Bukan stele

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The Bukan stele comes from Tappeh Qalayci near Bukan in West Azerbaijan and was found during excavations in 1985. A second, subsequent fragment appeared in the antique trade in Tehran in 1990. The dimensions are approx. 80 cm × 150 cm. The inscription dates from the 8th or early 7th century BC. Only the lower half of the stele with 13 lines of writing has survived. They reproduce a formula of curse, which usually form the end of royal inscriptions.

inscription

The inscription is Aramaic , the dating is based on the style of the script and the linguistic expressions used. She promises all kinds of epidemics to those who remove the stele, because he has reviled the gods and Haldi (HLDY). The reading of the following sentence is unclear, he mentions either

  • Ḫaldi, who is in Muṣaṣir (MTTR), or
  • Ḫaldi, who is in Izirta / Zirta (Z'TR), but this vocalization is controversial.

Furthermore, a famine is threatened in a very poetic way: seven cows are supposed to breastfeed a calf without being full, seven women are supposed to bake bread in an oven and not be able to fill it, the smoke from a hearth fire and the sound of millstones are said to come from his land disappear. Its earth is said to be sown with salt and bear only bitter herbs. Hadad and Ḫaldi are supposed to overturn the chair of the king, who puts his name (instead of the original, not preserved king's name) on the stele . The voice of the weather god should not be heard in his country (no thunder, which means that no rain falls), and the whole curse of the stele should hit him.

Overall, this curse formula is much more imaginative than on Urartian inscriptions, which usually only threaten that Ḫaldi and Šiwini should destroy the culprit "under the sun". Similar curse formulas are known from Tell Fecherije and Sefire . In a prophecy against Babylon, Jeremiah 25:10 describes the silence of the millstones ( And I let them lose the voice of bliss and the voice of joy, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mills and the light of the lamp ).

A. Lemaire assumes that the stele was written by the Mannean king Ullusunu.

Translations

A translation of the inscription was first submitted in 1991 by the Iranian linguist Bashâsh Kanzaq.

meaning

The stele of Bukan is the only Aramaic inscription that mentions the name Ḫaldis. It also gives an important clue for the spread of the Aramaic language, which then became one of the state languages in the Achaemenid Empire . The site belonged to the 9th – 7th Century to Mannai. If the assignment to Ullusunu is correct, the stele would also be the first evidence of a Ḫaldi cult in Mannai. However, this seems unlikely, since he was the state god of the enemy Urarṭu . Salvini wants to see the stele as a state treaty, perhaps between Urarṭu, represented by Ḫaldi, and Mannai, represented by the weather god.

literature

  • H. Donner ; W. Röllig : Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions. Volume 1. 5th, expanded and revised edition. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-447-04587-6 , no.320.
  • Israel Ephʿal: The Bukān Aramaic Inscription: Historical Considerations. In: Israel Exploration Journal 49, 1999, ISSN  0021-2059 , pp. 116-121.
  • R. Bashâsh Kanzaq: La lecture complète de l'inscription de Bukân. In: Recueil d'articles du premier colloque Langue, inscriptions et textes anciens, Shiraz 12-14 esfand 1370 (2-4 Mars 1991). Tehran 1375/1996, pp. 25-39. [Persian]
  • André Lemaire: Une inscription areméenne du VIII e siècle av. J.-C. trouvée à Bukân (Azerbaïdjan Irania). In: Studia Iranica 27, 1998, ISSN  0772-7852 , pp. 15-30.
  • André Lemaire: Jérémie xxv 10b et la stèle araméenne de Bukân. In: Vetus Testamentum 47, 1997, ISSN  0042-4935 , pp. 543-545.
  • Miroslav Salvini: The influence of the Urartu Empire on the political conditions on the Iranian plateau. In: Ricardo Eichmann , Hermann Parzinger (Hrsg.): Migration und Kulturtransfer. The change in Near Eastern and Central Asian cultures in the upheaval from the 2nd to the 1st millennium BC (= colloquia on prehistory and early history. Vol. 6). Habelt, Bonn 2001, ISBN 3-7749-3068-6 , pp. 343-356.
  • Michael Sokoloff : The Old Aramaic Inscription from Bukān. A Revised Interpretation. In: Israel Exploration Journal 49, 1999, pp. 105-115, Errata p. 275.
  • Javier Teixidor: Résumé des travaux 1997/98. In: Antiquités Sémitiques. Annuaire du Collège de France 1997/98, ZDB -ID 2259014-6 , pp. 389-400.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Sokoloff: The Old Aramaic Inscription from Bukān. 1999, note 111, especially because of the use of the 'ain.
  2. ↑ Michael Sokoloff: The Old Aramaic Inscription from Bukān. 1999, p. 111.
  3. ↑ Michael Sokoloff: The Old Aramaic Inscription from Bukān. 1999, p. 106
  4. ↑ Miroslav Salvini: The Influence of the Urartu Empire on the Political Conditions on the Iranian Plateau. In: Ricardo Eichmann; Hermann Parzinger (ed.): Migration and cultural transfer. Bonn 2001, p. 353.