IranicaAntiqua, vol. L, 2015 doi: 10.2143/IA.50.0.3053516 SEARCHING FOR MYTHOLOGICAL THEMES ON THE “JIROFT” CHLORITE ARTEFACTS BY Massimo VIDALE (University of Padua, Italy) Abstract: New evidence gathered at the plundered cemetery of Mahtoutabad, near the early urban compound of Konar Sandal South (Jiroft) confirms that here chlorite artifacts were used in elite funerals at the beginning of the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE. Some carved chlorite vessels from the Jiroft area and Shahdad represent a destructive flood, ending when a divinity lifts a rainbow in the sky. These images are compared with Old Babylonian and later cuneiform versions of flood myths. The paper also singles out indirect analogies with the flood narrative in Genesis 9, 12-17. Then it considers other images of fight between eagles and snakes, as possibly linked with parts of the famous and much discussed Mesopotamian poem of Etana (as already proposed in the past by Youssef Madjidzadeh). In spite of substantial divergences and discontinuities, at least in a crucial case the match between images and selected passages of the ancient sources appears more literal than previously suspected. It is argued that such similarities depended upon the wide circulation and sharing in the Middle and South Asia of the 3rd millennium BCE of codified oral versions of similar legendary themes (in form of narratives, through songs and rhymes). The Halil Rud stone carvers may have translated such intangible vanished heritage through standardized, formal images, in the context of a growing cultural and political interaction between the royal courts of Mesopotamia and those of the eastern pol- ity of Marhashi. Keywords: Halil Rud, Marhashi, carved chlorite artifacts, flood legends, storm bulls, Etana myth. Introduction In this article I discuss the likelihood that some chlorite vessels of the Halil Rud civilization (Kerman, Iran) express a myth centered on a flood caused by a powerful divinity. Moreover I explore—with variable results— the possible links between some other images on the same media and nar- ratives that we know through later Mesopotamian versions in the form of the so-called “myth of Etana”. 97513.indb 15 23/02/15 10:16 16 M. VIDALE I never had a particular interest in the relationships between ancient myths, religion and iconography; in particular, my only previous encounter with a “flood” story and its supposed archaeological evidence was Leon- ard Woolley’s famous biased interpretation of the “Deluge” layers he unearthed at Ur (Woolley 1965: 31-32). Being a stone, copper and pots- person, I never thought that this narrative, so prominent in the ideological foundations of the western world, could ever provide me with an intriguing research subject. My access to ancient Near Eastern texts for discussing the flood traditions and the other ancient sources considered here is secondary, as it depends upon the most widely available translations and versions in English (see below; in the case of the flood sources, George 2003; Dalley 1989: 1-38; Lambert & Millard 1969; Civil 1969 and ETCSL 2013; Foster 1995 and 2005; and Jacobsen 1978: 114-121); for the Etana narrative, Haul 2000, Hess & Streck 2009, Kinnier Wilson 1985 and 2007, Saporetti 1990 and others (see below). In this paper, I accept that the sites plundered in 2001 along the Halil Rud (Jiroft, Kerman, Iran: see Madjidzadeh 2003, 2008) are, as proposed since 20 years by Piotr Steinkeller (1982, 2006, 2008), what remains of the ancient polity of Marhashi, the most powerful adversary and later part- ner of Mesopotamian courts in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC ( contra Francfort & Tremblay 2010). Dating the Halil Rud carved chlorite artifacts The carved chlorite artifacts ascribed to the so- called “Intercultural style” (Kohl 1971, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1979, 2001, 2009; Lamberg- Karlovsky 1988; Zarins 1978) are probably the most distinctive and dis- cussed class of artifacts of Bronze age Middle Asia. It is now clear that this term and its implications are completely misleading, and that we are deal- ing with an indigenous style and local production of the Halil Rud valley culture or civilization or—as stated above—Marhashi (Piran 2013; Potts 2010: 178; quite outdated views still recently reproposed in Aubet 2013: 184-190). Rescue activities directed by the writer at the plundered graveyard of Mahtoutabad, near Konar Sandal South, Jiroft (2006-2009) recovered, from disturbed lots, fragments of carved chlorite vessels lost on the spot by the grave robbers. In the dumps piled aside each pilfered grave, chlorite sherds have ascertained associations with well preserved ceramic forms, 97513.indb 16 23/02/15 10:16 MYTHOLOGICAL THEMES ON THE “JIROFT” CHLORITE ARTEFACTS 17 currently under study (Pls. 1a-1c). The local provenience of these artifacts (contra the doubts in Muscarella 2005) is now beyond question (see Pl. 1c). Mahtoutabad was only one of the cemeteries of the Konar Sandal South urban complex, and it is reasonable to assume that thousands of carved chlorite objects were subtracted from this site alone and lost to the antique market. Among the motifs on record at Mahtoutabad range the following: palms and dates (Pl. 2, 1-5), mat-like zig-zag patterns (Pl. 2, 6), “hut” or door-like patterns (Pl. 2, 7). winding ridges or snakes (Pl. 2, 8 and 9, 12-14), alternating rows of scorpions (Pl. 2, 10 and 11), “waves” ending in round loops (Pl. 2, 15), hair or woolen flocks (Pl. 2, 16 and 17), canister- like patterns (Pl. 2, 6, 18), embricated pattern (Pl. 2, 19). In the graves debris we also found a chlorite spindle-whorl (Pl. 2, 20) and undecorated open bowls (Pl. 2, 21). Besides the widely acknowledged economical implications of these objects for the reconstruction of long-distance trade (Kohl 1975, 1976, 1978, 1979, 2001), their dating has been matter of dispute, as that of the chlorite working area excavated at Tepe Yahya, still the only manufactur- ing site for carved chlorite artifacts so far identified and scientifically exca- vated (see, among others, Ascalone 2006: 47-53; de Miroschedji 1973; Kohl 1971, 1975, 1978; Lamberg-Karlovsky 1970, 1971, 1972, 1976a, 1976b, 1988; Beale 1973, 1986; Amiet 1973, 1986; Lamberg-Karlovsky & Potts 2001). In short, from ca. 1970 to 1990, while P. Amiet, on the basis of the iconography of the seals, had promptly dated Yahya IVB to the interval 2500-2200 BCE (in reasonable agreement with De Miroschedji 1973, who first proposed for the artifacts as a time-range 2600-2300 BCE), most of the other authors initially ascribed Yahya IVB (and the production of the sérieancienne) to the first half of the 3rd millennium BCE (with the other exception of Beale 1986, who proposed a very wide-ranging dating 2400- 1800 BCE; later, a similarly low chronology was proposed in T. F. Potts 1994, who even extended the chronology of the carved artifacts to the times of the Ur III dynasty). In the last 20 years there has been a growing consensus to restrict the production of the same objects within the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE, accepting the substance of Amiet’s and De Miroschedji’s original views (see for example Quenet 2008, who places the production between ED III and the early Akkadian Period; and Ascalone 2006). D. T. Potts (in Lamberg-Karlovsky & Potts 2001: 200) originally favoured a slightly later 97513.indb 17 23/02/15 10:16 18 M. VIDALE range (between 2300/2200 and 2000 BCE), but recently proposed a middle- to late 3rd millennium BCE dating (2010: 178). While Lamberg-Karlovsky (2001), very cautiously, insisted on the wider span 2600-2000 BCE, few authors continue to propose earlier periods, or suggest that the série ancienne has a long stylistic evolution deeply rooted in the early 3rd mil- lennium BCE (Perrot & Madjidzadeh 2005, 2006). The idea of a long stylistic development, besides being in principle likely, might be supported by the find of a few artifacts of the same class in Mesopotamia that could go back to the second quarter of the 3rd millen- nium BCE (Moorey 1999: 47-48); but at present this is not supported by independent stratigraphic evidence, relevant 14C information and/or for- malized stylistic studies. Although fragments of alabaster and chlorite unfinished vessel and the tools used in their manufacture were found in late 5th-early 4th millennium BCE in the first occupation phase of the site of Mahtoutabad (Vidale & Desset 2013) it is too early to address the ques- tion of the local development of this craft tradition. A full appreciation of the stylistic evolution of these artifacts will be a demanding task, considering, for example, the wide range of forms and skill on some collections of chlorite artifacts (see not only the quality variations of some pieces in Madjidzadeh 2003, whose provenience is questionable, but also the objects of the same general class found at Shahdad, in Hakemi 1972 and 1997, whose provenience, instead, is certain). In the last campaigns of excavation at Konar Sandal South, a chlorite pedestalled cup decorated with interlocking snakes, inlaid with reddish limestone (?) and blue (turquoise) insets, was found in the uppermost abandonment levels of a private house, not far from the “Citadel” (excava- tion by R. Micheli, direction Y. Madjidzadeh; the piece is still unpub- lished). The latest 14C dates (calibrated) obtained for roughly contemporary levels of the site, in the earliest levels of the “Citadel” mound of Konar Sandal South so far exposed, range approximately 2450-2200 BCE (in this last context, Madjidzadeh also found an almost complete chlorite plaque or gaming board in the form of a scorpion-man: Madjidzadeh 2008: Tab. I; Fig. 12). At Mahtoutabad, in the dumps of the illegal diggers, together with the fragments in Pls.