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Ivory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Dominique Gollon
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Extract

In her Fauna of Ancient Mesopotamia, Mrs. van Buren pointed out that if elephants in the Middle East did not become extinct till about 800 B.C., then it was strange that there are not more representations of them. There is a lapis amulet from Kish which is rather indistinct, a miniature vase of sandstone and quartz decorated with a row of three elephants which was bought in Mosul, two cylinder seals which are related to seals of the Indus Valley type, and a Hittite seal found at Beth Shan which has been dated to the fourteenth century B.C. A terracotta from Diqdiqqeh near Ur shows an elephant being ridden and should probably be dated to the late third millennium B.C. An elephant-shaped cult stand and an elephant-shaped vessel come respectively from fourteenth century Beth Shan and from Hilani I at Zincirli where it can be dated to the time of Esarhaddon, Finally, an elephant is depicted together with monkeys and Bactrian camels on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III in the ninth century.

The earliest accounts of actual live elephants are found in Egyptian records of the middle of the second millennium B.C. under Thutmoses I (1525–1495) and of the middle of the fifteenth century B.C. when Thutmoses III killed a herd of 120 elephants “near the water-hole of Niy” or, according to an alternative reading, “for the sake of their tusks.” The water-hole at Niy is probably the Lake of Apamaea.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1977 , pp. 219 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1977

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Footnotes

*

Since presenting this paper, I have been able to consult a copy of Irene Winter's doctoral dissertation on North Syria in the Early First Millennium B.C., with special reference to Ivory Carving (Columbia University, Ph.D., 1973). In a discussion of the sources of ivory (366 ff.) she reached the same conclusions regarding the “Syrian” elephant, based on many of the same arguments. I am grateful to Mr. Howard Hawkes for lending me his copy of her thesis.

References

1 van Buren, E. Douglas: The Fauna of Ancient Mesopotamia as represented in Art (Rome, 1939), 77–78Google Scholar.

2 de Genouillac, H.: Premières recherches archéologiques à Kich, II (Paris, 1985), 25, P. 146b, Pl. XVII, Fig. 4bGoogle Scholar.

3 Böhl, F. M. Th.: “Openbare en Particuliere Verzamelingen in Nederland-Rijksmuseum van Oudheden: Sumerische en Babylonische Amuletten” in Ex Oriente Lux 5 (1937–1938), 463, Fig. 13 and Pl. XXXVIIIdGoogle Scholar.

4 A seal from Tell Asmar, related to Indus Valley seals, shows an elephant together with a crocodile and a hippopotamus (Frankfort, H.: Cylinder Seals (London, 1939), 305, Fig. 8Google Scholar; id.: Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region (OIP LXXII; Chicago 1955), 45–46, Pl. 61, no. 64a). A similarly related seal is illustrated by Burchard Brentjes: “Der Elefant im Alten Orient”, in Kilo 39 (1961), 21Google Scholar, Fig. 1 ( = de Clercq, I, 26), but another seal on the same page ( = Porada: Corpus, no. 854) does not depict a very convincing elephant. A monster with a trunk, illustrated by Zeuner, F. E. in A History of Domesticated Animals (London, 1963), 287Google Scholar and Fig. 11:13, occurs on a seal in the Brett collection but von der Osten states that the “trunk” is “probably due to a fault in the stone or a slip of the cutter” (von der Osten, H. H.: Ancient Oriental seals in the Collection of Mrs. Agnes Baldwin Brett (OIP XXXVII; Chicago, 1936), no. 16)Google Scholar. For the Beth Shan seal, see Rowe, A.: The Topography and History of Beth-Shan (Philadelphia, 1930), 22, Pl. 36Google Scholar.

5 Burchard Brentjes: op. cit., 19, Fig. 2, reproduced upside down from L. Legrain: Horseback riding in Mesopotamia, n. 5–a publication which I have been unable to check. I am grateful to Dr. R. D. Barnett for drawing my attention to this terracotta and for allowing me to discuss the subject with him; Dr. Barnett disagrees with the views expressed in this paper.

6 Rowe, A.: The four Canaanite Temples of Beth-Shan (Philadelphia, 1940), 57 and 88, Pl. 44A, 1,2Google Scholar; von Luschan, F.: Kleinfunde von Sendschirli (Berlin, 1943), 68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Abb. 80 and 81 and Pl. 35a and b.

7 ANEP, 353.

8 Helck, W.: Die Beziehungen Ägyptens zu Vorderasien im 3. und 2. Jahrtausend vor Christus (Wiesbaden, 1962), 307Google Scholar; Klengel, H.: Geschichte Syriens im 2. Jahrtausend v.u.Z., II (Berlin, 1969), 61Google Scholar.

9 ANET, 3rd ed. (1969), 240–241Google Scholar; and cf. Barnett, R. D.: A Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories (London, 1957). 165Google Scholar.

10 H. Klengel: op. cit., 58–74.

11 Luckenbill, D. D.: Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, I (Chicago, 1926), § 247 (14 elephants)Google Scholar; § 375 (10 elephants); § 392 (elephants); § 520 (30 elephants + some for a zoo).

12 Cameron, G. G.: “The Annals of Shalmaneser III”, in Sumer 6 (1950), 25, IV 40–44 (29 elephants)Google Scholar.

13 ARAB I, § 769 (from Arpad); II, § 284—for Tiglath-pileser III and Sennacherib. Lie, A. G.: The Inscriptions of Sargon II of Assyria, I (Paris, 1929), 71–73Google Scholar—forSargon. Thompson, R. Campbell: The Prisms of Esarhaddon and of Assurbanipal found at Nineveh 1927–8 (London, 1931) 16, l. 76Google Scholar.

14 Strabo, : Geography, XVI.2.10Google Scholar.

15 Zeuner, F. E., in his A History of Domesticated Animals (London, 1963) mentions on p. 277Google Scholar that this import had already been suggested in connection with the Assyrian kings but he gives no reference.

16 The land of Muṣri is generally Egypt. During the second millennium the term is also applied to an area on the Assyrian border with Iran, but I have been informed that the Musri on the Black Obelisk must be Egypt. The presence of the Indian elephant and the Bactrian camel in this context remains inexplicable.

17 de Vaux, R. in CAH 1/2, 231Google Scholar.

18 Mallowan, M. E. L. in CAH 1/2, 295Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., 300; see also C. J. Gadd: loc. cit., 439.

20 Banks, E. J.: Bismaya, or the Lost City of Adah (New York, 1912), 266–268Google Scholar—an Iranian chlorite vase fragment inlaid with lapis and ivory; 272—alabaster cows with lapis and ivory inlaid eyes; also 274, 329. See also Kohl, P. L.: “Carved Chlorite Vessels: A Trade in Finished Commodities in the Mid-Third Millennium,” in Expedition, Fall 1975, 18–31Google Scholar. It should be noted, however, that what was previously thought to be ivory is now often recognized as shell, and only a detailed study of the actual pieces would provide conclusive evidence one way or the other.

21 Ivories from near Beersheba have been quoted as indicating links with Predynastic Egypt (Perrot, J.: “Statuettes en ivoire et autres objets en ivoire et en os provenant des gisements préhistoriques de la région de Béershéba”, in Syria 36 (1959), 8–19, Pls. II-IIICrossRefGoogle Scholar; id.: “Les ivoires de la 7e campagne de fouilles à Safadi près de Beersheva”, in Eretz-Israel (1964), 92–93). Recently, however, Ruth Amiran has drawn attention to the similarity between these figures and a soapstone figure from Tepe Yaḥya in Southern Iran (“A note on the Tepe Yaḥyā soap-stone human statuette”, in Iran 11 (1973), 184 and Pl. IVCrossRefGoogle Scholar). F. Zeuner (op. cit., 278) suggests that Byblite trade may have been based on the exchange of wood for African ivory and that the capture of Byblos by the Assyrians brought about the end of this trade and of ivory carving. The elephant depicted in the tomb of Rekhmire, however, is of the Indian type and had come from Syria (Barnett, R. D.: A Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories, (London, 1957), 163)Google Scholar.

22 Cf. the article “Elephant” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

23 F. Zeuner: op. cit., 292–296.

24 E. Porada's paper read at the Rencontre, to be elsewhere published.

25 SirWoolley, Leonard: Alalakh—An Account of the Excavations at Tell Atchana in the Hatay, 1937–1949 (Oxford, 1955), 102 and Pl. XVIGoogle Scholar. The tusks are illustrated by Deraniyagala, P. E. P., in Some Extinct Elephants, Their Relatives, and the Two Living Species (Ceylon, 1955), Pl. 45, 1Google Scholar; according to his description on p. 116 (c) the tusks “show a flattened plane of wear at the apex which is the usual condition in E. maximus, whereas in Loxodonta africana the apex is usually conical”. Deraniyagala has christened the Syrian elephant Elephas maximus asurus Deraniyagala. This terminology was adopted by Barnett, R. D. in his A Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories (London, 1957), 164–166Google Scholar, and retained by Mallowan, M. E. L. in Nimrud and its remains (London, 1966), 484Google Scholar. Other skeletal remains of elephants from archaeological contexts include a jaw-bone found above the Level IV palace of Ilim-ilimma at Alalakh (Woolley: op. cit., 288); a single leg bone from a mid-second millennium B.C. level at Nuzi (Starr, R. F. S.: Nuzi, I, (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 493, Pl. 28CGoogle Scholar); foot bones and vertebrae in Early Bronze Age silos at Ugarit (Schaeffer, C.: Ugaritica IV (Paris, 1962), 230, 233Google Scholar); a large right thigh-bone from a house in a Hammurabi level at Babylon (Reuther, O.: Merkes, Die Innenstadt von Babylon, I (Leipzig, 1926), 10, Fig. 4Google Scholar). Mr. Michael Roaf tells me of elephant bones and tusks found in a fourteenth-century B.C. context at Haft Tepe in Elam, and Mr. James Mellaart has brought to my attention the discovery of the remains of full-grown elephants from excavations on the Aegean island of Tilos, west of Rhodes. By Palaeolithic times, however, the islands had developed a pigmy strain of elephant so that these full-grown elephants must have been brought in from elsewhere.

Professor Seton Lloyd has also informed me that elephants' tusks were found during the Oriental Institute Amuq excavations at Çatal Hüyük and Tell Tayinat.