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A figurine from Urkesh: A “Darling” from Troy to Mesopotamia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Jeanny Vorys Canby
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Extract

It was a pleasure to accept the Buccellatis' invitation to publish the upper half of a flat, lead figure of a woman found at Urkesh and return to an old interest of mine. I once surmised that such objects were used by merchants in the metals trade as “cash” when travelling from Mesopotamia to Anatolia.

The Urkesh piece is defectively cast, and the ridge above the eyeballs and the edge of the chin give the face a misleading, cheerful expression. From other examples we know that the ridge would probably have surrounded the eyes and that, above the remnant of a protruding chin, the mouth would have been straight. The long thin nose is still preserved. Curls over the forehead are represented by round knobs, as are the tresses falling on either side of the face. The woman is nude except for four ridges of a high collar necklace. The breasts, represented as small knobs, are placed very high on the chest and the fingers of the upraised hands are spread as if supporting them. A prominent knob, surrounded by a wide ridge, emphasizes the navel.

The Urkesh piece is very welcome as an excavated example of a familiar but rare type of lead figurine. The first example was found in third-millennium levels at Troy on the west coast of Turkey in the nineteenth century. Four moulds for casting such a figurine are also known. These are peculiar in having so many dies tightly crowded onto a single surface. They are for amulets, jewellery and stamp seals, as well as the figurines, and each object has its own pour hole for casting it separately.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 65 , 2003 , pp. 171 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2003

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References

1 A9.86; ht 0.07 m.

2 Canby, J., Early Bronze “trinket” moulds, Iraq 27 (1965), pp. 42–61 (hereafter Canby)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Not everyone agreed. See Emre, K., Anatolian Lead Figures and their Stone Moulds (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yaymlarından Seri VI-14), Ankara, 1971 (hereafter Emre)Google Scholar; Emre concluded that these and later moulds for lead figurines were made in Anatolia for an Anatolian market. R. Merhav generally followed her, but argued for a somewhat later date (An Anatolian trinket mould from the Lipchitz collection, The Israel Museum Journal 6 (1987), pp. 38–50 Google Scholar). R. Wartke, in his discussion of the contemporary moulds from Assur in the Berlin Museum, also concluded that they were made for the local Anatolian market (Vorderasiatische Gussformen aus den Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Forschungen und Berichte 20/21 (1980), p. 257 Google Scholar; hereafter Wartke).

4 Götze, A. (in Dörpfeld, W., Troja und Ilion, Athens, 1902, pp. 363 ff.Google Scholar) describes it as that of a toothless woman (see also Canby, Pl. Xc; Emre, No. 32, 111, Pl. I:1). It was taken to Berlin by the excavator and disappeared for many years, along with the precious objects from “Priam's Treasure”. It had been taken to Russia at the end of World War II. In 1996, it was displayed at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and republished in a catalogue raisonné: Tolstikov, V., Treister, M., The Gold of Troy (Pushkin Museum), Abrams, 1996, No. 258, pp. 194, 217 Google Scholar.

5 1. From Akhisar (Louvre; Emre, No. 41, p. 113). 2. From Abu Habba (British Museum; Budge, W., A Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities (2nd ed.), London, 1908, p. 117, No. 1071Google Scholar; Emre, No. 35, p. 111, Pl. II:1). 3. From Izmir (present location unknown, see n. 7; Emre, No. 37, p. 112, Pl. I:3; Canby, Pl. IXa-c). 4. In the Bible Lands Museum, Jerusalem (Emre, No. 38, p. 112, Pl. I:2). The Akhisar and Abu Habba moulds have both been known since the beginning of the twentieth century. The cross-hatching, the little face on the pendant spirals and other aspects of the Venice and British Museum moulds are strange (Emre, Pl. II:4–5).

6 See Umurtak, G., Some observations on a lead stamp seal from the Bademağaci excavations, Anatolica 28 (2002), pp. 159–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For the Izmir mould see Canby, Pl. IXa-c. The owner of the Izmir piece was not a collector but the wife of an American soldier stationed in Turkey, who bought it as a paperweight. The sum, as I remember it, was five American dollars, a small amount even then. This suggests to me that the seller purchased it locally, and it could, therefore, have been a west Anatolian find. Unfortunately, the last I heard of the piece was in the early sixties when the woman, at my urging, sent it to the Metropolitan Museum to be looked at, but she refused to sell it for the price they offered her.

8 Budge op. cit. (n. 5). Schäfer, H. P., Zur Datierung einer Gussform aus Troia, Archäologischer Anzeiger 1971, pp. 419–22Google Scholar, illustrates a mould from Troy for earrings like those on the Sippar mould. The body of the unusual long-horned goat on the Sippar mould is segmented like the animals on some of the standards in the Alaca Höyük royal tombs, see Bittel, K., Die Hethiter — Die Kunst Anatoliens vom Ende des 3. bis Anfang des 1. Jahrtausends vor Christus, Munich, 1976, pp. 36, 40 Google Scholar. The animal may have had only central Anatolian popularity. On the problem of the Sippar provenance, see Emre, pp. 121 ff., Wartke, pp. 243, 257.

9 J. Oates, Tell Brak in the fourth and third millennia: From Uruk to Ur III. In Eichler, S., Wäfler, M., Warburton, D., Tall al-Hamīdīya 2. Recent Excavations in the Upper Khabur Region, Freiburg/Schweiz and Göttingen, 1990, p. 146 Google Scholar, Pl. 15:1 — Ur III or Isin-Larsa are considered the latest possible date; also Oates, J. and Oates, D., Nagar in the Third Millennium. Excavations at Tell Brak 2, Cambridge, 2001, p. 246 Google Scholar. The same area also contained a mould with a die face for casting various trinkets, see below n. 12.

10 Pitman, H. in Algaze, G. et al, Research at Titriş Höytük in southwestern Turkey — 1999 season, Anatolica 23 (1997), pp. 66–9, 84, Figs. 19–20Google Scholar.

11 A mould from Assur even has a lion-headed eagle (Imdugud) that is associated with Girsu (Tello) in southern Mesopotamia (Wartke, No. 4, p. 228, Fig. 6, see p. 248)!

12 The trinket dies for Schnabelkannen on the new moulds are distinctly regional. The objects with antennae on the Izmir and Lipschitz mould (Emre, Pl. I:1–2) are probably some kind of insect, like the flies on a mould from Nuzi ( Starr, R. F. S., Nuzi — Report of the Excavations at Yorgan Tepe, Cambridge, Mass., 1939, I, pp. 24–5, II, Pl. 56gGoogle Scholar), and join the riverside creatures: frogs and turtles, as well as fish, popular on Mesopotamian moulds at Brak (Oates, Brak 2, see above n. 9), Nineveh ( Opitz, D., Altorientalische Gussformen, AfO Beiheft 1, Berlin, 1933, Pl. VI:3Google Scholar), and Assur (Wartke, p. 227, Fig, 4, p. 234, No. I). The striding lion facing the viewer certainly belongs in that area, see the Assur, Nineveh, Brak and Nuzi moulds just cited, plus one from Selenkahiye (M. van Loon, The preliminary results of 1974–1975 excavations at Selenkahiye near Meskene, AASOR 44 (1979), Fig. 13Google Scholar; van Loon, M. (ed.), Selenkahiye: Final Report on the University of Chicago and University of Amsterdam Excavations in the Tabqa Reservoir, Northern Syria, 1967–1975, Istanbul, 2001, Pl. 9.13 c-dGoogle Scholar.

13 M. Buccellati, Trade in metals in the third millennium: Northeastern Syria and eastern Anatolia. In Matthiae, P. et al. (eds), Resurrecting the Past — A Joint Tribute to Adnan Bounni, Leiden, 1990, pp. 117–30Google Scholar.

14 Parrot, A., Le temple d'Ishtar — Misson Archéologique de Mari I, Paris, 1956, p. 299, Pl. LXVIII, M 50Google Scholar; Badre, L., Figurines anthropomorphiques en terre cuite à l'âge du bronze en Syrie, Paris, 1980, pp. 70–1, 269, Pls. XXVI: 12–14, XXVII:15–19Google Scholar, dated to the Early Dynastic to Akkadian periods. See now the ivory figurine from Brak in an Akkadian level, Oates, , Brak 2 (see above n. 9), p. 295, Fig. 315Google Scholar.

15 See n. 12 and Wartke for some of these moulds.

16 Emre, pp. 139–50, Pls. V:2 to XI:3; also Bittel, op. cit. (n. 8), pp.95 ff., Figs. 83–4, 87, 90. Moulds for lead figurines from the later colonies in level Ib at Kültepe and at Alişar are smaller and usually have dies for only a god plus a female who sometimes holds a baby and, between the adults, sometimes an antelope or child, and a winged god. A figurine from Acemhöyük is thought to be a transitional piece see Emre, Pl. III-3 ibid., Fig 2; also Bittel, op. cit. (n. 8), p. 99, Fig. 89, with an identical pair in the Louvre said to be from Kültepe. The flat lead god from Karahöyük (where there could well have been Assyrian colonies) seems to be related to the group of stick figures accompanied by animals that Emre classifies as dating to the earlier Colony Age (see Emre, pp. 133–7, Pl. II; Alp, S., Karum-zeitliche Gussform und Siegel aus Karahöyük, Istanbuler Mitteilungen 43 (1993), pp. 185–93, Pl. 19:1Google Scholar.

17 For some good examples, see K. Bittel (op. cit. n. 8), pp. 69–91, 97 with figures.

18 Ibid., p. 101, Fig. 91; Alp, S., Ištar auf dem Karahöyük, Mélanges Mansel (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınlarından Serie VII-60), Ankara, 1974, pp. 703–7Google Scholar.

19 Emre, No. 51, Pl. XI:4a-b. Some of the curvaceous, flat lead figures from Kültepe kāmm level II and Alişar (Emre, Pls. V:1 and X:1), may have been made under local influences.

20 Earlier Anatolian lead idols are known. One, that copied an alabaster disc idol type characteristic of the late Early Bronze levels on the city mound at Kültepe, was found in northeastern Turkey near Zile ( Uzunoğlu, E., Ein Bleiidol mit schiebenformigen Körper, Istanbuler Mitteilungen 43 (1993), pp. 179–83, Pl. 18Google Scholar; id., Women in Anatolia (Exhibition Catalogue, Topkapi Saray Museum), Istanbul, 1993–4, A 110, p. 90.

21 Özgüç, N., The Anatolian Group of Cylinder Seal Impressions from Kültepe (Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınlarından Serie V-22), Ankara, 1965 Google Scholar. Bittel, op. cit. (n. 8), p. 92, Figs. 73–4.

22 Matthiae, P., Ebla — An Empire Rediscovered, New York, 1981, Pls. between pp. 192–3Google Scholar; Orthmann, W., Der Alte Orient (Propyläen Kunstgeschichte 14), Berlin, 1975, Figs. 412–14aGoogle Scholar.

23 Emre, No. 31, p. 109, Pl. VI:2.

24 Matthiae, P., Pinnock, F. and Matthiae, G. S., Ebla alle origini della civiltà urbana, Milan, 1995, p. 394, No. 241Google Scholar, “Bronzo Medio II, ca. 1750–1799”.

25 Mallowan, M. E. L., The excavations at Tall Chagar Bazar, and an archaeological survey of the Khabur Region, Iraq 4 (1937), p. 152, Pl. XVIIGoogle Scholar, found in temple-palace area BD, stratification uncertain.

26 T. A. Carter, personal communication.