2 kaskal-birds (from) Barbaria, the 6th day having passed from the month, delivery (to) Shulgi-simti. (AUCT 1.952, Shulgi 39, month 4)

Text Three 6 ducks (from) Bagum, fowler, the 28th day having passed from the month, delivery (to) Shulgi-simti, Shulgi-ili received (the above). (PDT 1.139, Shulgi 47, month 10)

Texts like these show male and female courtiers providing small quantities of livestock—a squab here, a goat there. Occasionally, larger 1

Abbreviations follow the guidelines outlined by the CDLI project, to be found online at http//cdli.ucla.edu.

shulgi-simti and the representation of women

365

quantities are recorded and occasionally the provisioners were not courtiers but professional livestock managers, such as the bird-keeper Bagum in the last text. The foundation then used the livestock and the fowl for royal dining or, more usually in the case of the larger animals, for sacrifices at various shrines and at various times of the cultic calendar. A few examples may be helpful in illustrating the nature of these transactions. Text Four 2 tugur-birds, for my queen’s consumption2 7 tugur-birds, slaughtered, entered into the palace, the 7th day having passed from the month, expenditure of Shulgi-ili. (OIP 115.119, Shulgi 47, month 6)

Text Five 1 grass fed sheep—(the god) An, 2 grass fed sheep—“that of the place of disappearance,” 2 grass fed oxen, 2 fattened sheep, 2 sheep that followed oxen, 2 goats—for the festival of Nabrium, (for the goddesses) Belet-shuhnir and Belet-terraban. 1 fattened sheep, 1 lamb—(the goddess) Allatum, 1 grass fed sheep, 1 goat—(the goddess) Ishara and (the goddess) BeletNagar, 1 lamb—(the goddess) Annunitum, 1 goat—(the goddess) Nannaya, the 6th day having passed from the month, expenditure of (the official) Ur-lugal-eden-ka in Ur. (TRU 282, Shulgi year 46, month 9)

In the first document, fowl were used for consumption by the palace or royal family; in the second, larger animals were sacrificed. The sacrificed animals went mainly to goddesses, many of whom were not the usual high-ranking goddesses of the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon (that is to say, we more usually find here sacrifices to goddesses like Belet-shuhnir and Belet-terraban or Nannaya than to Ninlil or Ishtar). Documents like text five record the provisioning of cults under Shulgi-simti’s auspices. It should be noted that, despite her status as royal wife, the foundation she ran was on a much smaller scale than

2

In Sumerian, níg-kú NIN-gá-àè.

366

t.m. sharlach

the types of provisioning we see reflected in other royal archives of Ur III date. An archive like that of Shulgi-simti seems at first a beacon of hope to the historian. As scholars dependent on the written record, even when we would like to include groups other than elite men in our representations of the past, we often find ourselves hamstrung by the fact that typically only urban men wrote and the topics they wrote about reflected their world. Non-elites and women may be entirely absent from the written records. Where they do occur they tend to appear as outsiders, as people fitted into the established hierarchy or viewed through the lens of the elite urban male. But even if all we can say is how elite men viewed or represented such a group, for instance women, we still move forward from previous generations’ historical accounts, in which they are essentially absent. Much important work on the representation of these various groups has been done in recent years and will no doubt continue to be a focus of inquiry (see for instance the bibliography compiled by Asher-Greve and Wogec 2002). Of course, if we had archives written by the non-elites themselves, the problem of filtering would dissipate. Women’s archives, though rare, do occur occasionally in the cuneiform record. Is the Shulgi-simti archive one of them? With most archives or historical sources, it is evident whether we are hearing a woman’s own voice or whether a learned male scribe is telling us about male views of women. A letter dictated by Shibtu, the queen of Mari, for instance, obviously falls into the first category, while the Epic of Gilgamesh falls into the second. Some texts are more ambiguous, such as the “Exaltation of Inanna,” for example, which is attributed to the priestess En-heduanna but which in the form we have it was certainly incorporated into the male world of the Old Babylonian é-dub-ba, or scribal school. The archive of Shulgi-simti is also, it seems to me, a difficult case. Does the archive represent a women’s world? With Shulgi’s wife as the nominal head of the institution that kept the archive, does it provide a rare glimpse into some aspects of the lives of royal women? If so, we could begin to see women from the royal court in their own space, an exciting prospect since heretofore they have largely been limited to walk-on appearances in the male domain. But, in what sense would one be justified in considering this a woman’s archive? The tablets do not seem to have been written by or dictated by a woman. While the livestock foundation had as its head

shulgi-simti and the representation of women

367

a woman, that is, Shulgi-simti, in its day-to-day operations, it was run by men. The degree of Shulgi-simti’s involvement in the actual affairs of the foundation is open to question. For example, was she present when individuals supplied animals or when sacrifices to the goddesses were made? Was she active in deciding where sacrifices should be directed? Or were these transactions carried out by her male employees in her name but with little involvement on her part? If the latter is a more accurate description, then perhaps we are not dealing with a woman’s archive or seeing women in their own space. Another issue to consider is the public/private question. Is the foundation a reflection of Shulgi-simti’s personal choices, her individual piety, as many have argued (for example, Sallaberger 1993, 18-25) or an institution tied to her official role as one of Shulgi’s wives? Should we suppose that a strict binary opposition between totally public and totally private is likely to misrepresent the complexities of the ancient past, and if so, how can we most accurately present Shulgi-simti’s activities in a historical narrative? What kind of evidence would we need to support one view over another? Furthermore, we should perhaps try to be more aware of how our own preconceptions about gender roles condition our responses to the types of questions raised. In late third millennium Babylonia, could women have public roles? Or was the public realm by definition a space reserved for men? Should we instead posit that women could have official roles which were limited to a woman’s sphere, a more private space? Or were women limited to only private roles? To further complicate the issue, issues of class (and even region of origin) must also have been factors in determining what was appropriate behavior for any given woman; if so, how can we untangle the variables? I do not claim to be able to answer these questions, especially in the few pages available here. But I do agree with my teacher Irene Winter, that it is only by being explicit with ourselves and our readers and by defining our terms that we can move forward as a field. When writing a history of women using a source such as the archive of Shulgi-simti, it is essential to attempt to define what the archive really represents, be it a public or private sphere, a woman’s archive or male one, or something along a continuum, and to be clear with ourselves what evidence we have to support our assertions. Otherwise, we run the risk of writing representations of ourselves, and our own preconceptions, rather than representing the past.

368

t.m. sharlach References

Asher-Greve, J., and M.-F. Wogec. 2002. Women and Gender in Ancient Near Eastern Cultures: Bibliography 1885 to 2001 A.D. Nin 3: 33-114. Sallaberger, W. 1993. Der kultische Kalender der Ur III Zeit. Berlin: de Gruyter. ———. 1999. Mesopotamien: Ur III-Zeit. OBO 160/3. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Sigrist, M. 1992. Drehem. Bethesda: CDL Press. Winter, Irene J. 1987. Women in Public: The Disk of Enheduanna, the Beginning of the Office of En-Priestess, and the Weight of Visual Evidence. In La Femme dans le proche-orient antique, ed. J.-M. Durand, 189-202. Paris: Editions de Recherche sur les Civilisations. Van de Mieroop, M. 1999. Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History. New York: Routledge.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

369

THE LEAD INLAYS OF TUKULTI-NINURTA I: PORNOGRAPHY AS IMPERIAL STRATEGY Julia Assante In tribute to Irene Winter, I offer a study on decorative arts. Every phase of this contribution is in some way indebted to her, not least because she has done so much to elevate the “minor arts” to a solid standing in the discourse of ancient Near Eastern art history. The objects in question are twenty small-scale lead reliefs with erotic content.1 Twelve pieces feature men and women in uncommon sexual acts, sometimes in ménages à trois (figures 1-4 and 6-8). Eight, including one mold, portray single females, usually nude, in various poses (figures 9-14).2 The erotica appeared in the reign of one king, Tukulti-Ninurta I (1240-1207 BCE), and at only two sites: Assur, the ancient capital of Assyria, and the adjacent royal city of Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta. As most former scholarship has distorted the nature and function of these objects in order to make (erroneous) sensational claims about ancient Near Eastern society, this study’s main aim is to set the record straight. The archaeological and textual evidence suggests that the reliefs were made as decorative insets for the furniture of Assyrian elite. Formal and contextual analyses in light of contemporary visual and social traditions indicate that they are private pornography. I consider the Middle Assyrian erotic reliefs as pornographic because they formed a discrete, exclusive repertoire that acutely conflicted with their moral environment, quite in contrast to Old Babylonian erotica that was mass-produced and celebrated certain long-standing cultural motifs.3

1 Not all reliefs are shown here. Nearly all are badly damaged from a disease caused by storage in oak boxes. Most are kept in an argon vacuum at the Vorderasiatisches Museum to prevent the disease from advancing. The drawings offered here are my own, taken from sketches in excavation day books. The sketches were made before storage and the onset of the disease. 2 Evelyn Klengel-Brandt remembers at least one more at the Assur site museum. 3 For a detailed discussion on Old Babylonian erotica, see Assante 2000, 2002. For comparison between Old Babylonian and Middle Assyrian erotica, see Assante 2000.

370

j. assante

As such, the lead inlays represent the only provenienced pornography known from Mesopotamia. The inlays are also politicized. So a further aim is exploring their ideological aspect. Politicization is introduced by the soft-pointed caps worn by all males in scenes where their heads survive. The caps unambiguously identify them as foreigners, specifically westerners from the modern region of Syria, who were deported to Assyria as captives by the thousands during Tukulti-Ninurta’s reign.4 Until the end of the Assyrian empire, the cap was the chief visual means by which westerners, especially captives, were distinguished from Assyrians. Men fornicating in sex scenes are the first Assyrian depictions of foreigners so far known. Overall, the lead inlays were part of a massive state production of decorative arts that I argue helped form and maintain an imperialist ideology at the time when Assyria was fast rising as a dominant war state. The sexual lead pieces are stylistically and, probably, functionally most closely related to contemporary non-figural lead work, of which there may have been thousands of examples.5 Yet they are considerably isolated in style and content.6 Their singular use of human figural forms, their themes, and their superior technology set them in a class of their own, while pointing to a precisely targeted elite audience. Despite their diminutive sizes (averaging 5.46 centimeters in height), they are astonishingly detailed, variable in motif, and naturalistic. The small numbers found suggest that they were produced as exclusive editions, even though mold casting normally leads to duplication. Restricted manufacture would have enhanced the status of the reliefs as well as their psychological impact. The openwork’s detail and intricacy demonstrate an unusually high degree of craftsmanship and technological expertise. Since there is not the slightest evidence, formal or otherwise, that Middle Assyrian artisans were aware of sexual representation 4

Specifically northwest Syria (Hattina), BÊt-Adini on the middle Euphrates and the Levant. See Wäfler 1975. This foreign element was first noted by Jerrold Cooper (19721975, 264). Soft-pointed caps occur again in Assur-bel-kala’s “broken obelisk” (10741057 BCE). 5 Of the excavated lead objects, the Vorderasiatisches Museum houses about 280, not all identifiable; others were left in Iraq, sent to museums in Turkey, or lost or discarded. 6 The extreme majority of Assur lead, mostly disks, shows highly stylized floral patterns. Although many lead objects from Anatolia and north Syria share the openwork style, they tend to take certain forms: trinkets, jewelry elements, or schematic human figurines. See Assante 2000, 262 n. 15.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

371

from other periods and places, the lead smiths apparently invented it. It was an extremely short-lived experiment. There is a certain consistency of sexual attitudes in coitus scenes that works partly by the omission of familiar positions. Surprisingly, sex in which both partners are recumbent—so common in erotica from other times and places in the ancient Near East—does not occur. Instead, all intercourse involves at least one partner standing. The sometimes difficult postures prevent construing such scenes as representing “normal,” that is, Assyrian, behavior. There are, furthermore, no hints of the domestic or community sphere—no beds or local tavern settings as in Old Babylonian erotica, which contemporary viewers could misread as Assyrian. Assyrians simply did not show Assyrians having sex. The specific milieu is staged and theatrical rather than orgiastic or ritual. Whether or not artisans modeled these scenes on actual live sexual performances or simply imagined them may never be answered. The iconography, discussed below, of theatrical postures, sexual props, musical instruments, and dancers’ costumes further distances these scenes from everyday Assyrian reality. By these visual prompts, Assyria effectively disowned its own erotic production. Because I have already discussed in a number of studies modern scholarship’s consistent misinterpretations when it comes to sex and nudity, only a few most pertinent to the lead reliefs are mentioned here.7 First, seemingly blinded by their content, scholars missed or ignored the careful insignia of foreignness in the reliefs8 as well as the iconography of sexual theater. Furthermore, the artifact class to which they belong was not investigated, precluding the discovery of their true function. Finally, their archaeological contexts have been overlooked or distorted, beginning with the excavator himself. Although Walter Andrae was quite aware than only one female nude was found in the Ishtar Temple (and that in later fill), he published all lead erotica in his Ishtar Temple report (Andrae 1935). His decision was based on his conviction that the reliefs must depict cult prostitution.9 Many have followed Andrae in deploying the reliefs to make claims about “orgiastic cults,” fertility rites, and the pervasiveness of 7 See Assante 1998; 2000, 19-73; 2003; 2006. Fortunately, Cooper’s careful RlA analysis of the reliefs (1972-1975) eliminated a Sacred Marriage misinterpretation early on. 8 With the exception of Cooper. See n. 4. 9 See Assante 2000, 46-49; Scurlock 1993, 15; Westenholz 1995, 61.

372

j. assante

prostitution, sacred or secular, in ancient Mesopotamia. I have argued elsewhere that such claims for Mesopotamia are fictions. They began appearing after the popularizing abridged edition of Sir James Frazer’s monumental work, The Golden Bough, was released in 1922 (Assante 2003, 23-24). Frazer almost single-handedly invented fertility cults and religious prostitution for the ancient Near East, with some help from other sources, notably Herodotus. Until recently, these pornographic inlays wrongly stood as proof for the existence of such rites in ancient Mesopotamia. I see no evidence for fertility cults, sacred prostitution, or orgiastic cults in Mesopotamia’s primary sources, visual or textual. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Assyrians perceived Ishtar as the goddess of sex during the Middle Assyrian period. Royal inscriptions from Tukulti-Ninurta I envision her in strictly martial terms. It was probably this Ishtar that the king had in mind when he built her temple in Assur.10 Similarly, the Hurrian Ninevite Ishtar was associated with healing, not sex.11

The Case for Elite Furniture Inlays The true archaeological contexts of the reliefs present their complete life cycle: their creation, consumption, and finally, reuse in fill. The findspots taken together strongly suggest that they were furniture inlays made for the royal house.12 Eleven out of twenty were found on the New Palace Terrace of Assur, which, as I have shown, was a workshop site that manufactured luxury decorative items of many types.13 All exhibited technological failures consistent with the debris of an industrial zone. Mixed in were kiln testers, the occasional 10

She may also have been the custodian of secrets, perhaps having to do with oathtaking (Westenholz 1998, 77). See also KAR 139. Most Assyrian versions of Ishtar are associated with motherhood or healing in addition to war. Both Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Assur had strong connections to kings and state cult (Menzel 1981). 11 Neo-Assyrian records also refer to her as wet nurse and mother (Livingstone 1989, 99). 12 This discussion is drawn from the extensive coverage in Assante 2000, 179-209. I compiled data from Andrae’s excavation day books in Berlin, with supplements from Miglus 1996 and Eickhoff 1985. Reinhard Dittmann, who excavated at Kar-TukultiNinurta with Kartrin Bastert, C. Schmidt and S. Thürwächter in 1986 and 1989, generously shared unpublished material from his excavations. 13 Tellingly, Tukulti-Ninurta named the main gate to the terrace, “The Metal Workers’ Gate” (Miglus 1982, 274).

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

373

tool, and pieces of gold and copper sheeting often used for plating, all signs of industrial output. The great amount of raw material and scrap metal in the form of sheeting, lumps, strips, wire, and so forth, also points to production rather than consumption. This is the first archaeological context—where they were made. There are two examples for the second archaeological context— where they were used: Tukulti-Ninurta I’s South Palace in Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta and an opulent town house in Assur, whose owner was almost certainly related to the royal house (Assante 2000, 200-201). Both date the artifacts to Tukulti-Ninurta’s reign and establish the elite and secular status of the users. The third archaeological context is secondary use. One object was found in later fill of the Ishtar Temple in Assur and two in the vicinity. As I have demonstrated, this fill was probably taken from the adjacent New Palace Terrace to stabilize and pack the temple mount (ibid, 184-199). Another piece occurred in the fill of the Assur Temple at Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, which was packed and sealed just after the king’s death. Other objects in the same fill indicate the nearby palace court as the source. A great many finds from the New Palace Terrace, whether in lead, shell, ivory, alabaster, frit, gold, or bone, share similar characteristics with the erotic reliefs—they are flat, thin, shiny, or lustrous, and have one figural or decorative surface that may be raised or incised. These are characteristics ideal for decorative inlays, for furniture and chests, stone vessels and accessories. As erotica was found together with ivory inlays and other materials that are textually attested to decorate Tukulti-Ninurta’s furniture,14 the archaeological contexts alone point rather strongly toward the reliefs as inlays. Significantly, the image that is formally closest to erotic reliefs also decorated furniture. It comes from a bronze openwork panel found in the North-West Palace at Nimrud (figure 5), believed to have overlaid the upper legs of a wooden throne (Layard 1853, 198-199; Finkel 1995, 124-125). Three figures, one facing right and two facing left with the female form taking center, present a compositional arrangement that bears a striking resemblance to figure 4. Although not inlays, 14 See the inventory text (VAT 16462; T232/IX) found in the palace at KarTukulti-Ninurta that itemizes the adornments of the king’s throne room furniture. For a new transliteration and translation by Walter Mayer and myself, see Assante 2000, appendix 4; also Köcher 1957-1958.

374

j. assante

the figures are nevertheless further comparable to the erotica in size (approximately 4.3 centimeters high) and detailing. The minute dimensions, intricacy, and lack of standardization of the erotica would require study at close range, ideally in small viewing fields set in chests, bed frames, or chairs.15 The considerable differences between erotic art and contemporary public decorative arts suggest that lead erotica was made for private, rather than public, viewing. Public design relied on vegetal, animal, and supernatural motifs, usually stylized, as in Tukulti-Ninurta’s South Palace walls. His throne-room furniture adhered mostly to animal and vegetal forms, with a few instances of otherworldly human figures.16 Here and in other public art, when nude human forms were used, they were mythological. The naturalistic postures in sex scenes and the elaboration and flow of clothing further contradict the ideals of contemporary official art, such as the iconographical postures and stiff formality of contemporary cylinder seals. Since erotic scenes are not traceable to any literature or myth so far discovered, viewers were not permitted a comfortable, distancing frame from previous art or mythology but were put into a voyeuristic position of watching the unexpected, the surprising, and the spontaneous. Depictions of sex may have been more than contrary to formal tastes, they may have been prohibited. Beyond a few allusions to Old Babylonian love poetry, sexual encounters appear in texts only later in the Neo-Assyrian period, and then very seldom.17 Even if Assyria had produced oral or written erotica, it is unlikely that it would have described the kind of sex shown in these reliefs. In the Middle Assyrian period, sexual imagery seems to have been suppressed. In official representation of all periods, images of mortal women—even clothed—were of the utmost rarity, and Assyrian women were almost never depicted. Non-Assyrian women, who appear sparingly in later palatial reliefs on walls or gates as publicly debased prisoners of war, are fully clothed; only the exposure of legs or possibly heads metonymically suggests nakedness and sexual availability (Cifarelli 1998, 223). Thus the official arts of Assyria protected Assyrian ideals of female modesty, even for non-Assyrian women. At the least, such 15 Because such detailed edges are difficult to fit, the receiving surface was probably soft, either wood, plaster, or mudbrick. 16 See n. 14. 17 See the incipits in Black 1983, 28.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

375

well-observed ethics render the likelihood that erotica was intended for public view all the more slim.

The Lead Inlays The Intercourse Scenes Among the intercourse scenes, three portray coitus in profile in which a standing male penetrates a female who lies in front of him, raised on a platform (figures 1-3). The platform is a squared, probably mudbrick structure up to ten courses high and five wide. Many scholars, following Andrae (1935, 103), have interpreted it as a temple altar; the female figure is then a temple prostitute. More recently, Frances Pinnock (1995) sees it as a city wall, transferring prostitution from the temple to the street. Rather than altars or walls, the platforms are more likely to represent stage props for live sex shows. They are quite realistically sized, as though to facilitate specific sexual acts and to maximize visual access to points of sexual exchange. In figures 1 and 2, the female lies on a platform tailored to support her torso and raise her recumbent body to the exact height of the male’s groin. In the disk, figure 2, a separate step of four courses at the base of the platform brings the male’s genitals in contact with the female’s. The block step, incidentally, eliminates the city wall interpretation. In all cases, the woman lifts her legs to allow an unobstructed view of the outsized and highly articulated penis penetrating her. In figure 1, the slant of the platform’s surface enables her to raise her upper body sufficiently to see her partner’s face. But the platform in the ménage à trois scene, figure 3, in which a woman is vaginally penetrated on one end and masturbates a man on the other, is not as deep nor as slanted. The results are twofold. First, the woman cannot lift her head and make visual contact with her partners. More importantly, the shallowness of the structure emphasizes the two points of sexual contact; sexual activity takes place visually clear of the prop and is symmetrically arranged on either side of it. Whether modeled on the real or purely imaginary, the platforms are customized for the maximum exhibition of sexual feats. In spite of the naturalistic poses taken by the figures in these scenes, the action is characterized by a kind of cold practicality typical

376

j. assante

of pornography. Sex acts stand as the chief points of focus, stripped of narrative content and, to a great degree, warmth and familiarity. Touching or mutual gazing is de-emphasized, especially in groupactivity scenes. There are other formal signs of a pornographic nature that lie in the objectification of the female partner in these images and consequent emotional detachment. The very fact that the females are nude, for example, while the males are richly clothed sets the sexes in opposition and focuses the viewer’s attention on the feminine body. That the male partners hold her nakedness in full view, whereas her view is limited, objectifies her within the scene. The way the bodies are represented also sharply delineates gender differences. In figure 1, the male’s full beard, large protruding nose, and pointed cap all resonate with his noteworthy ithyphallicism. Male legs are also quite muscular with highly articulated kneecaps and bulging calves, signifying hard masculine tautness, like the ready penis. The man in figure 2 is the only male figure of this typology that ignores the timeless masculine ideal of erect posture. The female by contrast is soft and rounded. The display of buttocks, a penetrable part of human anatomy, is also gendered. The buttocks of male figures in all lead inlays are covered. Formally this helps to frame and therefore emphasize the penis and its point of penetration. Yet Assyrian viewers might have perceived uncovered buttocks as feminine, a reading that would disturb the picture of naturalized male dominance over women or introduce a homosexual coloration that could compromise a male viewer’s response. By contrast, female buttocks are exposed, and even outlined in figure 6. A detailed succession of anklets, bracelets, and necklaces works to accentuate female nakedness and comprises the sparse adornments allowed to a body prepared exclusively for sex. Gender hierarchy is further played out in the configuration of standing males versus supine females. This configuration has a military signature and illustrates the ideological equation of imperialism with sexual dominance. In Mesopotamian battle art from all periods and places, the victor stands upright looking down on his enemy whose passive, supine position announces his utter defeat.18 Occasionally, the victor grasps the upraised hand of his defeated enemy, a gesture remarkably similar to the one in figure 1 (and in Andrae 1935, pl. 45n).19 18

Examples are numerous and consistent; one of the earliest is in the Royal Standard of Ur. 19 See, for instance, Opificius 1961, pl. 13, fig. 489.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

377

It is in fact a gratuitous gesture in sexual scenes, suggestive of manhandling, and used to convey control over the woman’s movements. The scene creates an atmosphere of dominance and submission, a dualism favored in battle art. Another visual quotation from imperial art is the woman’s upraised palm. This gesture has appeared ubiquitously in Mesopotamia as a sign of formal supplication (Cifarelli 1998). In later Assyrian reliefs, the raised open palms of conquered peoples signified pleas for clemency. In battle art, the sexual implications of the standing and recumbent configuration become clearer when the victor holds the bow, arrow, or lance. Such weapons are long-standing similes for an erect penis in ancient Near Eastern arts and texts, demonstrating a correlation of sexual dominance of penetrator over penetrated with physical or political dominance.20 Assyrians are never depicted subjected to this emasculating imagery. Oddly, coitus a tergo appears in only one motif, the ménage à trois of figure 4. A nude woman stands in the middle penetrated from behind by her partner at the right. The woman’s second partner faces her at left, although only his legs have survived. This scene mimics live entertainment most obviously because the male at right plays a lute while engaged in coitus. He also turns up alone in a fragment that probably came from the same mold (Andrae 1935, pl. 45d). The woman again wears anklets, bracelets, necklaces and has distinctively tightly waved hair. She is in a dance step, raising her outside thigh high above her waist to allow a good view of the man’s penis at her buttocks. At the same time, she twists her upper body to the front, displaying her breasts. As her outstretched hand is nearly identical to the woman’s masturbating hand in figure 3, she is most probably masturbating her facing partner. Scenes that feature a couple in standing intercourse present a more joyful, equitable picture (figures 6-8 and Andrae 1935, pl. 45f). In two, both partners are clothed. The scenes are also stylistically different; bodies are generally fuller, longer, and less knobby, for instance. There is more physical contact as well. Figure 6, in which the heads survived, shows close face-to-face gazing. Each touches the other’s chest—perhaps the sole example of

20 For examples see Paul 2002 and potency incantations 2, 3, 4, 14, and 15 in Biggs 1967. See also Foster 1993, 141. For discussion of such homoerotic symbolism in Assyrian royal art, see Assante forthcoming.

378

j. assante

breast stroking in Mesopotamian erotica. At the same time, he embraces her while she holds his penis between her legs. The citation to staged performance is embedded in the type of garments worn. This is hardly street wear. The man’s skirt is composed of a short, bordered cloth that envelops his buttocks and a cloth panel underneath, which reaches to his feet. Long dangling tassels emerge between his legs. The woman is bare chested and her buttocks are uncovered, even outlined with a decorated girdle that wraps between her thighs. A long panel of cloth falls between her legs like that worn by a female dancer-entertainer copulating in an Old Babylonian plaque scene (Barrelet 1968, no. 591). Armbands and a head circlet or cap complete her attire. The outfits highlight key points of sexual anatomy, such as the woman’s bust and buttocks and the man’s penis, as they should for clear sexual representation. Yet they go further and imitate reality by depicting garments made to maximize freedom of movement, which the loose cascading panels worn by both and the man’s tassels would only accentuate. Other positions of standing intercourse are more acrobatic, as in the best preserved of this type, figure 7. The performers stand more or less side by side. The woman balances on one foot, while lifting her other leg to the level of her partner’s waist. The man penetrates her from under her raised thigh. His anklet may identify him as an entertainer. The woman again grasps her partner’s penis to guide it in. The masturbation theme in many lead scenes privileges masculine pleasure and suggests a male viewing audience. The de-emphasis of male dominance in these scenes leaves room for the expression of a more lighthearted sexual showmanship. Unlike the anonymous female nudes of other lead reliefs, these women can be identified as dancers or entertainers by their clothing. In those images in which the heads remain, the male wears a soft-pointed cap. The implications are first, that the male partners are not only foreigners but also entertainers, and second, that the females are not just entertainers but also foreigners. Contemporary viewers probably did not read the semblance of equality in these scenes as elevating the female to male status but as reducing the male to hers. The focus seems to shift away from the internal hierarchy between sex partners in previous scenes, in which male viewers could in part identify with the more dominant male alien performers, to the hierarchical relationship of the beholder’s visual possession of sexualized bodies, both male and female.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

379

Single Females Six erotic reliefs and one mold are of single nude women in various postures. An eighth, a corroded piece from Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, figure 14, shows what might be fringed cuffs above the woman’s ankles, suggestive of dancers’ pantaloons.21 This group could be put into three categories: frontal spread-legged nude female (figure 9), sitting female in profile (figures 10, 11, and 13), and standing nude female bending over (figures 12 and 14). However, as there are no indications of baselines to orient the sitting and standing females, some figures that seem to be seated or standing when the relief is held one way, could just as well be standing or recumbent when the relief is rotated. Lone females might have been put in sets meant to parade a variety of sensuous forms. And as lead is a remarkably pliable metal, they may have been joined into more complex scenes. In the spread-legged motif (figure 9 and Andrae 1935, pl. 45m), the woman grabs her thighs above the knees from underneath and pulls them apart, flush with the sides of her body. The artist has depicted her vulva as a large deltoid in abruptly high relief resembling appliqué. Her wide-open legs and prominent vulva invite the viewer’s visual penetration. Six out of eight females are in profile. As they do not face the viewer and hence seem to be unaware of his (or her) attention, he is free to peruse their bodies without interaction, a voyeuristic act. Such visual strategies give more weight to the claim that the primary viewing audience was male.

The Ideology of Sex, Dominance and Conquest of the Other The non-Assyrian insignia of the soft-pointed caps locates sexual deviancy outside the Assyrian moral realm. It also alerts us to embedded political-ideological messages. The reliefs play predominantly on the concept of the other, a concept that here as elsewhere is usually grounded in gender, ethnicity, and social status. Alterity, a chief tool of the imperialistic state, creates and maintains dualisms that position the ruling power at the top and the conquered or subjugated 21

See the drawing in Eickhoff 1985, pl. 13, no. 2.

380

j. assante

at the bottom. The more extreme the degradation of the other, the more superior the dominant force appears. The dominant group or regime typically employs a number of “izing” devices applied to the other—marginalizing, barbarizing, criminalizing, exoticizing, feminizing, and so on—to give shape to the discourse of alterity. The most effective way the Assyrian male citizen class, the awÊlu, could maintain social borders and its superior position was by using these devices to manipulate laws, economics, public signs of difference, and art. Lead erotica is a good example from art, for it deploys all these devices, feminization in particular. In so doing it works to assert and even naturalize the inferiority and subordination of foreign men. Middle Assyrian lawmakers designed a legal system that forced foreign men into social structures of women and lower class men that kept them relatively helpless. They subordinated non-awÊlu men largely by making them invisible to state recognition. There are no legal provisions for non-awÊlu men as there were in the earlier laws of Babylonia. There is no terminology even for Assyrian males of the commoner class known from other legal codes. Non-awÊlu men were effectively erased. This is surprising in view of the heterogeneity of Assyria at this time. I understand this legal denial as a tactic to assert awÊlu supremacy. The laws were written exclusively for the protection of awÊlu men and their property. Hence, women of no matter what class, Assyrian and non-Assyrian alike, as well as all non-awÊlu men were defined against the awÊlu male as the other. Grouping non-awÊlu men, such as those depicted in the reliefs, with women as the other is one way the state feminized certain classes of men. The psychology of alterity in which the superior “naturally” dominates the inferior other was obviously at the root of Assyria’s military mentality. It is apparent in those sex scenes that re-imagine battle imagery of conqueror and conquered along gendered lines. More generally, since the male figures most probably represent foreign captives, the inlays refer to a wider, unseen configuration involving territorial conquest and the military, those who captured and deported them. From all that we know, Assyria during this period was profoundly androcentric, “nationalistic” in promoting attitudes of Assyro-centrism and supremacy, and, finally, hierarchical, three salient traits of a military society. The reliefs were cut from the same cloth. Assyria’s martial mindset seems to have pervaded even the social fabric and was projected on the chief deities, Ishtar and Assur, who

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

381

took on powerfully warlike natures at this time.22 The military may have been entirely Assyrian as foreign personnel do not appear in the record for another two hundred years (Mayer 1995, 167-225). Many Assyrians participated directly in the military at one time or another and were thus exposed to its disciplines and biases about conquest.23 As we have seen, the owners and audiences of pornographic art were likely to have come from the ruling class, the king as well as elite, if not royal, men. The primary viewers of pornography then were also the primary ideology makers whose involvement with the ever-escalating imperialistic program would have been unavoidable. Because most high army officials were presumably related to the king, as they were in later periods (Mayer 1995, 123, 434-435), some of the audience no doubt belonged to the military elite. Certainly, it would have been the military elite who could best appreciate the messages of conquest and the other in lead erotica. The ideology behind physical exposure in the reliefs can partly be deduced from law and official art, in which the display of physical exposure was long used as a sign for the conquered or criminalized.24 Full nudity for both men and women in a secular context signified loss of identity, the abject, submitted, and obedient. Even the Akkadian word for nudity, erû, connotes emptiness and destitution (CAD s.v. “erû”). At this time, nudity effectively implemented submission to state punishment for both sexes.25 The correlation between defeated 22 In Tukulti-Ninurta’s royal inscriptions, he calls on Ishtar, “mistress of strife and battle” to slay his enemies and inflict defeat (TN I A 0.78.1 vi 2-22; Grayson 1987, 238). In his account of his battle with the Kassite king Kashtiliashu, he refers to Ishtar as she “(who) marches at the fore of my army” (TN I A. 0. 78. 23; Grayson 1987, 271). The militarization of Assur is amply reflected in Middle Assyrian royal inscriptions that call on him to destroy the enemy and in personal names that appear for the first time in this period, such as Aààur-d§’issunu, “Assur is trampling them down,” (KAJ 124 r. 6 and 156, 10) or Aààur-mukannis, “Assur is subjecting” (KAJ 162, 26). 23 Anyone who owned real estate was obligated to perform service duty, called (p)ilku, which included war service, see RlA 5, 52-59. The remarkably convoluted Middle Assyrian Laws A §§ 36 and 45, which sought to preserve the army wife’s patriarchal status in the absence of her husband, further indicate the average awÊlu’s high degree of participation in the militia. 24 This discussion draws heavily from Cifarelli 1998. Nudity in other place and times of the ancient Near East conveyed a wide range of meaning, and female nudes did not always carry messages about sexuality (Assante 2006). 25 Legal texts from Nuzi and Hana describe stripping and public display of women who violated marital regulations. In one instance, the naked wife is set for public display on the roof of the palace (Malul 1988, 122-138).

382

j. assante

enemies with punished criminals is played out through nudity in later battle accounts (Cifarelli 1998, 213, 226). Exposure as a mark of social inferiority or criminality was imposed by Assyria’s dominant social group, awÊlu-class males. It distances marked men from the dominant class and turns them into feminized, visually possessible objects. Given these connotations, one can better understand why the exposed males in the inlays were carefully labeled as non-Assyrian. Full male nudity in the reliefs, however, would have compromised the picture of malefemale hierarchy inherent in Assyrian ideology. Full nudity for women in the reliefs works to inscribe the hierarchy of male over female. The laws of exposure for women are more finely shaded than for men and more closely structured along class lines, while leaning hard on the notion of the male gaze. According to Middle Assyrian laws, women of the awÊlu class, that is the daughters and wives of the awÊlu, were expected to wear veils in public and were thus visually available only in private, presumably awÊlu settings. Conversely, women of lower socio-legal rank, the unmarried qadiàtu’s and single women not living with their fathers or Éarimtu’s, as well as females slaves, were not allowed to veil when out and were therefore visually available in public.26 Assyrian law seems to have linked visual availability with sexual availability because mandated exposure applied only to marginalized unmarried women and slaves, with whom a man could sexually engage without legal restraints. The penalty for non-awÊlu women wearing a veil was severe. It was also severe for awÊlu men who failed to bring the offender to the palace for punishment. Both were beaten and marked and then stripped of their clothing—the state’s way of publicly debasing the miscreant man to the woman’s criminal status. The law was meant to be enforced by awÊlu-class men, not women. Only males of the awÊlu-class were responsible for looking and for policing public space to maintain a system of social ranking based on visual/sexual accessibility. Male looking was therefore empowered by the state. Men also dictated visible status by performing the symbolic veiling of women in marital rituals and by stripping unsubmissive women for public humiliation. In short, it was awÊlu men who looked

26 Middle Assyrian Laws A § 40 (v. 42-106) and § 41. For discussion, especially concerning the definition of the Éarimtu as a woman without patriarchal status (and not a prostitute), see Assante 1998, 32-35 and passim.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

383

and awÊlu men who imposed on women of all classes the figurative and literal degree of their physical exposure. Although most women in erotic insets appear anonymous to the modern eye, their complete nakedness in some is compelling reason to identify them as non-awÊlu class females, either Éarimtu’s, slaves, criminals, such as adulteresses who have lost their patriarchal status, or foreign captives. Those who are clothed most probably depict entertainers from the same social groups. Of course, the pairing of these women with westerners greatly favors an interpretation of their identity as captives. A captive woman separated from her husband might have been considered as part of the Éarimtu-class, as marital status may have had little relevance in exile. The dispossessed positions of most foreign females would have made them fitting subjects for physical exposure. The harsh codes of behavior from Middle Assyrian laws and Palace Decrees leave little doubt that what women do in lead scenes defied accepted conduct. The impact of images in which women engage sexually with two men at once on a society where the death penalty could be enforced for adultery is difficult to appreciate at our remove. The most policed women in Middle Assyrian society seemed to have been the sinnià§tu àa ekalli, the women of the king’s palace, ironically the same place that must have housed such examples of pornography. Middle Assyrian Palace Decrees, edicts concerned primarily with regulating conduct between the sexes, portray a life for palace women under vigilant surveillance; the merest proximity to unauthorized men, including eunuchs, could warrant death.27 The contrast between the excessive propriety expected of palace women and the behavior of women in the reliefs underscores the pornographic character of the images. It is doubtful that palace women were allowed to own or even ogle erotic pictures of men unless royals expressly wished it. The intended audience was more likely to have been men, especially in view of the content: the open, penetrable vaginas, the masturbation motifs, the objectified female body, as well as the viewer’s voyeuristic stance, which all tend to pleasure the male eye.

27 The edicts are an incomplete compilation from nine kings, including TukultiNinurta I, his father, and his grandfather. For a recent editing see Roth 1995; also see Freydank 1991, 68.

384

j. assante

The visual and written record on looking maintains a hierarchy of dominant subject/viewer over exposed object, in which the viewer visually consumes or possesses the object. The audience’s visual possession of sexualized foreign bodies in the reliefs parallels its possession of, and dominance over, foreign territory. Michelle Marcus (1995a, 201-202) sees Assyrian sexual and imperial discourses as inseparable and equates the “gaze of the voyeur” to the “imperialistic gaze” in Neo-Assyrian art. Marcus’s equation is particularly fitting for images that present foreigners as prostituted spectacles and, hence, as sexually conquerable bodies. They also implicate live spectators who were privileged enough to witness such events. It is far from unthinkable that some captives entertained Tukulti-Ninurta and his court this way, especially considering the common practice to take captives as dancers for the palace (Kilmer 1995, 2611). The more sexual exhibitions defied moral order, the deeper the humiliation would have been for the performers and the social group they represented. Looking at their images meant effectively that the viewer participated in the denigration of the social group represented. Assyria’s imperialistic ideology banked on the nuanced interplay of sex, gender, and power to do its work. The masculinized dominant class and the feminized other was an important dualism. Such gendered dualisms are perhaps more powerful than dualisms based on class or ethnicity, for they underlay all other hierarchical structures. The enemy or foreigner could be conceptualized as a woman and therefore inferior and conquerable, but a woman’s low status would not be adequately conveyed by referring to her simply as the enemy. The concept of nakru, the word for both “enemy” and “foreigner” (and sometimes “demon”), acquires its greatest dimensions of humiliation when imbricated with women’s sexuality. Feminization of the enemy is not just a modern inference; it was a way of thinking perpetuated from the court. In a number of royal inscriptions, Tukulti-Ninurta calls on Ishtar to change his enemy from a man to a woman and to cause his manhood to dwindle away.28 This explicit feminization of the enemy is the first of its kind recorded. It was to be used again and again in curses of later ages, particularly for soldiers, revealing a great deal about ancient gendered dualisms of the strong versus the 28

TN I A. 0.78.1 vi 2-22 (Grayson 1987, 238). The inscription survives in 18 examples.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

385

weak operating in military milieus. In one, the warrior is turned into a Éarimtu, a woman with the least power in a homosocial society.29 The curses add poverty, homelessness, anonymity, dependency on strangers, and sexual vulnerability to emasculation, conditions potentially not unlike those of foreign captives. Conquering itself had gender and sexual undertones. In Neo-Assyrian palatial reliefs and royal inscriptions, conquering is described as something the super masculine does to something comparatively feminine.30 For Middle Assyrian times, the situation seems to have been much the same. We can see this most clearly in Tukulti-Ninurta’s royal inscriptions in which conquered territory is imagined much like the female body, and conquering much like penetration.31 Several generations after Tukulti-Ninurta I, Assur-bel-kala (10741057 BCE) openly used the female body to stimulate a masculine taste for conquest. In provinces, cities, and “garrisons,” which were probably mercenary camps (Mayer 2003, 184), Assur-bel-kala erected nearly life-sized stone statues of nude females. The inscription on the shoulder of the one extant (BM 124963) says the king made them ina muÉ-Éi ßi-a-Éi, “for titillation” or “for pleasure.” As “ßâÉu,” however, can also mean “to be alluring,” and the prepositional construction ina muÉ-Éi refers to an object (here, the statues) or place, another possible interpretation arises: “I made these statues. . .to be alluring.”32 Whichever the case, the nudes would have manipulated military men to feel sexual desire. Through the common experience of arousal, Assur-bel-kala could unify his army, foreign and Assyrian, and prepare it for action—simply by getting the blood up. The nudes are not politicized, no doubt to avoid offending non-Assyrian mercenaries. Assur-bel-kala’s deliberate conflation of sexual arousal with the warrior spirit is direct and simplistic. As the Middle Assyrian inlays

29

E.g., the treaty curse of Assur-nirari V (Parpola and Watanabe 1988, 12 v 9-11). Similar curses surface in Jeremiah 50.35 and Nahum 3.13. 30 In Assante forthcoming, I discuss public art, where gender hierarchy is almost exclusively described by degrees of masculinities, from the supermasculine, impenetrable at the top to the feminized, penetrable, and conquerable at the bottom. And see Marcus 1995a; Cifarelli 1998. 31 See TN I A. 0.78. 23 (Grayson 1987, 271) for images of penetrated virgin territory. 32 That muÉÉu can also refer to the upper part of an object (here breasts) suggests an intentional wordplay. See CAD s.v. “muÉÉu”; also the Assur-bel-kala inscription A.0.89.10 (Grayson 1987, 108).

386

j. assante

were made for sophisticated Assyrian elites, more complex messages could be communicated. Although it is not absolutely clear if the images portray captives or westerners as they are envisioned to behave at home, the objects themselves were made and used in the capital cities and thus capture foreigners for Assyrian consumption. Underpinning the visual possession of pornography is, of course, Tukulti-Ninurta’s tangible ownership of captives. The booty, animate or inanimate, streaming into the metropolis during triumphal processions stood for subdued territories metonymically brought to the Assyrian heartland. For Assyrians and non-Assyrians alike, the influx of captives—the flow of wealth drained from the periphery—established Assur and Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta as the center of power. The more living booty the king could corral, the more his royal epithet, King of the Universe, seems to be confirmed. Through sheer statistics, this third-generation ruler took care to substantiate his ascendancy over his father, in particular his military ascendancy, by claiming to have taken exactly twice the number of hostages his father took, an astounding 28,800 prisoners captured from a single campaign.33 Included in these were the western peoples shown in the reliefs. This later wave of hostages was made to labor on the royal building projects at Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, after the building of the New Palace Terrace.34 Their representations were probably made at this time and intended for the new residence. Tablets excavated at Kar-TukultiNinurta, mostly from the South Palace, afford a glimpse of their exile conditions.35 One tablet alone records 1000 households of foreign laborers living at the worksite. Although we do not know exactly what conditions deportees endured, the hostages who built Sargon’s new city, Dur-Sharrukin, were managed by officials with military backup (Mayer 1995, 340). The armor found in the main court of the South Palace suggests that Middle Assyrian policy was much the same, with labor teams kept under close military supervision. Lead production itself may have implicitly carried the imprints of captive labor. From ration lists we know that some laborers were 33 TN I A. 0.78.23, line 28 (Grayson 1987, 272) and Shalmaneser I A.0.77.1, line 74 (Grayson 1987, 184). 34 Earlier hostages from northern Syria (Shubaru) and southern Anatolia built the New Palace Terrace (TN I A. 0.78.1 iv 40-61; Grayson 1987, 237). 35 See the texts in Freydank 1974 and 1980.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

387

specialized craftsmen, probably transferred to the capital specifically for their expertise, as in later periods (Matthews 1995, 465). In spite of poor records, the sheer amount of wrought lead found in Assur and Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta indicates a very large community of metalworkers. Some were likely to have been foreigners, for the peoples of the western and northern territories already had a long and established knowledge of metallurgy relative to Assyria, a knowledge that the Assyrian state would have wanted to exploit. From the time of Tukulti-Ninurta’s grandfather, there was a rapid expansion of improved metal technologies and new decorative forms in Assyria that reached its maximum during the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta. That this profile is coincident with the acceleration of deportation cannot be an accident. The concentration of foreign wealth, labor, and expertise at the core was part of an on-going program of Assyro-centrism, in which the very medium of lead played a significant role. The presence of lead in the Assyrian heartland denotes Assyria’s control over the vassal states where the metal was extracted. By this time, Assyrians collected lead ores or metal alloys not only from Syria but also from southern Anatolia.36 The movement deeper into Hatti territories for lead parallels military advances against Hatti, one of Assyria’s greatest enemies during Tukulti-Ninurta’s reign. Since the fall of the Mitanni Kingdom, Assyria widened and tightened the peripheral border between it and central Anatolia. In successive stages of increasing power and might, Tukulti-Ninurta’s grandfather Adad-nirari I (1305-1274 BCE), his father Shalmaneser I (1273-1244 BCE), and Tukulti-Ninurta himself made Assyria the military equal to Hatti, while developing a feeling of nationalistic superiority and an ideology of conquest (Mayer 1995, 191). Lead as the material evidence of territorial penetration and conquest was employed as an ideological tool only during the period when Middle Assyrian kings, in particular Tukulti-Ninurta, developed their imperialistic ambitions. As the extent of land under Assyrian control increased, so did the importation and use of lead, reaching its peak during his reign.37 In the years of rapid economic decline

36

See Lucas 1962, 244; Jankowska 1969; Müller 1982; de Jesus 1980. The belt of tribute-paying vassals included Rapiqu, Hana and Mari in the southwest, in the north, certain mountain areas, and in the east, Arraphe and the Zagros mountains (Mayer 1995, 209). Babylonia was another area of strategic concern during the Middle Assyrian period. 37

388

j. assante

and territorial shrinkage after Tukulti-Ninurta’s death, lead and lead artifacts are rarely attested (Moorey 1985, 125). The economic use of lead also promoted Assyria’s nationalizing drives. Lead was the medium of economic exchange only during the Middle Assyrian period and was used exclusively in the heartland of Assyria for domestic exchange. Bronze, tin, gold, and silver were used for external exchange. The internal circulation of lead as a monetary medium incompatible outside this domain effectively integrated Assyria and enforced an economically based Assyro-centrism consonant with nationalizing ideologies and imperialistic aims. This internal system of exchange based on lead effectively cordoned Assyria off from neighboring countries or, at least, limited economic permeability between them. Economic flow was instead turned inward.38 Similar patterns hold for faience, frit work, and wall paintings, which look westward for their origins but were brought to the core. Clearly foreigners transmitted their motifs, their styles, and their technological know-how. The explosion of prestige technologies during this time must have been due in part to the cheap and abundant labor provided by foreigners as well as their expertise. This, combined with seemingly limitless royal resources, would have led to the perfection of individual technologies and an upgrade in artistry in general. Tukulti-Ninurta seemed to have had a craze for the new, the brilliant, and the artificial. His emphatic adornment of palaces, temples, and their contents, glittering with artificial gemstones, glazed floral forms, and shining metals, works to announce his dominance over captured territories. His superiority was also apparent in the labor he was able to extract from them. The lead reliefs, like buildings and other adornments, showcased his ownership of humans, technology, and foreign territories. They were the material testaments of his supremacy as ruler and conqueror. I have argued that lead erotic inlays were intended explicitly for a type of viewer who could best infer their imperialistic content, the highest-ranked men of Assyria. These would include the king, his palace officials, as well as military officers who had access to his private apartments or who were recipients of gifts. Some of them, according to Assyrian custom and the archaeological record, were his relatives. The primary audience, the king and his court, would unfailingly iden38

For more on lead in the Middle Assyrian period, see Assante 2000, 256-260.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

389

tify with the dominant viewer position. What might have been of the utmost importance to Tukulti-Ninurta, beyond the pleasure these images afforded, may not have been a brute, despotic ownership of eroticized bodies; these images might have worked to conscript court members as allies. Certainly the king met with intrigue and, potentially, conspiracy, if the story of his assassination is true.39 A more complex function of the erotica than arousing desire, pleasuring the eye, or conveying messages of royal/imperial might have been power brokering in much the same vein as call girls are used today to conscript potential business clients. Assyrians privy to pornographic scenes participated in an act characterized by its exclusivity, its social illicitness, and the sheer intimacy of sexual response. Thus, the mutuality of authorized viewers is drawn tighter and their solidarity confirmed. As the reliefs carry a subtext that feminizes the west, should they activate sexual aggression in these viewers, arousal would align them emotionally and physically with the king’s imperialistic ambitions. If this speculation should be the case, we might imagine that at least for that moment of sustained viewing pleasure while the king’s elect perused these rare, intricate reliefs and assimilated their multivalent meaning, his plans and his person remained safeguarded. References Andrae, Walter. 1935. Die jüngeren Iàtar-Tempel in Assur. WVDOG 58. Leipzig and Berlin. Assante, Julia. 1998. The kar.kid/Éarimtu, Prostitute or Single Woman? A Critical Review of the Evidence. Ugarit-Forschungen 30: 5-96. ———. 2000. The Erotic Reliefs of Ancient Mesopotamia. Ph.D. diss., Columbia University. ———. 2002. Sex, Magic and the Liminal Body in the Erotic Art and Texts of the Old Babylonian Period. In Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East, Actes de la XLVIIe

39 Opposition may have formed for a number of reasons. Assyria suffered financial collapse after his death, which suggests that he bankrupted the state with his ceaseless war and building campaigns. The drain of power away from the prominent citizens of Assur with the building of Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta might also have been an antagonizing factor. The removal of the god Assur from his ancient home is perhaps the most extraordinary demonstration of the king’s tendency to flout the traditions of his own people. Given the guarded rules all other Assyrian kings maintained for image making, the singular creation of pornography would be consistent with his defiant personality.

390

j. assante

Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Helsinki 2-6 July 2001), eds. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 27-51. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. ———. 2003. From Whores to Hierodules: The Historiographic Invention of Mesopotamian Female Sex Professionals. In Ancient Art and Its Historiography, eds. A. A. Donohue and M. D. Fullerton, 13-47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2006. Undressing the Nude: Problems in Analyzing Nudity in Ancient Art, with an Old Babylonian Case Study. In Images and Gender: Contributions to the Hermeneutics of Reading Ancient Art, ed. S. Schroer, 177-207. OBO 218. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. ———. Forthcoming. Men Looking at Men: The Homoerotics of Power in the State Arts of Assyria. Barrelet, Marie Thérèse. 1968. Figurines et reliefs en terre cuite de la Mésopotamie antique. Paris: Librairie orientaliste P. Geuthner. Biggs, Robert D. 1967. ’À.ZI.GA, Ancient Mesopotamian Potency Incantations. Texts from Cuneiform Sources 2. Locust Valley and New York: J. J. Augustin. Black, Jeremy. 1983. Babylonian Ballads: A New Genre. JAOS 103: 25-34. Cifarelli, Megan. 1995. Enmity, Alienation and Assimilation: The Role of Cultural Difference in the Visual and Verbal Expression of Assyrian Ideology in the Reign of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.). Ph.D. diss., Columbia University. ———. 1998. Gesture and Alterity in the Art of Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria. Art Bulletin 80: 210-228. Cooper, Jerrold S. 1972-1975. Heilige Hochzeit. B. Archäologisch. RlA 4: 259-269. de Jesus, Prentiss S. 1980. The Development of Prehistoric Mining and Metallurgy in Anatolia. 2 vols. BAR International Series 74. Oxford: B.A.R. Eickhoff, Tilman. 1985. Kâr Tukulti Ninurta. Eine mittelassyrische Kult- und Residenzstadt. Abhandlungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 21. Berlin: Mann. Finkel, Irving L. 1995. Furniture and Fittings. In Art and Empire, Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum, eds. J. E. Curtis and J. E. Reade, 121-132. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Foster, Benjamin. 1993. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. 2 vols. Bethesda, Maryland: CDI Press. Freydank, Helmut. 1974. Zwei Verpflegungstexte aus Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta. AoF 1: 55-89. ———. 1980. Zur Lage der deportierten Hurriter in Assyrien. AoF 7: 89-117. ———. 1991. Beiträge zur mittelassyrischen Chronologie und Geschichte. Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des alten Orients 21. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Grayson, A. Kirk. 1987. Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millenium BC (to 1115 B.C.). RIMA 1. Toronto: Univerity of Toronto Press. Jankowska, N. B. 1969. Some Problems of the Economy of the Assyrian Empire. In Ancient Mesopotamia, Socio-Economic History: A Collection of Studies by Soviet Scholars, ed.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

391

I. M. Diakonoff, 253-255. Moscow: Nauka Pub. House, Central Dept. of Oriental Literature. Kilmer, Anne Draffkorn. 1995. Music and Dance in Ancient Western Asia. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, eds. J. Sasson et al, 2601-2613. New York: Scribner. Köcher, Franz. 1957-1958. Ein Inventartext aus Kâr-Tukulti-Ninurta. AfO 18: 300331. Layard, Austen Henry. 1853. Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. London: J. Murray. Livingstone, Alistair. 1989. Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea. SAA 3. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Lucas, Alfred. 1962. Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries. 4th ed., revised by J. R. Harris. London: E. Arnold. Malul, Meir. 1988. Studies in Mesopotamian Legal Symbolism. AOAT 221. Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Marcus, Michelle. 1995a. Geography as Visual Ideology: Landscape, Knowledge, and Power in Neo-Assyrian Art. In Neo-Assyrian Geography, ed. M. Liverani, 193-202. Quaderni di Geografia Storica 5. Rome: Università di Roma, Dipartimento di scienze storiche, archeologiche e antropologiche dell’Antichità. ———. 1995b. Art and Ideology in Ancient Western Asia. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, eds. J. Sasson et al, 2487-2505. New York: Scribner. Matthews, Donald. 1995. Artisans and Artists in Ancient Western Asia. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, eds. J. Sasson et al, 455-468. New York: Scribner:. Mayer, Walter. 1995. Politik und Kriegskunst der Assyrer. Abhandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syrien-Palästinas und Mesopotamiens 9. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. ———. 2003. Sennacherib’s Campaign of 701 BCE: The Assyrian View. Trans. J. Assante. In ‘Like a Bird in a Cage’: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCE, ed. L. L. Grabbe, 168-200. London and New York: Sheffield Academic Press. Menzel, Brigitte. 1981. Assyrische Tempel: I.Untersuchung zu Kult, Administration und Personal; II. Anmerkungen, Textbuch, Tabellen und Indices. Studia Pohl, Series Major 10. Rome: Biblical Institute Press. Miglus, Peter. 1982. Die Stadttore in Assur—das Problem der Identifizierung. ZA 72: 266-279. ———. 1996. Das Wohngebiet von Assur. WVDOG 95. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. Moorey, P. R. S. 1985. Materials and Manufacture in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Evidence of Archaeology and Art. BAR International Serie 237. Oxford: B.A.R. Müller, Manfred. 1982. Gold, Silber und Blei als Wertmesser in Mesopotamien während der Zweiten Hälfte des 2. Jahrtausends v.u. Z. In Societies and Languages of the Ancient Near East: Studies in Honour of I. M. Diakonoff, eds. M. A. Dandamayev et al, 270-278. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips.

392

j. assante

Opificius, Ruth. 1961, Das altbabylonische Terrakottarelief. Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Parpola, Simo, and Kazuko Watanabe. 1988. Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths. SAA 2. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Paul, Shalom. 2002. The Shared Legacy of Sexual Metaphors and Euphemisms in Mesopotamian and Biblical Literature. In Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East, Actes de la XLVIIe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Helsinki, 2-6 July 2001), eds. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting, 489-498. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Pinnock, Frances. 1995. Erotic Art in the Ancient Near East. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. eds. J. Sasson et al, 2521-2531. New York: Scribner. Roth, Martha. 1995. Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Writings from the Ancient World, Society of Biblical Literature 6. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Scurlock, JoAnn. 1993. Lead Plaques and Other Obscenities. N.A.B.U. 1: 15. Wäfler, Markus. 1975. Nicht-Assyrer neuassyrischer Darstellungen. AOAT 26. Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag. Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. 1995. Heilige Hochzeit und kultische Prostitution im Alten Mesopotamien. Wort und Dienst, Jahrbuch der Kirchlichen Hochschule Bethel n.f. 23: 43-62. ———. 1998. Goddesses of the Ancient Near East 3000-1000 BC. In Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence, eds. L. Goodison and C. Morris, 63-81. London: British Museum Press.

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

393

Note: All photos with VA numbers by courtesy of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. Drawings are by the author, following sketches in the original field inventory journals.

Figure 1. Lead inlay (VA 4244)

394

j. assante

Figure 2. Lead disk (VA 5441)

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

Figure 3. Lead inlay (VA 4245)

395

396

j. assante

Figure 4. Lead inlay (VA 5428)

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

397

Figure 5a. Neo-Assyrian royal furniture decoration (photo © Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum)

398

j. assante

Figure 5b. Detail of Neo-Assyrian royal furniture decoration (photo the Trustees of The British Museum)

© Copyright

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

Figure 6. Lead inlay (VA 5426)

399

Figure 7. Lead inlay (VA 5429)

400 j. assante

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

Figure 8. Drawing of lead inlay (VA 5430)

401

402

j. assante

Figure 9. Lead inlay (VA 5427)

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

Figure 10. Lead inlay (VA 5433)

403

404

j. assante

Figure 11. Drawing of lead inlay (VA 5160)

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

Figure 12. Mold for lead inlay (VA 8274)

405

406

j. assante

Figure 13. Drawing of lead inlay (VA 5432)

the lead inlays of tukulti-ninurta i

407

Figure 14. Lead inlay (BM WA 1922: 8.12.103) (photo courtesy of the Vorderasiatisches Museum with permission from the British Museum.)

408

j. assante

barley as a key symbol in early mesopotamia

V “Opening the Eyes and Opening the Mouth”: Interdisciplinary Contexts

409

410

a.c. cohen

barley as a key symbol in early mesopotamia

411

BARLEY AS A KEY SYMBOL IN EARLY MESOPOTAMIA Andrew C. Cohen Hordeum vulgare is an annual grass that grows in a bunch, matures rapidly and offers abundant fruit in the form of the familiar starchy grain, barley (see figure 1). It was domesticated and brought into general use in Mesopotamia circa 7,200 BC, a few centuries after such wheats as Triticum monococcum “einkorn” and Triticum dicoccum “emmer” became widely cultivated (McCorriston 2000, 83). From the time of its domestication until the era of initial state formation in the fourth millennium BC, barley seems to have been grown in larger and larger amounts. But it is in the third millennium BC—the era coinciding with the growth of urbanism and the era on which I have had the opportunity to work closely with Irene—that barley becomes a staple, that is, the principal food on which a social group lives. I argue that concentrating on barley was a cultural choice that took into account a number of the grass’ characteristics, the most important of which is the infrequently noted use of barley and parts of the barley plant for animal fodder. This choice resulted in the creation of political-economic and symbolic value. The symbolic value of barley was such that barley likely constituted a key symbol for early Mesopotamia (c. 2900-1600 BC). The increasing use of barley in the third millennium, particularly in the irrigated alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia, is most apparent in administrative tablets. We are fortunate to have documents that shed light on the crop preferences of the town of Girsu, modern Tello, for much of the second half of the third millennium BC. (A note on the ratios: percentage “planted” refers to the area of cultivation dedicated to barley as a fraction of total cultivated land; percentage “harvested” refers to the volume of barley as a fraction of the entire yield of grain.) •

ED III. On nine temple-controlled fields which together total 404 ha, three were planted with 100% barley and the others grew between 68% and 88% barley (RTC 71, Jacobsen 1982, 26).

412

• •

•

a.c. cohen

The predominance of barley in that account is corroborated by DP 574, a pre-harvest survey. Dynasty of Agade. On several fields, 97% was planted with barley (RTC 188; Jacobsen 1982, 28). 2nd Dynasty of Lagash. Several tablets document 96-97% barley as being harvested from institutional land (Pinches Amherst 13, RTC 195, and RTC 201; Jacobsen 1982, 28) 3rd Dynasty of Ur. On fields controlled by various temple and other institutions in Girsu totalling 24,266 ha, 97.8% of the land was planted with barley (TuT 5; Maekawa 1984, 90-91).

This data, while offering a diachronic view of crop choice in a single city, is paralleled by a wealth of material from individual time periods and other cities. Based on the textual record then, it is apparent that barley became an increasingly important element of the agricultural system over the course of the third millennium. It is difficult, at present, to determine whether the use of barley as a staple by the great institutions was mirrored by small households or subsistence farmers. One might well imagine that the archaeobotanical record would shed light on this, but that is not the case. Preservation of botanical remains in southern Mesopotamia is generally poor and where there are well preserved remains, excavators have only recovered small samples (Eridu, Tell ed-Der, Ur). It is therefore impossible to judge the relative importance of any food crop in southern Mesopotamia from the archaeobotanical studies. It seems likely however, as O’Shea and Halstead (1989) have pointed out, that the non-institutional sector cultivated more diverse crops because small households would have aimed at self-sufficiency. Thus, when talking about barley as a staple in the third millennium, one is really speaking of the economy of the large institutions such as temples and palaces. Relying on barley was, I believe, a choice made based on a combination of factors, beginning with its use as food. Bread made from barley alone is not to everyone’s taste because it has a strong flavor, and a heavy, dense and mealy texture. This texture results from a lack of gluten, the stretchy proteins that catch CO2 and make bread rise. More preferably, barley is made into porridge or added to soups. In ancient times and today, much barley goes to the production of beer. To make beer, the barley grain is sprouted and then dried. This process, called malting, maximizes the starches available for fermentation. Cooking the malt in water releases enzymes that convert

barley as a key symbol in early mesopotamia

413

the starches to sugars. The resulting sweet liquid is then fermented, yielding beer. Wheat lacks the crucial enzymes that create sugars and thus cannot be used as the sole grain in beer-making; it must be combined with barley. Previous studies have commonly attributed barley’s predominance over wheat to just a single characteristic of the plant’s reproductive abilities. Some recognize that barley is a good performer with respect to yields (Powell 1985, 14-19). Others point out that emmer may match the yields of barley. In controlled tests, however, emmer yields have been found to be highly variable (Stallknecht, Gilbertson, and Ranney 1996), and so barley may have been preferred because of its reliability. Still others focus on aspects of the plant’s growth requirements (van Zeist 1999, 363). For both Hordeum and Triticum varieties the period of active growth is fall, winter and spring—the time when temperatures are moderate in southern Mesopotamia and the water in the river increases—and both require similar numbers of frost free days. Hordeum varieties require less moisture than the Triticum. The result being that Hordeum may be better suited to cultivation in marginal environments or in arid regions that require judicious use of irrigation water. A final characteristic of barley commonly credited for its growing prevalence in southern Mesopotamia is salinity tolerance. Jacobsen once argued that because barley is more tolerant of saline soils than wheat, it is better suited to this alluvial zone where progressive soil salinization can become problematic (Jacobsen 1982). This argument has been systematically demolished by Powell, who stresses that, “though barley is indisputably more tolerant of salt than wheat, wheat is sufficiently close to barley in salt tolerance” to make this a non-issue (Powell 1985, 12). At sites in northern Syria and northern Mesopotamia, regions which do not rely on irrigation and for which soil salinization is therefore not a problem, the archaeobotanical record clearly shows the same increasing preference for barley through the third millennium. Indeed, recent archaeobotanical studies in northern Syria and northern Mesopotamia all reveal a progressive increase in the cultivation of barley, which coincides with the integration of these regions into the cultural orbit of southern Mesopotamia. Thus, at Kurban Höyük total quantities of barley appearing in soil samples increase from 45% in the early third millennium BC to 68% barley in the mid-third millennium

414

a.c. cohen

BC to 78% barley in the late third to early second millennium BC. At late third to early second millennium Tell es-Sweyhat, barley accounts for 96% of the grain in the samples (Miller 1997, 124-125). On the Balikh, at the site of Tell Hamam et-Turkman, the proportion of barley versus other cereal grains found in soil samples rises from 55% in the mid- to end of the fourth millennium BC to 85% in the mid-third millennium (van Zeist 1999, fig. 19.4). Finally, along the Khabur a sample of 16 sites shows increasing percentages of barley processing remains as a proportion of the whole set of archaeobotanical remains over the course of third millennium (McCorriston and Weisberg 2002, 490). Thus, in an area as suited to growing wheat as to growing barley, barley was preferred. Did northern Mesopotamians adopt a southern custom, the use of barley, just as they adopted writing? I argue that a last characteristic crucially separates barley from the wheats: hordeum plants and seed make excellent fodder. Given proper supervision, animals can graze barley crops early in the plants’ growth cycle without drastically reducing yields (Briggs 1978, 311-313). This encourages tillering, that is the production of potentially fertile side shoots from the base of the plant (see figure 1). Animals can also eat post-harvest straw and non-grain products of crop processing. This nutritious dry material stores well for winter use. In contrast, while wheat fruit is very useful as feed, its straw, which is more woody than barley straw, is far less suitable as fodder because it has fewer nutrients. The importance of barley as fodder is confirmed by the archaeobotanical record. Many of the samples from sites in both northern and southern Mesopotamia contain carbonized clean barley grains and spikelet bits, the latter being products of crop processing. These materials enter the archaeological record as dung fuel. That is, barley fodder is fed to animals, and the dung is then collected, dried and burned. Evidence for this practice comes from samples of soil scientifically collected from archaeological contexts. Samples containing “actual burned dung” are documented as are samples preserving a characteristic combination of cereal seeds and “field weeds,” that is, “indigenous legumes and grasses.” The latter samples reflect the use of dung fuel, rather than, say, the detritus of food preparation, because only animals would be consuming and excreting a mixture of grain and field weeds, according to Naomi Miller (1996, 524). Moreover

barley as a key symbol in early mesopotamia

415

ethnographic records and my own casual observations indicate that dung fuel enjoys widespread use in Anatolia and Syria. I am arguing that Hordeum varieties were favored over other cereals such as Triticum dicoccum “emmer” by Mesopotamian cultivators because of their versatility in the human diet, their reliability, their low moisture use and especially because of their utility as fodder. This set of characteristics enabled production of grain and other goods on a massive scale. Production was organized by the great Mesopotamian institutions, palaces and temples. The institutions held land on which barley was cultivated with the intent of consistently creating a surplus. A fraction of this surplus was fed to wool-bearing and working animals, and the rest was returned to the economy in the form of remuneration for work performed. With regard to the labor, it has been pointed out that in the very earliest cuneiform texts, “the relationship between the grain capacity system and time notations was such that they might in fact have reflected each other,” meaning that, in the fourth millennium, grain measures and work time were inseparable (Englund 1998, 126). In the third millennium, the best documented period is Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2100 BC). At this time, laborers, when considered from the perspective of their relationship to the state, can be categorized into two groups: those with a long-term relationship to the state and those with a seasonal or even shorter term relationship. As Waetzoldt (1987) has shown, long-term employees such as craft workers and bureaucrats were allotted barley monthly in an amount that corresponded to their economic importance and level of responsibility. Wool sufficient to make one garment was issued once a year and occasionally a special allotment of oil was given. To the extent that a family could not supplement its allotment with food grown in a garden, hunted, or brought in by some other means, barley constituted a dietary staple. As such, it could be consumed after having been ground and made into bread, and it fit into the cuisine as a base on which a wet meat and/or pulse braise, stew or soup was commonly served (Bottéro 1985; Limet 1987).1

1 I have previously pointed out the frequency with which the Sumerian word for these dishes (tu7) occurs and have further identified an associated class of vessel, the lowcapacity necked pot (A. Cohen 2005, 171-173).

416

a.c. cohen

At least as significant, the fodder generated from barley was also the raw material for the most important large-scale, tradeable craft product of the time, textiles. Sheep survived lean periods on barley fodder and produced valuable wool. The state employed women in spinning yarn and weaving textiles. One account, UET 3: 1505, puts yearly production in Ur at 630 tons of wool and another from a single workshop in Girsu records over 6000 workers (Englund 1998, 151 n. 342; Waetzoldt 1972). This textile “industry” functioned primarily to produce an easily transportable high-value trade good for export. Traders exchanged textiles for luxurious raw materials including carnelian, lapis lazuli, silver and gold that were unavailable in the Mesopotamian heartland. These imported raw materials were transformed into prestige goods in state workshops and were largely consumed by the urban elite. Barley was a crucial input at several points in this system. To summarize, the institutional choice of barley as staple was one that was made in order to maximize production of a capital good.2 This good had the functional property that it could be fed to animals to produce wool. Wool, transformed by workers who are paid in barley and who survive on barley, is a good of utility which could be exchanged. The scale of this undertaking and the labor involved ensured that barley became a “key symbol” for southern Mesopotamians. Key symbols, to use the terminology of Ortner (1973), exhibit several characteristics: they are said to be culturally important to their users and they arouse positive or negative feelings; they come up in many different contexts such as conversations, literature and symbolic domains; they are elaborated upon to a greater extent than similar phenomena in the culture; and there are more restrictions surrounding them. The hypothesis that barley was a key symbol in early Mesopotamia is dramatically confirmed by a Sumerian literary composition now called “Debate between Sheep and Grain,” which was current at least as early as 1800 BC. It depicts a debate between the personifications of Sheep and Grain.3 The composition opens with a mythological prologue set in ancient times.

2 Adams (1981) made a similar argument some 25 years ago, and to my mind, the new evidence presented here confirms it. 3 Note that grain is written dingir.àe.tir, a set of signs that includes the sign for barley.

barley as a key symbol in early mesopotamia

417

nam-lu2-ulu3 ud re-a-ke4-ne ninda gu7-u3-bi nu-mu-un-zu-uà-am3 tug2-ga mu4-mu4-bi nu-mu-un-zu-uà-am3 kalam già-gen -na su-bi mu-un-gen ; ; 6 udu-gin7 ka-ba u2 mu-ni-ib-gu7 a mu2-sar-ra-ka i-im-na8-na8-ne The people of those days did not know about eating bread. They did not know about wearing clothes; they went about with naked limbs in the Land. Like sheep they ate grass with their mouths and drank water from the ditches. (ll. 20-25)

The gods then create sheep, grain and agricultural implements. These are given to humanity so that they might enrich themselves and the gods. We then read that during the course of a divine drinking party, Grain calls out to Sheep, saying, “Sister, I am your better; I take precedence over you” (l. 72).4 After this challenge, both Grain and Sheep take turns, first describing the good they do for humanity and then trading insults. At last Grain ends the debate with the statement, àag4-tur3-zu ganba-ka lu2 u3-bi2-in-de6/ tug2 nig; 2-dara2 ni2-za si-ma-ab lu2 gu2-zu u3-bi2-in-la2/ u8- gu ; 10-àe3 àe giàba-an-e ; lu2-u3 in-na-ab-e, “When your innards are taken away by people in the market-place, and when your neck is wrapped with your very own loincloth, one man says to another: ‘fill the measuring cup with barley for my ewe’” (ll. 177-179). Grain is then declared the winner and praised. Barley’s political-economic role, symbolic roles, and the link between the two are signaled by this exchange. First, note the privileging of Grain (barley) over Sheep. Both make equally significant contributions to the world of humans and gods. Both also have faults. Grain (barley) is privileged over sheep because of its use as fodder (thus confirming the importance of barley over wheat). Second, in the view of the text’s composer, bread and clothes are what separates humanity from animals. The importance of eating and clothing has long been recognized in anthropology as being crucial in the creation and main4

Transliteration and translation from Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature = ETCSL (www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk).

418

a.c. cohen

tenance of social relations.5 Bread is the early Mesopotamian symbol that betokens a group’s status as human and civilized. There is good reason to think that the view of barley encoded in this composition was pervasive. The poem was frequently copied as part of the scribal training process. There are over 50 cuneiform sources for the “Debate between Sheep and Grain.” Moreover, the last few lines of the composition contain a slight variation on a common Sumerian proverb: kug tuku-e za-gin3 tuku-e gud tuku-e udu tuku-e kan4 lu2 àe tuku-ka ud mi-ni-ib-zal-zal-e, “He who has silver, he who has lapis lazuli, he who has oxen, and he who has sheep wait at the gate of the man who has barley” (UET 6/2 263; ETCSL). Another proverb reflects the same sentiment: a2-il2 kalag-ga lugal àe-ke4 bi2-ib-ra-ra-e-[àe], “Even the strongest laborer gets beaten by the owner of the barley” (Proverb Collection 13 20; ETCSL). As Bourdieu (1977) has noted, proverbs belong to that great unconscious set of knowledge and ideas about the world which organizes everyday life. They confirm that the attitudes embodied in the debates derive from cultural values and norms. Barley was so central to everyday life in southern Mesopotamia that the calendar of some cities was based on aspects of barley cultivation. In the city of Girsu, to return to my earlier example, one finds month names that may be read as iti-àe-kin-ku5(-ra2) “month of the barley harvest,” iti-ki-su7-àu-su-ga “month of clearing the threshing floor,” iti-guru7-im-du8-a “month when the silo is replastered,” and iti-guru7-dub-ba-a “month when the silo is heaped full (of grain)” (M. Cohen 1993, 37-64). There are also four months named after major religious festivals which focus on barley: iti-ezem-àe-gu7d Nanàe “month of the festival of the Barley Consumption of Nanàe,” iti-ezem-àe-gu7-dNin-gir2-su “month of the festival of the Barley Consumption of Ningirsu,” iti-ezem-munu4-gu7-dNanàe “month of the festival of the Malt Consumption of Nanàe,” iti-ezem-munu4gu7-dNin-gir2-su “month of the festival of the Malt Consumption of Ningirsu.” These festivals were no doubt important in the social life of this city—some lasted for four or five days. Even for the urban 5 In her research in the Ecuadorian Andes, Mary Weismantel built on Sidney Mintz’s idea that “food preferences are close to the center of self-definition” to show how barley is used as a “symbol of indigenous resistance” against hegemonic whites (1988).

barley as a key symbol in early mesopotamia

419

population of Girsu, events in the fields surrounding the city constituted markers for temporal reckoning and orientation. In the “Debate between Sheep and Grain” barley helps order a view of the world which elevates bread eating and beer drinking Mesopotamians over naked animals that eat grass and drink from ditches. Barley also orients actions through time, even for the city-dwellers of Girsu. It would be fair to say that barley was a key symbol in the specific historical context of the highly urbanized society of southern Mesopotamia in the fourth and third millennia BC. Although Irene does not use the term “key symbol” as such, in her discussion of the Gudea statues (Winter 1992), she shows how a visual trope can become embedded in a culture. There are many ways in which symbolic objects or substances can come to have meaning and value. In the present paper, I have tried to show that one of the more important symbols for Early Mesopotamia, barley, gained symbolic value based on its manifold political and economic values.

References Adams, Robert McC. 1981. Heartland of Cities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bottéro, Jean. 1985. The Cuisine of Ancient Mesopotamia. Biblical Archaeologist 48 (March): 36-47. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by R. Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Briggs, D. E. 1978. Barley. London: Wiley. Cohen, Andrew C. 2005. Death Rituals, Ideology, and the Development of Early Mesopotamian Kingship. Leiden: Brill/Styx. Cohen, Mark E. 1993. The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East. Bethesda, Md.: CDL Press. Englund, Robert K. 1998. Texts from the Late Uruk period. In Mesopotamien: SpäturukZeit und frühdynastische Zeit, ed. J. Bauer, R. K. Englund, and M. Krebernik, 13-233. OBO 160/1. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Jacobsen, Thorkild. 1982. Salinity and Irrigation Agriculture in Antiquity: Diyala Basin Archaeological Projects, Report on Essential Results, 1957-58. BiMes 14. Malibu: Undena. Limet, H. 1987. The Cuisine of Ancient Sumer. Biblical Archaeologist 50: 132-140. Maekawa, Kazuya. 1984. Cereal Cultivation in the Ur III period. Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 1: 73-96.

420

a.c. cohen

McCorriston, Joy. 2000. Barley Domestication. In Cambridge World History of Food, ed. K. F. Kiple and K. C. Ornelas, 81-90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCorriston, Joy, and Sanford Weisberg. 2002. Spatial and Temporal Variation in Mesopotamian Agricultural Practices in the Khabur Basin, Syrian Jazira. Journal of Archaeological Science 29: 485-498. Miller, Naomi F. 1996. Seed Eaters of the Ancient Near East: Human or Herbivore? Current Anthropology 37/3: 521-528. ———. 1997. Farming and Herding along the Euphrates: Environmental Constraint and Cultural Choice (Fourth to Second Millennia B.C.). In Subsistence and Settlement in a Marginal Environment: Tell es-Sweyhat, 1989-1995 Preliminary Report, ed. R. L. Zettler, 123-132. Philadelphia, PA: Museum Applied Science Center for Archaeology University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Ortner, Sherry B. 1973. On Key Symbols. American Anthropologist 75/5: 1338-1346. O’Shea, John, and Paul Halstead. 1989. Bad Year Economics: Cultural Responses to Risk and Uncertainty. New Directions in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Powell, Marvin A. 1985. Salt, Seed, and Yields in Sumerian Agriculture: A Critique of the Theory of Progressive Salinization. ZA 75: 7-38. Stallknecht, G.F., K.M. Gilbertson, and J.E. Ranney. 1996. Alternative Wheat Cereals as Food Grains: Einkorn, Emmer, Spelt, Kamut, and Triticale. In Progress in New Crops, ed. J. Janick, 156-170. Alexandria, Virginia: ASHS. van Zeist, Willem. 1999. Evidence for Agricultural Change in the Balikh Basin, Northern Syria. In The Prehistory of Food: Appetites for Change, ed. C. Gosden and J. Hather, 350-373. London: Routledge. Waetzoldt, Hartmut. 1972. Untersuchungen zur neusumerischen Textilindustrie. Vol. 1, Studi economici e tecnologici. Rome. ———. 1987. Compensation of Craft Workers and Officials in the Ur III Period. In Labor in the Ancient Near East, ed. M. A. Powell, 117-141. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Weismantel, Mary J. 1988. Food, Gender, and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Winter, Irene J. 1992. ‘Idols of the King’: Royal Images as Recipients of Ritual Action in Ancient Mesopotamia. Journal of Ritual Studies 6/1: 13-42.

barley as a key symbol in early mesopotamia

421

Figure 1. Barley, from the USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database (Hitchcock, A.S. (rev. A. Chase). 1950. Manual of the Grasses of the United States. USDA Misc. Publ. No. 200. Washington, DC.)

422

a.c. cohen

biblical mÀlîlot, akkadian millatum

423

BIBLICAL M7LÎLOT, AKKADIAN MILLATUM, AND EATING ONE’S FILL Abraham Winitzer The inclusion of a short etymological study of a Semitic root allegedly common to Hebrew and Akkadian may seem at first an odd sight in a volume honoring Irene Winter. For those fortunate to have studied with our jubilarian, however, surely this will not be the case. To have learned from Professor Winter is perhaps foremost to have experienced the shattering of artificial and senseless intellectual barriers. Well beyond her insistence of a dialogue between the visual and verbal media, Professor Winter has been an unflinching champion of the inclusion of ideas in her classroom, regardless of their origin. Be it from the Indus valley or the pages of the High-Holidays lectionary, whether in truths concealed in J.-L. David’s portraiture or in the starry heights explored by (her own) planispheres, seemingly anything that might provide an intellectual bridge to better understanding ancient Mesopotamia and its visual record was a welcome guest in Professor Winter’s classes. Of course this intellectual breadth is evinced in her own writings where, for example, and in contrast to the general direction of these comparisons, on more than one occasion the echo of the Biblical text—for instance a piece of Deuteronomic rhetoric concerning agrarian abundance1—amplifies and enhances the pitch of some aspect of Mesopotamian civilization. It does seem fitting, therefore, that this brief communication, with its aim of shedding light on a detail from the Biblical world with the aid of a counterpart from the Mesopotamian—and in turn suggesting a reassessment of the Mesopotamian evidence itself—should find a place in a tribute for Irene Winter, master bridge-builder and intellectual par excellence.

1

Winter 2003, 252*, 261*; also 1986, 255 n. 1.

424

a. winitzer Deut 23: 25-262

Among the later so-called “miscellaneous” laws of Deuteronomy, two entries (23:25-26) function as safeguards against the possibility of overindulgence in produce while passing through a neighbor’s lands. This following seeks, inter alia, to shed new light on both these laws, placing emphasis on a particular lexeme in the second, whose traditionally assumed meaning presents an overlooked obstacle to the verses’ accepted interpretation. A transliteration of the laws follows, along with a translation that skips over the problematic term. kî t§bo" bÀkerem r¿ #ek§ wÀ"§kalt§ #¨n§bîm kÀnapàÀk§ áob#ek§ wÀ-"el kelyÀ k§ lo" titt¿n 26 kî t§bo" bÀq§mat r¿ #ek§ wÀq§ãapt§ mÀlîlot bÀy§dek§ wÀÈerm¿à lo" t§nîp #al q§mat r¿ #ek§ 25

25

When you enter a neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat grapes to your bellyful; but you must not put any in your vessel. 26When you enter a neighbor’s field of standing grain, you may pluck . . . with your hand; but you must not put a sickle to your neighbor’s grain.

The first law in this couplet (v. 25) considers a neighbor’s vineyard; in the second (v. 26) the setting shifts to a neighboring grainfield. Both laws appear to allow for consumption and/or gathering of produce from a foreign field, and both seem to prohibit any further picking for later use. Accordingly, one may sate oneself on the vines of another “to one’s (lit., your) satistfaction” (kÀnapàÀk§ áob #ek§), yet take none along for the road (v. 25). A similar injunction appears concerning grain (v. 26): the reaping of grain with one’s sickle—presumably in excess of that which could be plucked by hand—is forbidden. Exactly what is specified in v. 26 as legally permissible, it is submitted, presents an unrecognized crux interpretum. As a counterpart to #¨n§bîm (“grapes”) in v. 25 one might expect to find in this verse the common Biblical term for an ear of wheat, àibbolet, or better its plural 2 Verse numbers follow the Hebrew. Abbreviations generally follow those of CAD (vol. 12, 2005), but note also the following: DCH = The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Clines 1993); HALOT = The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Koehler and Baumgartner 1995); OBE = Old Babylonian Extispicy: Omen Texts in the British Museum (Jeyes 1989). Thanks are offered to J. Huehnergard, G. Beckmann, and B. Bruning for their help on an earlier stage of this paper, though the responsibility for any errors herein is mine alone.

biblical mÀlîlot, akkadian millatum

425

3 [ form àibbolîm, though this is not the case.4 Instead one encounters the Biblical Hebrew substantive mÀlîlot, a hapax legomenon, with translations as “ears of corn for rubbing”5 or the like based in large part on an assumed derivation from one of the homophonous verbal √mll.6 In fact in itself this particular root is a hapax,7 allegedly meaning “to rub, scrape,” though this sense is by no means certain.8 Still, most ancient translations have assumed this etymological connection for their understanding of mÀlîlot,9 as have modern commentaries.10 Another important, indeed seemingly conclusive, datum presented itself not too long ago from the Dead Sea Scrolls: in the Temple Scroll (11QT 19:7) mlylwt is paired with "bybwt, “fresh, young ears”11 both in apposition to lÈm Èdà, “fresh bread.” Understandably, in that context the text’s main editor rendered the pair as “fresh ripe ears.”12 On the basis of the evidence from Qumran, therefore, the rendering of Biblical *mÀlîl§(h) as an “ear of corn” (that is, wheat)13 would seem to be justified. Upon further thought, however, it becomes increasingly doubtful that this sense for mÀlîlot properly covers the term in its Biblical context.

[ Note, e.g., Isa 17:5, where q§m§(h) // àibbolîm. Nor does one encounter here Èiãã§(h)/Èiããîm, “wheat,” whether alone or in any of its stages of ripening ("§bîb, karmel, q§lî, i.e., fresh → parched), áÀ #or§(h)/áÀ #orîm, “barely,” or any other among the common terms for cereals and cereal cultivation. 5 So HALOT, 2: 590; cf. BDB, 576: “ear[s] of wheat”; Borowski 2002, 58. 6 The root is classified as m-l-l II in BDB, 576; m-l-l III in DCH, 5: 328; and m-l-l IV in HALOT, 2: 594. Borowski (2002, 58 n. 4) tentatively offers two different possibilities (in BDB’s classification): m-l-l II, “to rub, scrape,” or m-l-l III, “languish, wither, fade.” 7 Its occurrence is in Prov 6:13, on which see below. 8 Common translations (e.g., JPS) of “shuffling” for the activity described concerning one’s feet in Prov 6:13 are contextual and rather forced; cf. the meaning of this root in BDB, 576: “rub, scrape”; DCH, 5: 328: “scrape”; HALOT 2: 594: “rub away between the fingers, scrape > to give a sign.” For a tentative suggestion as to the meaning of √mll in this verse see n. 51 below. 9 See, e.g., LXX stáxus (elsewhere rendering q§m§(h), “standing grain” and àibbolet, “ear of grain”); Targum Neofiti pyrwkyn (< √prk, “remove husks by rubbing”); Peshitta mlwg (< √mlg, “to pluck”) àbl"; but cf. mlyn in Onqelos, for which see n. 14 below. For the (similar) understanding of the term in Rabbinic texts see Feliks 1990, 158-159, 194195. 10 E.g., Driver 1951, 269; von Rad 1966, 148; Tigay 1996, 220; Borowski 2002, 58. 11 This term, for which see Borowski (2002, 88), is mentioned in the Biblical corpus in Exod 9:31; Lev 2:14. 12 Yadin 1983, 1:106-8; 2:82; cf. García Martínez and Tigchelaar (1998, 2: 1241): “tendrils of barley and corncobs.” 13 So, e.g., DCH, 5: 300. 3 4

426

a. winitzer

In fact, it appears that virtually14 no interpretation, ancient or modern, accounts for a basic problem in the understanding of the Biblical text. After all, if, as indeed it would seem, these verses attempt to prohibit the (excessive) pilfering of food,15 then the law concerning the grain (v. 26), especially when considered in light of its counterpart (v. 25), would be rendered nonsensical. Unlike the first instance, where the contrast drawn distinguishes between a proper—substantial yet finite—and unacceptable produce amount, according to its accepted understanding the second law contrasts two picking methods. A strict interpretation of v. 26, therefore, would deem permissible the picking of an unlimited amount of grain—even with the intent of taking some along—so long as the act was done manually.16 Conversely, the law would hold unacceptable the reaping of even a single ear with a sickle, whether or not any had been previously picked by hand. Surely this was not the intended meaning!17

Akk. millatum, “looting, plundering” (?) A solution to this puzzle may be found with the aid of comparative Akkadian lexical evidence. There one finds the verb mal§lum, from

14 But note the translation in Targum Onqelos as mlyn, whose basis (< ml"/mly, “to be full” [so Jastrow Dict., 789]) seems to intimate an awareness of, and perhaps a solution to, the very problem described below. 15 So, e.g., von Rad 1966, 148; Brueggemann 2001, 233-235, and note the insightful remarks therein likening the issue behind these verses to that of centuries-old legal debate concerning the enclosure movement and the laws of enclosure in early modern England (for which see most recently Kain, Chapman, and Oliver 2004). 16 Or, strictly speaking, with the aid of another instrument, e.g., magg§l, “sickle.” 17 To be sure, one could argue that generally speaking the prohibition against the sickle functions in a manner analogous to that involving baskets in the preceding verse, since ipso facto the stipulation concerning the plucking by hand establishes limitations on the amount that an individual can harvest. Yet it is important to realize that one could reap manually as well, especially where smaller plots were concerned (see Borowski 2002, 58 and n. 5). Thus it is not sufficient to suggest that the laws in vv. 25-26 are supplementary, and that the prohibition concerning the method of reaping in the latter verse (v. 26) implies a limitation on amount as in the former (v. 25). This point finds support in Rabbinic interpretations of v. 26 (for which see the discussion in Feliks 1990, 194-195), where further temporal qualifications on the plucking of mÀlîlot (e.g., at work’s end) were established. It would thus seem that, as it was understood by the Rabbis, the allowance granted by the Biblical verse was perceived as too lenient and, if left unmodified, potentially deleterious to the agrarian economy.

biblical mÀlîlot, akkadian millatum

427

√mll, translated by the dictionaries as “ausplündern,”18 “to eat, eat one’s fill, consume, eat clean,”19 even “to pillage, loot, consume,”20 along with its feminine substantive, millatum, understood as “Plünderung”21 or “looting, plundering.”22 The noun is known from at least three texts and is probably to be restored in a fourth.23 Each of these represents an individual omen from the Old Babylonian (extispicy) omen collections; these are quoted as examples 1-4 below. The almost exclusively pejorative sense in these examples for both substantive and verb may initially seem problematic for our purposes (though in light of the following discussion it will be suggested that the understanding of the basic sense of Akk. √mll demands reevaluation). Nevertheless, it shall be seen that Akk. mal§lum and millatum are in fact cognate with Biblical Hebrew mÀlîlot, and that an understanding of their semantic range clarifies the sense of the Hebrew lexeme and the law in which it appears, especially in light of its real counterpart in the preceding verse: the eating of one’s fill (kÀnapàÀk§ áobÀ #ek§) 1. àumma ina libbi b§b ekallim qûm àakim-ma iàqaal ⇒ millatum àatammå ekall§ti imallalå If in the middle of the Palace Gate a filament was situated and suspeed ⇒ (it forecasts) looting/plundering: àatammu-officials will eat the palaces clean. (YOS 10 11 iv 12-15) 2. [àumma ina (libbi ?) b§b ekallim q]ûm iàqallal ⇒ millatum àatammå ekallam imallalå [If in the (middle of ?) the Palace Gate a fi]lament was suspended ⇒ (it forecasts) looting/plundering: àatammu-officials will eat the palace clean. (YOS 10 25:63) 3. [àumma ina (?) b§b ekalli]m àÊrum24 kupput-ma iàqallal ⇒ [millat]um sarråtum ekallam iàt[ana]rriqå [If in (?) the Palace Gat]e a tissue was compacted and suspended ⇒

18

AHw, 594. CAD M/1, 160. 20 CDA, 193, which includes the meaning “to eat o.’s fill” as well. 21 AHw, 652. 22 CAD M/2, 69. 23 A fifth case may be that of Ni 1218, II: 1-4, edited by Kraus (1987, 194-196) as follows: x x x x àatammå ekallam iàtanarriqå. Unfortunately that publication includes neither a copy nor a photograph of the text. 24 Spelled here ài-ir-ru-um and noted in CAD ’/3, 113b. 19

428

a. winitzer (it forecasts) [loot]ing/[plunder]ing: thieves (lit., liars, criminals) will k[eep] stealing from the palace. (YOS 10 26 iv 11-12)

4. àumma ina libbi b§b ekallim påßum kupput ⇒ . . .25 millatum àatammå ekallam iàtanarri[qå] If in the middle of the Palace Gate a white spot was compacted ⇒ . . . (it forecasts) looting/plundering: àatammu-officials will keep stea[ling] from the palace. (YOS 10 26 i 36-37)

And compare with: 5. (àumma) ßibtum palàat ⇒ àatammå ekallam imallalå kurusisså àamaààammÊ m§tim ikkalå26 (If) the Increase is (generally) perforated ⇒ àatammu-officials will eat the palace clean; (alternatively:) rodents will consume the flax of the land. (YOS 10 35: 29 // Nougayrol 1941: 88 ll. 14-15) 6. àumma b§b ekalli el¿nu b§b ekalli ⇒ ekallu ekalla imallal If (there is) a Palace Gate above (another) Palace Gate ⇒ one palace will consume the other. (Hunger 1976: 81 l. 12 [SB])

In examples 1 through 4 the initial instance of millatum is followed by what appears to be a detailed depiction of the predicted act: àatammu-officials or, more generally, thieves (example 3), are envisaged as either eating up (mal§lum) supplies (examples 1, 2) or habitually stealing (< àitarruqum) from the palace (examples 3, 4). The same image of àatammu-officials eating the palace clean is also encountered in example 5, where the forecast describing these figures alternates with a second interpretation that foretells rodents consuming (ak§lum) the land.27 To conclude from this pairing, the sense of mal§lum in the first prediction goes far beyond any notion of leisurely eating or dining. This voraciousness must extend to the verbs in examples 1 and 2, as well as to the substantive millatum, which occurs as a lemma for the

25 Inserted here is: ta-da-a[k?] na-ak-ra-Lam?J, possibly an independent initial forecast, but nonetheless difficult even in the matter of its syntax. 26 Our normalization reflects a composite from both versions. On the basis of the plural subject of both versions the singular form ikkal in the version from YOS 10 35 is understood as a collective. 27 This forecast occurs on its own in the following loose parallel of this tradition from yet a third collection: [àu]mma ina påt ßibtim àÊlå sebet àaknå ⇒ [t]ibût kurusissim [I]f in the front of the Increase seven holes were situated ⇒ (it represents) an [o]nslaught of rodents (lit., rodent). (OBE 10: 64-5)

biblical mÀlîlot, akkadian millatum

429

following longer interpretation in those examples.28 Furthermore, to judge by its appearance before the predictions of kleptomania in examples 3 and 4, the semantic range of the term must have stretched beyond its immediate context so as to offer a logical fit there (note too the sense of mal§lum in example 6). A translation for millatum as “looting” or “plundering,” therefore, reflecting a more general act than, say, “gluttony,” does not seem inappropriate. From this perspective it must be granted that neither of these meanings can apply to the Biblical cognate, since each would sanction the right to pilfer and thus render the stipulation concerning grain in v. 26 even more senseless than before. Yet further evidence presented in what follows points to a sense of Akk. √mll more compatible with Biblical Hebrew melîlot. This sense, which, it is suggested, is not adequately conveyed by the dictionaries, in fact represents the basic one for Akk. √mll. Akk. mal§lum, 1a. “to eat, consume,” 1b. “to consume completely, eat up”; 2. (in omens) loot, plunder”; Akk. millatum, 1a. “edible(s), consumption”; 1b. “eatable total or fill, complete consumption”; 2. (in omens) “looting, plundering” On a few occasions the connotation of mal§lum does seem rather prosaic, not so distant after all from the basic sense of ak§lum, “to eat.” Thus in the so-called Babylonian Theodicy, for instance, the phrase m§lil erqu is understood in its literal sense, that is, “one who eats (only) vegetables,” or, simply, “a vegetarian.”29 Another example comes from among the instructions of ’up¿-awÊlim,30 where the following appeal by the father to his son is predicated on a vetitive form of mal§lum: m§rÊ [it]ti? àa ÉÊãÊ ã¿na ¿-tamlula (My) son, may you not eat bread (lit., meal) [wi]th criminals! (Nougayrol 1968, 278 l. 6) 28 On this “Lemma: Full Interpretation” structure witnessed in certain omen apodoses, and more specifically the relationship in such instances between lemmata and their glosses, see Winitzer 2006, 141-203. 29 Lambert 1960, 80, l. 185 (and note the mirror image in the following line depicting persons whose sustenance is the carob fruit; Lambert 1960, 210, l. 12). 30 Text no. 163 in Nougayrol 1968, 273-290 and 436-437. A more recent translation is found in Foster 1996, 1: 330-334 (with an updated listing of editions of and new sources for the text).

430

a. winitzer

Whatever the background of this pearl of wisdom,31 it seems all but certain that mal§lum here maintains a sense not far removed from that of ak§lum. Finally, one notes an altogether festive context of mal§lum in the depiction of a just king, likely Nebuchadnezzar II or Nabonidus:32 damqa Éißbi àadî u tâmtÊ33 ultamlil uãaÉÉid-ma uãaÉÉâ maÉar il§nÊ rabûti The pleasant yield of mountains and seas he gave to eat, he offered (it) luxuriantly before the great gods. (Lambert 1965, 7; Schaudig 2001, 584)

Admittedly these three34 examples all stem from literary contexts hardly representative of a broad spectrum of Akkadian. Subsequently and without additional evidence, especially evidence from non-belletristic sources, any call to reconfigure the semantic range of mal§lum (and accordingly that of millatum) so as to bring it in line with that of ak§lum may seem premature. On the other hand it must be recalled that by no means do omen collections like those from which the above examples are gleaned represent a neutral ground for the establishment of a particular term’s basic sense. To the contrary, not infrequently in the environment of the omen collections a word, whose sense otherwise seems well-established, challenges the bounds of this selfsame understanding. A case in point is the depiction of the àatammu-official in examples 1, 2 and 4 above. The portrayal of this figure in these omens as persona non grata, elsewhere known as a chief supervisor of the Old Babylonian palace and temple economies, would certainly strike the student of Mesopotamian socioeconomic history as odd.35 Little if any textual evidence can be mustered to support such prejudice. In fact, if the

31

Note the brilliant interpretative comment by the text’s editor, J. Nougayrol (1968, 286): “[la sentence] met en garde contre le danger de fréquenter intimement les méchants et d’être tenu pour ejusdem farinae (companio, compain, copain).” 32 On the debate over the identity of this royal figure see most recently Schaudig 2001, 579-580 (with previous scholarly positions and bibliography). 33 Following the reading by Schaudig (2001, 584): ti-amat!(kur)meà; cf. Lambert (1965, 7): ti.atmeà. 34 B. Gronenberg (1997, 84, l. 21 and n. 73) proposed another such attestation in her recent edition to one of the so-called Aguàaya poems (= B); but cf. the rendering of the same line by Foster (1996, 1: 88, 91). 35 So, e.g., Gallery 1980, 23.

biblical mÀlîlot, akkadian millatum

431

native lexical traditions are in any way indicative of wider opinion, then just the opposite estimate of this figure abounded: the standard and common Sumerian rendering of Akkadian àatammum, àà.tam, is equated with ellum (“pure, clean, clear”),36 ebbum (“bright, pure”),37 and, most frequently, qÊpum (“trustworthy, trusted”)38—the connotations of these words all unmistakably positive. Plainly the explanation for this Samaritan-like twist in the àatammu-officials’ reputation lies in the nature of omens themselves, with their flair for the dramatic in general, and specifically their obsessive concerns about betrayal and treason.39 Aside from additional references to transgressions to be committed by àatammus,40 this sort of role reversal is well-attested elsewhere in the collections regarding a range of functionaries who normally figure as pillars of Mesopotamian societal order: sukkallu- and zabardabbû-officials, eunuchs, slaves, even barbers.41 Perceived dangers notwithstanding, a contextual study of these cases leaves little doubt that by and large statements about the abnormal behavior of these persons are to be ascribed more to the hermeneutic considerations underlying the omens than to anything else.42 The hyperbole concerning the àatammu-officials constitutes no 36

See Aa VII/4 130-133 (MSL 14, 469). See Lu I 135 (MSL 12, 98); OB Lu B v 32 (MSL 12, 184). 38 See Nabnitu XVII (= J) 78-80 (MSL 16, 156); Lu I 135m (MSL 12, 98); OB Lu B v 31 (MSL 12, 184); Aa VII/4 130-133 (MSL 14, 469). 39 On this topic see Bottéro 1973: 140-143. 40 YOS 10 24 r. 29 // YOS 10 26 i 27; Nougayrol 1941, 80 l. 9; Nougayrol 1971, 70 l. 19. 41 For citations and brief analysis of texts mentioning most of these figures, as well as others not listed here, see Jeyes 1989, 33; concerning the zabardabbû-official see van Dijk 1976, no. 78 ll. 8-9. 42 Note, for instance, the two options for the prominent palace figures in the alternative interpretations of the following omens: 37

àumma b§b e[kallim àin§-m]a birÊtÊàunu qûm ßabit ⇒ rubûm irbam ikkal àanû àumàu sukkallum irbam ikkal If the P[alace] Gates [(are) two an]d between them a filament is seized ⇒ the prince will consume income (in produce); its second interpretation: the sukkallu-official will consume income (in produce) (YOS 10 24:5). And cf. the following parallel tradition, wherein the predicate describing the seizure of palace income, a most common interpretative association for “Palace Gate” omens (for which see Jeyes 1989, 60-61), is rendered less theatrically with maɧrum, “to accept”: àumma àin§ b§b ekallim birÊàunu qûm ßabit ⇒ àukkallum irbam imaÉÉar

432

a. winitzer

exception, and must be viewed within the context of the discourse characteristic of the collections and their interpretative aspirations. Indeed, the omen cited as example 5 above functions as the ultimate case in a unit of entries studying a gradually increasing number of a particular ominous finding. Accordingly, the statement about the ravaging àatammu-official, like the complementary forecast describing a plague of rodents, was apparently deemed a fitting topos with which to interpret the ad infinitum signification of the ultimate case in this numerical-based gradation sequence.43 If it is true, as Speiser once remarked, that “a word, like a person, is sometimes typified by the company it keeps,”44 then one can better understand how, in the company of such ignominious characters and in such unflattering contexts, an original meaning for millatum could have devolved into “looting” or “plundering.” Certainly it appears that the latter two possibilities express the word’s nuance in the omen literature. Indeed, so radical was this transformation that a first millennium commentary on an omen series (’umma Izbu)45 explains the Sumerian àà.tam (that is, a àatammu-official) as qÊpum, “a trustworthy, trusted person,” but sees fit to gloss its own definition with mal§lum, and the latter in turn with ak§lum.46 In light of the preceding discussion, however, the extent to which the flavor of divinatory mal§lum and millatum is permitted to represent the words’ basic meanings demands reexamination. Indeed, a more banal sense to the primary meaning of the verb, “to eat,” does appear to be preferable after all.47 The possibility that a substantive millatum existed outside the charged context of the omen literature is uncertain but does not seem unreasonable. If so, one might posit for this qitl-pattern noun—this pattern often indicating in If (there are) two Palace Gates and between them a filament is seized ⇒ the sukkallu-official will accept income (in produce). (YOS 10 26 i 14-15; cf. YOS 10 22: 2) 43 For a brief treatment of the significance of this paradigmatic employment of numbers in the omen collections see Bottéro 1992, 134-136; a more in-depth treatment of this subject in the context of the collections’ organizational apparatus may be found in Winitzer 2006, 553-605. 44 Speiser 1967, 164. 45 Leichty 1970. 46 Izbu Comm., 422 ff., in Leichty 1970, 224. 47 The same point for mal§lum is implied by Nougayrol (1968, 5) and was perhaps realized by CAD (above and n. 19), though in the latter case the more prosaic meaning offered is overshadowed by what follows.

biblical mÀlîlot, akkadian millatum

433

Akkadian the passive “result” of their verb48—a sense like “edible(s),” or perhaps “consumption,” i.e., what is eaten or consumed. It is not difficult to appreciate how this term’s semantic range may have shifted so as to focus yet further on its resultative sense, perhaps in the manner of “(one’s) eatable total or fill” or “complete consumption.” Possibly this development took place independently of the word’s employment in the omen literature. Whatever the case, the still more pejorative sense for millatum in the omens, the one with which the term became linked, is, as we have suggested, a matter internal to the hermeneutics of the omen collections themselves. Heb. mÀlîlot ≈ Akk. millatum Biblical mÀlîlot, it seems after all, shares a good deal with its Akkadian cognate.49 If taken in the manner suggested for the primary sense(s) of millatum, one finds a clear parallel situation between the two Deuteronomic laws. The picking of mÀlîlot in v. 26 corresponds to the limit placed on the amount of grapes granted in v. 25: that corresponding to the eating of one’s fill. The raising of a sickle, or, one may surmise, even any additional plucking by hand, exceeds the maximal consumable amount by a given individual and is, consequentially, forbidden. To judge by the evidence from Qumran as well as from most of the ancient interpretations, the original sense of Biblical mÀlîlot was soon abandoned or, more likely, forgotten, perhaps on account of the rarity of a Hebrew √mll (if the Biblical tradition is any indication of the broader underlying reality) with meanings similar to those of the more basic sense of Akkadian mal§lum.50 Nonetheless it 48

See J. Fox 2003, 141. Of course a basic difference between these is their underlying noun patterns: unlike the Akkadian *qitl pattern (here augmented as *qitl-at), Hebrew nouns like mÀlîlot with the pattern *qÀtîlot (sg. *qÀtîl§) are verbal nouns or substantivized adjectives. On the significance of this pattern for a post-Biblical mlylwt see n. 50. 50 Another factor that may have played an effective role in the evolution of the word’s meaning involves the noted expansion in post-Biblical Hebrew of attestations of words in the semantic group describing various agricultural activities patterned on *qÀtîl§ (see J. Fox 2003, 33). These, as J. Fox notes (2003, 193, nn. 45 and 47), frequently are productive, nouns of action. Still on occasion one finds passive actant noun meanings for agriculturally based topics patterned on *qÀtîl§/*qÀtîlot, e.g., bÀßîr§(h)/bÀßîrôt, “vintage(s),” Ȩrîà§(h), “thicket,” mÀsîq§(h)/mÀsîqôt, “crop(s) of an olive harvest.” It is likely that the Temple Scroll’s "bybwt and mlylwt noted above, both in apposition to “fresh 49

434

a. winitzer

seems likely that the Hebrew tongue savored the taste of this Semitic root as well.51 And thus an emended translation of the Deuteronomic verses with which this discussion began follows: 25

When you enter a neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat grapes to your bellyful; but you must not put any in your vessel. 26When you enter a neighbor’s field of standing grain, you may pluck (your) fill of edibles with your hand; but you must not put a sickle to your neighbor’s grain.

References Borowski, O. 2002. Agriculture in Iron Age Israel. Boston: ASOR [originally published, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1987]. Bottéro, J. 1973. Le pouvoir royal et ses limitations d’après les textes divinatoires. In La Voix de l’Opposition en Mésopotamie: Colloque organisé par l’Institut des Hautes Etudes bread,” reflect two additional examples of such substantives. In the case of the latter an understanding of √mll as “to crush, squeeze” (see following note) certainly would have facilitated this development. Yet it is not difficult to imagine how a meaning of “to eat, consume” for *m§lal also could have fostered this semantic analogy: *m§lîl would refer to the (season of the) collection of that which was eatable, that is, ripe and ready to be plucked for eating, with the actant noun mlylwt to “collected eatable (i.e., fresh, ripe) produce”—a most fitting parallel to, and possibly a template for, "bybwt. (For the latter suggestion see Swanson 1995, 43.) 51 It is thus certain that the meaning of the participle mol¿l in Prov 6:13, describing an action performed by a “worthless, evil man” with his feet, one complementary to the winking of the eyes and pointing of the finger, cannot be based on this same root. That there existed an additional √mll in Biblical Hebrew meaning “to shuffle (one’s feet)” (< “to scrape”) seems unlikely, but see M. Fox (2000, 221), who opts for this sense mainly on the basis of Rabbinic Hebrew (where one finds m§lal II “to crush, squeeze” [Nif.] “be compressed” [Jastrow Dict., 792]). Possibly, however, the root in Rabbinic Hebrew, which at any rate must have drawn support from the purported understanding of mÀlîlot in Deuteronomy, relates rather to a √mll occurring in Ugaritic and meaning “to stamp” (see Olmo Lete and Sanmartín 2003, 2: 558). The possible connection of the Ugaritic root to Prov 6:13 was discussed by Pope and Tigay (1971, 127-128) but seems to have been overlooked; note, however, the proximity of that meaning to Jastrow’s understanding of the Rabbinic Hebrew root. And it must be granted that a meaning of “to stomp ([with] one’s foot/feet)” for √mll in Proverbs offers the verse—“winking his eye(s), stomping (mol¿l) his foot/feet, pointing his finger”—a most reasonable sense. (If in keeping with the kÀtîb [i.e., written] form and LXX one opts for the singular “eye” and “foot”—these singular forms thus matching “finger” in the verse—then it would seem that an even stronger case can be made against understanding mol¿l as “shuffling” in a sense akin to “scraping, rubbing.”) Not that this makes it right: the possibility that a homophonous Ugaritic root refers to caressing of feet (see Olmo Lete and Sanmartín 2003, 2: 558) means that the matter will not be resolved without additional evidence, or, at any rate, in the present communication.

biblical mÀlîlot, akkadian millatum

435

de Belgique 19 et 20 mars 1973, ed. A. Finet, 119-165. Brussels: Institut des hautes études de Belgique. ———. 1992. Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. Translated by Z. Bahrani and M. Van De Mieroop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brueggemann, W. 2001. Deuteronomy. Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries. Nashville: Abingdon. Clines, D., ed. 1993–. The Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. 5 vols. to date. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Dijk, J. J. van. 1976. Cuneiform Texts of Varying Content. TIM 9. Leiden: Brill. Driver, S. R. 1951. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Deuteronomy. 3rd ed. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Feliks, Y. 1990. Agriculture in Eretz-Israel in the Period of the Bible and Talmud: Basic Farming Methods and Implements. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass [Hebrew]. Foster, B. 1996. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. 3rd ed. 2 vols. Bethesda, MD: CDL. Fox, J. 2003. Semitic Noun Patterns. HSS 59. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Fox, M. 2000. Proverbs 1-9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. The Anchor Bible, vol. 18a. New York: Doubleday. Gallery, M. 1980. The Office of the àatammu in the Old Babylonian Period. AfO 27: 1-36. García Martínez, F. and Tigchelaar, E. J. C., eds. 1998. The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill. Gronenberg, B. 1997. Lob der Iàtar: Gebet und Ritual an die altbabylonische Venusgöttin Groningen: Styx. Goetze, A. 1947. Old Babylonian Omen Texts. YOS 10. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hunger, H. 1976. Spätbabylonische Texte aus Uruk. Vol. 1. Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft in Uruk-Warka 9. Berlin: Mann. Jeyes, U. 1989. Old Babylonian Extispicy: Omen Texts in the British Museum. Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul. Kain, R., J. Chapman, and R. Oliver. 2004. The Enclosure Maps of England and Wales 1595-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koehler L., and W. Baumgartner. 1995. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Rev. ed. Translated by M. E. J. Richardson. Leiden: Brill. Kraus F. R. 1987. Verstreute Omentexte aus Nippur im Istanbuler Museum. ZA 77: 194-206. Lambert, W. 1960. Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 1965. Nebuchadnezzar King of Justice. Iraq 27: 1-11.

436

a. winitzer

Leichty, E. 1970. The Omen Series ’umma Izbu. TCS 4. Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin. Nougayrol, J. 1941. Textes hépatoscopiques d’époque ancienne conservés au Musée du Louvre. RA 38: 67-83. ———. 1968. Textes suméro-accadiens des archives et bibliothèques privées d’Ugarit. In Ugaritica 5: Nouveaux Textes Accadiens, Hourrites et Ugaritiques des Archives et Bibliothèques Privées d’Ugarit, Commentaires des Textes Historiques, ed. J. Nougayrol, E. Laroche, C. Virolleaud, and C. F. A. Schaffer, 1-446. MRS 12. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale. ———. 1971. Nouveaux textes sur le ziÉÉu (II). RA 65: 67-84. Olmo Lete, G. del., and J. Sanmartín. 2003. A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition. 2 vols. Translated by W. G. E. Watson. Leiden: Brill. Pope, M., and J. Tigay. 1971. A Description of Baal. UF 3: 117-130. Rad, G. von. 1966. Deuteronomy: A Commentary. Old Testament Library. Translated by D. Barton. Philadelphia: Westminster. Schaudig, H. 2001. Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon und Kyros’ des Großen samt den in ihrem Umfeld entstandenen Tendenzschriften: Textausgabe und Grammatik. AOAT 256. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Speiser, E. A. 1967. “People” and “Nation” of Israel. In Oriental and Biblical Studies: Collected Writings of E. A. Speiser, ed. J. J. Finkelstein and M. Greenberg, 160-170. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press [first published in JBL 79 (1960): 157-163]. Swanson, D. 1995. The Temple Scroll and the Bible: The Methodology of 11QT. Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah 14. Leiden: Brill. Tigay, J. 1996. The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy

. Philadelphia: JPS.

Winitzer, A. 2006. The Generative Paradigm in Old Babylonian Divination. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University. Winter, I. J. 1986. The King and the Cup: Iconography of the Royal Presentation Scene on Ur III Seals. In Insight through Images: Studies in Honor of Edith Porada, ed. M. Kelly-Buccellati, 253-268. Malibu: Undena. ———. 2003. Ornament and the “Rhetoric of Abundance” in Assyria. In Hayim and Miriam Tadmor Volume, ed. I. Eph’al, A. Ben-Tor, and P. Machinist, 252*-264*. Eretz-Israel 27. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Yadin, Y. 1983. The Temple Scroll. 3 vols. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society.

self-portraits of objects

437

SELF-PORTRAITS OF OBJECTS Jack Cheng The Warka vase, the Great Lyre of Ur and the Altar of Tukulti-Ninurta are all included in the canon of Mesopotamian art, if the canon is defined as those objects that are always taught in an introductory course on ancient Near Eastern art. These three objects in fact thrust themselves into that canon through the use of a particular representational characteristic: each has an image of itself on itself. 1 I refer to these self-referential depictions as “self-portraits of the objects” for reasons that will be described below. However, these objects were all created in different millennia and attempting to draw a meaningful connection between them suggests either an egregious conflation of distinct cultures on my part, or a basic cultural trait shared in Late Uruk, Early Dynastic and Middle Assyrian times. In other words, if this is a historic phenomenon and not merely an interpretive conflation, then the motivation for the creation of these self-portraits over such a long period may be considered a Mesopotamian phenomenon. This paper will review the objects, previous work on this curious representational form, and explain the term I am using. The different levels of intentional use and communication will be delineated. Then, based on the expected audience and finding non-Mesopotamian examples for analogous works, potential meanings and intentions are arrived at. The Objects, Previous Work and Descriptive Term The Warka vase has a narrow profile that tapers down, curves in and then flares out again at its base. The alabaster vessel is carved in a 1

There is also a gold leafed copper statue dedicated to the god Martu for the king Hammurabi which has been excluded here because of its uncertain provenance. This kneeling figure and its curious self-portrait was the subject of my first paper for Irene Winter. To return to this phenomenon after fifteen years of her teaching and scholarship have informed my thinking is a pleasure. Thanks are due to the readers on this paper, Jülide Aker, Marian Feldman and Tonia Sharlach.

438

j. cheng

series of registers. From the bottom up, there is a pair of undulating lines, probably representing water. Then a row of alternating stalks of grain are separated by a minor band from a line of male and female sheep. A major band separates these domesticated products from a line of nude men carrying vessels—bowls, vases and jars. A second major band separates the men from the tallest, uppermost register. At the top, a large figure and two smaller attendants approach a female figure, identified by two standards behind her as Inanna. Other objects behind the goddess include ritual vessels shaped like animals, vases and tables of offerings and two vessels with the same unusual profile of the Warka vase itself. The Warka vase was found in a treasury hoard of a temple at ancient Uruk dated to about 3000 BCE but the vase is thought to have been made sometime earlier.2 The Great Lyre is one of eight bull lyres excavated from the Royal Cemetery of Ur (ca. 2600-2400 BCE). The Great Lyre is the largest of them, found in PG 789, called the “King’s Grave.” The rectangular shape of the sound box supports a bull’s head protome and is decorated with inlay. On the front of the lyre, below the bull’s head, four panels depict various figures in action. Of interest here is the second panel from the bottom. In this panel, three animals play music. On the right a bear dances on his hind legs, and a small mammal, usually identified as a jackal, holds a sistrum in one paw and sits with a tablet or possibly a drum on his lap. On the left side of this panel, a donkey sits behind a bull lyre. The Altar of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243-1207 BCE) was found in a sealed off room of the Ishtar Temple at Ashur (traditionally called an altar, the object is more accurately described as a socle). The altar consists of a rectangular shape with a semicircular projection at each upper corner, resting on two plinths. Rosettes fill the semicircles and the rest of the rectangular form is carved with a scene of two men, dressed identically, holding the same scepter, and making the same gesture with their hands. On the left, one stands with his right hand in front of his face pointing forward. At the center, an identical man kneels, also pointing with his right hand. The right side of the scene depicts a rectangle with semicircular projections sitting on two plinths—the 2 The image on the vase shows two vessels with the same profile; a fragment of a twin (“Doppel des Alabastergefässes”) was bought in Paris and was already in the collection of the Vorderasiatisches Museum when the Uruk Vase was excavated (Heinrich 1936, 17).

self-portraits of objects

439

same profile as the altar itself. Centered on this object is a vertical, needle like projection and a rectangle. A cuneiform inscription on the plinth states that the object is dedicated by Tukulti-Ninurta to the god Nusku.3 The images on each of these objects do not match themselves exactly. The vase and altar are presented with identifiable profiles but without any indication of relief carving; the bull lyre depicted in mosaic inlay does not have the beard of the bull on the Great Lyre itself. However, the depictions clearly refer to the class of objects on which they reside. Although most descriptions of each of these objects mentions the self-referential image on them, there has not been much study of the broader phenomenon. Recently, Zainab Bahrani (2001, 2003) has written on both the Warka vase and the Altar of Tukulti Ninurta. The phrase Bahrani uses to describe their semiotic effect is “circular referentiality” and she also makes reference to W. J. T. Mitchell’s terms “hypericons” or “metapictures.” As appealing as these terms are, however, Mitchell’s essay (1994) concerns pictures of picture-making. Thus, “Las Meninas,” a painting by Diego Velasquez of a painter in the act of painting is an example of a metapicture, but is not what I am referring to as an “object self-portrait” since the painting in the picture is not of the picture.4 A Mesopotamian “metapicture” would be the reliefs in Court VI of Sennacherib’s “Palace Without Rival” at Nineveh which shows the quarrying and transport of the stone reliefs that make up the sculptural medium (but they do not depict the very walls on which they are carved). Mitchell’s terms are not applied by him to artworks with depictions of themselves and thus are not entirely appropriate for our purposes. My phrase to describe these depictions is “object self-portrait,” which is at once inapplicable to any other sort of representation and patently absurd.5 They are not self-portraits as usually understood: 3 Although the inscription must have been integral for the makers of the altar, I have chosen not to deal with it in this paper because my investigation focuses on the visual effect of the monument. Furthermore, audiences that I am considering may have been illiterate, the image is the main focus of the viewer and the inscription does not deal with the self-portraiture phenomenon as I have described it. 4 In fact, the canvas has its back to the viewer and we have no idea what is on it, but the logical inference is that it’s a painting of the king and queen of Spain and not the scene before us. 5 The term is clearly a paradox but is chosen in part because it is so weird as not to

440

j. cheng

an artist’s depiction of him- or herself. My use of the term is meant to evoke both the context of an anonymous artisan culture and a scholarship that has at times dealt with archaeological artifacts as if they are self-generated. Within the subfield of ancient Near Eastern art, these rhetorical shortcuts reflect the fact that with limited primary sources, archaeologists and interpreters of ancient art assume that these artifacts are themselves representative of the larger culture or dominant ideology. Thus an object like the Warka vase is both one of the best known representatives of Uruk culture and a product of that culture at well. A representation of itself on itself is the “object’s self-portrait.” If grouping the vase, lyre and altar suggests a cross-cultural and pan chronological Mesopotamian phenomenon, we should consider if it is uniquely Mesopotamian. It is not. In the ancient world, there is the painted Greek vase known as the lekythoi that can include an image of itself on itself.6 The Olmec Kunz Axe is a figure in the round holding a bas-relief representation of himself (Miller 2001, 18-9).7 Furthermore, in the twenty-first century CE, we find self-representations on vacuum cleaners and photocopiers and on children’s car seats and all the ingeniously collapsible equipment designed for babies. These modern “object self-portraits” are extensions of (or replacements for) the instruction manuals that are required to operate these machines, reflecting the complexity of the object in question. Mesopotamian stone vases and altars are much less complicated to use and so their self-depictions seem to signal complications and factors beyond the functional. A major difference between the Mesopotamian and modern object self-portraits lies in where the image of the object is positioned. In modern examples, the self-representations tend not to stand out; they are usually behind panels that explain how to remove paper jams or install toner cartridges, or under the mattresses of portable cribs. In contrast, the Mesopotamian examples are placed front and center on highly visible, even ostentatious, objects. apply to anything else, the way a more apt phrase like “self-representation” could refer to many different phenomena. 6 Examples can be found in the Tampa Museum of Art, the Harvard University Art Museum and the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, see Tampa 86.79, Harvard 1960.339, RISD 06.050. Thanks to Andrew C. Cohen for pointing these out. 7 Thanks to Katie Ocediacz, a student from the Massachusetts College of Art, for drawing my attention to this object.

self-portraits of objects

441

Interpretation: Levels of Content A general description of any of these self-portraits seems straightforward: they describe an event in which the object is used. On the Warka vase, a pair of vases are placed near a female of some importance. On the bull lyre, a bull lyre is played as part of an animal orchestra. On the altar, a man stands and then kneels before an altar. However, the complexity of the images is apparent immediately. To take the Warka vase, we question whether the event was imaginary or real. If real, was it a one time event, or a regular ritual? If regular, was it performed daily, monthly, annually? Is the woman meant to be the embodiment of the goddess herself, or her earthly presence in the form of the high priestess? Similarly, the picture on the bull lyre is certainly metaphorical since a donkey could not have played the instrument. The altar provokes questions about the use of narrative by depicting two images of the same man in the same pictorial space—does doubling the king give him more power or dilute the potency of his likeness? Different levels of content need to be sorted out. Generically, a more-than-human figure interacts with an object with a simple picture of itself: subject, verb, object. But it is the visual grammar that invites speculation. Subject: the represented figure who interacts with the object can be described as metaphorical and/or spiritual. A goddess, a dexterous donkey, and a king. The Assyrian king might be a special individual, but nowhere near as unique as a goddess or a musical donkey, except that his double depiction creates a sense of iconicity. The odd nature of the figures depicted in the self-portraits adds to the cognitive dissonance we contend with when we view the objects. Verb: the interaction with the objects are all based on utility. The goddess stands before, the donkey plucks or strums, the king approaches and kneels. Object: the objects are all useful, and used. A container, a musical instrument, a flat topped piece of furniture. The self-portraits on the objects each convey a basic message of functionality: “this is how the object is used.” The self-contained contextual information—and the lack of language—is what makes this sort of self-portraiture so useful for vacuum cleaners and photocopiers.

442

j. cheng

There is a more complex message encoded not in the demonstration of function but in the visual grammar of self-portraiture. There is meaning in the visual medium. Taking the simple messages of each representation and then putting them on a version of the objects themselves creates another level of content. To understand the meaning and purpose of each of these visual statements, and why they were presented in this way, it would help to know to whom they are addressed.

The Audience The possible audiences for these images are the direct participants who interacted with the objects, the local audience that witnessed the interaction, and then those who are not present when the object was used. Another possible audience that is difficult to grapple with is the divine. On the one hand, if the gods were considered omnipresent, then they would have been present at any rituals involving these objects. On the other hand, if the gods were considered to be somewhat distant, then they would have been equally absent from the rituals. We should consider the possibility that these objects were never actually used as depicted and therefore no one viewing the objects would have seen them in use. The archaeological findspots of these objects do not suggest definitive use. The Warka vase was found in a temple, but not on an altar or recognizable place of worship but rather in a treasury hoard (Heinrich 1936). The lyre was buried in a mass grave of the Royal Cemetery of Ur and could have been played for the last time during the burial rite, or possibly constructed to be played only in the afterlife (Woolley 1934, 249ff). The Altar of Tukulti-Ninurta, like the vase, was found in a religious building, the Ishtar Temple of Ashur, but in a room that had been sealed off; the excavator interpreted the space as storage and possibly a symbolic burial place for sacred objects (Andrae 1935, 57-76). In other words, each of these may have been used at one time, but none was found in a context of regular use. As objects, all three were made for the direct participants. The goddess—or her representative—would use the vase, a musician would play the instrument, the king would worship at the altar. However,

self-portraits of objects

443

the basic message of functionality presented by the self-representations would not be for the direct participants. Tukulti-Ninurta, for example, probably did not need to know how to kneel before the altar. Similarly, anyone present would see how the object was used. The basic functional explanation would be more useful for anyone not present when the objects were used. The picture on the lyre, for example, shows someone how to play the instrument; although it might seem obvious on which side of the instrument to sit, I would argue that it is this self-portrait (as well as depictions on the Standard of Ur and various seals) that makes the arrangement seem obvious and not merely probable. The higher level message that is evoked by the visual grammar of self-portraiture and the iconic figures interacting with the objects in their self-portraits is clearly intentional. Its effect on the direct participants (priest/priestess, musician, king or otherwise) who handled the actual artifact is hard to determine but perhaps it reinforced a ritual mindset. For the local audience to a ritual there would be an increased resonance. That is, for someone standing in the room with the altar, to have a third, living king join his carved representations in worship could only add to the significance of the event. For an audience not-present for the use of the object (or if these objects were not used at all), the self-portrait gives these objects increased significance and an iconic status in themselves. While this discussion of the object self-portraits restates the evocative nature of these representations, it is possible that this method of representation has a direct meaning and purpose. To that end, a comparison to a modern example may be helpful. Indisputably, the most traveled object self-portrait is the image on the NASA space probe Pioneer F launched in 1972 (figure 1). The purpose of that image is to communicate the origin of the spacecraft to alien beings who might come across it. Two abstracted representations of the Pioneer are on the design. A larger one is placed with drawings of a nude man and woman, as a measure of scale comparing the object to the size of its creators. Below, a smaller Pioneer shows the trajectory of the mission among the planets of the Solar System (not to scale). Acknowledging a tongue-in-cheek attitude, Ernst Gombrich (1972) discussed the image in a popular essay on how the visual perception of images is a learned skill. He concluded that the use of contour lines, the blocking of the woman’s hand by her hip,

444

j. cheng

and the mixture of foreshortening and lack of perspective would be indecipherable to the intended viewer, an extra-terrestrial whose visual physiognomy could be completely alien from ours. However, the basic point of the diagram is perfectly understandable to most adult humans; the man’s raised hand would certainly be understood by a Chinese or Indian as a greeting today, even if Gombrich had doubts in 1972. To put it another way, if four thousand years from now, humankind succeeded in colonizing Saturn’s moons and future archaeologists found the remains of Pioneer F crushed into Titan, they would probably be able to understand the basic meaning of the diagram. To return to our Mesopotamian objects, this example of future human archaeologists is analogous to twentieth-century archaeologists uncovering the five thousand year old Warka vase and instantly understanding that the object was significant and having a major clue as to how it was used. Could the Sumerians and Assyrians have made these object for future viewers? That would require that they had a sense of time and chronology and their own limited place within it. In fact, it seems they did. The Mesopotamians were active historians, and evidence exists for their concern with the past (Winter 2000; Roaf 2000). Among this evidence are the objects found in collections by later rulers, particularly the Elamite Shutruk-Nahhunte I at Susa and the texts collected in Assurbanipal’s library. More significantly, at least some elite Mesopotamians understood that they were part of a future’s history. Evidence for this awareness of their place in a continuum of history is found in the foundation tablets and brick inscriptions that were buried in the construction of major public buildings. These documents reveal that the patrons of these buildings were pragmatic about the longevity of their accomplishments. An example from Assurbanipal: “May a later prince, in whose reign this work shall have fallen into ruin, renew its ruins. Let him see my royal image and anoint (it) with oil; let him offer a sacrifice. Let him deposit (it) with his (own) image” (Ellis 1968, 179).8 In essence, these foundation tablets are a hedge against the inevitability of decay. Political history in Mesopotamia had already been established as a series of successive hegemonic powers and the 8

As goofy as the NASA designers may have been, they did not presume as the Mesopotamians did, that their audience would share their language.

self-portraits of objects

445

participants in that history understood that suggesting an unnatural longevity of their own creations was an act of hubris. This is the moral lesson of the Curse of Agade—when an Akkadian king declared his divine status (in effect, saying that his works would stand forever) the kingdom was destroyed so utterly that the mighty capital city has yet to be found. The request for renewal by later princes may be particularly Mesopotamian because the region between the rivers has been occupied and ruled by so many different cultures over the centuries. By the Middle Assyrian period, Tukulti-Ninurta would probably have recognized that his land had once been settled by other types of people than his own tribe. Whereas Egyptian pharaohs assumed (rightly) that their sons and grandsons would complete the tombs they built for themselves, Mesopotamian rulers (rightly) prepared for the moment when their heirs lost control of their land and their monuments were destroyed, purposefully or by natural forces. Marian Feldman suggests that the literal foundations of Mesopotamia may also have contributed to this need for constant renewal (personal communication). Mudbrick requires regular replastering to maintain a barrier against the elements that will eventually erode it. Rather than building with a medium like stone that would last for centuries, the Mesopotamian built with a material that would be washed away in a decade without proper maintenance. Certainly this process would encourage rulers to consider the future of their buildings. The evidence of the foundation tablets clearly shows that Mesopotamians understood that they were part of a stream of history. Like the Pioneer probe, the Mesopotamians sent out messages to an alien culture, in this case, a future human culture. I believe that this was a major function of the vase, lyre and altar. They are visual analogues to the foundation texts. Did it work? Yes. Although the head of a woman found at Warka is an unarguable masterpiece, most classes on early Sumer, including Irene Winter’s, start with the Warka vase. After all, it lays out the hierarchical view of the nature of the society from which it came and gives us its own context even as it stands in mute witness. The lyre from Philadelphia is probably the most reprinted object in the Mesopotamian art canon, much more than any of its brethren. The altar of Tukulti-Ninurta is the only regularly reproduced artifact from the Middle Assyrian period. The combination of an iconic figure shown interacting with the object and the fact that the representation exists

446

j. cheng

on the object creates significance, whether or not we fully understand that significance. Irene Winter (1999, 63) has argued that the Stele of Naram-Sin is particularly evocative to modern audiences because “we come predisposed to appreciate it by our own ‘habits of viewing,’” in the case of Naram-Sin, symmetry around a vertical axis and a composition that emphasizes the upper part of the representational field. I am arguing that these three particular objects are evocative because they are intentionally communicating to us as future observers of the culture they came from and exploiting “habits of viewing” which may be universal to human visual cognition.9 The existence of these object self-portraits serve as a call for renewal, for scholars to reconstruct, if only on paper, computer models or in their mind’s eyes, the temple, cemetery, palace and society from which these artifacts were excavated. There may even be an implied plea for understanding—learn about us so that we may live on in human history. These object self-portraits give a context that allows even novice historians a sense of where they came from while tenured professors continue to pick away at them, certain that more meaning can be found in the depictions. The self portraits on these objects establish themselves as part of a canon of ancient Near Eastern art. References Andrae, Walter. 1935. Die jüngerin Ischtar-Tempel in Assur. WVDOG 58. Leipsiz: J.C. Hinrichs. Bahrani, Zainab. 2001. Performativity and the Image: Narrative, Representation, and the Warka Vase. In Leaving No Stones Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen, ed. Erica Ehrenberg, 15-22. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. ——— . 2003. The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Ellis, Richard S. 1968. Foundation Deposits in Ancient Mesopotamia. New Haven: Yale. Gombrich, E.H. 1972. The Visual Image. Scientific American 227: 82-96.

9 Why, Julide Aker asks, are these three objects like this and no others? For this I have no direct answer except to point out that other object self-portraits such as the kneeling copper statuette of Hammurabi do exist, although without proper excavation records. If, or when, more of these objects are properly excavated, I predict they will be immediately placed within the canon of Mesopotamian art.

self-portraits of objects

447

Harper, Prudence O., Evelyn Klengel-Brandt, Joan Aruz, and Kim Benzel, eds. 1995. Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Ashur on the Tigris. Exhibition Catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Heinrich, Ernst. 1936. Kleinfunde aus den archaischen Tempelschichten in Uruk. Berlin: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Miller, Mary Ellen. 2001. The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec. 3rd ed. London: Thames and Hudson. Mitchell, W. J. T. 1994. Metapictures. Picture Theory, 35-82. Chicago: University of Chicago. Roaf, Michael. 2000. Survivals and Revivals in the Art of Ancient Mesopotamia. In Proceedings of the First International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, ed. P. Matthiae, A. Enea, L. Peyronel, and F. Pinnock, 1447-1462. Rome: Università degli studi di Roma. Winter, Irene J. 1999. Tree(s) on the Mountain: Landscape and Territory on the Victory Stele of Naram-Sîn of Agade. In Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers and Horizons in the Ancient Near East, ed. S. de Martino, F. M. Fales, G. B. Lanfranchi, and L. Milano, 63-76. Padua: Sargon srl. ———. 2000. Babylonian Archaeologists of the(ir) Mesopotamian Past. In Proceedings of the First International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, ed. P. Matthiae, A. Enea, L. Peyronel, and F. Pinnock, 1785-1798. Rome: Università degli studi di Roma. Woolley, C. Leonard. 1934. The Royal Cemetery. Vol. 2, Ur Excavations. London: Trustees of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania.

448

j. cheng

Figure 1 Pioneer F Plaque “designed to show scientifically educated inhabitants of some other star system, who might intercept it millions of years from now, when Pioneer was launched, from where, and by what kind of beings. (With the hope that they would not invade Earth.) The design is etched into a 6 inch by 9 inch goldanodized aluminum plate, attached to the spacecraft’s antenna support struts in a position to help shield it from erosion by interstellar dust.” (excerpted description from the NASA website) Courtesy NASA Headquarters—GReatest Images of NASA (NASA-HQ-GRIN), photo ID GPN-2000-001623

from mesopotamia to modern syria

449

FROM MESOPOTAMIA TO MODERN SYRIA: ETHNOARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON FEMALE ADORNMENT DURING RITES OF PASSAGE Amy Rebecca Gansell Commonly acknowledged but seldom scrutinized, traditional adornment in the modern Middle East displays striking formal continuity over millennia. A specific type of female headdress provides the most powerful example: it consists of a dorsal ribbon terminating in tassels and a central forehead ornament from which a fringe of pendants dangle (figures 1-5). Variations of this headgear occur in the ancient visual and archaeological records as early as the Late Bronze and Iron Ages (thirteenth to seventh century BCE) in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and again at the first through third century CE site of Palmyra in the Syrian desert (figures 1-3).1 Within the twentieth century CE, nearly identical headbands were still worn by women in greater Syria (figure 4), and related examples served as stock costume elements in French studio portraits personifying the exotic odalisque (figure 5). Tracking this remarkable case of continuity prompts several questions: How could this or any manner of adornment endure for over three thousand years? Was it consciously or unconsciously retained? Beyond formal properties, might any ancient meaning have remained intact? Could folk symbolism or even regard for the historic potency of this device have motivated adherence to the ancient form? In response to these queries ethnoarchaeology is our most valuable tool, for it offers living models for the interpretation of past cultural phenomena (David and Kramer 2001). When applied judiciously, knowledge of modern practice, regardless of direct continuity or formal affinities, can illuminate ancient life.

1 A similar headband illustrated in Neo-Assyrian art is worn by the ruler and crownprince, and one study compares the female diadem to male phylacteries in the Jewish tradition (Keel 1981; Reade 1967). This paper, however, focuses on the adornment of women.

450

a.r. gansell

It is with great pleasure that I offer this paper in honor of Irene J. Winter, who, herself, demonstrated the benefits of ethnoarchaeology by proposing “cross-cultural analogies” of ritual action for ancient Mesopotamian artifacts through field observation of Hindu rites involving parallel objects and images (1992, 1994, 1999, 2000). Winter also emphasized the potential of ethnoarchaeology through her curatorial role in the exhibition “Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur” and the accompanying Harvard University seminar she taught in 2002.2 She pointed out similarities between floral headdresses known to have been worn by Syrian brides in the Anti-Lebanon mountain region during the 1930s and visually analogous adornment found on women buried over four thousand years ago in the Mesopotamian cemetery at Ur (figures 6-8). This formal association between ancient burial and modern bridal attire prompted the present study: in July 2002 and in January 2006 I conducted field surveys of traditional adornment practices in Syria. The survey results and their implications for the interpretation of ancient Near Eastern culture are presented below. Exploring the limits and prospects of ethnoarchaeology, this paper aims to pursue the meaning and motivations underlying adornment during rites of passage. By evaluating consistencies between modern and ancient material, we may enhance our understanding of traditions at either end of the historic spectrum.

Survey in Syria: Background, Methods, Results and Future Considerations The 2002 field survey was implemented to learn more about the floral headdresses of the Anti-Lebanon mountain region to which Winter had called attention, although my research developed to include a second region (the Syrian Hauran) and its local adornment customs. Sigismund Sussia Reich (1937) initially documented Anti-Lebanon attire in 1936 during fieldwork in the villages of Malula, Bakha and Djubbadin. Since his publication, no further studies had been conducted. Sixty-six years later, with new questions derived from an

2 A traveling exhibition of material from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, “Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur” was shown at the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Mass., May 18-September 1, 2002.

from mesopotamia to modern syria

451

interest in ancient Near Eastern culture, I returned to the villages where Reich had worked.3 Background: Reich’s Ethnography Centuries before Reich’s campaign, travelers noted the archaic Syriacor Aramaic-speaking populations of the Anti-Lebanon (Marchetty 1660; Niebuhr 1774). By 1936 most settlements were solely Arabicspeaking, and Reich (1937, 10) observed that not only were the remaining Aramaic-speakers bilingual in Arabic, but their children were learning Arabic as their first language. He acknowledged that these communities (“the last Aramaeans”) were in a period of transformation influenced by modern Arab and Western cultures. Traditional, perhaps even ancient, practices, in close conjunction with the Aramaic language, were rapidly becoming obsolete. Reich’s study was based on interviews, observations of daily life and ceremonial events, literary and linguistic analysis, and ethnographic references. He covers an array of topics including agriculture, the home, festivals, and life stages such as birth, marriage and death. His presentation of wedding adornment, in particular the portraits and meticulous descriptions of two elaborately decorated brides (one from the village of Bakha and one from Djubbadin), serve as the foundation for this investigation (Reich 1937, 110-14) (figures 6, 7). In the portraits, both brides wear paper or natural flowers atop their heads (Reich 1937, 103). Gold medallions frame their faces; ornaments are suspended over their upper foreheads, and strings of medals, animal teeth and shells adorn their throats and chests. Their lower eyelids are heavily outlined with kohl, circles of applied medium decorate their cheeks and chins, and motifs are marked on their foreheads.

3 The Harvard University Committee on the Use of Human Subjects in Research determined this project to be exempt from review. Travel research was supported by the G. Sinopoli Memorial Grant for Research in the Near East (2002) and the Aga Khan Foundation (2006). Many thanks to my hosts, translators, and field assistants: Tony and Georgette Khouri (2002), Joseph Malki (2002), Marwan and Hanan Materwani (2006), Bacel Moqaw (2006), and Ahmad Shadeh (2006). I would also like to thank the following individuals who have offered invaluable assistance in developing and refining this project and the resulting paper: Kim Benzel, Andrew Cohen, Cynthia Finlayson, Susan Helft, Bob Hunt, Widad Kawar, Anne McClanan, Alicia Walker and Irit Ziffer.

452

a.r. gansell

Details and the precise configurations of makeup and jewelry vary between brides, perhaps reflecting specific family or village traditions. The Djubbadin woman’s flowers are positioned in an upright formation behind her head, while they are stacked horizontally across the top of the head of the Bakha bride. Their forehead motifs differ in design. A series of marks enhance the lower jaw-line of the Djubbadin bride; the Bakha bride has a vertical line below her lips. In addition, the woman from Bakha wears two appliqués above her mouth, and, on the outside of her right nostril, a small hand is depicted (Reich 1937, 112). Reich attributed the women’s elaborate adornment to protective measures, aesthetics, and/or sexual display (1937, 87, 89, 103, 113, 114). The most well documented of these interpretations is supernatural protection. Broadly attested in Islamic culture, forehead jewelry and cosmetically applied symbols (which were tattooed in some contemporaneous communities) function apotropaically (Charles 1939, 10811; Reich 1937, 113). The hand depicted on the nose of the Bakha bride is protective, and henna (not pictured), which dyes the brides’ hands, guards and purifies the women. Flowers, especially bouquets in the “plume” formation (seen on the Djubbadin bride, figure 7), may ward off the evil eye. Around the time of Reich’s study, feathers, sometimes actual peacock feathers that themselves have “eyes,” were worn in Palestine and displayed during rites of passage to avert malevolence (Granqvist 1931-1935, 67). Still today plumes of feathers are attached to the fronts of vehicles to ensure safe travel on the highways of Syria. Reich further observed a strong aesthetic motivation in bridal adornment. Describing a sense of competition among brides, he reported that the “most beautiful brides” were judged as those who were most abundantly adorned and most carefully made up (Reich 1937, 114). Finally, sexual display, although less explicitly discussed, is certainly a credible interpretation of the adornment considering the cultural emphasis on women’s fecundity. Field Objectives and Methods: 2002 and 2006 Surveys Continuing Reich’s study, the 2002 survey aimed to verify whether the adornment tradition he documented survived to any extent. If the practice was no longer attested, any memories of it would be assessed and documented to identify the historic timeframe and circumstances

from mesopotamia to modern syria

453

of its abandonment. Ultimately, I hoped to ascertain how the living cultural record might be relevant to future, in-depth ethnoarchaeological analyses of ancient Near Eastern adornment. Working together, my translators and I made contact with approximately two hundred people over six weeks of fieldwork conducted in two seasons (2002 and 2006). Our sampling strategy aimed to interview equal numbers of adult men and women, but privileging senior members of the community who may have witnessed or participated in the adornment practices under investigation. In the communities we visited, however, men were much more visible and more socially forthcoming than women. The elderly were rarely seen. On two occasions we were restricted from contact with firsthand witnesses due to their frail health; both of these potentially key informants passed away between 2002 and our return in 2006. As guests carrying out only a preliminary survey, we tried to be unobtrusive, preferring to avoid “cold-calling” people in their homes, at work, or while performing labor. Instead, we approached individuals who appeared to be at leisure in public spaces. In smaller villages we first asked the muhktar (administrative leader) for permission to visit the community, proceeded with our interviews upon his invitation, and accepted any introductions he offered. During group and individual interviews, copies of Reich’s bridal portraits were shown and informants were asked if they were familiar with this style of adornment. We attempted to guide interviews according to a standard list of questions, but discussions tended to be more loosely structured, following informants’ narratives of relevant points we had not predicted.4 When interviewees were not familiar with the adornment tradition, we asked to be directed to a person or community who might be aware of it. Survey Results: The Anti-Lebanon In the Anti-Lebanon we focused our efforts on the villages of Bakha (2002) and Djubbadin (2006) where Reich had worked.5 It was soon apparent that the custom of wedding adornment reported in 1936 is

4 Standard interviews covered background on the informant, history of the local tradition, and identification and interpretation of adornment elements and ensembles. 5 We conducted survey in Malula and Saidnaya as well, but these more urban populations did not yield much data.

454

a.r. gansell

no longer practiced in this region. The tradition was already waning at the time of Reich’s visit and had fallen entirely out of practice about ten years later. No surviving jewelry was made known to us.6 We did have the opportunity to interview one woman who was married during the 1930s, but, because she was only nine years old at the time of her union, she did not participate in a formal ceremony or wear any special adornment. Speaking in Aramaic, she explained that many brides were not actually bedecked in the manner documented by Reich and that the jewelry of those who were so adorned represented a collection pooled and shared by village women. While Reich’s expedition made a lasting impression on his hosts—his interactions in Bakha, for example, were recounted in 2002 by a later generation—memory of the adornment tradition was limited. Many interviewees claimed to be utterly unaware of it—even declaring that it could not possibly have taken place in their village. Furthermore, the historic validity of details offered by several “knowledgeable” informants is compromised by obvious contradictions and anachronisms. Nevertheless, the surveys revealed three themes. Preliminarily it is evident that beauty, joy and strength were imparted and expressed through bridal adornment. Corroborating Reich, we found that a bride’s beauty correlated to the degree of her adornment more than any other characteristic. That is, as a bride, a woman’s beauty seems to have been based less on physiognomic appearance than on the extravagance of her embellishment. The next most prevalent statement was that flowers are an integral part of male and female bridal attire and overall wedding decoration. They are symbolic of “joy,” the most important sentiment of a wedding. Demonstrating the cultural importance of this imagery, several women surprised us by independently pointing out the barely visible flower depicted on the Bakha bride’s dress (figure 6). They explained that floral patterns traditionally are embroidered on all bridal dresses and that each design is unique (figure 9 shows a woman proudly displaying a fragment of her deceased mother’s bridal dress, which she saved on account of its embroidery). Finally, numerous informants acknowledged that a bride’s adornment, especially the strings of teeth, “strengthened” her. This inter6

One informant explained that items were donated to a museum in Damascus about thirty years ago, but this remains unconfirmed.

from mesopotamia to modern syria

455

pretation may be linked to apotropaic protection, but no one explicitly confirmed this. In fact, when asked how this adornment “strengthened” her, we were told that by adding more decoration, the necklaces made her more beautiful; through this (constructed) beauty she was “strengthened.” Because jewelry was not necessarily personal property, it did not equate to private wealth per se, but an abundance of adornment certainly reflected some form of status. We were told that a young woman known for her innate beauty might attract a groom of higher status than she. For the wedding, both her beauty and the groom’s social standing could have motivated elaborate adornment. Although it was the beauty of a bride’s complete adorned image, not simply her natural attractiveness, that was aesthetically appreciated, more attractive women may have had the privilege of more elaborate adornment. In the context of weddings, adornment, beauty and supernatural protection from envy appear to be interdependent. Although clothing certainly contributed to attractive and socially recognizable bridal images, cosmetics and jewelry also lured and deflected envious gazes (Mershen 1987, 107). Adornment created a beautiful bride and simultaneously protected her against the inherent danger of being envied on account of her beauty. The more elaborately attired she was, the more she might be envied, but the more she would be protected. Extravagant embellishment, therefore, seems superfluous unless it concurrently displays wealth, social status or identity. In fact these characteristics themselves may have required protection from envy. Survey Results: The Hauran In response to our focus on bridal adornment, many informants from the Anti-Lebanon referred us to the Hauran region of southwest Syria near the city of Suweida. Here they knew that Druze women wear relatively elaborate headdresses still today. Other individuals encouraged our consideration of bedouin jewelry, particularly in the Jezirah and Tadmor (Palmyra) regions. This opportunity remains to be explored, but we did pursue research at the Hauran villages of Mshanef (2002) and Bosan (2006).7 7

In the city of Suweida, where we began the Hauran survey, interviewees suggested we visit the region’s more remote villages and bedouin camps.

456

a.r. gansell

Druze women in the Hauran wear a traditional type of headdress called a tarbouche (figure 10). A tarbouche consists of layered rows of gold medallions that frame the hairline and a central forehead element, often inscribed “Allah” (figure 11). Usually the medallions are sewn onto a fez, on top of which is a silver filigree disk equal to the circumference of the head. In contrast to Anti-Lebanon conventions, flowers are never worn with a tarbouche. The very suggestion of this combination received adamant rejection from informants, although ornamental floral and vegetal designs are depicted on the head disk. Perhaps aesthetic consistency based on more rigid, durable forms or the ephemeral nature of actual flowers negates their use. The more ostentatious aspects of the tarbouche are not immediately visible in public. Typically a white scarf is worn over the headdress, and the medallions are encased in black lace (figure 12). Nonetheless, villagers generally were aware of which members of the community owned a tarbouche, and who among them possessed more elaborate versions. Two women were particularly well-known on account of their headdresses; one of these women’s home was even called the “house of the tarbouche.” Interviews in Mshanef and Bosan indicated that the tarbouche is accepted simply as “what women wear.” Informants across a range of ages accounted for the origin of this type of headdress to be from their “grandmother’s generation,” which, perhaps, is a convention for acknowledging matrilineal cultural heritage. No symbolic significance was commented upon, even when we specifically tried to elicit interpretations. The Druze, however, regard the tarbouche as an important, visible emblem of their culture (figure 13).8 Its strong affiliation with cultural identity and the relative isolation of their settlements presumably sustain its endurance. While headdresses are said to be passed down through families, the logistics of this process remain to be clarified. We were told that in the past silver medallions were used, but now gold is preferred.9 How then could these gold headdresses have belonged to everyone’s 8 Upon arriving in a village, observation of the specific and consistent style of female dress immediately communicates that it is a Druze settlement (figure 13). 9 A documented shift from silver to gold during the 1960s suggests that headdresses are adapted when they are passed down from one generation to the next (Kalter 1992, 81). Demonstrating a casual attitude toward intervention, one woman, excited to show me her medallions up close, ripped the lace off of them, explaining that the material was nothing special and could be easily repaired (figure 11).

from mesopotamia to modern syria

457

grandmother? More likely, the tradition itself has a long history, and although antique elements may be used, the headdresses are best understood as composite objects, only parts of which are generations old. Presently only about half of the brides in Mshanef and Mosan still wear a tarbouche, which often are borrowed from a relative for the wedding. Although these headdresses are by no means rare and some women continue to wear a tarbouche for daily public activity, fewer and fewer are being retained. Many families sell their headdress for the value of its metal to fund the construction of a modern house. Having a new home, more so than possessing a tarbouche, has come to symbolize family status and wealth. Suggestions for Future Study The data provided through this survey encourages prompt in-depth study. In the Anti-Lebanon very few informants with firsthand knowledge of floral headdresses survive, and the living tradition in the Hauran is breaking down. Ideally this appeal would be met by a longer-term field commitment, reaching an understanding of culture far beyond what could be assessed through the preliminary survey interviews represented here.10 A variety of specific research opportunities remains to be explored, particularly in the Anti-Lebanon. For instance, Reich (1937, x) published the names of many of his informants; their families might have more extensive memories of the events he documented.11 He also noted (1937, x-xi) that about two thousand photographs were taken over the course of his fieldwork; this collection certainly would be useful if located.12 Furthermore, in the villages studied by Reich, and among any informant group known to have been the subject of prior study or not, it would be profitable to ask whether ethnographic photographs, drawings, or other relevant documentation are preserved.

10 Our limited contact with informant communities may, in part, account for their reticence regarding any symbolic and apotropaic values of adornment. 11 Due to the short duration of our visits, we did not ask for families by name. However, relatives of the now deceased Bakha bride identified themselves and asked for a copy of her portrait, which they themselves had never seen. 12 Les Ateliers de Phototypie Duval à Paris, which reproduced the plates for his publication, may provide a starting point.

458

a.r. gansell

The surveys conducted in 2002 and 2006 focused on the AntiLebanon and Hauran regions of Syria. Informants strongly encouraged our consideration of bedouin traditions, and it is hoped that future researchers may do so. In addition, antique travel accounts, ethnographies, and recent scholarship document related adornment practices and Westernization among bedouin and settled populations of present-day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey (Granqvist 1931-1935; Kalter 1992; Micklewright 1989; Mershen 1987; Paine 1859). Indeed it would be productive to consider this breadth of evidence, keeping in mind that today’s political borders do not reflect hard divisions of culture. Depending on the scope of one’s project, North Africa, the Gulf region and Central Asia may offer relevant comparative material. Finally, Near Eastern populations residing in the West might be considered. Often, in an effort to acknowledge and sustain ethnic identity, émigré groups preserve traditions, even after they have fallen out of use in the homeland (Demaray and Keim-Shenk 2003). Wherever research is based, a crucial component of ethnoarchaeological study is the actual observation of objects “in action.” Investigators should endeavor to attend weddings, generally held from May to October, and possibly witness the preparation of brides.13 Although informants may insist that no traditional practices survive, evidence taken for granted within the community may remain. Even if weddings are entirely “modern,” the documentation of this development would provide a valuable benchmark. Requiring substantial time in the field but key to an ethnoarchaeological study of adornment is the typological analysis of formal characteristics. Adornment ensembles should be observed and documented while worn in context, and individual elements should be examined on their own as well. Where traditional adornment is no longer practiced, potential heirlooms and documentary records could provide unexpected evidence. In all cases, it may be informative to consult artisans who made the jewelry (or their surviving families) in order to investigate the cognitive process behind the crafting of standard, culturally recognizable forms. 13 We did not observe any weddings. However, in 2002 we were told that two years earlier (i.e. 2000) a family in Mshanef actually borrowed horses and conducted a highly traditional ceremony. To observe an accurate spectrum of wedding traditions, then, multiple wedding seasons may need to be considered, ideally by both male and female investigators.

from mesopotamia to modern syria

459

Typologically consistent configurations of adornment and jewelry design derive from fundamental conceptual models. These models may represent vestigial receptacles of meaning; now potentially void, their lingering replication may simply fulfill visual expectations. However, formal differences that persistently correspond to a particular variable (such as provenance) carry more apparent cultural information. Patterned relationships between or among typological and cultural variables compose what may be considered a visual language of adornment. Typologies reveal, but do not translate, the formal components of this language. Once significant components are identified, their correspondence to cultural information provides definitions. Symbolism, however, can only be read with the aid of inside cultural knowledge, which ethnographic and textual records may provide. Even when reliable evidence to decode symbolism is lacking, consistently represented variables and relationships may nonetheless be described as conceptually significant. Field documentation should also aim to establish a verbal typology of costume terminology and descriptions. Analysis might reveal meaning embedded in vocabulary beyond what is visually apparent or consciously recognized (see glossary in Weir 1990, 78). In Arabic, for example, different words and metaphors are selected to refer to a “beautiful” woman depending on what kind of “beauty” she exhibits (Sasson 1990, 21). Applied to the present study, one might investigate if adorned brides, despite physiological differences, are described consistently, and if communities with different adornment traditions employ distinct descriptive vocabularies. Especially when looking for the historic and regional heritage of a tradition, distinctions of language and dialect should be considered. In the Anti-Lebanon, for instance, if an Arabic speaker employs Aramaic words to describe brides, the archaism and regional specificity of the custom may be substantiated. Ultimately verbal typologies may reveal consistencies and specificities, which may be applied in the translation of visual language, both ancient and modern.

Ancient Evidence The tasseled diadem introduced at the beginning of this paper (figures 1-5) demonstrates undisputable continuity in jewelry form and encour-

460

a.r. gansell

ages the exploration of relationships between other types of adornment across the historic and geographic breadth of Near Eastern culture. This case offers a model for the detection of other potential continuities in the material record and contributes to our general understanding of adornment. Before turning to the floral headdresses from Ur, therefore, a brief review of the tasseled diadem is provided. Tasseled Diadems and Forehead Ornaments A jewelry mold from the Late Bronze Age site of Ugarit on the Syrian coast represents a typological forerunner to the tasseled diadem.14 The Ugarit mold and similar forehead ornaments depicted on terracotta figurines of related provenance situate the origin of this design in the Levant (Keel 1981, 193-202). A few centuries later, first millennium BCE Levantine ivory carvings portray elite women wearing distinct examples of the tasseled forehead ornament (Oates and Oates 2001, 82; Suter 1992) (figure 2). The majority of these Syrian and Phoenician sculptures were excavated from Assyrian palaces in northern Iraq. At the capital of Nimrud, an actual gold mesh diadem of this type was discovered in a tomb (figure 1). Queens were buried here, who, themselves, were probably Levantine princesses married into the Assyrian court (Dalley 2004). The tasseled diadem may exemplify traditional Levantine adornment and have served to identify foreign women within royal Assyrian contexts. At the same time it may have communicated adult or married female status or have denoted rank or office. The gold example from Nimrud certainly expressed wealth. Portrayed as a standard jewelry component on meticulously coifed, ideally proportioned ivory figures, it may also be regarded as aesthetic embellishment. Additionally, the “eyes” of polished agate on the Nimrud diadem suggest an apotropaic function (Harper et al 1995, 94-96). These inlay elements may have served to deflect malevolence from specific, presumably vulnerable, points on the head and back over which they lay. Dated more than a half millennium later than the ancient Assyrian material, very similar tasseled forehead ornaments are portrayed on funerary sculptures of women from the Roman-Parthian period site of Palmyra in the Syrian desert (figure 3). Adornment on these statues 14

This object (M10135) is on display in the Aleppo Museum, Syria.

from mesopotamia to modern syria

461

expressed wealth and represented indigenous Palmyrene culture, individual social identity and matrilineal clan (Finlayson 1998, 120-21). The circumstances of how this adornment tradition may have passed from the Levant and Assyria to Palmyra has yet to be rigorously pursued. Nonetheless, the formal link between Assyrian and Palmyrene jewelry is substantial enough to suppose that the tasseled design could have remained continuously visible. Moreover, it is not trivial that this component is worn by women and specifically on the center of the forehead. These contextual consistencies indicate a shared visual language, not the mere drifting of a motif. If this language endured through the likely conduit of bedouin populations, field interviews and historical documentary sources may contribute significantly to verification of, at the least, formal continuity. Within the last half century, women in greater Syria wore a type of tasseled diadem that is nearly identical to the first millennium BCE example from Nimrud (Kalter 1992, 87; Kawar and Hackstein 1987, 226, 374-375; Keohane 1994, 144) (figure 4). Ethnographers describe this attire as expressing wealth and having beautifying and protective properties, while also reflecting gender and status. Although more specific symbolism cannot be traced, formal continuity and profusion is indisputable. Variations of another headdress type portrayed at Palmyra are documented from the ancient period through the twentieth century CE and may be linked to the tarbouche of the Hauran (Finlayson 1998, 132-133). The Ur Burials The ancient Mesopotamian site of Ur is situated in southern Iraq. Here, in the 1920s, Sir Leonard Woolley discovered a large cemetery dating to the mid third millennium BCE. Woolley’s report (1934), published just a few years before Reich’s ethnography, documents over two thousand graves, sixteen of which he called “royal tombs” on account of their architecture, wealth and evidence of human sacrifice. The “royal tombs” contained unsurpassed quantities of jewelry and grave goods of precious materials. Jewelry preserved on the bodies of the deceased has facilitated identification of adornment sets and reconstruction of personal assemblages as they were worn (Gansell forthcoming; Keith 1934; Pollock 1991). One set generally associated with women includes a headdress comprised of gold pendant

462

a.r. gansell

leaf wreaths and, atop the head, a spray of gold, silver, lapis lazuli and shell flowers (figure 8).15 In the exhibition “Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur,” Winter compared this assemblage, worn with chokers and multiple necklaces, to the floral bridal attire documented by Reich in the Anti-Lebanon (figures 6, 7). An explicit understanding of the function and symbolism of adornment from Ur remains out of reach, however, as the nearly 4500 year old cemetery itself is enigmatic. A dearth of textual resources, visual narratives and comparative archaeological evidence leaves even the general circumstances of burial unclear. In each “royal tomb” a primary body is accompanied by “attendants,” who may have been willingly or unwillingly sacrificed or have committed group suicide. The identity of these deceased is ambiguous (Marchesi 2004; Moorey 1977; Pollock 1991). Did they represent members of the royal court, a priestly echelon, and/or a special kin group? Were the “attendants” elite themselves? And did the wealth disposed of in these tombs belong to any or all of the deceased, or was it institutional property? Archaeological evidence indicates that ritual action was conducted within the tombs, suggesting that death and burial constituted a rite of passage (Scurlock 1995; Winter 1999). Although we do not know who the deceased are, adornment, among other factors, differentiates group and individual identities. The floral headdress itself defines a visually identifiable subgroup of women. Their affiliation may be based on social identity, rank or office within a political or priestly organization, and/or their ritual roles within the tomb. The Ur “treasures” display wealth, although whose assets and the audience to whom they were presented are unknown. The masterful crafting of objects, too, demonstrates aesthetic investment and appreciation. Perhaps the tomb occupants themselves, extravagantly bedecked with finely made, gleaming gold and colored stone jewelry, benefited from the resources taken with them to the grave and the effects of their aesthetic appeal. Precious objects may have facilitated entry into the netherworld, while the aesthetic impact of adornment may have had metaphysical power (Benzel 2006; Pittman 1998, 88). 15 Sex determined through the physical examination of select skeletons at the time of excavation corresponds to other gender-suggestive variables such as associated cylinder seals and portable objects. Based on this evidence, the gender of individuals adorned in floral headdresses may confidently be proposed as female.

from mesopotamia to modern syria

463

Formal continuity of the Ur headdress is more problematic to trace than that of the tasseled diadem. Unfortunately any “missing links” cannot necessarily be accounted for, as arrangements of live flowers would not be preserved in the archaeological record. No comparable floral headgear is represented again until the twentieth century CE, when it was documented by Reich in the Anti-Lebanon region of Syria.16 Nonetheless, it should not be overlooked that floral imagery in general played a consistent role in adornment throughout Near Eastern history. Specifically associated with the head, rosettes actually occur alongside the above discussed tasseled ornaments on first millennium BCE ivory figurines (figure 2) and some Palmyrene funerary sculptures.17

Living Evidence and the Ancient Record: Synthesis and Conclusions This study highlights the potential ethnoarchaeological importance of adornment and provides specific points of focus for interpretation. Only female adornment is considered, but findings may be applicable to male culture as well. In fact, some evidence probably reflects nongendered beliefs and practices. General consistencies observed here also occur in various world contexts. Although these diverse incidences are unlikely to be related, they should not be regarded as merely universal human phenomena, but outgrowths of similar values and circumstances. They surely offer cross-cultural ethnoarchaeological insight but lay outside the scope of the present investigation (Winter 2000). The overall objective of this study was to explore adornment during rites of passage by evaluating relationships between living and ancient Near Eastern traditions. Emphasis is given to the comparison of Syrian folk practice with material from the “royal tombs” at Ur, and a preliminary array of correlations is indicated through the comparison

16 A possible ancient link, however, may be observed in terracottas, probably dating a few centuries later than the Ur cemetery, from the Indus Valley site of Harappa. These works portray female figures wearing headdresses that incorporate a row of threedimensional flowers along the hairline (Kenoyer 2003, 391-2; Pittman 1998, 106). 17 For example, a third century sculpture from Palmyra (NCG 1102) now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen portrays a tasseled ornament adorning a cap with floral decoration.

464

a.r. gansell

of published ethnographies and recent field survey with archaeological remains (figures 6-8). Pursuing broad themes, cross-regional evidence is combined and trends are identified. Specific details may thereby be considered within larger, more meaningful contexts offering formal and conceptual analogies. The evidence considered here comes predominantly from weddings and burials, although the parallels between these contexts are a somewhat artificial product of ethnographic and archaeological access. Nonetheless, it is significant that women are exceptionally attired during these events. Yet it should be kept in mind that, at least in the Anti-Lebanon during the 1930s, adornment was not an essential factor in the personal transition from unmarried to married; its significance related more to public display. Likewise, at the Ur cemetery, some graves contained single, unadorned bodies, suggesting that ornamentation was an important part of the spectacle of “royal” burials, but not crucial for all deceased. In any case, the benefits of adornment during rites of passage are evident across history. Some functions include personal provisioning and protection, communication of social status and wealth, and the modification or concealment of individual identity. Literally or symbolically, adornment may equip a person or provide supernatural protection. The possible use of grave goods at Ur to obtain entry to the netherworld and the symbolism of strength expressed through Anti-Lebanon bridal attire exemplify ways in which jewelry may assist one in transition or prepare one for what lies beyond. The protective properties of adornment are attested in Near Eastern folk practice (Mershen 1987; Reich 1937, 86-90). Jinns, evil spirits that can invade and harm people during events that render the individual vulnerable, such as childbirth, circumcision and weddings, are particularly guarded against. Similar malevolence was feared by a lineage of pre-Islamic cultures in this region. Ancient Near Eastern texts cite protective measures including the use of amulets, early examples of which are found on elite bodies at Ur (Reiner 1987; Woolley 1934, 375). The adornment of Syrian brides incorporates diverse charms, such as the hand portrayed on the nose of the Bakha woman, the crescent moon pendants on the Djubbadin bride’s necklace, and, in the Hauran, the central tarbouche medallion inscribed “Allah” (figures 6, 7, 12). Furthermore, the moveable metal parts of Syrian and

from mesopotamia to modern syria

465

ancient Mesopotamian headgear may deter evil spirits through their jingling and glare. Adornment also serves to communicate social and cultural information. It announces and reinforces new and established aspects of personal identity and community membership, especially in the presence of family and community. In Syrian weddings and the tombs of Ur, the adornment assemblages under consideration specifically denote the wearers as female. Like a white gown and veil in Western culture, in Syria, this folk adornment immediately and primarily identified a woman as a bride, and henceforth elements of it signify her married state. At Ur, although the specific identities of the deceased are unknown, distinct jewelry sets represent collective roles (Gansell forthcoming). In addition, formal variation in adornment differentiates local and regional identities. The ancient record does not provide direct comparisons for Ur, but related jewelry is known from other third millennium BCE sites in Mesopotamia, Syria and the Indus Valley, suggesting local variation of a widespread general tradition. In the Anti-Lebanon, minor details distinguish brides from Bakha and nearby Djubbadin. Cross-regionally, many more apparent differences characterize bridal attire of the Hauran and Anti-Lebanon. Underlying this contrast is geographic as well as cultural distance. In terms of identity, adornment, especially when crafted from precious materials, signifies status. Within a group, ranges of more and less elaborate assemblages indicate hierarchy, but a display of wealth does not necessarily reflect individuals’ literal economic circumstances. At Ur, primary tomb occupants consistently wore the most adornment, and their “attendants” were outfitted to varying degrees of extravagance that corresponded to other categories of ranked privilege. But because the living status of the “attendants,” who may have been a subjugated population, is unknown, their adornment cannot be assumed to have been personal property. Alternatively, it could represent the resources of the primary deceased or the wealth of the unidentified institution with which this cemetery was affiliated. Indeed the adornment of primary tomb occupants may even be derived from institutional or general family wealth. In the Anti-Lebanon during the 1930s, a bride’s jewelry was pooled by villagers and did not represent the assets of any single individual or family. Nonetheless, it certainly expressed the collective wealth of the

466

a.r. gansell

population. This may have represented the community’s endorsement of the union and assured an environment of prosperity and security for the new couple. Today in the Hauran the bridal headdress does not reflect wealth so much as Druze identity and cultural pride. Wealthier families are regarded as those who have vehicles or new houses, not those who retain a tarbouche. But, fulfilling tradition, even when families do not themselves possess a tarbouche, one is almost always borrowed and appreciated on the occasion of a wedding. The adornment elements and assemblages considered here make a strong aesthetic impact with their bulk, bright colors and gleaming, shifting metal parts. Evidence from Syria and ancient Ur indicates that both adornment itself and an individual’s adorned image were aesthetically valued. In the context of events considered here, the decoration of multiple participants in conjunction with music and action would create an awesome multi-sensory aesthetic experience. This, perhaps, would compound the success of adornment in aiding in life transitions, protecting chief participants and reinforcing issues of status and identity. Finally, aesthetic display may temporarily modify or disguise personal identity (Pittman 1998, 87). It changes a specific woman to a “bride,” for example, and during liminal phases anonymity may offer protection. Ethnographic studies of some greater Near Eastern cultures document the concealment of brides’ faces for the sake of social and supernatural security (Granqvist 1931-1935, 67; Keohane 1994, 144). At Ur, while perhaps providing personal benefits, attire would have visually organized individuals into a spectacle of standard costumed roles. Here adornment may even have had metaphysically transformative properties; recent interpretation proposes that choreographed tomb occupants embodied divine roles aided by the aesthetic intensity of their adornment (Benzel 2006). Turning now to specific affinities between the floral wreath-based jewelry set from Ur and folk adornment of the Anti-Lebanon, we are both more limited and more grounded in making interpretations. Primarily, one observes a common incorporation of floral headpieces, strands of moveable metal pendants draped around the head, and multiple necklaces. Although symbolic meaning cannot be projected from one culture to another on the basis of formal resemblance, visual correspondence indicates similar aesthetic inclinations. Also, a conceptual preference for decorating the head, neck and chest is

from mesopotamia to modern syria

467

evident (Eilberg-Schwartz 1995). Considering that these parts of the body are the most visible, bear personally recognizable features and contain vital organs, both cultures may consider them particularly valuable and vulnerable. Further meaning may be mined through visual and verbal typological investigations, especially considering that the repetition of designs may nurture and reinforce aesthetic and conceptual values. Ethnoarchaeology may also reveal aspects of visual and material culture not surviving in the archaeological record. In this study, hindering comparison of adornment practices, non-durable features such as hairstyle, cosmetics and clothing are not preserved in the Ur cemetery. However, study of the living record reminds investigators to consider, rather than overlook, the role of these potential costume elements. Best demonstrating this point, the flowers worn by Syrian brides would not have been preserved archaeologically, while those excavated from Ur are known only because they are made of metal. Other important aspects of bodily adornment and the aesthetic enhancement of brides include henna, perfume and depilatory practices. While it cannot be assumed that these customs were incorporated into ancient personal presentation, they offer enlivening possibilities. In conclusion, I shall respond to the questions posed in the opening of this paper. Although decisive resolution cannot be offered, the ethnoarchaeological study presented here guides preliminary interpretations. It seems that formal traditions endure, indeed for millennia. These appear to be maintained through conscious efforts to follow the tradition of previous generations for the sake of demonstrating and reinforcing cultural identity, especially in insular, clan-based communities (Finlayson 1998, 116-117). While symbolic meaning may shift or be lost, general conceptual significance may be retained. This study was initiated in response to Winter’s interest in parallels between floral bridal adornment documented in twentieth century Syrian folk culture and headdresses worn by women entombed over four thousand years ago at the Mesopotamian site of Ur. While direct continuity is not detected, ethnoarchaeological analysis has begun to shed new light on a multiplicity of issues. It is hoped that this paper encourages future research and fieldwork on this rich and promising topic. We may thereby continue to pursue the endeavor in which Irene Winter has served as a model, recuperating a more vivid

468

a.r. gansell

understanding of the actions and values that comprised the “life” of ancient Near Eastern culture.

References Benzel, K. 2006. “Technologies” of Jewelry: Methods and Metaphysics in Mesopotamia. Paper read at the annual meeting of the College Art Association, February 22-25, Boston, Mass. Charles, H. 1939. Tribus moutonnières du Moyen-Euphrate. Beirut: Institut français de Damas. Dalley, S. 2004. Recent Evidence from Assyrian Sources for Judaean History from Uzziah to Manasseh. JSOT 28: 387-401. David, N., and C. Kramer. 2001. Ethnoarchaeology in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Demaray, E., and M. Keim-Shenk. 2003. Always Remembering the Motherland: Tai Dam Wedding Textiles and Dress. In Wedding Dress Across Cultures, ed. H. B. Foster and D. C. Johnson, 191-205. New York: Berg. Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 1995. Introduction: The Spectacle of the Female Head. In Off with her Head! The Denial of Women’s Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture, ed. H. EilbergSchwartz and W. Doniger, 1-14. Berkeley: University of California Press. Finlayson, C. S. 1998. Veil, Turban and Headpiece: Funerary Portraits and Female Status at Palmyra. Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa. Gansell, A. R. 2007. Identity and Adornment in the “Royal Tombs” of Ur. Cambridge Arhaeological Journal (17/1): 29-46. Granqvist, H. 1931-1935. Marriage Conditions in a Palestinian Village. 2 vols. Helsinki: Akademische buchhandlung. Harper, P. O., E. Klengel-Brandt, J. Aruz, and K. Benzel, eds. 1995. Assyrian Origins: Discoveries at Ashur on the Tigris, Antiquities in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kalter, J. 1992. Syrian Folk Jewelry. In The Arts and Crafts of Syria, ed. J. Kalter, M. Pavaloi, and M. Zerrnickel, 79-102. London: Thames and Hudson. Kawar, W., and K. Hackstein. Katalog der Sammlung Widad Kawar. In Pracht und Geheimnis: Kleidung und Schmuck aus Palästina und Jordanien, ed. G. Völger, K. V. Welck, and K. Hackstein, 174-424. Cologne: Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum. Keel, O. 1981. Zeichen der Verbundenheit zur Vorgeschichte und Bedeutung der Forderungen von Deuteronomium 6, 8f. und Par. In Mélanges Dominique Barthélemy, études biblique offertes à l’occasion de son 60e anniversaire, ed. P. Casetti, O. Keel, and A. Schenker. Fribourg: Éditions universitaires. Keith, A. 1934. Report on Human Remains. Chap. 23 in C. L. Woolley, Ur Excavations II: The Royal Cemetery, 400-409. London: The British Museum.

from mesopotamia to modern syria

469

Kenoyer, J. M. 2003. Female Figures with Headdresses and Jewelry. In Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus, ed. J. Aruz with R. Wallenfels, 391-392. Exhibition catalogue. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Keohane, A. 1994. Bedouin: Nomads of the Desert. London: Kyle Cathie Limited. Marchesi, G. 2004. Who was Buried in the Royal Tombs of Ur? The Epigraphic and Textual Data. Orientalia 73: 153-197. Marchetty, F. 1660. La Vie de monsieur de Chasteuil, solitaire du Mont Liban. Paris. Mershen, B. 1987. Amulette als Komponenten des Volksschmucks im Jordanland. In Pracht und Geheimnis: Kleidung und Schmuck aus Palästina und Jordanien, ed. G. Völger, K. V. Welck, and K. Hackstein, 106-109. Cologne: Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum. Micklewright, N. 1989. Late-Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Wedding Costumes as Indicators of Social Change. Muqarnas 6: 161-174. Moorey, P. R. S. 1977. What do We Know about the People Buried in the Royal Cemetery? Expedition 20: 24-40. Niebuhr, C. 1774. Description de l’Arabie. Amsterdam: S. J. Baalde. Oates, J., and D. Oates. 2001. Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Paine, C. 1859. Tent and Harem: Notes of an Oriental Trip. New York: D. Appleton and Co. Pittman, H. 1998. Jewelry. In Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur, ed. R. L. Zettler and L. Horne, 87-122. Exhibition catalogue. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Pollock, S. 1991. Of Priestesses, Princes, and Poor Relations: The Dead in the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1: 71-89. Reade, J. 1967. Two Slabs from Sennacherib’s Palace. Iraq 29: 42-48. Reich, S. 1937. Études sur les villages Araméens de l’Anti-Liban. Beirut. Reiner, E. 1987. Magic Figurines, Amulets, and Talismans. In Monsters and Demons in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Papers Presented to Edith Porada, ed. A. E. Farkas, P. O. Harper, and E. B. Harrison, 27-36. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Sasson, J. M. 1990. Artisans. . .Artists: Documentary Perspectives from Mari. In Investigating Artistic Environments in the Ancient Near East, ed. A. C. Gunter, 21-28. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution. Scurlock, J. A. 1995. Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Mesopotamian Thought. In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. J. M. Sasson, vol. 3, 1883-1894. New York: Scribner. Suter, C. 1992. Die Frau am Fenster in der orientalischen Elfenbein-Schnitzkunst des frühen 1. Jahrtausends v. Chr. Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in BadenWürttemberg 29: 7-28.

470

a.r. gansell

Weir, S. 1990. The Bedouin. New ed., first published 1976. London: British Museum Publications. Winter, I. J. 1992. “Idols of the King”: Royal Images as Recipients of Ritual Action in Ancient Mesopotamia. Journal of Ritual Studies 6: 13-42. ———. 1994. Radiance as an Aesthetic Value in the Art of Mesopotamia (and Some Indian Parallels). In Art: The Integral Vision, ed. B. N. Saraswati, S. C. Malik, and M. Khanna, 123-132. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld. ———. 1999. Reading Ritual in the Archaeological Record: Deposition Pattern and Function of Two Artifact-Types from the Royal Cemetery of Ur. In Fluchtpunkt Uruk, archäologische Einheit aus methodischer Vielfalt, Schriften für Hans Nissen, ed. H. Kühne, R. Bernbeck, and K. Bartl, 229-256. Rahden/Westf.: Leidorf. ———. 2000. Opening the Eyes and Opening the Mouth: The Utility of Comparing Images in Worship in India and the Ancient Near East. In Ethnography and Personhood, ed. M. W. Meister, 129-162. Jaipur: Rawat Publications. Woolley, C. L. 1934. Ur Excavations II: The Royal Cemetery. London: The British Museum.

from mesopotamia to modern syria

471

Figure 1. Gold diadem from Tomb II at Nimrud (Iraq), first millennium BCE, Baghdad Museum (IM 105696)

472

a.r. gansell

Figure 2. Ivory head of a woman with diadem from Burnt Palace at Nimrud (Iraq), first millennium BCE, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1954 (54.117.8) (photo: all rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

from mesopotamia to modern syria

473

Figure 3. Stone funerary sculpture of a woman with forehead ornament, Palmyra (Syria), second century CE, Palmyra National Museum, Syrian Arab Republic

474

a.r. gansell

Figure 4. Tasseled folk diadem, Irbid region of northern Jordan, twentieth century CE, Widad Kawar collection (TRXXIV 7 J)

from mesopotamia to modern syria

475

Figure 5. Postcard of woman modeling Kabyle adornment, Algeria, early 20th century CE (Lévy et Neurdein réunis, Paris)

476

a.r. gansell

Figure 6. Portrait of a bride from Bakha, Anti-Lebanon region, Syria, 1936 (Reich 1937, fig. 26)

from mesopotamia to modern syria

477

Figure 7. Portrait of a bride from Djubbadin, Anti-Lebanon region, Syria, 1936 (Reich 1937, fig. 27)

478

a.r. gansell

Figure 8. Adornment of Queen Puabi, Tomb 800 at Ur (Iraq), third millennium BCE, University of Pennsylvania Museum (Neg#152100)

from mesopotamia to modern syria

479

Figure 9. Woman showing fragment of antique wedding dress, Anti-Lebanon region, Syria, 2002 (author photo)

480

a.r. gansell

Figure 10. Druze woman modeling tarbouche, Hauran region, Syria, 2002 (author photo)

from mesopotamia to modern syria

481

Figure 11. Detail of tarbouche showing central pendant, Hauran region, Syria, 2006 (author photo)

482

a.r. gansell

Figure 12. Druze woman wearing tarbouche in public, Hauran region, Syria, 2002 (author photo)

from mesopotamia to modern syria

483

Figure 13. Druze women in traditional costume during daily public activity, Hauran region, Syria, 2002 (author photo)

484

a.r. gansell

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

485

THE NINETY-DEGREE ROTATION OF THE CUNEIFORM SCRIPT1 Benjamin Studevent-Hickman It is an accepted fact among scholars of the ancient Near East that the cuneiform script was rotated ninety degrees counterclockwise at some point in its history. The evidence for the rotation is straightforward enough: on inscribed objects from ancient Mesopotamia the orientation of the inscriptions changed from vertical to horizontal vis-à-vis the standing position of the objects and/or any iconography they contained (figure 1), and this change, in turn, rotated the individual graphemes ninety degrees counterclockwise from their original orientation as pictographs (figure 2). Where, when, and why this happened remain a subject of some debate, and even basic introductions to cuneiform disagree. This is not surprising, on the one hand, for there has been no systematic treatment of the issue for over twenty years. On the other hand, it is quite astounding, for the discussion bears on the fundamental question: how do we read cuneiform? It is a real privilege to dedicate this essay to Irene, who has been so fundamental in forming—indeed, in transforming—the way I see the objects we all hold so dear. May this be pleasing in her sight. The Two Basic Views There are essentially two views on the historical context of and reasons for the rotation of the cuneiform script. The first places it in 1

This article has benefited greatly from conversations with several scholars, including Robert Biggs, Jerry Cooper, William Hallo, Gianni Marchesi, Joachim Marzahn, Karen Radner, Walther Sallaberger, and Christopher Woods. Particular thanks are due to Jo Ann Hackett, John Huehnergard, Stephanie Reed, Emmanuelle Salgues, Claudia Suter, and especially Piotr Steinkeller, who read an earlier draft of the manuscript and provided many valuable suggestions and corrections. For convenience, the following dates (all B.C.E.) are offered for the periods mentioned: Uruk (3200-3000), Jemdet Nasr (3100-2900), Pre-Sargonic/Early Dynastic (2900-2350), Fara (ca. 2500), Sargonic/Old Akkadian (2334-2154), Ur III (2112-2004), Old Babylonian (2004-1595), Kassite (1595-1155), Middle Assyrian (1350-1000), NeoAssyrian (1000-610).

486

b. studevent-hickman

Babylonia in the middle of the second millennium B.C.E., in the Kassite period specifically. The best-known proponent of this view is Sergio Picchioni, who argued that the script retained its vertical orientation on both epigraphic and paleographic inscriptions until this time.2 According to him, the evidence is unequivocal: All the objects whose correct position can be easily established, and which have inscriptions on them that date back to a time prior to the middle of the 2nd millennium B.C., display a vertical type of writing. There are no exceptions. (Picchioni 1984-1985, 19, his emphasis)

Picchioni’s evidence stemmed above all from epigraphic sources, where the change is relatively clear. His paleographic evidence, by contrast,3 consisted of three primary data: Early Dynastic tablets from Ebla (Tell Mardikh), which were discovered with their writing oriented vertically (Picchioni 1980; Archi 1988); some Old Babylonian mathematical texts, in which the terms above and below reflect the edges of a tablet bearing the beginning and end of a line of text, respectively (see, for example, Neugebauer and Sachs 1945, 42 no. 4: 5-6 with n. 125, 49 with n. 135d); and Early Dynastic tablets from Shuruppak (Tell Fara) that contain incised drawings alongside the script, showing it to be vertical (Deimel [1923] 1969, 63 no. 62;4 Heinrich and Andrae 1931, pl. 28).5 Picchioni’s basic position has often been followed 2

Here I adopt the basic distinction between epigraphy and paleography found in earlier Classical studies: epigraphy refers to inscriptions on stone (and, by extension, on metal or ivory), paleography refers to those on clay. This differs from what is normally found in ancient Near Eastern studies, where epigraphy refers to inscriptions in general and paleography refers to grapheme shape and formation. It should be noted that cylinder seals and stamps used for brick inscriptions bridge the two domains since the inscriptions are carved into epigraphic media (generally in reverse), which are then impressed into moist clay. I consider such objects to be among the epigraphic evidence since the act of writing takes place there. 3 Paleographic data—above all tablets—are more difficult to use since, in the absence of any iconography, there is generally no way to determine the orientation of the script. Without knowing whether the rotation had taken place, the standing position of the graphemes as pictographs does not help either. 4 Deimel’s presentation is misleading, for it suggests that the drawing is perpendicular to the direction of the script, which is clearly not the case (for a photo of the tablet, see http://cdli.ucla.edu/dl/photo/P010653.jpg). This may have led to some misunderstanding in the literature (see, e.g., Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting Jr. 1991, 8). 5 Picchioni (1984-1985, 17) also cites a change in the appearance and placement of the colophon, but his argument is not clear to me. Note that at least two additional data from the paleographic record support his argument further. The first are the so-

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

487

in the literature, albeit in less forceful and absolute terms (see, for example, Englund 1998, 18 n. 1; Postgate 1995, 63; note also figure 2 in this article). As for the reason for the change, he simply sees it as a Kassite innovation that, once implemented, affected all media (Picchioni 1984, 48). The second view locates the change in Babylonia as well, but much earlier, and here there is some ambiguity concerning the date. Proponents of this view have placed considerably more weight on the paleographic evidence, where the mechanics of handwriting play a much greater role. Assuming a right-handed scribe, they have argued that vertical writing required a cumbersome grip on the stylus and made it difficult to write wedges in certain directions; moreover, since the earliest text-fields progressed from right to left, the scribe had to deal with the added problem of smearing, as many left-handed writers of English do today. To overcome these problems, they maintain, the scribe rotated the tablet to his or her left, thus introducing the horizontal component. As the tablets grew larger and more oblong, they became harder to manipulate. Holding them by their long sides (that is, with the length of the tablet running more or less perpendicular to the forearm), the scribes wrote horizontally (Falkenstein 1936, 10; Messerschidt 1906, 306; Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting, Jr. 1991, 8; Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993, 116-124; and esp. Powell 1981, 426-431). For proponents of the earlier date, the internal development of the graphemes supports this argument. Adam Falkenstein (1936, 9), for example, noted that wedges b and c (figure 3) were replaced by wedges f and g already in the Uruk corpus, so the script must have been written horizontally from practically the beginning.6 Subsequent called tags used in antiquity to label tablet containers (Sum. pisan-dub-ba). These clay lumps, generally shaped liked tablets themselves, were wrapped around the two ends of a string used to seal the container, and inscribed with a description of its contents. In the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods, the tags clearly hung in such a way that the script was vertical (Goetze 1950; Fitzgerald 2003). The second datum is a tablet from the Old Babylonian period bearing two incantations (van Dijk, Goetze, and Hussey 1985, pl. 65 no. 66). The tablet is pierced perpendicular to the direction of the script, presumably to wear it as a necklace (Reiner 1960). With the object worn this way, the script would have appeared vertical to an observer. I thank Gianni Marchesi for this reference. 6 Falkenstein’s views were largely supported and supplemented by Margaret Green and Hans Nissen, whose observations, though not published, were discussed by Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting, Jr. (1991, 8; see also Green 1981).

488

b. studevent-hickman

changes followed this basic trend; Anton Deimel has provided the most detailed outline (again, with respect to figure 3): Der Keil a findet sich in der ältesten Schrift nur in wenigen Zeichen... nach der Zeit Urukaginas verschwindet er vollständig aus der Keilschrift. b ist nur eine Ziffer vor gan [a cuneiform sign] und bedeutet 1/4; dies Zeichen ist bis Urukagina einschliesslich im Gebrauch. In den Texten der Dynastie Ur wird b durch c ersetzt, zuweilen auch durch d. Im letzteren Falle wurde d...etwas mehr nach e zu geschrieben [sic]. Von der Dynastie Ur an sind daher die Keilrichtungen a, b, c gänzlich ungebräuchlich, g, f, e, d bilden einzig die Bestandteile aller Keilschriftzeichen. Der Grund hierfür ist leicht ersichtlich, es ist das Gesetz der Trägheit: a, b, c kann man nur sehr schwer mit der rechten Hand eindrücken. Mit der Faust wären...b und c leicht zu schreiben; dass diese Keilrichtungen trotzdem so selten vorkommen, spricht auch sehr gegen das “Faustschreiben.” Da somit dem Schreiber praktisch nur g, f, e, d handlich zu Gebote standen, war er von Anfang an gezwungen, das Bild auf die linke Seite zu legen, da ihm nur hier die Bildungselemente zur Verfügung waren. (Deimel [1922] 1970, 12-13)7

Citing an important study by Messerschmidt (1906), Deimel went on to argue that the stylus was held like a pen or pencil.8 Like Falkenstein, he also claimed that the signs were written horizontally from the beginning, but both of these authors added an important qualification: while the scribes certainly wrote the earliest signs horizontally, they did not read them this way until shortly after the Fara period (Deimel [1922] 1970, 13; Falkenstein 1936, 11). Unfortunately, they offered 7 See also Falkenstein 1936, 9 and Edzard 1980, 551-552. Edzard notes the existence of a few wedges at angles not covered by Deimel or Falkenstein, but these are of no real consequence. 8 Messerschmidt discovered what is common knowledge today: in the early history of Babylonian cuneiform, the stylus was a reed. This is clearly indicated by the fact that the three possible surfaces of a cut reed formed the three faces of all cuneiform wedges. With a wedge standing upright, impressions from the tips of the fibers appear on the top face; those from the strands appear on the left face; and the smooth outer surface forms the right face (see the images in Powell 1981, 427-430; with Messerschidt 1906, 192 fig. 4, 196 fig. 5, 305 fig. 6, and 306 fig. 7). Messerschmidt also examined the angle at which the stylus contacted the clay in various periods; the significance of his analysis for Deimel ([1922] 1970, 13 n. 1) is clear: “Die Keilchen g und f sind in der Periode von Ur meist senkrecht eingedrückt, zuweilen zeigen sie etwas nach der linken, faserigen Seite. Die Keilchen e und d werden immer mit der stark nach rechts geneigten, kieseligen Seite des Kalamus eingeschrieben. Auch dies spricht sehr dafür, dass die alten Schreiber ihr Schreibrohr genau so hielten wie wir unsere Feder.”

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

489

no real evidence for this claim; one gets the impression, however, that it is based on the larger sizes of some tablets in Fara times and the growing level of abstraction in the signs, which eliminated their pictographic component and made them more susceptible to the rotation (Edzard 1980, 546; Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993, 119; Postgate 1995, 63). On similar grounds (namely, the disappearance of certain wedges and the presumed grip of the stylus), Marvin Powell (1981, 431) dated the change in reading to the Sargonic period.9 Some proponents of the earlier date have used still other paleographic data to show when the change took place. Ignace Gelb, Piotr Steinkeller, and Robert Whiting, Jr. (1991, 8-10, 240-241), for example, cited the evidence of sale transactions inscribed on clay pegs, also called “nails” or “cones.” Such pegs, inscribed up the taper as a rule, were pierced along their axes by wooden stakes used to affix them to a wall, a ceremony that finalized the transaction and made it public. According to them, the pegs were positioned below eye level, in which case they were read horizontally from the left side or vertically from above. In one case from the late Early Dynastic period, however, a peg is inscribed down the taper, so its script could only have been read horizontally (that is, from above, it would have appeared upside down). For them, this indicates that the script must have rotated by this time.10 To cite a final example, Christopher Walker noted that the first texts written in a single column date to the time of Lugalzagesi, a contemporary of Sargon, the well-known founder of the Old Akkadian dynasty. For him, this suggests “that the change had taken place shortly before” (Walker 1987, 14; cf. Postgate 1995, 64 with 57 fig. 2: 5). Walker did not elaborate on this 9 See also Postgate 1995, 63-64; Labat 1995, 3-4. Like Deimel, Powell uses Messerschmidt’s analysis as evidence for the grip of the stylus. For him, however, it was held between the thumb and fingers. 10 The authors also cite evidence from ancient kudurrus, stone monuments of various shape having inscriptions recording transactions in landed property. In the earliest kudurrus shaped like tablets, a row of text-fields with the signs oriented vertically traverses the entire object, starting on the obverse, wrapping around the edge, and continuing on the reverse. Beginning in the Fara period, however, the rows are confined to the obverse or reverse, excepting the last one on the obverse, which continues on the reverse. For them this indicates that the orientation of the script has changed from vertical to horizontal. I must admit that I do not understand their logic here since, as noted above, there is no point of reference on a tablet for determining horizontal or vertical. Also, the archaic tablets from Uruk generally follow their “later” format (see Englund 1998, 58-59).

490

b. studevent-hickman

claim, noting only that the change accompanied—even affected—the development of the graphemes in accordance with the observations by Deimel and others. For all proponents of the earlier date, it seems, the rotation of the cuneiform script happened purely by accident. This is not a problem per se, but their position does raise one important question: if the script was rotated in the third millennium, whenever that happened, why did it continue to appear vertical for another thousand years or so? The general explanation is “the context”; in other words, they claim that the vertical orientation was retained on epigraphic inscriptions, which are more conservative by nature and, as a result, more likely to incorporate archaizing elements in both script and language. This line of reasoning is unacceptable to many proponents of the later date, eliminating any element of common ground between the two views (Picchioni 1984-1985, esp. 12-16; see also Edzard 1980, 547 and 551).

An Assessment of the Two Views With all due respect to these scholars and their contributions, it must be said that there are real problems with all of the arguments outlined above. Some of these problems stem from a simple misstatement of the facts, others involve more methodological issues. We begin with the argument for the later date. To be sure, the bulk of the evidence does support Picchioni’s basic position: in those cases where the direction of the cuneiform script is clear, it changed from vertical to horizontal beginning in the Kassite period. As noted above, the epigraphic material provides the primary evidence for this, and the few paleographic data cited would appear to support it as well. But some of Picchioni’s claims are simply not true; in short, there are exceptions. Several objects from pre-Kassite times clearly have horizontal inscriptions and they stem from epigraphic and paleographic sources alike. These include, but are surely not limited to, the following:11

11 It should be noted that several of these examples were available when Picchioni wrote his essay. Such oversights are understandable; the point here is to show that such claims might be stated in less forceful terms. Given the amount of evidence we have and

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

491

the so-called Blau Obelisk, a stone monument probably dating to the Uruk period and coming from ancient Urum (modern Tell #Uqair) in northern Babylonia (see Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting, Jr. 1991, pl. 11 with p. 41); an unpublished stone monument in the British Museum dating to the Early Dynastic period (BM 117936; see Walker 1987, 14); a duck weight from the time of Naram-Sin (2254-2218 B.C.E.; see Molina 1989); an unpublished brick in the British Museum dating to the reign of Sin-kashid (ca. 1850 B.C.E.; the brick is BM 90267; Walker 1981, 11); a statue of a kneeling figure from the time of Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.E.; Orthmann 1975, 294 no. XI); and a bilingual clay cylinder of Samsu-iluna (1749-1712 B.C.E.).12

By the same token, several post-Kassite objects clearly have vertical inscriptions, well after the change was purportedly implemented. They include: nearly all brick inscriptions (with the exception, for example, of the Sinkashid inscription noted above), which appear vertical until the time of Marduk-apla-iddina II (721-710 B.C.E.; Walker 1981, 11); a seal from the Middle Assyrian period (Orthmann 1975, 351-351 with fig. 271c); a statue of Napir-asu, dating to the thirteenth century (Orthmann 1975, 384 with fig. 289); several Neo-Assyrian seals (for example, Orthmann 1975, 355-359, 361-363 with figs. 273a, b, c, f, g, 274 e, f, 275e, see also 362 fig. 108b);13 an Assyrian amulet like the Old Babylonian incantation tablet cited above (see n. 5 in this article; for the object, see Reiner 1960, 154); and the fate it has suffered at the hands of the antiquities market, this might be suggested as a prudent general rule. 12 See Hallo 1982, 115. According to him, the cylinder has a hole along its axis that “starts at the left end of the inscription and only runs halfway through the cylinder... so that the possibility of using the hole to mount the cylinder on a stick vertically is excluded, since the hole is at the top of the object even from the point of view of the older [vertical] direction of writing.” It is possible that the hole reflects a post used to form the cylinder, not to mount it. If so, Hallo’s argument may still be valid (i.e., if the object was inscribed in this position, the scribe would have had to write upside down). 13 According to Hallo (1982, 114), Assyrian glyptic inscriptions did not become horizontal until the thirteenth century. Note also the seals from Buchanan 1966 cited by him.

492

b. studevent-hickman the famous ninth-century statue of Hadad-Yith’i, ruler of ancient Guzana (biblical Gozan, modern Tell Halaf), which contains a bilingual inscription in Neo-Assyrian and Aramaic—the former oriented vertically (see Abou-Assaf 1981; Abou-Assaf, Bordeuil, and Millard 1982; for the date, see esp. Kaufman 1982, 139-142).

This last item raises yet another consideration: as noted by Kaufman, the Akkadian term egirtu is used in the first millennium to refer to an Aramaic letter and ultimately becomes a loanword in that language, coexisting with spr, the native Aramaic term. His comments on the etymology of egirtu consider the direction of the script: The correspondence egirtu: spr should serve to finally settle the dispute over the etymology of egirtu, Aramaic "grt/h. . .Morphologically, there is no problem in seeing it as the feminine verbal adjective of the verb eg¿ru, “to be crossed..., twisted”; indeed, it is the only possibility... The semantic difficulties are of a more serious nature. One wonders if it may not first have been used to refer to a specific type of tablet written or shaped in an unusual fashion. Bearing in mind the reference to an egirtu armÊtu, “Aramaic egirtu,”...one might even suggest that egirtu originally referred to a document written in alphabetic script, from right to left, and thus “twisted” from the cuneiform point of view or even more literally “crosswise” to the original direction of cuneiform writing from top to bottom. (Kaufman 1977, 124 n. 44)

Attestations of egirtu are limited to the Neo-Assyrian period, so, if the term does refer to the perpendicularity of the Aramaic script and not to its reverse direction (or to still some other aspect of the script or medium), this provides yet another case of the use—perhaps better, the idea—of vertical cuneiform well after Kassite times.14 As a final point: the mathematical texts cited by Picchioni cannot be used as evidence for the direction of the script since the phrases above and below (again, used to refer to the beginning and end of a line of text)

14 Cuneiform appears horizontal in the overwhelming number of times in this period, but the term may nonetheless refer to the perpendicularity of the two scripts. This is to say, it may have entered Assyrian during the Aramaean incursions of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries, precisely when the cuneiform script started to run horizontally on Assyrian seals (see n. 13 in this article). Admittedly, this suggests that there were Aramaic inscriptions at that time, and our earliest linear alphabetic dates to ca. 1000 B.C.E., some two centuries later. Nonetheless, uses of the stem from which egirtu is derived generally indicate some aspect of “crossing” in Assyrian, so there may be something to Kaufman’s suggestion.

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

493

may be frozen expressions used well after the rotation had been implemented. The problems with arguments for the earlier date concern methodology more than fact. Beginning with the most obvious, in describing the directions of individual wedges and the development of the graphemes, Deimel, Falkenstein, and others all assumed that the script had already been rotated! If we consider the evidence without this assumption, the most common wedges (figure 3) are those running straight down (d) and straight to the left (b), not straight to the right (f) and straight down (d). Even setting this observation aside, the elimination of certain wedges says nothing about the orientation of the script, it only indicates its direction or “flow” (Englund 1998, 72). In other words, the graphemes could have developed in much the same way if the script had been written in its original, vertical orientation with the stylus held or manipulated differently. And, while we can determine the angle at which the stylus met the tablet, there is no evidence whatsoever for the way it was held from the graphemes themselves (nor can we assume that all scribes held it the same way); the basic disagreement between Deimel and Powell is indicative of this point (see n. 9). In the end, the only sure fact in this context is that the stylus and tablet had to be rotated with respect to each other since, as noted, the same surfaces of the stylus formed all of the wedges (see above, note 8).15 More than likely, limiting this movement was the primary reason for simplifying the graphemes, and, while this forces one to ask how the scribes were able to write with any efficiency, particularly given the predominantly administrative context of most tablets and the sizes of most graphemes, it is clear that this development could have transpired whether the graphemes had been rotated or not. Unfortunately, nothing in the order in which the wedges were impressed sheds any light on this problem;16 modern experiments appear to have debunked the argument based on smearing (Walker 1987, 14). 15 This situation differs from the one found in Ugarit. There, both vertical and horizontal wedges were likely made with a square-headed stylus, perhaps of bronze, held horizontally in the hand with very little manipulation (Ellison 2002, esp. 72-86). 16 To the best of my knowledge, the only detailed studies of cuneiform grapheme formation are Sallaberger 1996 and Ellison 2002. In his study of the tablets from Tell Beydar in northern Syria, which he dates to the late Early Dynastic period, Sallaberger (1996, 63) concluded that there is no real order in which the wedges were impressed save that 1) they are formed in the direction of the script and 2) there are discrete units that are written the same wherever they appear. Ellison (2002, 109-110 n. 95) reached

494

b. studevent-hickman

The other two arguments in favor of the earlier date are also equivocal. The Early Dynastic peg cited by Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting, Jr. is inscribed precisely like foundation deposits of the same shape at this time, and those were invariably presented upright (Ellis 1968, 46-93, esp. 72). The adoption of this typology and presentation would not be surprising, and, since it remains unclear precisely how transaction pegs were presented with respect to an observer, their argument leaves some element of reasonable doubt.17 Finally, the single-column tablets first introduced during the reign of Lugalzagesi (Walker 1987) may reflect nothing more than text-fields composed of vertical strings of graphemes. If nothing else, it is a logical progression based solely on the fact that the orthography of compound logograms and the syntax of written Sumerian were largely fixed by this time.

A New Point from Old Data There can be no doubt that the Kassites introduced a major change in the direction in which the cuneiform script was read (that is, presented). As noted above, the epigraphic evidence, as well as a few paleographic data, largely confirms Picchioni’s basic claims, just not a similar conclusion concerning early logosyllabic cuneiform: “The principles...[are] far from fixed...In January 2000 I was able to inspect several tablets from the state archive collection in the British Museum. All of the tablets came from the same site and were dated to the same period on the grounds of prosopography. In these tablets, no fewer than five different scribal hands could be easily documented. The order of the wedges varied among these hands, suggesting that this feature is much more related to an individual scribal technique than to either a fixed temporal or geographic style.” The same is not true, apparently, for alphabetic cuneiform and the Neo-Assyrian script, where the wedges are formed in the direction of writing, but horizontals are written before verticals and from bottom to top while verticals are written from top to bottom (Ellison 2002, 110; Daniels 1995, 84-85). For other considerations regarding handwriting in the earlier periods, see Biggs 1973. 17 The Sumerian phrase that refers to the post-transaction ceremony in these inscriptions is kak...du3. Akkadian equivalents of the phrase support the translation “to drive the peg (into the wall)” (Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting, Jr. 1991, 241; cf. CAD s.v. mah§ßu); however, they give no indication of its ultimate orientation or position. An image from the so-called Uàumgal Stele shows what appears to be a peg driven into a wall, but, as fate would have it, that peg appears at roughly forty-five degrees, halfway between the two possibilities considered here (Gelb, Steinkeller, and Whiting, Jr. 1991, 44 with pls. 13 and 14). In this context, it is worth noting that the phrase kak...du3 also carries the sense “to stand the peg upright” (cf. na-ru2-a [i.e., na-du3-a], for “stele” or, literally, “stone stood upright”).

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

495

in the absolute terms in which he stated them. While exceptions appeared well before Kassite times, they remain isolated incidents, and in many of them the reasons were surely practical or even aesthetic in nature. But they are precedents nonetheless, and they show that the use of horizontal cuneiform was alive and well in the epigraphic record from very early on. The question is whether there is any evidence in the paleographic record that supports the earlier date of the rotation while eliminating some of the methodological problems that have undermined arguments for it in the past. There is one possible datum that, to the best of my knowledge, has gone overlooked in the literature, at least with respect to the topic at hand. In cuneiform lexical texts, which consist of lexicons proper, syllabaries, lists, and grammatical texts, individual entries were often marked with a single, vertical wedge. In the earliest examples, which come from the Uruk period, this “wedge” was actually a rounded impression that appeared vertical with respect to the original orientation of the proto-cuneiform pictographs (figure 4a). The impression had no semantic value of its own, being used instead as a “visual and memory” aid “in counting the number of lines inscribed on tablets so as to be able to collate line totals on original and copies” (Englund 1998, 83 n. 179 with literature). For much of the third millennium, its size could vary, and occasionally it could be replaced by a purely circular impression, but overall its shape and orientation remained the same (Englund 1998, 82 n. 175; Krebernik 1998, 314 with n. 746). By the Old Babylonian period, however, this grapheme had transformed into a true cuneiform wedge. More significantly, it appeared rotated ninety degrees with respect to the other graphemes (figure 4b; see also Englund 1998, 83 n. 179). While there are real differences between the lexical traditions of the third and second millennia (see, in general, Cavigneaux 1980-1983; note also Nissen 1981, 99, 105), it seems reasonable to assume that this grapheme remained vertical to the reader, particularly given the overall durability and prestige of the lexical tradition. As a corollary, the rest of the script must have shifted by this time, the marker serving as a stationary point of rotation. The question is precisely when this happened, and, unfortunately, there is a dearth of lexical witnesses between the Fara and early Old Babylonian periods.18 Fortunately, though, the same phenomenon occurs in a 18

Fragments of lexical texts are attested from the Old Akkadian and Ur III periods (Englund 1998, 88-89 fig. 24 and Veldhuis 1997, 16-18). To the best of my knowledge,

496

b. studevent-hickman

different context for which there is more than ample evidence, and that evidence places the change within the timeframe demarcated by the lexical sources. The cuneiform legal and administrative records provide the first real evidence for the phenomenon outlined above. In the earliest such documents (again, from the Uruk period), discrete objects were invariably counted with a rounded, vertical impression—precisely the same grapheme used to mark entries in the early lexical texts. This logogram for the integer one, as it were, retained its basic shape and orientation until the Fara period, when it started to appear as a true cuneiform wedge, and, as in the lexical texts, this metamorphosis was accompanied by a ninety-degree rotation of the rest of the script about this grapheme (figure 5).19 But the change was sporadic, and the original, rounded impression continued to appear in the majority of cases into the Sargonic period, disappearing completely from this context by Ur III times.20 While it cannot be proven, it seems reasonable, again, to assume that the orientation of the grapheme remained vertical to the reader, particularly given the fact that numbers are the most consistently written graphemes in the script—indeed, they are the progenitors of cuneiform itself. Regardless of whether one accepts the assumption, the Fara to Sargonic periods clearly represent none of them bear the entry marker, so they offer nothing that would allow us to date the change more precisely. 19 The texts in figure 5 are probably from Fara (Powell 1973, 100). Other possible examples of the rotation include Jestin 1937, pl. CXIII no. 465; pl. CXII no. 467; and pl. CLXXII no. 906. The qualification “possible” is necessary for two reasons: First, Jestin’s copies can be unreliable (Biggs 1974, 36). Second, I have not yet found other texts corresponding to these examples in which the same items are counted with the original notation. This is an important control for the argument presented here, for it is well known that different notational systems were used to count different objects in the Uruk period and that, in Old Akkadian times, certain objects were simply more prone to being counted with wedges, even when rounded impressions were still the norm (see Gelb 1970a, xx). Note, incidentally, that this development is generally presented as if the grapheme for one rotated, not the rest of the script (e.g., Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993, 140). This is a direct result of the fact that most introductions to cuneiform present the earliest tablets with the script in the horizontal position, an “error” acknowledged but carried out nonetheless. 20 The rounded impression continued to appear as part of a system of notation for workers in Ur III administrative texts. There, both rounded impressions and cuneiform wedges appear, and in both directions. Unfortunately, this system remains largely undeciphered. According to Nissen, Damerow, and Englund (1993, 25, cf. 120, 140), rounded numbers were still used in Ur III times, but I know of no evidence for this outside this context.

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

497

the “transitional stage” in the writing of numbers.21 As argued here, they also mark the first real evidence for the rotation of the script as a whole.22 Given the relative abundance of administrative and legal texts from the third millennium, it may be possible to trace the implementation of the rotation in more detail. In some texts from Fara, only the direction of the rounded impression is changed, illustrating, essentially, the first step in the overall process (see, for example, Jestin 1937, pl. CXIII no. 465); in others, rounded impressions of the original orientation appear alongside cuneiform wedges that have rotated, illustrating the simultaneous use of the original and final systems (see esp. Jestin 1937, pl. CLXXII no. 906: 1; pl. CXIII no. 465: ii: 1’).23

21

Gelb 1955, 178-179. Gelb and others consider the Sargonic period to be the initial stage of the change, but these examples clearly show that it was taking place already in Fara times. 22 I have intentionally left the so-called Personenkeil, which undergoes a similar development, out of this discussion. In the Fara period, the entry marker from the lexical texts (or the logogram for one, if you prefer) was adopted as a prefix for personal names—hence the designation—appearing specifically in rosters or before the names of witnesses in legal texts. In the second millennium, the grapheme became, for all intents and purposes, a determinative for personal names, in which case it appeared, predictably, as a cuneiform wedge rotated ninety degrees with respect to the other graphemes. In the interim, and even in the Fara period itself, the use of this grapheme was somewhat unpredictable; moreover, it could appear as a rounded impression or cuneiform wedge in either direction (in the case of the latter, it could even appear at an angle). As with the notation used for workers in the Ur III corpus (see n. 20 in this article) the shape and direction of the Personenkeil involved a host of social and economic factors that are not yet understood. Nonetheless, the Fara and Sargonic periods still represent a transitional stage of the writing of this grapheme, a stage that may reflect the rotation of the entire script (this observation, originally made by Piotr Steinkeller [personal communication], provided the impetus for this article; for a detailed discussion of the Personenkeil and its development, see Krecher 1974, 161-165; cf. Edzard 2004 and Gelb 1955, 324). 23 It could be argued that the simultaneous use of the original, rounded impressions and rotated cuneiform wedges illustrates that the numerals rotated, not the script. This may have been true initially, but it was clearly short-lived. In support of this, I know of no examples where the wedge appears in the original orientation alongside a rounded impression that had rotated. Since it remains almost certain that the end result preserved the original orientation, such cases must represent a period in which the older system had not yet “caught up” to the new. It may be noted here that a similar alternation occurs elsewhere in Fara texts: the grapheme for one is also rotated in compound graphemes of which it is one of two components (note, e.g., ]IxA’ and ]IxDI’; see Steinkeller and Postgate 1992, 15). Alternations having nothing to do with this grapheme are attested in other systems at this time as well (see Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993, 59, 64).

498

b. studevent-hickman

Combined with the evidence cited above, these examples place the onset of the rotation in Fara times, and the fact that there are so few attestations from this period supports this further still. The Sargonic period is something altogether different: at that time, the number of attestations of the rotated wedge increases considerably, with a noticeable spike during the reign of Shar-kali-sharri, the son of Naram-Sin (Gelb 1970a, xix-xx).24 By the end of the dynasty, the new system was used almost exclusively (Gelb 1970b, xxii). Other changes within the paleographic tradition may reflect this development. In the Fara period some tablets (namely, lexical and literary texts and some administrative texts) start to become more oblong (Deimel [1924] 1968, 2*), but by and large the older, more “spheroid and square” tablets predominate, and continue to do so until the time of Naram-Sin (Steinkeller and Postgate 1992, 7 citing Westenholz 1975, 3-4; cf. Foster 1982, 3). Beginning with his reign, longer, more “pillow-shaped” tablets are the general rule, so much so that the fundamental variable in tablet size is length (Gelb 1955, 169). In addition, the earlier tablets “tend to arrange the text in rather short and broad compartments” within narrower columns, “whereas in the later texts the compartments are longer and slimmer” and found in wider columns (Westenholz 1975, 3). This is surely connected to the development of single-line tablets noted above. Returning to the graphemes themselves, there are several other changes within them that may reflect the rotation. The standard examples here are the signs ’U and DA. According to Gelb (1955, 170 n. 4), [t]he tablets dated to Sargon have the first vertical wedge [in these signs] written with an upward stroke, and they are thus linked epigraphically to the Pre-Sargonic period. Tablets written after Sargon show this vertical wedge made with a downward stroke.

This observation should be taken with some caution, however, for it is based on a limited number of tablets from a relatively small area in northern Babylonia (Biggs 1973, 40). Moreover, there are several attestations of the “later” forms of these signs in Umma texts dating to the reign of Lugalzagesi, a contemporary of Sargon (Biggs 1973, 40), and of the “earlier” forms in tablets from Nippur dating to the 24 For examples from the Sargonic period, see Gelb 1955, 203 no. 7, 281 no. 34 (garments) and Gelb 1970a, pl. XIII no. 30, pl. XXXII no. 75 (shekels). Other examples are available by browsing the various volumes of Sargonic administrative texts.

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

499

reign of Naram-Sin (Westenholz 1975, 3).25 Still, this appears to be the general trend (Steinkeller and Postgate 1992, 7), one connected no doubt to the disappearance of certain wedges and the larger simplification of the script in Sargonic times (Sallaberger 1996, 64). This simplification created an unprecedented level of standardization and uniformity in the script, so much so that there is relatively little difference between graphemes in Sargonic texts from Susa, Babylonia, the Diyala region, and northern Syria (Gelb 1955, 177). Indeed, even graphemes in epigraphic inscriptions were carved to look like they were composed of paleographic wedges (Edzard 1980, 544-545, 548; Postgate 1995, 63).

Conclusions If one accepts the arguments presented here, there can be no doubt that the first large-scale implementation of the rotation of the cuneiform script took place in the Sargonic period, specifically during the reigns of Naram-Sin and Shar-kali-sharri. In the end this should come as no surprise, for the period as a whole is marked by unparalleled changes in virtually every aspect of Babylonian society. The effects of these changes were certainly far-reaching, and, where scribal practices are concerned, they may even have extended to the later lexical tradition, the other primary datum for the rotation (Cavigneaux 19801983, 616). On a more speculative level, the rotation itself may be an Akkadian (that is, Semitic) innovation: Semites were clearly present in Babylonia—including in Fara (Krebernik 1998, 261)—early in its history, and there is ample evidence for a distinctive writing tradition from the Akkadian heartland (namely, northern Babylonia and the Diyala region),26 the very area that supplies most of the attestations we have. 27 Indeed, both the Akkadians and their script may be 25 Note also that comparable developments were taking place in other graphemes in much earlier periods (Falkenstein 1936, 9; cf. Hallo 1957, 24-25 with 25 n. 2). 26 The Akkadian heartland may have been confined more precisely to the Diyala region; a recent study of Sargonic Akkadian isolates its origin to that area (Hasselbach 2005, esp. 232-235). 27 True, most of the Sargonic tablets in general come from this region, but the larger body of evidence for a distinctive, northern, writing tradition suggests that this is more than a coincidence (for additional remarks, see Westenholz 1975, 36).

500

b. studevent-hickman

connected to the larger Semitic phenomena that characterized northern Babylonia and much of Syria during the third millennium (Steinkeller 1993, esp. 115-116). Comparative studies may shed further light on this issue.28 This returns us to the question raised against proponents of the earlier date: why did the cuneiform script continue to appear vertical on so many objects? On the one hand, the explanation they offered is quite reasonable: epigraphic inscriptions do show a tendency to employ archaisms in ancient Mesopotamia, and they continue to do so today.29 On the other hand, the question is somewhat misleading, for it assumes that the rotation must be fully implemented.

28

Walther Sallaberger has provided the most detailed studies of third-millennium scripts from northern Mesopotamian, specifically those from Tell Mardikh (ancient Ebla) and Tell Beydar (see Sallaberger 2001 and 1996, respectively). As noted by him, the former shows a homogeneity in wedge thickness and a marked tendency to simplify graphemes into vertical and horizontal wedges, opening enclosed areas within the graphemes in the process (Sallaberger 2001, 442-443; 1996, 64 with bibliography). The Beydar script, by contrast, shows “none of these features” (Sallaberger 1996, 64); his additional comments on that script are worth quoting in full: [W]ithin Syria the cuneiform writing of Beydar shows the closest affinities to that of the nearest ED [Early Dynastic] site, Mari. Furthermore the cuneiform of Mari and Beydar is much more strongly linked with the Babylonian tradition than with that of Ebla. Looking at the map, this is not surprising at all, but the connections between Ebla and Babylonia are documented in various ways, and it must also be kept in mind that the Beydar tablets are the northernmost ED tablets found until now...Many questions must remain unanswered, because we lack comparative material first of all from two places, namely Kià [in northern Babylonia]...and the area of later Assyria. But even with this situation in mind, the best comparisons for Beydar writing still stem from Pre-Sargonic Nippur, Isin and Adab. Babylonia was linked with the ]abår triangle by the well-known trade route following the Tigris valley and then passing through the hilly landscape to the north of Jebel Sinjar. This route is also known from archival sources from Ebla. Apparently, the transmission of cuneiform writing into the ]abår triangle followed the same way. (Sallaberger 1996, 65) In light of these observations, it is certainly interesting that the scripts from Ebla and later Assyria followed a similar development while those from Tell Beydar and Babylonia followed another (for the distinction in terms of the Assyrian and Babylonian scripts, see Labat 1995, 4, 6; Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993, 123). This dichotomy may be reflected in later temple architecture as well (Matthiae 1975, 56 with bibliography). 29 Note especially the “Latinization” of U’s on buildings such as the “HARVARD SEMITIC MVSEVM.” If one denied the use of such archaisms, he or she would think U and V were interchangeable in written English. It should be noted, incidentally, that archaisms in cuneiform were not confined to the epigraphic record (see the examples in Edzard 1980, 560 and Hallo 1957, 24-25).

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

501

The exceptions that appear after both the Sargonic and Kassite periods illustrate that that was not the case. But this, too, should not be surprising, for cuneiform, like most scripts, always had a certain malleability about it. This is illustrated not only by the objects, some of which even have the script running in both directions,30 but also by the specific descriptions of the graphemes found in lexical sources.31 Both practicality and aesthetics will determine which way a script is presented; the cover and spine of nearly any book will show this to be true. In short, both dates for the rotation of the cuneiform script—more precisely, for its large-scale implementation—are essentially correct, and both can be corroborated by the evidence available. The reasons for the rotation remain unknown; however, foreign influence should always be considered when such a drastic change to a script occurs.32 In Mesopotamian history, the Sargonic and Kassite periods were truly momentous occasions, each marking a point when a non-native power represented Babylonia’s literate culture. In both cases major changes were introduced in the script, and in both cases precedents had already been set. In closing, I should stress that analyses of this type illustrate one fundamental point of which students and scholars of the ancient Near East are growing increasingly aware: we need to use all of the evidence available to answer the questions before us. Be it iconography, archaeology, or purely textual data, each of these domains has something all its own to contribute to our understanding of the past, and it is only by integrating them that we can fully deal with such questions as how cuneiform was read. In my experience, this is something Irene has always taught her students.

30

See the kudurrus in King 1912, pls. XLIII-LII, CIII; Toscanne 1917, 194 fig. 65; cf. the Neo-Babylonian seal in Orthmann 1975, 362 fig. 108b, where the script runs vertically, but from both top to bottom and bottom to top. 31 Note in particular the uses of the terms tenû, “inclined, tilted” (e.g., “the ’U2 sign is the BAR sign tilted”); gilimû “crossed (obliquely)”; and igigubbû “inversed.” The basic study of these terms is Gong 2000 (esp. 18-41). For examples showing the manipulation of proto-cuneiform graphemes, see Englund 1998, 58-59, 68 (note especially the appearance of the signs EN, SANGA, and MU’3 on p. 69 fig. 22 and 102 fig. 31). 32 As noted by Edzard (1980, 546), the classic example of foreign influence on the direction of a script is illustrated by Uighur, which was rotated precisely like the cuneiform script, but from horizontal to vertical.

502

b. studevent-hickman References

Abou-Assaf, A. 1981. Die Statue des HDYS#Y, König von Guzana. MDOG 113: 3-22. Abou-Assaf, A., P. Bordreuil, and A. F. Millard. 1982. La Statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bilingue assyro-araméenne. Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations 7. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations. Archi, A. 1988. Position of the Tablets of Ebla. Or n.s. 57: 67-69. Biggs, R. D. 1973. On Regional Cuneiform Handwritings in Third Millennium Mesopotamia. Or n.s. 42: 39-46. ———. 1974. Inscriptions from Tell Abå ‘al§bÊkh. OIP 99. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Buchanan, B. 1966. Catalogue of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in the Ashmolean Museum. Volume I: Cylinder Seals. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cavigneaux, A. 1980-1983. Lexikalische Listen. RlA 5: 609-641. Daniels, P. 1995. Cuneiform Calligraphy. In Nineveh, 612 BC: The Glory and Fall of the Assyrian Empire, ed. Raija Matilla, 81-90. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Deimel, A. [1924] 1968. Die Inschriften von Fara III: Wirtschaftstexte aus Fara. WVDOG 45. Osnabrück: Otto Zeller. ———. [1923] 1969. Die Inschriften von Fara II: Schultexte aus Fara. WVDOG 43. Osnabrück: Otto Zeller. ———. [1922] 1970. Die Inschriften von Fara I: Liste der archaischen Keilschriftzeichen. WVDOG 40. Osnabrück: Otto Zeller. Edzard, D. O. 1976. F§ra und Abu ‘al§bÊh: Die ‘Wirtschaftstexte.’ ZA 66: 156-195. ———. 1980. Keilschrift. RlA 5: 544-568. ———. 2004. Personenkeil. RlA 10: 431-432. Ellis, R. S. 1968. Foundation Deposits in Ancient Mesopotamia. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Ellison, J. L. 2002. A Paleographic Study of the Alphabetic Cuneiform Texts from Ras Shamra/Ugarit. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University. Englund, R. K. 1998. Texts from the Late Uruk Period. In Mesopotamien: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit, ed. Pascal Attinger and Markus Wäfler, 15-233. OBO 160/1. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag. Englund, R. K. and H. J. Nissen. 1993. Die lexikalischen Listen der Archaischen Texte aus Uruk. Archaische Texte aus Uruk 3. ADFU 13. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. Falkenstein, A. 1936. Archaische Texte aus Uruk. ADFU 2. Berlin: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

503

Fitzgerald, M. 2003. pisan dub-ba and the Direction of Cuneiform Script. Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin 2. . Foster, B. R. 1982. Archives and Record-Keeping in Sargonic Mesopotamia. ZA 72: 1-27. Gelb, I. J. 1955. Old Akkadian Inscriptions in Chicago Natural History Museum: Texts of Legal and Business Interest. Fieldiana: Anthropology 44/2: 161-338. Chicago: Chicago Natural History Museum. ———. 1970a. Sargonic Texts in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Materials for the Assyrian Dictionary 5. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1970b. Sargonic Texts in the Louvre Museum. Materials for the Assyrian Dictionary 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gelb, I., P. Steinkeller, and R. M. Whiting, Jr. 1991. Earliest Land Tenure Systems in the Near East: Ancient Kudurrus. 2 vols. OIP 104. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Goetze, A. 1950. Sin-iddinam of Larsa. JCS 4: 83-118. Gong, Y. 2000. Die Namen der Keilschriftzeichen. AOAT 268. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Green, M. W. 1981. The Construction and Implementation of the Cuneiform Writing System. Visible Language 15.4: 345-372. Hallo, W. W. 1957. Early Mesopotamian Royal Titles: A Philologic and Historical Analysis. American Oriental Series 43. New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society. ———. 1982. Review of Cuneiform Brick Inscriptions in the British Museum; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the City of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery; the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, by C. Walker. JCS 34: 112-117. Hasselbach, R. 2005. Sargonic Akkadian: A Historical and Comparative Study of the Syllabic Texts. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Heinrich, E. and W. Andrae, eds. 1931. Fara. Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft in Fara und Abu Hatab 1902/3. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Jestin, R. 1937. Tablettes sumériennes de ’uruppak conservées au Musée de Stamboul. Paris: E. de Boccard. Kaufman, S. A. 1977. An Assyro-Aramaic egirtu àa àulmu. In Essays on the Ancient Near East in Memory of Jacob Joel Finkelstein, ed. M. de Jong Ellis, 119-127. Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 19. Hamden, CT: Archon Books. ———. 1982. Reflections on the Assyrian-Aramaic Bilingual from Tell Fakhariyeh. Maarav 3: 137-175. King, L. W. 1912. Babylonian Boundary-Stones and Memorial-Tablets in the British Museum. 2 vols. London: Trustees of the British Museum. Krebernik, M. 1998. Die Texte aus F§ra und Tell Abå ‘al§bÊh. In Mesopotamien: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdynastische Zeit, ed., Pascal Attinger and Markus Wäfler, 237-427. OBO 160/1. Freiburg: Universitätsverlag.

504

b. studevent-hickman

Krecher, J. 1974. Neue sumerische Rechtsurkunden des 3. Jahrtausends. ZA 63: 145-271. Labat, R. 1995. Manuel d’épigraphie Akkadienne (signes, syllabaire, idéogrammes). 6th edition of the 1948 original, revised and enlarged by F. Malbran-Labat. Paris: Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner. Matthiae, P. 1975. Unité et développement du temple dans la Syrie du Bronze Moyen. In Le Temple et le culte: Compte rendu de la vingtième Rencontre assyriologique internationale organisée à leiden du 3 au 7 juillet 1972 sous les auspices du nederlands instituut voor net nabije oosten, 43-72 with plates IX-XVI. Publications de l’Institut historique et archéologique néerlandais de Stamboul 37. Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-archeologisch instituut te istambul. Messerschmidt, L. 1906. Zur Technik des Tontafel-Schreibens. Parts 1-3. Orientalistische Litteratur-Zeitung 9/4: 185-196; 9/6: 304-312; 9/7: 372-380. Molina, M. 1989. Una mina de Nar§m-Sîn. Aula Orientalis 7: 127-128. Neugebauer, O., and A. Sachs. 1945. Mathematical Cuneiform Texts. American Oriental Series 29. New Haven: American Oriental Society and the American Schools of Oriental Research. Nissen, H. J. 1981. Bemerkungen zur Listenliterature Vorderasiens im 3. Jahrtausend. In La lingua di Ebla: Atti del convegno internazionale (Napoli, 21-23 aprile 1980), ed. Luigi Cagni, 99-108. Istituto Universitario Orientale, Seminario di Studi Asiatici: Series Minor 14. Napoli: Don Bosco. Nissen, H. J., P. Damerow, and R. K. Englund. 1993. Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East. Translated by Paul Larsen. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Orthmann, W., ed. 1975. Der alte Orient. Propyläen Kunstgeschichte 14. Berlin: Propyläenverlag. Picchioni, S. A. 1980. La direzione della scrittura cuneiforme e gli archivi di Tell Mardikh Ebla. Or n.s. 49: 225-251. ———. 1984. Die Keilschriftrichtung und ihre Archäologischen Implikationen. Sumer 42: 48-54. ———. 1984-1985. The Direction of Cuneiform Writing: Theory and Evidence. Studi Orientali e Linguistici 2: 11-26. Postgate, J. N. 1995. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. Rev. ed. New York: Routledge. Powell, M. A. 1973. Review of Pre-Sargonic and Sargonic Economic Texts, by E. Sollberger. ZA 63: 99-106. ———. 1981. Three Problems in the History of Cuneiform Writing: Origins, Direction of Script, Literacy. Visible Language 15/4: 419-440. Reiner, E. 1960. Plague Amulets and House Blessings. JNES 19: 148-162. Sallaberger, W. 1996. Sign List: Palaeography and Syllabary. In Administrative Documents from Tell Beydar (Seasons 1993-1995), 33-67. Subartu 2. Turnhout: Brepols.

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

505

———. 2001. Die Entwicklung der Keilschrift in Ebla. In Beiträge zur Vorderasiatischen Archäologie: Winfried Orthmann gewidmet, ed. J.-W. Meyer, M. Novák, and A. Pruss, 436-445. Frankfurt am Main: Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Archäologisches Institut. Sollberger, E. 1972. Pre-Sargonic and Sargonic Economic Texts. Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum 50. London: The Trustees of the British Museum. Sommerfeld, W. 1999. Die Texte der Akkade-Zeit 1. Das Dijala-Gebiet: Tutub. IMGULA 3/1. Münster: Rhema. Steinkeller, P. 1993. Early Political Development in Mesopotamia and the Origins of the Sargonic Empire. In Akkad: The First World Empire: Structure, Ideology, Traditions, ed. M. Liverani, 107-129. History of the Ancient Near East / Studies 5. Padua: Tipografia Poligrafica Moderna. Steinkeller, P., and J. N. Postgate. 1992. Third-Millennium Legal and Administrative Texts in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. Mesopotamian Civilizations 4. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Thureau-Dangin, Fr. 1912. Notes assyriologiques. RA 9: 73-80. Toscanne, P. 1917. Sur la figuration et le symbole du scropion. RA 14: 187-203. Van Dijk, J., A. Goetze, and M. I. Hussey. 1985. Early Mesopotamian Incantations and Rituals. Yale Oriental Series 11. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Velhuis, N. 1997. Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects. Ph.D. diss., Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Walker, C. B. F. 1981. Cuneiform Brick Inscriptions in the British Museum; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the City of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery; the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. London: British Museum Publications, Ltd. ———. 1987. Cuneiform. Reading the Past. London: Trustees of the British Museum. Westenholz, A. 1975. Old Sumerian and Old Akkadian Texts in Philadelphia Chiefly from Nippur, Part One: Literary and Lexical Texts and The Earliest Administrative Documents from Nippur. Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 1. Malibu: Undena Publications.

Figure 1. The rotation of the cuneiform script as illustrated by two objects from ancient Mesopotamia a) Vertical script on a fragment of the “Stele of the Vultures” from the late Early Dynastic Period, Musée du Louvre (photo Erich Lessing/ Art Resource, NY)

506 b. studevent-hickman

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

507

Figure 1. b) Horizontal script on a slab from one of the reliefs found in the Northwest Palace of Assurnasirpal II, Room Z, British Museum (© copyright The Trustees of the British Museum)

Figure 2. A sample chart showing the development of several cuneiform graphemes from early pictographs (from Nissen, Damerow, and Englund 1993, 124 fig. 106; reproduced courtesy Hans Nissen)

508 b. studevent-hickman

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

509

Figure 3. The possible directions of cuneiform wedges (from Deimel [1922] 1970, 12)

Figure 4. Two examples of cuneiform lexical texts showing the orientation of the original entry marker vis-à-vis the other graphemes a) a composite of the archaic witnesses of the series Lu2 A (after Englund and Nissen 1993, 17 fig. 4; reproduced courtesy Dietrich Reimer Verlag)

510 b. studevent-hickman

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

511

Figure 4. b) drawing of a fragment of an Old Babylonian syllabary in the Louvre (AO 5399), provenance unknown (from Thureau-Dangin 1912, 80)

512

b. studevent-hickman

Figure 5. Two texts from the Fara period showing the proposed rotation of the script about the logogram for one (© copyright The Trustees of the British Museum; collations kindly provided by Irving Finkel) a) Sollberger 1972, pl. 4 no. 6 (BM 15828): see col. i, l. 1 [top right] (“5 pounds of copper”)

the ninety-degree rotation of the cuneiform script

513

Figure 5. b) Sollberger 1972, pl. 5 no. 9 (BM 26238): see col. iii, l. 1 [top right] and elsewhere (“4? pounds of copper”)

514

b. studevent-hickman

index

515

INDEX Achaemenid 11, 18, 205, 265–8, 270–2, 273, 277, 280–1 Achilles 298, 303 Adad-Nirari I 387 Adad-Nirari II 308 Adad-Nirari III 135 administrative texts 272, 318, 329, 332, 333, 336, 340, 496, 498 aesthetic, aesthetics 7, 10, 11, 18, 22, 71, 80, 101, 102, 246, 295, 452, 455, 456, 460, 462, 466–7, 495, 501 Agade (see Akkad) agency 101, 107, 245, 247, 265, 272 Ahuramazda 267 Ain D§r§ 80–1 Akkad 276, 322, 412, 445; Akkadian Empire, history, period 9, 87, 170, 278–282, 325, 326–7, 445, 486, 489; Akkadian art and culture 137, 165, 265, 266, 269, 273–5, 308, 317, 365; Akkadian language 10, 16, 23, 75, 136, 267, 272, 295, 319, 332, 381, 424, 426, 430, 431, 433, 492, 494, 495, 496, 499 Akkadisches Handwörterbuch 16 Alacahöyük 79, 81, 184 Alalah (Tell Atchana) 75, 77 Aleppo 75–7, 79, 80–1, 97, 98, 99, 460 alien (extra-terrestrial) 443–5 ancestor worship or ancestor cult 179, 184, 190, 191, 193, 196–7 animal 22, 29, 48, 50–1, 53, 87, 108–9, 143–4, 149, 164–5, 185, 192, 209–10, 229–30, 245–6, 365, 367, 374, 411, 414–7, 419, 438, 441, 451 Annubanini 268, 288 Anshan 275 Anti-Lebanon, The (Syria) 450–1, 453, 455–6, 457–9, 462, 463, 464–6, 476, 477, 479 Anzu 306, 307, 308 Apsu 307 Archaeological Institute of America 18 archaizing script 490 Architectonics, architectonic, tectonic 69, 70–1, 73–4, 76, 79–81, 83, 88, 90

Asag 306, 308–9 Asakku (see Asag) Ashur (see Assur, city or Aààur, god) Ashurbanipal (see Assurbanipal) Ashurnasirpal II (see Assurnasirpal II) Aààur (god) 137, 138, 139, 142, 145, 304, 373, 380, 381, 389 Assur (site) 274, 278, 369, 370, 372–3, 386, 387, 389, 438, 442 Assurbanipal (or Ashurbanipal) 133, 135, 270, 276, 299, 444; North Palace at Nineveh (and sculptures) of 8, 9, 50, 101–115, 129, 130, 229–248, 250, 254, 255, 262, 270 Assurnasirpal II 133, 134, 144, 146; Northwest Palace at Nimrud (and sculptures) of 3, 7, 14, 70, 71, 88, 89, 103, 138–9, 150, 169, 170, 233, 243, 270, 507 Astiruwas 194–5 Atrisuhas 193, 204 attire 273, 317–8, 321, 325, 327, 329, 330–2, 335, 338–9, 340, 341, 378, 450, 454–5, 461–2, 464–6 awÊlu 380, 381, 382–3 Babylon 51, 87, 163, 266, 276, Babylonia 111, 113, 171–2, 267, 276, 279, 280, 304, 306, 367, 380, 387, 429, 486, 487, 488, 491, 498–501 Balawat (Imgur-Enlil) 84, 141, 142–3, 144, 147, 151, 157, 158 banquet 112, 129, , 325–7, 337, 340, 341 Bardiya 267 barley 10, 303, 411–9, 421, 425 Bavian Inscription 163, 172 beer 412–3, 419 Beersheba 53 Behistun (see Bisitun) Bel 168 Bilgames 306, 308 bird 48, 51, 52, 55, 308, 326, 336, 364, 365 Birklinçay 84, 141

516

index

Bisitun (Behistun) relief 265–282, 287, 291 bread 82, 186, 190, 193, 412, 415, 417, 418, 419, 423, 425, 429, 434 calendar 365, 418 Cambyses 267, 277 canon, Mesopotamian art 437, 445–6 caprid 48, 52, 53, 149 captive 102, 104, 106–11, 114, 267, 268, 269, 281, 370, 380, 383–6 Carchemish 8, 75, 76, 79, 81–2, 85, 88, 170–97, 201 ceremony (see also ritual) 10, 51, 52, 54–5, 69, 74, 76, 77, 81–3, 90, 133, 141, 143, 179–97, 210–3, 218, 239, 318–9, 321, 332, 338, 339–40, 451, 454, 458, 489, 494 Chaldaeans 108, 109–112, 121, 125, 126, 127 chariot 16, 185, 187–8, 230–3, 235–47, 250, 253, 255, 260, 261 Chicago Assyrian Dictionary 16, 295 Choga Mish, Late Uruk seal impression from 49, 64 College Art Association 18, 24–5 Columbia University 4, 15, 28, 30 court lady 317, 318, 319, 325, 327, 328, 330, 331, 339–40 craft workers 415 cup marks (hollows) 183, 188, 189 Cyprus 49, 74, 78 Cyrus I 270 Dalton School 23 Darius I 9, 265–82, 291 deity (see also god, goddess) 51, 54, 137, 138–9, 146–7, 162–71, 183, 185, 188– 90, 192–3, 195–6, 208–9, 214, 217, 275, 280, 296, 309, 318–20, 322–4, 328, 329–330, 332–3, 335, 337–8, 340–1, 380 Delphi 271, 292 Demeter 301–3 deportees, deportations 105, 108, 114, 370, 380, 386–7 DiyarbakÌr 84 dog 196, 229, 236–7, 241, 242, 256 door plaque 324, 326, 331, 336, 337–8, 350, 360 Dår Kurigalzu 50–1

Eannatum (see Stele of the Vultures) Ebabbar (see Sippar) Ebla (Tell Mardikh) 75, 76–7, 323, 330, 486, 500 Egypt 6, 14, 48, 53, 54 ,72, 108, 119, 120, 267, 297, 299, 300, 304–5, 445 Elam, Elamites 50, 66, 109–10, 112, 122, 123, 124, 125, 130, 171, 267–8, 272, 275, 276–7, 280–1, 444 Elephantine 267 Eleusinian Mysteries 299, 301–3 en or en 86, 215, 317–29, 331–3, 336, 338, 339, 363, 501 En-Gedi (Israel) 47 Enki/Ea 307, 308, 319 Enkomi 78 Enuma Elish 306 ereà-dingir 318–9, 320, 323, 328, 329, 331, 336, 337, 338, 339 Eridu 319, 412 erû 381 Esarhaddon 86, 135, 155, 243, 276, 304, 309 ethics, in collecting 19; in display 375; in scholarship 19, 23; in war 107 ethnoarchaeology 10, 449–50, 453, 458, 463, 467 ethnography 3, 11, 18, 415, 451, 457, 458, 459, 461, 464, 466 eunuch 194–7, 202, 383, 431 Faida 163, 165 fodder 411, 414–5, 416, 417 food 186, 340, 411, 412, 414, 415, 418, 426 Fort Shalmaneser 55, 148, 150–1, 159 garment 27, 231–2, 240, 243–4, 273, 326, 330, 331, 332–3, 338–9, 378, 415, 498 Gaumata 267, 278 gesture 89, 103, 107, 109–12, 137–9, 142, 146, 149–51, 162, 164, 169, 242, 327, 329, 338, 340, 376–7, 438 Gibson, McGuire 15 Gilgamesh 21, 22, 28, 273, 296–9, 301, 304, 306, 337, 366 god (see also deity, goddess) 8, 24, 48, 77, 79, 81, 86, 113, 137, 138, 142, 161–2, 165–72, 181, 183, 186, 188–9, 190–3, 195, 197, 209, 214–5, 217, 243, 275, 280, 295–300, 301, 302–9, 319, 321–

index 3, 325–7, 329, 330–2, 337–41, 365, 389, 417, 430, 437, 439, 442 goddess (see also deity, god) 34, 75, 191, 214, 298, 302, 303, 319, 320, 323, 325, 327–9, 330–1, 335–7, 339–40, 365, 367, 372, 438, 441–2 Golan 53 good shepherd, Assyrian king as 102, 114 Great Staircase 181, 183, 188–90, 193 Greece, Greek culture 9, 14, 22, 26, 28, 29–30, 72, 296, 297, 298, 299, 302, 303, 305, 440; in Persia 266, 270–3, 281 Gudea 3, 8, 14, 24, 137, 161, 333, 419 habitus 73 Hades 303 hair or hairstyle 111, 237, 238. 241, 242, 246, 267, 269–70, 279, 281, 302, 317, 324, 325, 326, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 335, 337, 338, 339, 340, 377, 456, 463, 467 Hala Sultan Tekke 78 Haldi 208–10, 213, 214, 215, 217 Halule 171 Hama 82 Hamanu 109–10, 122, 125 Hammurabi 437, 446, 491; Code of 276–7 Éarimtu 382–3, 385 Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 5, 14, 24, 25, 101, 440, 450, 451 Hasanlu 23, 51 Hatti 85, 164, 387 Hattuàa 75, 78–9, 180 Hattuàili I 75 Hauran, The (Syria) 450, 455–6, 457–8, 461, 464–6, 480, 481, 482, 483 headdress 34, 54, 267, 269, 273, 317, 321, 324, 325, 330–2, 336, 338–41, 449–50, 455–7, 460–3, 466–7 Hephaistos 298, 303 Herald’s Wall 181, 183, 185, 194 hierarchy 9, 14, 102, 209, 218, 239–40, 242, 245–7, 320, 341, 366, 376, 378, 380, 382, 384, 385, 445, 465 high priestess 317–341, 441 horse 4, 144, 229, 232, 235, 237, 240–1, 244–6, 261, 303, 458

517

human and divine spheres 322, 325–6, 341 human spouse of a deity 322 Humbaba 21–3, 29, 306 Huwawa 306–9 ideology 3, 7–10, 18, 22, 24–5, 28, , 72, 81, 87–8, 90, 102–3, 105, 107, 113, 115, 171, 180, 186, 196, 205–6, 218, 229–30, 233, 242, 244–5, 247–8, 274, 279, 321, 323, 340, 370, 376, 379, 381–2, 384, 387–8, 440 Iliad 298 illicit trade in antiquities 18 Imperial religion 206, 208, 210 India 10, 18, 27, 444 Inshushinak 275, 277 International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East 18 Ishtar (also temples at Nineveh and Assur) 21, 28, 34, 268, 279, 365, 371, 372, 373, 380, 381, 384, 438, 442 Iàtar-’awuàka 80–1 jewelry 10, 240–1, 242–4, 332, 338, 370, 452, 454–5, 458–9, 460–1, 462, 464–6 John of the Cross 300, 301 K-12 curriculum 23, 24, 25, 26 Kamanis 195 Karhuhas 192 Karkamià (see Carchemish) Katuwas 82, 88, 179, 186, 188, 190, 191–5, 197 key symbol 10, 411, 416, 419 Khinis System 162–4, 166, 167–9, 171, 177, 178 Khorsabad 50, 65, 137, 141, 166, 167, 279 king 8, 16, 34, 53, 54–5, 74, 75, 80, 82–7, 101–3, 105, 106, 107, 112, 113–4, 130, 133–4, 136, 137–40, 142, 144–6, 147, 148–52, 161–72, 179, 182, 185, 188–97, 205–218, 224, 230–3, 235, 237–8, 240–8, 267, 273–6, 279–280, 298, 304, 308–9, 319–23, 325, 326, 327, 329–33, 337, 338, 339–41, 363, 369–372, 373, 381, 383, 385–6, 388– 9, 430, 437, 438, 439, 441, 442–3, 445; kingship 7, 9, 22, 28, 55, 136–7, 179, 180, 184, 186, 187–8, 190–7,

518

index

210, 215, 217, 246, 248, 274, 278–80, 298, 304, 320–3, 341 King’s Gate 82, 181–2, 184, 186, 192–3, 204 koine 72, 78, 80, 87, 89 Kubaba 191, 192 kudurru 489, 501 kulålu 55 kur 308 Kurban Höyük 413 Lachish 106, 108, 118 landscape 9, 14, 24, 54, 76, 82, 84, 105, 108, 112, 134, 140, 141–2, 144, 152, 206, 209, 211, 500 lexical texts 495–6, 497, 510 libation 143, 144, 183–4, 186, 189–90, 210, 324, 327, 340 Lindbach Award for Distinguished Teaching 15 lion 9, 51, 53, 81, 167–8, 183–4, 189, 193, 216, 229–234, 236–8, 240–7, 250, 251, 252, 279 Long Wall of Sculpture 181, 183, 185–6, 189–90, 192, 203 Lullubi, 268, 269, 275 Luristan bronzes 50 Lyre of Ur, “Great” 437–445 MacArthur Prize 16, 17 Malatya 76, 81–2, 85, 184 Maltai 163, 165–7, 176 Mamu 84 Manishtushu 274, 279 Marching and Chowder Society 15 Marduk-apla-iddina II 270, 271, 290, 491 Mari 75, 167, 279, 324, 327, 331, 339, 366, 387, 500 Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Massachusetts 18, 440 Megiddo, pictorial paving slab 54, 67 melammu 9, 295–310 Middle Assyrian Palace Decrees 383 mountain sheep 50, 51 muÉÉu 385 Muràili I 74, 75, 78, 84 Na’aman, Nadav 15 Nabonidus 271, 430 Nahal Mishmar (Israel) 47–55

nakru 384 Naram Sin 137, 170, 269, 275, 279, 491, 498–9; Stele of 9, 14, 137, 265–6, 269–70, 273–8, 280–1, 289, 293, 446 narrative 14, 17, 22, 26, 69–90, 101–9, 112–4, 143, 150, 170, 233, 243, 267– 8, 367, 376, 441, 453, 462 NASA 96, 443, 444, 448 Nebuchadnezzar I 277 Nebuchadnezzar II 430 Neo-Assyria art and culture of 3, 7, 8, 11, 14, 17, 101–115, 133–52, 164, 170, 171, 229–48, 269–70, 273, 295, 299, 384–5, 397, 398, 449, 491; history and language of 105, 114, 133, 161, 163, 168, 279, 372, 374, 485, 492, 494 Nergal 86, 299–300, 304, 309 netherworld 296, 297, 298–301, 302, 303–5, 306, 308–9, 462, 464 Nimrud (see also Assurnasirpal II, Northwest Palace of) 3, 70, 71, 146, 148, 156, 170, 270, 373, 460–1, 471, 472 Nineveh (see also Assurbanipal, North Palace of and Sennacherib, Southwest Palace of) 50, 66, 101, 138, 139, 162– 3, 171–2, 270, 279, 372, 439 Ninlil 166–7, 365 Ninurta 81, 86, 146, 170, 304, 306, 308 Nippur 15, 333, 334, 336, 498, 500 Northern System 162–3, 165–9 numerals (graphemes for) 497 Old Babylonian 21, 33, 34, 275, 304, 306, 308, 366, 369, 371, 374, 378, 424, 427, 430, 485, 486, 487, 491, 495, 511 Oriental Institute, University of Chicago 15, 29, 317 orthostat 8, 69–90, 95, 97, 98, 99, 148– 50, 180, 183–6, 188–9, 193, 194 ossuaries, clay 48, 53 Paleography/paleographic evidence 486– 7, 489–90, 494–5, 498–9 Pasargadae 270–1 patronage 80, 243–5, 273 pedagogy 22–31 Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary 16

index Persepolis 239, 266, 270–1, 272, 282 (p)ilku 381 Porada, Edith 4, 15, 29, 51, 52, 55 presentation scene 14, 34, 319, 328, 336, 337, 340 prestigious architecture (bâtiment de prestige) 52, 77, 78, 83, 88, 89–90 procession 51, 54–5, 106–0, 142–4, 151, 165, 181, 183, 185, 188, 192–3, 195– 6, 202, 239, 243, 386 Processional Entry 181–2, 185, 192, 195–6 propaganda 18, 28, 102, 105–6, 115, 163, 165, 170–1 Proust, Marcel: 103–4 provenanced antiquities 18 puluÉtu 296–8, 306, 307 qadiàtu 382 qarnu 50 radiance 9, 295–310 Ras Ibn Hani 78 Rebel Lands 308, 309 reception 14, 18 regalia 304, 318–9,330, 332, 333, 341 Reich, Sigismund Sussia 450–4, 457, 461–3, 464, 476–7 rhetoric 7, 9, 17–8, 54, 70, 72, 87, 88–9, 114, 265, 297, 301, 423, 440 Rimush 278 robe 34, 111, 137, 270–1, 273, 274, 280, 302, 332, 333, 338, 341; flounced 317, 324–6, 327, 329, 330–3, 335–7, 339; fringed 138, 149, 317, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 338; pleated 271, 317; tufted 327, 330, 331 Rome 14, 28 Royal Buttress 181, 182, 185, 192, 193, 195–6, 202 Royal ideology 8, 9, 10, 102, 113, 205, 321 ßâÉu 385 ’apinuwa (Ortaköy) 78 Sargon II (Sargonid Period) 50, 105, 113, 135, 137, 141, 167, 212, 243, 279, 386 Sargon of Akkad (Sargonic Period) 278, 279, 321, 485, 489, 496, 497, 498–9, 500, 501

519

Sar-i Pul 268, 288 ’ariààa (KuâaklÌ) 78 ’arri-kuàuh (Piyaààili) 79 Scorpion Beings 296–9, 301, 307, 309 seal, sealing, seal impression 9, 14, 22–3, 29, 33, 34, 48–9, 52, 54, 62, 63, 64, 137, 139, 171, 216, 217, 268, 270, 274, 279, 317–320, 324–330, 336–7, 339–40, 348, 349, 351, 352, 353, 354, 374, 443, 462, 486, 487, 491, 492, 501 seated figures 76, 109, 110, 151, 184, 186, 190, 192, 193, 280, 300, 302, 325–8, 337, 379 semiotics 14, 439 Sennacherib 8, 86, 101, 106, 108, 111, 113, 135, 139, 145, 161–172, 243, 276; Southwest Palace at Nineveh (and sculptures) of 102, 106, 108, 111–2, 145, 161–172, 439 Shalmaneser I 386, 387 Shalmaneser III (also see Fort Shalmaneser) 84, 134–5, 141–5, 154, 171 Shamash 275 Shamshi-Adad I 278, 279 Shamshi-Adad V 135 Shar-kali-sharri 274, 498, 499 Shulgi-simti, 363–7 Shutruk-Nahhunte 275, 277, 280, 444 Simpson, Elizabeth 16 Sin 166, 168 sinnià§tu àa ekalli 383 Siphnian Treasury, Delphi 271, 292 Sippar 275, 277, 280 ’iru Maliktha 163 Source of the Tigris 84, 141 stag 50–1, 53 statue, statuette 8, 24, 52, 75–6, 87, 137, 146, 161, 183–4, 186, 189–90, 192–3, 200, 202, 204, 248, 274, 276, 279, 317, 327, 329, 333–7, 341, 355, 356, 358, 359, 385, 419, 437, 446, 460, 491–2 status 25, 27, 52–3, 111, 161–2, 165, 179–80, 187, 190–1, 194–7, 218, 240, 242–8, 320, 327, 331, 339, 341, 365, 370, 373, 378–9, 381–4, 418, 443, 445, 455, 457, 460–1, 464–6 Stele of the Vultures 15, 24, 506 style 9, 14, 17–8, 22, 24–7, 28, 52, 70,

520

index

71, 72, 78, 81, 90, 101–3, 111, 138–9, 148–9, 151, 163, 189–90, 193, 266, 269–75, 277–81, 301, 325, 326, 333, 337–8, 370, 374, 377, 388, 453, 456, 494 Suhis I 82, 187, 191–2 Suhis II 179, 186, 188–93, 195, 197, 203 Sumerian language 16–7, 21, 295, 306, 308, 309, 319, 322, 332, 363, 365, 415, 416, 417, 418, 431, 432, 494 ’uppuliliuma I 79 Susa 48, 49–50, 52, 62, 272, 274–7, 280–1, 444, 499 Symbolic power 134, 206, 215, 218 Symeonoglou, Sarantis 13 Syro-Hittite 69–70, 72, 76, 81, 83, 85, 87, 90 Tablet of Destinies 306–7, 308 Tadmor, Hayim 4, 85, 105, 113, 114, 163 Tadmor, Miriam 15, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, tarbouche 456–7, 461, 464, 466, 480, 481, 482 Taàmetu 168 technology 30, 72, 76, 83, 85, 89, 90, 370, 388 Teleilat Ghassul (Jordan), “Henessy Fresco” 53–4 Telipinu 79 Tell Beydar 493, 500 Tell ed-Der 412 Tell es-Sweyhat 414 Tell Fara 485, 488, 489, 495–9 Tell Halaf 82, 492 Tell Hamam et-Turkman 414 Tell Ta’yinat 82 Tello 278, 333, 334, 338, 411 Teààub 77, 79, 85 Teumman (Elamite king) 112, 130 Theodore Macridy 79 Tiamat 170, 306–7 Tiglath-pileser I 83, 84–5, 86, 87, 89, 134 Tiglath-Pileser III 87, 105, 135 Til Tuba; battle of 112, 128 Tilmen Höyük 75, 77, 79, 95 town models 55

Tukulti-Ninurta I (and Kar-TukultiNinurta) 10, 369–70, 372–4, 379, 381, 383, 384–9 Tukulti-Ninurta, altar of 437–446 Tukulti-Ninurta II 134 Ugarit (Ras Shamra) 78, 460, 493 Ugaritic (language) 434 Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince 299, 301 University of Chicago 16, 318 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 13, 15, 23, 450 unprovenanced antiquities 18, 446 Ur 319, 319, 320, 322, 323, 326, 327, 329, 331, 332, 333, 334, 336, 365, 376, 416, 437, 443, 460, 461–7; Royal Cemetery of (or Royal Tombs of) 29, 326, 438, 442, 450, 461–7, 478 Ur III Period 9, 14, 161, 320, 321–3, 328–9, 330, 331, 332, 333, 336, 337– 8, 340–1, 363, 366, 412, 415, 485, 487, 488, 495, 496, 497 Urartian temple 205, 207, 208, 211, 212, 214 Urartu 207, 210, 213, 214–5, 218 Ura-Tarhunzas 186, 191, 194 urban armature 78 Uruk (culture) 48–9, 52, 62, 63, 64, 320, 323, 327, 437, 440, 485, 487, 491, 495, 496 Uruk (site) 49, 273, 319, 321, 322, 327, 332, 333, 334, 336, 438, 489 vignettes 101–15, 236, 278 visual literacy 25, 26 Wadi el-Makkukh (Israel), Warrior’s Tomb 54 Warka vase (or Uruk vase) 14, 323 437–446 Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri 13 Water Gate (of Carchemish) 181, 182, 184, 186, 190, 191 Well Relief (of Aààur) 168 winged disc (or disk) 138–9, 267, 270, 272, 281 Winter, Irene J. 3–11, 13–9, 21–32, 35–43 (bibliography of), 47, 54, 55,

index 69–70, 71, 89, 101, 102, 105, 114, 133, 137, 139, 150–1, 161, 164, 166, 179, 180, 187, 205, 218, 233–4, 248, 265, 266, 271, 273, 281, 295, 307, 309, 317, 323, 324, 326, 330, 331, 332, 363, 367, 369, 411, 419, 423, 438, 444, 445, 446, 450, 462, 463, 467, 485, 501

workshop 53, 239, 372, 416 Yariris 179, 188, 190, 192, 194–7 Yesemek 79 Zincirli 76, 82 zirru 321, 323, 336 Zohab 268

521

xvi

table of contents