Tallay Ornan

This paper explores the defeat of the lion by the individual standing at the head of the social order in the art of the ancient
Near East, from the late fifth to the middle of the first millennium BCE. Depictions of the sovereign subjugating the Big Cat
present the former performing a cultic act for the sake of the goddess Ishtar, whose primeval adversary was probably the lion.
On the one hand, combat with the lion presents the king as commonly accepted, defeating his human rivals signified by the
beast. On the other hand, this combat presents the king fighting the goddess’s primeval foe. The king in these visuals is, thus,
elevated to a lesser divine-like member of her entourage. Since most of the visuals and relevant records showing the trope of the ruler subjugating the lion are from Upper Mesopotamia and Syria, the first-millennium Neo-Assyrian intensive and detailed
compositions of the theme are considered elaborations of local North Mesopotamian and Syrian traditions.

Picturing Royal Charisma assesses how Middle Eastern leaders manipulated visuals to advance their rule from around 4500 BC to the 19th century AD. In nine fascinating narratives, it showcases the dynamics of long-lasting Middle Eastern traditions, dealing with the visualization of those who stood at the head of the social order. The contributions discuss: Mesopotamian kings who cast themselves as divine representatives in art; the relationships between the ‘king of men’ and ‘king of beasts’ – the lion; Akhenaten’s visual conception of a divine king without hybrid attributes; the royal image as guiding movements of visitors in the palace of Nimrud; continuities in the functions and representation of Neo-Assyrian eunuchs that survived in the Achaemenid, Sasanian, Byzantine and Islamic courts; the triumphal arch of the emperor Titus and its reflections in Christian Constantinople; patterns of authority and royal legitimacy in 3rd century AD Palmyra and Rome; the use of the Biblical pas...

The article discusses an Assyrianized cylinder seal found in 2007 in
Gezer and its affinities to other Assyrian or Assyrianized cylinder seals made of
hard semi-precious stones from Israel/Palestine and Jordan. By examining the seal
in relation to other glyptic items found at Gezer, an effort is made to shed light on
the role of Gezer during the period of the Assyrian conquest.

As has been shown and extensively dealt with in early and more recent scholarship, Neo-Assyrian palatial wall reliefs went through many thematic changes throughout their two hundred and fifty years of existence. One of their conspicuous traits was a gradual abandoning of magical-religious subject matters, represented by protective supernatural beings, in favour of larger and more detailed historical compositions — mostly of a belligerent nature — revealing, for the first time in antiquity, a truer sense of narrative display. As the narrative-historical themes were rightly considered to be an innovative and prominent contribution of Assyrian imagery to the history of art, extensive efforts have been devoted to the study of these compositions within the context of Assyrian palaces.In the present contribution I intend, however, to concentrate on the “losing” side of Assyrian palatial decoration, namely to focus on the visibility of apotropaic fantastic creatures rendered on wall reliefs and to offer some explanation for their gradual expulsion from the pictorial display of the Assyrian palace. Following Porada, in this essay these hybrids are called demons, in accordance with the Greek term daimon. Benevolent demons appear already in early ninth-century Neo-Assyrian wall reliefs, both in temples, as shown by a small number of slabs from the Ninurta Temple at Nimrud, and much more commonly in palaces, in particular within the North-West Palace.

The step-topped, free-standing square monument called in modern literature the Broken Obelisk was found by Hormuzd Rassam at Nineveh, near the Ishtar temple on the mound of Kuyunjik. It is the earliest monument of this kind, and it differs in its pictorial rendering from the later, so-called Assyrian obelisks. Whereas the succeeding examples display reliefs on their four sides, creating consecutive narratives, the Broken Obelisk exhibits a single, motionless relief on its front, the subject of the present paper (Börker-Klähn 1982, Nos. 132, 138–45, 152; Bär 1996, 57-68, 88–99, 101–5, 148–65).My aim here is to shed light on the motif of the king holding prisoners of war by means of lead ropes and to examine the bearing of this motif on the status of the royal image in pictorial renderings. According to different interpretations of the scene, the king holds a ring and rod (Börker-Klähn 1982, 178, No. 131 with earlier bibliography), or a ceremonial mace (Russell 2003, 4) as well as lead rope(s) with which he binds prisoners of war standing in front of him (e.g. Pritchard 1969, 300, No. 440; Strommenger 1964, 437, PI. 188, bottom; Börker-Klähn 1982, 178; Collon 1995, 117; Russell 2003, 4). My initial interest in the iconography of the Broken Obelisk was aroused by the fact that on it the so-called ring and rod symbols of kingship granted by the gods, are held by the king, whereas usually they are held by a deity in compositions conveying the very act of the divine giving (Hallo 2005, 150–1, 161; Suter 2000, 6–7; Ornan 2005, 12).

A Middle Bronze Age gold-coated bronze statue of a seated king found in a Late Bronze Age context on the acropolis of Tel Hazor is interpreted as an old icon of a dead king whose image was still meaningful centuries after its production. It is suggested that the Middle Bronze Age royal statue was used by a Late Bronze Age king of Hazor to reinforce his rule. The article discusses the role played by statues of dead kings in the memory of the past and their use in royal self-legitimization in second-millennium Syria and the Levant. The food provided to the dead in the Beyond, as recorded in ancient Near Eastern myths, is compared with the food and drink offered to the dead by the living, as documented in texts and archaeological finds. Consequently, the possibility of recognizing deified rulers in the archaeological record is examined, and a minimalist view of the powers of dead kings is suggested.

Abstract A carnelian pebble stamp seal excavated by Macalister at Gezer and believed lost, and a seal kept today in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, are one and the same. A cast of the original kept by the Palestine Exploration Fund in London proves to be identical to the seal in Jerusalem. The unique iconography of the seal showing a man in a cultic gesture in front of a griffin, as well as its stylistic details, show it to be an Assyrianized product of the late eighth or seventh century bc, possibly of local production.

We examine here the typology, distribution, iconography and the historical-cultural implications of seal impressions depicting a lion as a lone motif stamped on handles of storage-jars from Judah. These seals were part of an administrative-economic network run by the governing authorities of Judah during the Babylonian rule and in the early phase of the Persian-Achaemenid rule of Judah. The type of storage jars and the very habit of stamping handles on such containers continued as a local administrative practice attested from the late eighth century to the second century in Judah. The current corpus is comprised of some 136 jar handles, a majority of which were found at Ramat Raḥel. Most stamped impressions were uncovered in hill country sites around Ramat Raḥel, Jerusalem, and Nebi-Samwil. They were stamped by ten types of actual seals that are divided thematically to three major groups. The lions represented on these thematic sealings’ types alluded to Yahweh and most probably served as a stand-in of the god of Israel worshiped in Jerusalem.

This study examines the role of the pithoi drawings and wall paintings of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud. The author suggests that the pithoi drawings were sketches made in preparation for the wall paintings. Therefore, the repeated attempts to find meaning in the layout of the drawings on the pithoi, or to trace links between them and the inscriptions seem futile. She argues that only an investigation of the pottery drawings and the wall paintings as one assemblage reveals the thematic program of the buildings’ decor, which is comprised of two groups: one depicts subject matters related to the king and his activities, the second presents beneficial motifs. The combination of these themes typifies state-run official buildings in the first millennium throughout the ancient Near East and does not support the suggestion that Kuntillet ‘Ajrud served as a ‘religious’ building or centre, although the state sponsored site at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud included a small cultic architectural space.

This book analyzes the history of Mesopotamian imagery from the mid-second to mid-first millennium BCE. It demonstrates that in spite of rich textual evidence, which grants the Mesopotamian gods and goddesses an anthropomorphic form, there was a clear abstention in various media from visualizing the gods in such a form. True, divine human-shaped cultic images existed in Mesopotamian temples. But as a rule, non-anthropomorphic visual agents such as inanimate objects, animals or fantastic hybrids replaced these figures when they were portrayed outside of their sacred enclosures. This tendency reached its peak in first-millennium Babylonia and Assyria. The removal of the Mesopotamian human-shaped deity from pictorial renderings resembles the Biblical agenda not only in its avoidance of displaying a divine image but also in the implied dual perception of the divine: according to the Bible and the Assyro-Babylonian concept the divine was conceived as having a human form; yet in both case...

We examine here the typology, distribution, iconography and the historical-cultural implications of seal impressions depicting a lion as a lone motif stamped on handles of storage-jars from Judah. These seals were part of an administrative-economic network run by the governing authorities of Judah during the Babylonian rule and in the early phase of the Persian-Achaemenid rule of Judah. The type of storage jars and the very habit of stamping handles on such containers continued as a local administrative practice attested from the late eighth century to the second century in Judah. The current corpus is comprised of some 136 jar handles, a majority of which were found at Ramat Raḥel. Most stamped impressions were uncovered in hill country sites around Ramat Raḥel, Jerusalem, and Nebi-Samwil. They were stamped by ten types of actual seals that are divided thematically to three major groups. The lions represented on these thematic sealings’ types alluded to Yahweh and most probably ser...

A seal impression found on a bulla from the City of David depicting a throne and two winged discs may corroborate the assumption that the conceived image of Yahweh in Iron II Jerusalem was of a human-like form. Through a succinct description on the emergence of the hegemonic concept that negates any (conceived) material aspects of Yahweh, a distinction is made between the practical-cultic nature of the biblical Image Ban and the Bible's ontological perception of the god of Israel as a human-like entity in form and 'nature'.

Abstract: A reexamination of the relief on the Hammurabi's "Law Code" stele reveals that the type of beard worn by Hammurabi and Šamaš does not conform to the Old Babylonian beard type. Moreover, the linear workmanship of the lower part of the king's beard suggests that the relief was never finished. Considering the troubled history of the stele – made and erected in Babylonia in the late fifties of the eighteenth century BCE and carried away to Susa in the mid twelfth century – it is proposed that the re-sculpting of the Stele was undertaken by Šutruk-Naḫḥunte or his son Kutir-Naḫḥunte upon the Elamite capture of the monument with the goal of making it their own. An attempt to clarify the circumstances and motivation of this reworking is offered in the article. You may download a PDF of this article from: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/703854 or contact: tallay.ornan@mail.huji.ac.il

As has been shown and extensively dealt with in early and more recent scholarship, Neo-Assyrian palatial wall reliefs went through many thematic changes throughout their two hundred and fifty years of existence. One of their conspicuous traits was a gradual abandoning of magical-religious subject matters, represented by protective supernatural beings, in favour of larger and more detailed historical compositions — mostly of a belligerent nature — revealing, for the first time in antiquity, a truer sense of narrative display. As the narrative-historical themes were rightly considered to be an innovative and prominent contribution of Assyrian imagery to the history of art, extensive efforts have been devoted to the study of these compositions within the context of Assyrian palaces.In the present contribution I intend, however, to concentrate on the “losing” side of Assyrian palatial decoration, namely to focus on the visibility of apotropaic fantastic creatures rendered on wall relief...

The step-topped, free-standing square monument called in modern literature the Broken Obelisk was found by Hormuzd Rassam at Nineveh, near the Ishtar temple on the mound of Kuyunjik. It is the earliest monument of this kind, and it differs in its pictorial rendering from the later, so-called Assyrian obelisks. Whereas the succeeding examples display reliefs on their four sides, creating consecutive narratives, the Broken Obelisk exhibits a single, motionless relief on its front, the subject of the present paper (Börker-Klähn 1982, Nos. 132, 138–45, 152; Bär 1996, 57-68, 88–99, 101–5, 148–65).My aim here is to shed light on the motif of the king holding prisoners of war by means of lead ropes and to examine the bearing of this motif on the status of the royal image in pictorial renderings. According to different interpretations of the scene, the king holds a ring and rod (Börker-Klähn 1982, 178, No. 131 with earlier bibliography), or a ceremonial mace (Russell 2003, 4) as well as lea...

... ture of the figurine, which manifests Egyptian characteristics such as the dress and atef crown as well as non-Egyptian tangs below ... Betsy M. Bryan, “Art, Empire, and the End of the Late Bronze Age,” in The Study of the Ancient Near East in ... 260 F Journal of Near Eastern Studies ...

We examine here the typology, distribution, iconography and the historical-cultural implications of seal impressions depicting a lion as a lone motif stamped on handles of storage-jars from Judah. These seals were part of an administrative-economic network run by the governing authorities of Judah during the Babylonian rule and in the early phase of the Persian-Achaemenid rule of Judah. The type of storage jars and the very habit of stamping handles on such containers continued as a local administrative practice attested from the late eighth century to the second century in Judah. The current corpus is comprised of some 136 jar handles, a majority of which were found at Ramat Raḥel. Most stamped impressions were uncovered in hill country sites around Ramat Raḥel, Jerusalem, and Nebi-Samwil. They were stamped by ten types of actual seals that are divided thematically to three major groups. The lions represented on these thematic sealings' types alluded to Yahweh and most probably served as a stand-in of the god of Israel worshiped in Jerusalem. Résumé. Nous examinons ici les typologie, distribution, iconographie et implications his-torico-culturelles d'empreintes de sceaux sur anses de jarres judaïtes dont le seul motif est un lion. Ces sceaux faisaient partie intégrante d'un réseau administratif et économique durant la domination babylonienne et au début de l'époque achéménide. Le corpus actuel compte quelque 136 anses, dont la majorité a été exhumée à Ramat Raḥel. La plupart ont été découvertes dans les collines autour de Ramat Raḥel, Jérusalem et Nebi-Samwil. Dix types de sceaux sont attestés, répartis en trois principaux groupes thématiques. Les lions qui figurent sur ces types font allusion à Yahvé et servaient probablement de substitut au dieu d'Israël vénéré à Jérusalem. 70

A reexamination of the relief on the Hammurabi's "Law Code" stele reveals that the type of beard worn by Hammurabi and Shamash does not conform to the Old Babylonian beard type. Moreover, the linear workmanship of the lower part of the king's beard suggests that the relief was never finished. Considering the troubled history of the stele-made and erected in Babylonia in the late fifties of the eighteenth century BCE and carried away to Susa in the mid twelfth century-it is proposed that the re-sculpting of the Stele was undertaken by Shutruk-Nahhunte or his son Kutir-Nahhunte upon the Elamite capture of the monument with the goal of making it their own. An attempt to clarify the circumstances and motivation of this reworking is offered in the article.

A seal impression found on a bulla from the City of David depicting a throne and two winged discs may corroborate the assumption that the conceived image of Yahweh in Iron II Jerusalem was of a human-like form. Through a succinct description on the emergence of the hegemonic concept that negates any (conceived) material aspects of Yahweh, a distinction is made between the practical-cultic nature of the biblical Image Ban and the Bible's ontological perception of the god of Israel as a human-like entity in form and 'nature'.

This study examines the role of the pithoi drawings and wall paintings of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud. It suggests that the pithoi drawings were sketches made in preparation for the wall paintings. The repeated attempts to find meaning in the layout of the drawings on the pithoi, or to trace links between them and the inscriptions, seem therefore futile. It argues that only an investigation of the pottery drawings and the wall paintings as a one assemblage reveals the thematic program of the buildings’ décor, which is comprised of two groups: one depicts subject matters related to the king and his activities, the second presents beneficial motifs. The combination of these themes typify state-run official buildings in the first millennium throughout the ancient Near East and does not support the suggestion that Kuntillet ‘Ajrud served as a ‘religious’ building or  centre, although the state sponsored site at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud it included a small cultic architectural space.

This essay aims to examine the contribution of the pictorial finds from Kuntillet Ajrud with respect to the site’s function: Was it a religious center or a royal post of the Northern Kingdom of Israel?
The pictorial records, as well as the written ones revealed in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (late ninth-eighth century BCE) are found on two main types of physical platforms, or media: pottery jars and plastered or non-plastered walls. The two pottery pithoi were used initially as storage jars, but owing to their massive surface area, they were reused as platforms for the scribbling of inscriptions, mainly of epistolary nature. Accordingly, the pithoi drawings should also be interpreted as sketches. This conclusion accords well with the virtual absence of Iron Age II painted pottery, in particular storage jars. Only if we regard the pithoi drawings as sketches can we explain some of their peculiarities, such as the drawing of some paintings over other ones, the haphazard layout of the jars’ motifs, and the ongoing difficulty in providing a clear and comprehensive explanation of their meaning and function.  The drawings of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud were used as doodles: artists’ exercises for the study, practice or planning of pictorial motifs and compositions intended for another surface, i.e. the walls of the structures at the site. 
The view of the Ajrud visual records as one assemblage that includes both the pottery and the wall paintings – the former used as sketches for the latter  – gives rise to two main themes that were probably used for the  painted architectural décor. The first thematic group depicts the king and his court activities. This includes the large mural of an enthroned king in building A, the depiction of harnessed horse(s), a walled city, an archer, wild animals that were probably part of hunting scenes, the seated layer player most probably aimed to be integrated in a banquet scene, and the sketch of a row of five or six(?) dignitaries (usually identified as worshippers). The second group of reconstructed wall paintings shows protective themes aimed to guard the buildings and their inhabitants.

It should be stressed that apotropaic images and motifs were by no means  restricted to cultic buildings in the ancient Near East. More often than not, such icons were selected to safeguard any type of structure, in particular palaces and state-sponsored buildings. In fact, most of the first-millennium archaeological finds of apotropaic images (painted and sculpted) derive from contemporary palaces and elite residencies. Hence, the protective themes among the Kuntillet ‛Ajrud jar sketches and walls’ painting do not support a cultic or a religious character of the site. The pictorial themes included in the second group of protecting images include the Bes images, the suckling cows, and the vegetal motifs of date palms, lotus chains, or pomegranates.
The non-religious character of the site does not preclude, however, the existence of a specific architectural unit that was reserved for cultic purposes. Indeed, as is commonly accepted, the so called ‘bench room’ probably served for such activities. This, however, does not mean the entire site functioned as a religious center. A comparison to the Judahite post at Arad that included a cultic space located within a wider non-religious structure provides support for the above conclusion.
The visual image that is associated with the ‘bench room’ is the depiction of the tree flanked by ibexes shown above a striding lion. The prominent role of Yahweh in the inscriptions revealed at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud coupled with the strong associations between ‘Ajrud and the Kingdom of Northern Israel and supported by an earlier link between the emblem and a male deity, suggest that the signified deity referred to by the latter complex emblem could have been Yahweh. Although traditionally this emblem was associated with ashera, the unclear character of this numinous entity during the first millennium does not permit a clear-cut correspondence between the two.           
The close links between Samaria and the finds from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud enable us to enliven the décor program of the palace of the kings of Israel in Samaria. The ‘Ajrud paintings, then, can be seen as a dusty and shattered mirror of the grandeur of the long-lost palace of the Israelite kings in Samaria.

As has been shown and extensively dealt with in early and more recent scholarship, Neo-Assyrian palatial wall reliefs went through many thematic changes throughout their two hundred and fifty years of existence. One of their conspicuous traits was a gradual abandoning of magical-...

Standing at the head of the social hierarchy, the Mesopotamian king had a close relationship with the gods and was considered a mediator between the earthly and divine spheres. The interaction between kings and gods had a supreme role in ensuring social welfare and a vital function in the empowerment of the ruler. The
worldly needs of the ruler led to continuous efforts to upgrade him by comparing him to the divine, as epitomized in the unique representation of Naram-Sin. As a one-time representation, however, this portrayal emphasizes how ambivalent and restrained
the display of godlike kings in Mesopotamia was in general. The qualified approach of Mesopotamian iconography to royal deification is expressed in the consistent use of implicit and indirect measures to convey the godlike image of the king. A comparison
between selected Mesopotamian pictorial and textual records sheds light on the difference between these two modes of expressions in conveying the divine status of the king, the visual mode being much more limited than the written one. It was
perhaps the immense power of the visual mode, and its potentially explosive nature.
in relation to the fate of all mortals, including kings, that prevented direct and explicit
representation of quasi-divine kings in the art of ancient Mesopotamia