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Two Assyrian Observations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

C. J. Gadd
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Extract

Through the recent publication (1942) of the excellent official Guide to the Iraq Museum there has come to notice a fragment of Assyrian bas-relief which is of interest in several points. This is numbered IM.31065, and is illustrated in the aforesaid Guide by Fig. 105, p. 125. The re-publication offered here (Plate V) is from a good photograph very kindly furnished by the Director-General of Antiquities in Iraq, together with permission to make this use of it. For both of these favours I wish to express sincere gratitude.

Hardly more than the first glance is needed to suggest a context for the fragment; it recalls at once the tents and domestic activities in the Assyrian camp shown upon the well-known scene now (or formerly) in the National Museums, Berlin, numbered VA. 965. The connexion is very close—the curved defensive wall and bastions which surround the camp have only to be continued on VA (the Berlin fragment) in the downward direction in order to coincide with the upturned line which continues in IM (the Baghdad fragment) up to a horizontal fillet dividing the registers of the slab.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 1948 , pp. 19 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1948

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References

page 19 note 1 For details of this see The Stones of Assyria, p. 218, and Boutcher's drawing, ibid., Plate 29A. A good photograph of the fragment in its recent condition was published in Antiquity, IX, Plate I. Still more recently it has been discussed by Meissner, B. and Opitz, D., Studien zum bît-ḫiláni im Nordpalast Assurbanaplis zu Ninive, p. 78 fGoogle Scholar. Their ascription of the scene to an Elamite campaign is justified by the new fragment; the apparent deficiency in height of the whole slab is accounted for by the added registers of prisoners.

page 19 note 2 Meissner and Opitz, op. cit., p. 78, are of this opinion.

page 20 note 1 Though not certain, for both of these arrangements occur, on slabs which were found fallen from above into neighbouring rooms; see The Stones of Assyria, Plate 43, compared with Plate 44.

page 20 note 2 See van Buren, E. D., The Fauna of Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 68 Google Scholar; J.N.E.S., IV, 157, line 26Google Scholar, and V, 153; and compare C.T., XXXI, 48, 1. 13 Google Scholar, “If … its mouth is swollen (ulluṣ) like a sheep's tail,” etc.

page 20 note 3 For the details, see The Stones of Assyria, p. 204, No. 67, with Plates 29B, 43 and 44.

page 21 note 1 B.M. 118898; the text published and translated by Budge, and King, , Annals of the Kings of Assyria, I, 128 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 21 note 2 pagutu for pagitu (?); the pair, male and female, are listed as pa-gu-u, pa-gi-ti (see Landsberger, B., Oie Fauna des alten Mesopotamiens, 10, ll. 118, 119)Google Scholar. The question of gender was raised by Delitzsch, , Handwörterbuch, 514B Google Scholar.

page 21 note 3 The value turn has been sometimes assumed, on the strength of the examples quoted by Streck, in Z.A. XVIII, 193 Google Scholar, as well as in supposed conformity here with the Arabic timsāḥ. But Thureau-Dangin did not admit this value to his Syllabaire accadien, and Landsberger (op. cit., 142, n. 1) denies it in this instance. What is equally puzzling is the initial t in Arabic. The Coptic dictionaries, under emsah, suggest that it is due to the addition of the definite article feminine to a substantive masculine, but offer no explanation of this anomaly. Professor Battiscombe Gunn, who has been good enough to give his opinion upon this, supposes that the substantive must originally have been the feminine msḥt, though this form does not seem to survive after the 18th Dynasty and is unknown to Coptic; but he can suggest no reason why the feminine should be used. He has (1125) also drawn attention to the curious possibility pointed out by Cerny, in Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte, XLIII, 346 ff.Google Scholar, that the χάμψαι of Herodotus stands for hn-msḥ, the substantive with the indefinite article plural. Finally, nam-su-ḫa might be due to the prefixing of the definite article plural, Coptic nemsoḥ or nemsaḥ. It thus appears, strangely enough, that the Assyrian, Greek, and Arabic renderings all took over the Egyptian word for ‘crocodile’ with an article attached, but with a different form in each instance.

page 21 note 4 Goossens, R., Un conte égyptien; Pharaon, roi des phoques, in the Mélanges Franz Cumont [Université libre de Bruxelles; Annuaire de l'Institut de Philologie, etc., IV (1936)], Part II, 715 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 21 note 5 For another claimant to this meaning, see Jensen, P., K.B., VI, 2, p. 6*Google Scholar. I have not been able to see the work of Buschor, E., Meermänner (S.B.A.W., 1941, No. 1)Google Scholar. It should, of course, be borne in mind as a weighty objection that such stories have no counterpart in ancient Egyptian, where no word for ‘seal’ has been identified, nor is the creature anywhere represented in art.

page 21 note 6 After Bérard, V., Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée, II, 63 Google Scholar.

page 22 note 1 His description is translated into German by Loorits, O., Pharaos Heer in der Volksüberlieferung (Tartu, 1935), 162 Google Scholar, especially ‘und die Leute Pharaos verwandelten sich in Fische; jene Fische aber haben Menschenköpfe, einen Körper aber haber sie nicht, sondern nur den Kopf; die Zähne und die Nase aber sind menschenähnlich; wo aber die Ohren sind, da ist Gefieder; wo aber der Nacken ist, da ist der Schwanz; es isst ihn [ = den Fisch] aber niemand.’

page 22 note 2 Flower, Major S. S., in Proceedings of the … Zoological Society of London, 1932, p. 404 Google Scholar. This reference was taken from the book of Allen, Glover M., Extinct and Vanishing Mammals of the Western Hemisphere, recommended to me by Dr.Fraser, F. C., of the British Museum (Natural History)Google Scholar, to whom I owe much gratitude for the interest he has taken in these enquiries.

page 22 note 3 I.e., the Monk Seal.

page 22 note 4 Loc. cit., p. 718.

page 22 note 5 Goossens, loc. cit., 719 f.

page 22 note 6 By Major Flower, loc. cit., 405. Popular names like this seem occasionally to be given with little regard to suitability. Thus Landsberger (Fauna, 142) observes that the name ‘sea-horse’ applied to the naḫiru might cast a doubt upon the identity of this with the sperm whale. But Flower again relates (p. 445) that the dugong is even more preposterously called by Red Sea fishermen the ‘sea-camel.’ Here, however, modern zoology has outdone this seeming paradox, for Glover Allen says (p. 528) that the sirenia or sea-cows (including the ḍugongs) ‘are thought to be distant relatives of the elephants.’

page 23 note 1 A.f.O., VI, 93, and 76Google Scholar.

page 23 note 2 In the Archæological Museums, Department of Oriental Antiquities, No. 7850.

page 23 note 3 The inscription upon the stone figure specifies it as belonging to the palace.

page 23 note 4 A.f.O., VI, 93 Google Scholar.

page 23 note 5 The inscriptions quoted by Landsberger, , Fauna, 142c Google Scholar.

page 23 note 6 Also to be restored in the fragment VAT. 95 39, as suggested by Weidner, loc. cit. 88.

page 24 note 1 My thanks to the two gentlemen named must also be extended to Dr. F. R. Kraus, who took much interest in the examination and was good enough to inform me of its details.