Hacibebekli stele
The Hacibebekli stele is a late Hittite monument from the area around Maraş in southern Turkey . It is exhibited in the Adana Archaeological Museum and has the inventory number 1297.
Find
The stele was found and published around 1911 by the British archaeologist John Garstang in a mill in the village of Hacıbebekli, six kilometers southeast of Türkoğlu in the province of Kahramanmaraş . The nearby hill Çoban Hüyük is believed to be the place of origin. Hans Henning von der Osten saw the stele in 1929 on the way to Maraş. In the Archaeological Museum of Adana , the date of receipt is given as May 19, 1932. It was also described by the German ancient orientalists Helmuth Theodor Bossert (1942) and Winfried Orthmann (1971). The British Hittite scientist John David Hawkins included them in the Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions . No excavations have yet been carried out at the site.
description
The basalt stele, rounded at the top, has a height of 1.19 meters, a width of 65 and a depth of 35 centimeters. The front is flat, the back is rounded at the edges. The lower right corner and the foot part are missing. The flat relief of a protective god can be seen in front. The god turned to the right wears a long piece of clothing with a fringed hem and a belt, a horned helmet and shoes with curved tips. The face is bearded, the hair falls in bundles on the nape of the neck. He is armed with a sword visible behind his body and holds a bow carried over his shoulder in his right hand. In the left he is holding an incompletely preserved prey by the hind legs, possibly a hare. The god stands on an animal, presumably a deer. The back and the rear part with a stubby tail are still preserved, on the right edge remains can be seen that could represent ears or antlers. The winged solar disk hovers above the head. These as well as the horned helmet identify the figure as a god, through the deer and the prey animal he can be classified as one of the numerous Hittite protective gods, probably as the protective god of the wilderness . The rock relief on Karasu , for example, shows a comparable representation of the motif “Patron God on Deer” .
The heavily weathered back and the side surfaces of the stele bore an inscription in Luwian hieroglyphics , nothing of which is legible. Only dividing lines indicate four or five lines.
A chronological classification can only be made on a stylistic basis by comparing it with other steles from the area around Maraş. Orthmann then dates the work to the late 9th century BC. Chr.
literature
- Winfried Orthmann: Studies on late Hittite art. (= Saarbrücker contributions to antiquity, vol. 8) Habelt, Bonn 1971 p. 90, 258–261, 484, plate 14 ISBN 978-3774911222
- John David Hawkins: Corpus of hieroglyphic Luwian inscriptions. Vol 1. Inscriptions of the Iron Age. Part 1: Text: Introduction, Karatepe, Karkamiš, Tell Ahmar, Maraş, Malatya, Commagene. de Gruyter, Berlin 2000, p. 277 plate 129 ISBN 3-11-010864-X .
Individual evidence
- ^ University of Liverpool: Annals of Archeology and Anthropology Vol. 4, 1912 pp. 126f. Plate XXIII