Tell Ain Dara
Tell Ain Dara ( Arabic تل عين دارة, DMG Tall ʿAyn Dāra ) is a settlement mound of an ancient residential city in northwest Syria , on which the remains of a temple from the late Hittite period were uncovered, the construction phases of which began in the 13th to 8th centuries BC. To be dated. The importance of the temple dedicated to the goddess Ištar results from the building sculpture made of black basalt in its own style .
location
Tell Ain Dara is located northwest of Aleppo in the fertile valley of the Afrin . A road leads from Aleppo via the small town of Dar Taizzah past the Simeon Monastery to the north through the valley. Four kilometers after Basuta , in the village of Ain Dara, a two-kilometer access road branches off to the west to the hill. Straight ahead to the town of Afrin is eight kilometers. This part of the Afrin Valley is the only arable plain within the northern Syrian limestone massif on which rain- fed agriculture was carried out during the Bronze Age . The oval hilltop rises 20 meters from the plain.
history
End of the 13th century BC The great Hittite empire probably collapsed due to attackers from the Aegean region ( sea peoples ). With the great political upheaval of this time, the layers of destruction of the Bronze Age city-states Ugarit and Alalach , which were within the Hittite sphere of influence, are explained. Sam'al , Karkemiš , Karatepe and Ain Dara belong to the late Hittite small states that formed in the following period and whose ruins could be located in northern Syria and Anatolia . In the three centers of power mentioned, the palaces were decorated with reliefs and sculptures, whereas in Ain Dara the temple was particularly lavishly designed.
In the 9th century, Ain Dara was part of the Aramaic small empire Bet Agusi ( Assyrian : Unqi ), whose main town Kinalua (Kunalua) is associated with Tell Ta'yinat on the Orontes (near Antioch ). With the advance of the New Assyrian Empire to the west, the temple was destroyed. The Assyrian King Shalmaneser III. (ruled 858–824), according to an inscription, conquered the fortified city of Mu-ú-ru and expanded it into a fortress. The place is localized with Ain Dara due to the location, excavation finds and the name Dārā , which could be a Semitic form of the Hurrian place name Mudra / u .
On an older settlement mound in the early Hellenistic period in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC After evaluation of ancient sources , the newly founded small town of Gindaros is assigned to three different places in the Afrin Valley: today's Djinderis, the Roman city complex Kyrrhos or possibly Ain Dara. In any case, one layer of Ain Dara contained remains from the Seleucid to Hellenistic times (late 4th to 1st century BC). At that time, the city was surrounded by a two meter high fortification wall. No finds from Roman times have emerged.
The one meter thick layer of earth above it allows the conclusion that Ain Dara was uninhabited until the Islamic period. Some small finds follow from the 7th century, until the Ottoman period in the 16th century, the place was continuously inhabited. A broader stratum from the 9th to 12th centuries included coins, household items, and farm implements. Apart from the excavated temple, few ancient remains of other buildings have been preserved on the settlement hill and the lower town, which was walled in the Aramaic period, on the plain in the east.
In 1954, a shepherd discovered a basalt lion in a burrow on the hill. As a result, excavations began in 1956, in which the base zone of the temple from the 10th / 9th centuries. Century was uncovered. After a long break, Ali Abou Assaf, director of the Syrian Antiquities Service in Damascus, continued the excavations from 1980 to 1985.
The temple was the target of Turkish air strikes during the Syrian civil war on January 26, 2018 during the Turkish military offensive on Afrin . According to estimates by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights , 60% of the facility was destroyed. According to an observer and the Syrian government, the facility was badly damaged by the Turkish bombardment.
temple
Assaf divided the development of the temple into three construction phases. The oldest, hypothetical temple from the end of the Bronze Age corresponded in its layout to the following. It was an Anten temple on a limestone platform with two columns at the entrance, a rectangular vestibule from which three steps led to the main hall and a cella raised again by a podium . In the second construction phase, decorative elements made of basalt were introduced, including the monumental figural steles and relief panels presented on the base zone. There was a material contrast between the light limestone of the static elements and the dark, superimposed blinding decorations made of basalt. In the third phase, the early Iron Age, a pillared walkway came on three sides added, lions and sphinxes orthostats and protomes -Decorations around it.
With its threefold structure, the temple is in the tradition of the Syrian tradition in the 3rd millennium BC. Chr. Developed longhouse temples. The structure of the temple corresponds to the Hittite house type of Bit Hilani with a square, 16.7 × 16.8 meter cella. The temple stood on an artificial terrace , covered with sphinx and lion reliefs, measuring 32 × 38 meters. An 11-meter-wide flight of stairs led to the outer courtyard, this led to the entrance steps on a portico supported by columns . There are three footprints about one meter long in the two steps, as a sign of the goddess Ištar's march into the temple and her presence in it. Such footprints are known from the Indian subcontinent, but extremely rare in the Middle East. At the side of the stairs two sphinxes greeted the believers. After the anteroom, two colossal basalt lions flanked the entrance to the main hall. Like the footsteps, the deity depicted in the cella was larger than life. A relief band led around the cella in the base area, which showed mountain gods, human-animal hybrid beings and dignitaries who all raise their hands in adoration at a height of 58 centimeters. They look like atlases that have nothing to wear. After this idea they took on the task of raising the cella as the place where the gods manifest themselves above the earthly realm into the heaven and domicile of the gods.
Under mountain god no deity is understood here, perched on a mountain, but a sacred, revered mountain. The mountain was depicted as a human figure, clad in a scalloped skirt up to the waist and whose feet can be seen. At the base area these figures appear in the middle of a group of three. They wear a conical cap with three to five pairs of horns on their heads.
The temple was probably dedicated to Ištar as the beloved of the northern Syrian mountain god. Only one representation was discovered that shows the goddess herself (relief of the "warlike Ištar"), but her attributes sphinx and lion are numerous, as are those of the mountain god, bull people and eagle-headed people. The best preserved reliefs are now in the Aleppo National Museum . The monumental basalt sculptures on site are badly damaged by large-scale flaking caused by the weather.
Dating of the portraits
The temple complex continued Hittite building traditions, especially in the design of the entrance with flanking animal figures and gateways. On the other hand, the idiosyncratic design of the sculptures at this location and that differed from that of the successor states of the Hittite Empire gave rise to speculations about their time of origin.
Ali Abou Assaf divides the building decor into three style sections: some reliefs on the base of the cella from 1300 to 1000 BC. BC, the protomes and reliefs of the entrance facade and on the cella to 1000 to 900, and further protomes, steles and relief fragments between 900 and 700 BC He dates the Ištar relief to the 8th century. For Winfried Orthmann , on the other hand, no major differences in style are discernible, which is why he dated all building sculptures between 1200 and 1000 BC. Dated. This would create a traditional connection with the somewhat more recent reliefs excavated in the citadel of Aleppo from the temple of the weather god (Haddu, Teššup , Tarhunza ), which date from the end of the 10th or the beginning of the 9th century. The protomes at the entrance to the main building probably come from the earliest construction phase, the reliefs on the colonnade are likely to have been created in the 11th century, the lions and sphinxes in front of the entrance, which differ most from Hittite models with their angular, strip-like lips, are likely to be a little younger be. The single lion placed a little above on the way to the temple is also dated to the 11th century.
Comparison of meanings
The tripartite division into staircase, vestibule and cella corresponds to the older temple in 2048 in the Palestinian town of Megiddo . The orthostats at the entrance to the temple and the cella show the Great Hittite style of the Central Anatolian centers of Hattuša and Alaca Höyük . In their effect on the viewer, the sculptures put the architectural structure of the temple in the background. The temple in Ain Dara also gives an impression of the Bronze Age temple in Hazor , which was destroyed in the 13th century and whose orthostats are poorly preserved.
The walkway received attention as an unusual architectural feature in this context. It can be compared with the handling of the Solomonic temple in Jerusalem described in the Bible . The cella of this First Temple , built in the 10th century BC. Was built, was also square with 11 × 11 meters. The construction plan as an antenna temple with double pillars at the entrance is accordingly. Its handling is being reconstructed as a three-storey building and should not have been structurally connected to the core building. In Ain Dara, the foundation of the walkway was also not connected to the core structure, and no information is given here about the number of floors. In both temples, walking around the temple must have been part of the cult. Before the discovery of Ain Dara, the temple of Tell Ta'yinat, excavated between 1935 and 1938, was recognized for its resemblance to the Solomonic temple. The temple there (building 2) was smaller and further away in time, it is dated to the 8th century.
literature
- Ali Abou Assaf: The Temple of Ain Dara. Damascus Research 3, Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1990. ISBN 3805311087
- Ali Abou Assaf: The Temple of Ain Dara in Northern Syria. Antike Welt 24, 1993, pp. 155-171
- Kay Kohlmeyer : On the dating of the sculptures by 'Ain Dara. In: Dominik Bonatz , Rainer M. Czichon, F. Janoscha Kreppner (eds.): Locations : Collected writings on the archeology and history of the ancient Near East . ad honorem Hartmut Kühne. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2008, pp. 119–130. ISBN 344705770X
- Mirko Novák : The Temple of 'Ain Dara in the Context of Imperial and Neo-Hittite Architecture and Art. In: Jens Kamlah, Henrike Michelau (ed.): Temple Building and Temple Cult. Architecture and Cultic Paraphernalia of Temples in the Levant (ADPV 41). Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 2012, pp. 40–54. ISBN 978-3-447-06784-3
- Winfried Orthmann : On the dating of the Ištar relief from Tell 'Ain Dārā. Istanbuler Mitteilungen 43, 1993, pp. 245-251
- Elizabeth C. Stone, Paul E. Zimanski: The Iron Age Settlement at 'Ain Dara, Syria. Survey and Soundings. BAR International Series 786, Oxford 1999
- Manfred Weippert: mountain gods, lions, bull and bird people. Reconstruction of the G 1 base from the temple of 'Ain Dara in Northern Syria. In: Cornelis G. den Hertog u. a. (Ed.): Saxa Loquentur. Studies on the archeology of Palestine / Israel. (Festschrift Volkmar Fritz). Münster 2003, pp. 227-256. ISBN 3934628346
- Paul Zimanski: The "Hittites" at 'Ain Dara. In: K. Aslihan Yener, Harry A. Hoffner u. a. (Ed.): Recent developments in Hittite archeology and history: Papers in memory of Hans G. Güterbock . Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake 2002, pp. 177-191
Web links
- John Monson: The New 'Ain Dara Temple: Closest Solomonic Parallel. Biblical Archeology Review 26 (32), 2000, pp. 20–35 (PDF file; 362 kB)
Individual evidence
- ^ Eugen Wirth : Syria, a geographical country study. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1971, map p. 145
- ^ Edward Lipinski: The Aramaeans: Their Ancient History, Culture, Religion. Peeters Publishers, Leuven 2000, pp. 202, 285
- ↑ Getzel M. Cohen: The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa. University of California Press, 2006, pp. 170 f
- ↑ "Syria war: Turkish air strikes 'damage ancient Afrin temple'" BBC January 29, 2018
- ↑ Syrian government says Turkish shelling damaged ancient temple. Reuters, January 28, 2018
- ↑ Manfred Weippert 2003, pp. 234 f, 238
- ↑ Orthmann 1993
- ↑ Kay Kohlmeyer 2008
- ↑ John M. Lundquist: The Temple of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future. Frederick A. Praeger, New York 2007, pp. 57-59
- ↑ John Monson, 2000 (weblink)