Arslantaş (Darende)
Coordinates: 38 ° 29 ′ 33.2 ″ N , 37 ° 19 ′ 58.2 ″ E
The late Hittite monument Arslantaş ( Turkish for lion stone ), also Arslantaşlar (plural) or Aslantaş (lar) , near Darende consists of two free-standing lion sculptures in an open landscape. You are at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. BC originated.
location
The sculptures stand between agricultural fields in the vicinity of the villages of Yeniköy and Yarımca in the Darende district of the Turkish province of Malatya , about 16 kilometers west of the district town of Darende. They cannot be assigned to the group of late Hittite sculptures from Maraş or to the Malatya group . Consequently, a historical affiliation to the kingdoms of Gurgum or Melid cannot be decided.
description
The two heavily weathered lions are free-standing sculptures in which only the stone block has been left under the body. The heads are fully plastic, both sides as well as the front and rear view are executed as a relief. The shoulders, thighs and legs are set apart from the body in the side view, the surfaces are flat and poorly developed. On the heads, the mane, ears, a broad nose and the wide open mouth with the tongue hanging out are carved out. The heads sit directly on the shoulders without a neck and are pulled back. The front feet with recognizable claws are pushed far forward, the back slopes backwards. The overall posture distinguishes the lions, as well as others from the environment, from other lion figures from the late Hittite period, which means that they cannot be assigned to any of the known groups. Although the figures are clearly identifiable as portal lions and are undoubtedly in situ , a structural connection is not visible. Winfried Orthmann assumes that they belong to their own group, although it remains unclear whether there was a center in which this independent tradition developed. He also attributes other lion sculptures from the area to the same workshop, including a poorly preserved one from Hunu and the portal lion from Sevdilli, which is on display in the Kahramanmaraş Archaeological Museum .
The archaeologists David George Hogarth , the participants of the Cornell expedition of 1907 and Piero Meriggi report badly weathered traces of hieroglyphic signs on various parts of the feet, but due to the poor state of preservation, the usability and the existence of an inscription by John David Hawkins are questioned. Tahsin Özgüç dates the lions to the 12th or 11th century BC. Chr.
Research history
The first report on the monument comes from the Prussian politician Karl Friedrich von Vincke (1858), after which numerous scientists visited the site, including David George Hogarth (1891), the Cornell expedition (1907), and later Hans Henning von der Osten (1927) ), Tahsin Özgüç (1947) and Piero Meriggi (1964). Some of them report that one of the lions had fallen over, which is also shown by photographs, apparently it was raised again. Extensive discussions are provided by Winfried Orthmann and John David Hawkins, among others.
Web links
literature
- Winfried Orthmann : Investigations into the late Hittite art (= Saarbrücker contributions to antiquity. Vol. 8, ISSN 0080-5181 ). Habelt, Bonn 1971, p. 118, (at the same time: Saarbrücken, University, habilitation paper, 1969).
- John David Hawkins : Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions. Volume 1: Inscriptions of the Iron Age. Part 1: Text introduction, Karatepe, Karkamis, Tell Ahmar, Maras, Malatya, Commagene (= studies on Indo-European linguistics and cultural studies. NF 8, 1). de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2000, ISBN 3-11-010864-X , p. 329, no. V.23.
annotation
- ↑ In the literature on the subject, the monument is often referred to as Arslantaş (Elbistan).