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Colossal Neo-Hittite Statue Discovered at Tell Tayinat

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This lavishly decorated monumental sculpture was discovered at the Neo-Hittite site Tell Tayinat in southeastern Turkey. Photo: Jennifer Jackson (Tayinat Archaeological Project/University of Toronto)

Excavations at Tell Tayinat in southeastern Turkey uncovered a monumental human sculpture from the ancient city of Kunulua, the capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Patina in the early first millennium B.C.E. The Tayinat Archaeological Project uncovered the five-foot tall head and torso along with a decorated column base; parts of a full statue that likely stood over 12 feet tall. The figure features inlaid stone eyes, elegantly styled hair, a beard, and the arms hold a spear and shaft of wheat.

A July 30 press release by the University of Toronto (below) highlights the significance of the statue’s chronology. The existence of monumental sculpture soon after the collapse of the great Bronze Age civilizations in the area (Hittite, Middle Assyrian, Egyptian New Kingdom) at the end of the second millennium B.C.E. attests to the financial success of the newly established Neo-Hittite states that followed. A Luwian inscription on the statue describes the successful campaigns of the Patinean King Suppiluliuma who fought the Assyrian Shalmaneser III in the 9th century B.C.E. The statue’s discovery in a doorway is one of many ancient Near Eastern examples of lavishly and symbolically decorated threshold spaces.

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Read the opening paragraphs of the press release “Archeologists unearth extraordinary human sculpture in Turkey” from the University of Toronto site:

Archeologists unearth extraordinary human sculpture in Turkey
Posted on July 30, 2012

TORONTO, ON – A beautiful and colossal human sculpture is one of the latest cultural treasures unearthed by an international team at the Tayinat Archaeological Project (TAP) excavation site in southeastern Turkey. A large semi-circular column base, ornately decorated on one side, was also discovered. Both pieces are from a monumental gate complex that provided access to the upper citadel of Kunulua, capital of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Patina (ca. 1000-738 BC).

“These newly discovered Tayinat sculptures are the product of a vibrant local Neo-Hittite sculptural tradition,” said Professor Tim Harrison, the Tayinat Project director and professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the University of Toronto’s Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations. “They provide a vivid glimpse into the innovative character and sophistication of the Iron Age cultures that emerged in the eastern Mediterranean following the collapse of the great imperial powers of the Bronze Age at the end of the second millennium BC.”

The head and torso of the human figure, intact to just above its waist, stands approximately 1.5 metres in height, suggesting a total body length of 3.5 to four metres. The figure’s face is bearded, with beautifully preserved inlaid eyes made of white and black stone, and its hair has been coiffed in an elaborate series of curls aligned in linear rows. Both arms are extended forward from the elbow, each with two arm bracelets decorated with lion heads. The figure’s right hand holds a spear, and in its left is a shaft of wheat. A crescent-shaped pectoral adorns its chest. A lengthy Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription, carved in raised relief across its back, records the campaigns and accomplishments of Suppiluliuma, likely the same Patinean king who faced a Neo-Assyrian onslaught of Shalmaneser III as part of a Syrian-Hittite coalition in 858 BC.

The second sculpture is a large semi-circular column base, approximately one metre in height and 90 centimetres in diameter, lying on its side next to the human figure. A winged bull is carved on the front of the column and it is flanked by a sphinx on its left. The right side of the column is flat and undecorated, an indication that it originally stood against a wall.

“The two pieces appear to have been ritually buried in the paved stone surface of the central passageway through the Tayinat gate complex,” said Harrison. The complex would have provided a monumental ceremonial approach to the upper citadel of the royal city. Tayinat, a large low-lying mound, is located 35 kilometres east of Antakya (ancient Antioch) along the Antakya-Aleppo road.

The presence of colossal human statues, often astride lions or sphinxes, in the citadel gateways of the Neo-Hittite royal cities of Iron Age Syro-Anatolia continued a Bronze Age Hittite tradition that accentuated their symbolic role as boundary zones, and the role of the king as the divinely appointed guardian or gate keeper of the community. By the ninth and eighth centuries BC, these elaborately decorated gateways, with their ornately carved reliefs, had come to serve as dynastic parades, legitimizing the power of the ruling elite. The gate reliefs also formed linear narratives, guiding their audiences between the human and divine realms, with the king serving as the link between the two worlds.


Interested in the Hittites? Read the full article The Last Days of Hattusa: The Mysterious Collapse of the Hittite Empire by Trevor Bryce online for free in Bible History Daily.


 

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2 Responses

  1. Ric Lotfinia says:

    Is that elegantly styled hair or a sculpted representation of the famous boar tusk Greek helmet? I think it is the a sculpted representation of the rare helmet, myself.

  2. Colossal Neo-Hittite Statue Discovered at Tell Tayinat says:

    […] support ABR! For more, visit: Biblical Archaeological Review (offsite […]

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2 Responses

  1. Ric Lotfinia says:

    Is that elegantly styled hair or a sculpted representation of the famous boar tusk Greek helmet? I think it is the a sculpted representation of the rare helmet, myself.

  2. Colossal Neo-Hittite Statue Discovered at Tell Tayinat says:

    […] support ABR! For more, visit: Biblical Archaeological Review (offsite […]

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