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Urartian Stones in the Van Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

P. Hulin
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Extract

Professor F. W. König published in 1956 a note listing and describing the stones lying in the Van Museum, as far as he was able to do so from photographs of them taken in 1954 by Professor H. Gamerith and placed at his disposal. Professor König's note included two sketches, based on the photographs, of the stones as they lay; and he gave to each stone in the sketches a number by which he referred to it in his list.

Visits to the Van Museum made in the course of journeys in eastern Turkey undertaken by the writer in September 1956 (accompanied and assisted by his wife) and in September 1957 (alone) have made possible the following amplified account of the Urartian stones in the museum. The numbers assigned to the stones in König's sketches are used as a means of reference; information already available in König's note or in his Handbuch is not repeated, except that identifications made by him from the photographs are repeated (in parenthesis) to make the list complete; numbers not occurring in the series relate to stones which could not be seen to bear any Urartian inscription.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 8 , December 1958 , pp. 235 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1958

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References

1 AfO. XVII 359–60Google Scholar.

2 The writer thanks the Turkish central and local authorities and the authorities of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara for helping him to make these journeys, and the Trustees of the Arnold Historical Essay Fund of the University of Oxford and the Council of the British Academy for helping to meet his expenses in making them.

3 König, F. W., Handbuch der chaldischen Inschriften ( = AfO. Beiheft 8)Google Scholar, Graz, Teil I 1955, Teil II 1957. Abbreviated as HChI. The writer thanks Professor König for his kindness in sending him proofs of parts of Teil II before publication, and in lending him copies of the photographs on which his note was based.

4 In descriptions of stones with one inscribed (or carved) surface, it is that surface, regarded as standing vertically with the inscription (or carving) reading horizontally, to which the terms “height” and “width” respectively are applied, regardless of their present position on the ground; descriptions of other stones are appropriately expanded.

5 It is the upper part of the tail, and the shadow to the left of it, which are represented by the mark on the front surface of the stone in König's sketch.

6 This piece of information was kindly supplied by the Van Museum Curator, Bay Hakkı Yakupoğlu.

7 The back of the block, though roughly vertical, is otherwise fas the photograph on pl. XXXIII shows) irregularly shaped; its thickness, which consequently varies considerably, is least at the tail end.

8 Herzfeld's fig. 353 also shows, on the right, a drawing of part of a bull from pl. XVIII of Pharmakowski's article in Materiali po Arkeoloji Rusii XXXIV (1914)Google Scholar, and he spoke (op. cit. p. 248) of “the bulls engraved on slabs of red onyx or alabaster, excavated at Van, of which fig. 353 gives a design composed from four large fragments”; Barnett stated (loc. cit. p. 39 n. 1, referring to Herzfeld) “The illustration in his book is wrongly described by him. That on the left of his figure is the bull at Adelyevas, not Toprak Kale. That on the right is from Toprak Kale”.

9 Herzfeld tried, but was unable, when he first received photographs of the squeezes, to make a composite drawing from them, because they showed the squeezes on three different scales, and was unable at the time to inspect the squeezes themselves (Lehmann-Haupt, op. cit. p. 745). Whether he inspected the squeezes later, before producing the drawing he published in 1941, is not known to the writer; Dr. R. Ettinghausen, of the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, where Herzfeld's papers are lodged, kindly sought there for information about the source of the drawing, but without success.

10 The damaged spiral has already been mentioned. In addition, for example, two patches of flaking-off below the same five spirals on the stone, a similar patch connecting the two uppermost horizontal lines of the double triangle farther to the rear, and other patches crossing the longer sides of the double triangle, are shown in Lehmann-Haupt's photograph (op. cit. p. 744); the shape of the foot is partly shown near the top edge of Lehmann-Haupt's photograph (but not recognizably enough for inclusion as such in Herzfeld's drawing); and the missing spiral in the main ornamentation along the top edge of Herzfeld's drawing corresponds to a very faint spiral in the squeeze (as shown in Lehmann-Haupt's photograph) resulting from insufficient pressure on the squeeze-paper at a point where (as may be seen from the photograph on pl. XXXIII of this volume) a depression, the line of which is visible on Lehmann-Haupt's photograph, crossed the stone approximately vertically.

11 Belck seems to have made only one visit to Adılcevaz (and Lehmann-Haupt none), on which he found, as well as two inscriptions (HChI. 128 and Inc. 1), what were first reported as “auch die ersten sicher chaldischen Stein-Sculpturen, ein knieendes Rind und Theile von Pferden” (Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 1898, p. 573Google Scholar). Lehmann-Haupt's discussion (op. cit. pp. 743–7) suggests that his belief (and perhaps that Herzfeld's) was that all three squeezes were from the same bull. Herzfeld in later publishing his design did not describe it as representing a single bull, and had perhaps recognized that the Mittelstück bull could not be the bull of the Hinterer Teil from (for example) the greater distance in the former between the parallel horizontal lines of the double triangle in proportion to its distance from the row of spirals above it; that the Mittelstück bull also could not be the bull of the Vorderes Stück (even if the latter was when the squeeze was made partly concealed and has since been broken) is clear from the difference between the angles between the two rows of spirals leading down from the ear, from the difference in the shape of the eye, and from other details. If the photographs on pp. 742–3 result from the same process as that on p. 744 (which appears to be from a print made, without reversal of the negative, from a photograph of the stone side of the squeeze), the bull (or bulls) which they partly represent also faced left; if it (or they) faced right, it (or one of them) perhaps formed part of a relief complementary to the one of which the present stone forms part; and one block of what would be the upper middle part of perhaps such a complementary relief was among those found at Adılcevaz, and is shown by Burney and Lawson on the left side of their figure on p. 212.

12 The rulings cut between the lines of the inscription are omitted in the copy.

13 On account of the present position of the stone, and of the closeness of the adjacent stones, photographs of about the upper three-quarters of the relief could only be taken at very acute angles; the drawing, made from these photographs, may accordingly be slightly distorted.

14 König, , HChI. p. 165Google Scholar, “hat … diesen Stein ( = diese Stele) geweiht”. Friedrich, , Einführung ins Urartäische ( = MVAG. XXXVII. 3, 1933) p. 27Google Scholar, “hat … diese Stele beschriftet”. Melikishvili, , Vestnik Drevney Istorii fasc. 47 (1954. 1) 209Google Scholar, translates the root of kuguni in the sense “to erect, set up”; cf. Goetze, , JAOS. LV (1935) 302Google Scholar, Tseretheli, , RA. XXXIII (1936) 92Google Scholar.

15 The forms DINGIRḫaldinili and šidištuali show that KÁ here is regarded as plural, as it is more often than not in the known Urartian inscriptions. The term “Haldi-gates”, however, may well have been considered as referring to a single complex, a “Haldigateway” (“Torgebäude”, König, , HChI. p. 54 n. 2, p. 190Google Scholar; the term for “Heiligtum”, Goetze, , Kleinasien p. 182, 2nd edn. p. 197Google Scholar; cf. Melikishvili, , VDI. fasc. 44, 1953. 2, 287Google Scholar), as is indicated by the use of “this Haldi-gateway” (lit. “these Haldi-gates”) in an inscription speaking of itself recessed into the rock in the form of a large doorway or gateway at Kapısı, Meher (HChI. 10Google Scholar; photograph in CICh. spp. 39–40), and as is suggested also by the verbal form kušuni in HChI. 113 I.

16 König, , HChI. p. 165Google Scholar, “(hat) errichtet”. Melikishvili, (VDI. fasc. 47, 1954. 1, 216)Google Scholar translates the root of šidištuali in the sense “to build, construct”; cf. Friedrich, , AOr. IV (1932) 60 ff.Google Scholar, Einf. p. 27, Tseretheli, loc. cit. 94.

17 See note 26, below.

18 I.e., the sign for “twenty”.

19 In the Kelishin, inscription (HChI. 9)Google Scholar, the phrase ŠÁRRU KURšuraue appears to correspond to the Assyrian šar 4kiššati, “king of all (the world)”, and the phrase ŠÁRRU KURbiainaue to the Assyrian šar 4matNairi; and the plural form biainaue recalls the Assyrian matatiNairi. Alternative account could perhaps be taken of the plural forms šuraue and biainaue here by translating “king of the land of the Shuri, king of the land of the Biaini”; Goetze, (Kleinasien p. 175, 2nd edn. p. 191)Google Scholar, translating in this sense (but using the terms “die Šura” and “die Bia-äer”), sees the possibility of the Šura corresponding to the Subarū of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and in that case the expression of a claim to Upper Mesopotamia resting on an old Hurrian tradition (Urartian being a late Hurrian dialect, op. cit. 2nd. edn. p. 194, cf. 1st. edn. p. 179). Melikishvili (loc. cit. 218) takes (KUR)šuri as a common noun meaning “universe, world, empire”, but (loc. cit. 232) KURbiainili as “land of Biainili” with the suggestion that the word incorporates a tribal name. König, (HChI. pp. 165, 202–3)Google Scholar translates KURšuraue “Wagen-Länder” and (HChI. p. 178) KURbiainaue “Fruchtländer” (as well as “Biai-Länder”, equating the two), referring to an article in Archiv für Völkerkunde IX (1954)Google Scholar, not seen by the writer; cf. HChI. p. 224 n. 27.

20 A plural form of an adjective formed from the name Menua, and so perhaps meaning something like “places of Menua”; cf. HChI. p. 166.

21 ali(e) is thus translated by König, (HChI. p. 171)Google Scholar, Friedrich, (ZDMG. CV, 1955, 54, 69, 71–2Google Scholar, cf. WZKM. XLVII, 1940, 198–201Google Scholar), and Melikishvili (loc. cit. 196). Goetze, (ZA.NF. V, 1929–1930, 120, 126–7Google Scholar, cf. RHA. III, fasc. 24, Juillet 1936, 275 and n. 51) treated it in similar contexts as the relative ali; and Tseretheli, (RA. LII, 1958, 30–5Google Scholar, cf. RA. XXXI, 1934, 45–7Google Scholar) translates it “ce qui suit”, as the object of an understood “(dit)”.

22 This translation of dulie follows König, (HChI. pp. 49, 180)Google Scholar, who bases it on the apparent correspondence of Urartian dulie with Assyrian itamar in the Kelishin inscription, Urart. ll. 31, 35, Ass. ll. 30, 35. Goetze, (RHA. III, fasc. 22, Janvier 1936, pp. 179–81)Google Scholar translated the phrase in the sense “instigates another to such things”, cf. Melikishvili, , loc. cit. 202, VDI. fasc. 44 (1953. 2) 254Google Scholar, translating in the sense “causes another to do”; Friedrich, (Einf. pp. 41–2)Google Scholar translated the variant aluše ainiei inili dulie “wer für irgendeinen (anderen) diese (Dinge) tut”; cf. Tseretheli, , RA. XLVII (1953) 133–7Google Scholar, for a different handling of the passages in the Kelishin inscription.

23 The translation of ll. 39–41 is uncertain. Goetze, (RHA. III 195–8)Google Scholar regarded turinini as a third person singular imperative, as the translation here takes it; cf. Melikishvili, , VDI. fasc. 44 (1953. 2) 254Google Scholar. Friedrich, (Einf. pp. 41, 44)Google Scholar treated turinini as an accusative singular, meaning “Zerstörer”, object of ululie, against which cf. Goetze, loc. cit. 193. König, (HChI. pp. 78, 205)Google Scholar regards turinini as a passive form, “he will be destroyed”, referring to AfV. VIII 170 f.Google Scholar, not seen by the writer. For pieini cf. Friedrich, , Einf. p. 45Google Scholar, Melikishvili, , VDI. fasc. 47 (1954. 1) 213Google Scholar. König, (HChI. p. 193)Google Scholar translates mani DINGIRUTU-ni pieini “der wird aus dem Sonnenlicht weggebracht sein (oder wird vom Sonnengott bestraft)”.

24 The translation of the remainder is quite uncertain. König, (HChI. p. 208)Google Scholar offers “dessen arḫi und inaini und Leben soil getötet werden und dem Nichts zugeführt sein”. Cf. Friedrich, , Einf. pp. 41, 45Google Scholar. Goetze, (RHA. III. 194)Google Scholar proposed “Let him not live quietly further on(??) neither here(?) nor anywhere else(??) where he will be staying”, with a footnote at the end “Literally perhaps: ‘it leads (him)’”. Cf. Melikishvili, , VDI. fasc. 44 (1953. 2) 254 n. 10Google Scholar (offering no connected translation of the passage.)

25 See note 15, above.

26 Sayce, (JRAS. XIV, 1882, 500)Google Scholar inferred from the contexts in which the word badusi(e) occurs that it must be an adjective meaning “old” or “decayed”; and approximately this sense is retained by Friedrich (“verfallen(?)”, most recently in ZDMG. CV, 1955, 71Google Scholar; but without explanation of the “unklare Wortform”, AOr. IV, 1932, 61 n. 4Google Scholar); Melikishvili, (VDI. fasc. 47, 1954. 1, 201Google Scholar) also translates the word as an adjective, but in the sense “majestic, stately, august, grand (?)”. Goetze, (RHA. III 183 n. 16)Google Scholar regarded the word as a noun meaning “residence”; cf. Tseretheli, , RA. XXX (1933) 31–2Google Scholar, translating “pour (sa) demeure”; König, (HChI. p. 177)Google Scholar, regarding HChI. 74 II as decisive (… [DINGIR] Ḫaldinie badusie DUB-te [ter]ubi …), also translates badusie as the dative case of a noun, meaning “for (his) sovereignty”. The text here (unless MEŠ appears on the stone in error) seems to suggest that badusie is an adjective, in showing by the addition of MEŠ its agreement with KÁ.MEŠ in l. 4. badusie does not occur elsewhere with MEŠ suffixed; it always occurs with a noun in the singular (usually É.GAL) except for six occurrences (HChI 12 II, 49a, 50a, 50b, 76 VII, 113 I) with DINGIRḪaldinili KÁ (or KÁ-li or KÁ.MEŠ), which itself could evidently be considered as a physical and grammatical singular—cf. n. 15, above. In HChI. 74 II badusie may similarly be taken as an adjective qualifying DUB-te (cf. Melikishvili, , VDI. fasc. 44, 1953. 2, 297Google Scholar).