Stele from Kürtül
The stele of Kürtül is a late Hittite monument from the area around Maraş in southern Turkey . It is exhibited in the Kahramanmaraş Archaeological Museum and has inventory number 197.
Find
The stele was excavated in 1963 by farmers looking for building blocks in a field near the town of İsmailli south of Kürtül in the central district of the Turkish province of Kahramanmaraş . In the same year Nihat Eray, the museum director at the time, took them to the Kahramanmaraş Archaeological Museum. It was first published in 1964 by Mustafa Kalaç. The ancient orientalist Winfried Orthmann described the sculpture in 1971, the first edition of the inscription was presented by the Italian philologist Piero Meriggi in 1975. The British Hittite scientist John David Hawkins included them in the Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions in 2000 .
description
Only the upper part of the basalt stele has been preserved, roughly from the hip of the figure shown. The fragment has a height and a width of 64 centimeters and a depth of 23 centimeters. The relief is in good condition. The figure, turned to the right, stands out in high relief from the ground, the contours merge round into the shaped body surface. The head of the neck falls down in strands, the beard is braided into spiral curls. Eyes and ears are shown in correct profile view, the hands are detailed. The god wears a horned cap and a belted, short-sleeved tunic . The left, outstretched hand holds a three-pronged bundle of lightning , the right a battle ax, a sword can be seen on the belt behind the body. A winged solar disk hovers over the head. The upper corners of the stele are rounded.
On the back of the stele there is a four-line inscription in Luwian hieroglyphics . The condition is worse than on the front, various characters are illegible. It begins at the top left, continues in the shape of a bustrophedon and breaks off at the bottom left. In the first line, the builder introduces himself as Las, son of Laras (?), And then dedicates the work to the god Tarhunzas . The rest of the inscription is unclear, Tarhunzas and the sun god are mentioned again and 80 units of barley, perhaps as an offering.
Both the text and the representation with the typical posture and the elements of a bundle of lightning and an ax allow the figure to be identified with the Luwian weather god Tarhunzas. According to stylistic features, Orthmann assigns the relief to the Maraş III group and dates it to the Late Hittite III period . Because of the character shapes of the text, Hawkins gives the 8th century BC. Chr.
literature
- Mustafa Kalaç: A weather god stele and three reliefs in the Maraş Museum. In: Jaarbericht van het vooraziatisch-egyptisch genootschap Ex Oriente Lux 18, 1964, pp. 280–283.
- Winfried Orthmann: Studies on late Hittite art. (= Saarbrücker Contributions to Antiquity, Vol. 8) Habelt, Bonn 1971, ISBN 978-3774911222 , pp. 90, 235, 519 plate 38
- 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 , p. 271 plate 122.