Stele from İspekçür
The stele of İspekçür (also İspekçir) is a late Hittite monument from central Turkey with reliefs and remains of an inscription in Luwian hieroglyphics . It is exhibited in the Archaeological Museum Sivas and has the inventory number 342. It is believed to be in the 11th or 10th century BC. BC and is assigned to the Kingdom of Melid .
Research history
The stele was discovered in 1907 by members of the Cornell expedition to Asia Minor and the Assyro-Babylonian Orient ( Cornell University ) in the village of Yeşiltaş, formerly İspekçür, in the Darende district of the Turkish province of Malatya . The place is on the left, northern bank of the Tohma about 20 kilometers downstream from Darende, where such a stele was also found. According to the statements of the villagers, it came from the local citadel. It was broken into four pieces that were scattered around the village and used as a mortar to crush grain. The find was published in the report of the Hittite Inscriptions expedition in 1911. When the ancient orientalist Ignace Gelb visited Sivas in 1935 , the stele had already been in the Gök Medrese there for several years , from where it reached today's Archaeological Museum of the city via various intermediate stops. The next publication also came from Yellow. The text was first published in 1958 and again in 1975 by the Italian philologist Piero Meriggi . The Near East archaeologist Winfried Orthmann dealt in detail with the sculptures in his research on late Hittite art in 1971 , as did the archaeologist Rudolf Naumann in an essay from 1973. Finally, the British Hittite scientist John David Hawkins took the stele in 2000 with a new translation in his Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions on.
description
The stele, made up of four parts, is 2.27 meters high, and has an average width and depth of 46 centimeters. It is provided with reliefs and inscriptions on three sides, the reverse is unworked. The reliefs are made relatively flat, the writing is engraved, with the exception of two characters on the right side, which are raised.
Reliefs
The left side shows the picture of a female figure turned to the right. She is dressed in a long fringed robe and wears a polo shirt with a veil hanging over her shoulders. Her shoes are only partially preserved, but like those of the other two figures, they probably had raised tips. She holds a bowl in her raised left hand. It stands on a brick wall with a gate, i.e. a city wall. On the wall there is a kind of sign with no longer recognizable characters. A beardless man facing to the right is depicted on the front. His hair is rolled up at the nape of his neck. He is holding a lituus in his right hand , the left is raised and turned towards his mouth. He is standing on a mountain landscape. On the right side is a male figure turned to the left. His hair is tied at the nape of the neck and the clothes are the same as the other two. He holds the lituus in his left hand, the right pours a liquid from a libation jar into a two-handled jug standing at his feet. He stands on the back of a bull walking to the left. Due to the style and the inscription, Orthmann sees the stele in connection with the pictorial art of Malatya. The depicted are likely King Arnuwantis of Melid, possibly his grandson and his wife.
Inscriptions
Below the sculptures there are inscriptions in Luwian hieroglyphics on all three sides. It is not a circulating text, but at least two separate inscriptions. They are located at the break between the two lower fragments of the stele, so some parts of the characters are missing.
The left page probably contained three lines, the top of which appears to be clockwise. On the lower fragment, the last line can also be seen as clockwise, so remnants of lines in between should probably represent the second line to the left. King Arnuwantis is mentioned, possibly also his wife, who would then probably be the one depicted in the relief.
The text on the front page begins to the left at the top right and continues bustrophedon over the next and remnants of the third line. The last line on the lower fragment is clockwise again, so it seems to be the fourth. It may have continued on the third page. Here Arnuwantis introduces himself as the grandson of Kuzi-Teššub and son of PUGNUS-mili, the ruler of Melizi (Luwian for Melid).
In the single-line inscription on the right, perhaps the continuation from the front, "Arnuwantis, the grandson" is mentioned. Whether it is the same as on the front or whether a grandson of the former is meant here remains unclear.
Two individual hieroglyphs (-si-sa) can be seen above the head of the figure on the right-hand side , which indicate that another inscription was placed above the figures in the lost part of the stele. The two characters are not engraved like the others, but worked in raised relief.
Base surfaces of the sculptures left and in front
Front body
Front headboard
right side
Dating
Arnuwantis (I.) is presented in the text as the grandson of Kuzi-Teššub, who lived in the 12th century BC. Was king of Karkemiš . Even if “Arnuwantis, the grandson” is to be Arnuwantis II. And thus grandson of the former, this means a relatively early date for the stele. Hawkins suspects their origin to be in the late 11th or early 10th century BC. This assessment is also confirmed by Orthmann through stylistic analyzes.
The same succession of generations is described on Darende's stele .
literature
- Benson Brush Charles: Hittite Inscriptions ( Cornell Expedition to Asia Minor ). Ithaca / New York 1911, pp. 31-38 Figs. 33-39 Pl. XVIII-XIX.
- John David Hawkins: Corpus of hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions . Vol 1. Inscriptions of the Iron Age . Part 1: Introduction, Karatepe, Karkamiš, Tell Ahmar, Maraş, Malatya, Commagene. de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-11-010864-X , pp. 301–304, plates 142–144.
- Winfried Orthmann: Studies on late Hittite art. (= Saarbrücker Contributions to Antiquity, Vol. 8). Habelt, Bonn 1971, ISBN 978-3-774-91122-2 , pp. 117, 487, ( online ).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ignace Gelb: Hittite Hieroglyphic Monuments (= Oriental Institute Publications . Volume 45). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1939, pp. 30-31.
- ^ Piero Meriggi: Manuals di Eteo Geroglifico . Parte 2,3, 1975, pp. 43-46
- ^ Rudolf Naumann: The stele of Ispekçir In: Festschrift Heinrich Otten Harrassowitz, 1973 pp. 217–220
- ↑ each seen from the viewer