Eannatum and the “King of Kiš”? Another Look at the Stele of the Vultures and “Cartouches” in Early Sumerian Art
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN EANNATUM AND THE “KING OF KIŠ”? ANOTHER LOOK AT THE STELE OF THE VULTURES AND “CARTOUCHES” IN EARLY SUMERIAN ART The Stele of Eannatum of Lagaš (the so-called ‘Stele of the Vultures’) is a monument known to most students of the Ancient Near East. In both text and image, front and back, it documents the victory of the city-state of Lagaš over neighboring Umma in a battle arising out of long-standing disputes concerning land- and water-rights.1 The confl ict is attested throughout the entire Early Dynastic III period, both before and after Eannatum, ruler of Lagaš, who commissioned this particular stele sometime ca. 2460 b.c.2 In its present state at the Musée du Louvre,3 one is easily led to think of the stele as a complete monument; yet the restoration actually con- sists of only 7 fragments—one purchased on the market, and six found scattered around Tell K, where the temple of Ningirsu was located, at the site of Tello, ancient Girsu, a city within the state of Lagaš.4 Upon * This article originally appeared as “Eannatum and the ‘King of Kiš’? Another look at the Stele of the Vultures and ‘Cartouches’ in Early Sumerian Art,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 76 (1986), pp. 205–212. 1 The text was originally read and published by F. Thureau-Dangin, Restitution matérielle de la Stèle des Vautours (1909) 42–63 (hereafter RMSV). Th. Jacobsen published a new reading, heavily restored, for the fi rst ten columns, in “Translation of the Stele of the Vultures, Cols. I–X,” in: S. N. Kramer Anniversary Vol. (= AOAT 25, 1976) 247–259. See now, however, H. Steible/H. Behrens, Die altsum. Bau- und Weihinschriften I (= FAOS 5, 1982) 120–145. 2 On the issue of the Early Dynastic confl ict, see now J. S. Cooper, Reconstructing History from Ancient Inscriptions: The Lagash-Umma Border Confl ict (= SANE 2/1, 1983). For its continuation beyond ED III, see G. Pettinato, “i7-Idigna-ta i7-nun-šè: Il confl itto tra Lagaš ed Umma per la ‘Frontera Divina’ e la sua soluzione durante la terza dinastia di Ur,” in: Mesopotamia 5–6 (1970/71) 281–320. 3 = AO 50+2436–2438+16109. 4 Fragments discovered during the 1880’s in excavations conducted by the French, cf. L. Heuzey, “La Stèle des Vautours,” in: Gazette archéologique (1884) 164–180 and 193–203; A. Parrot, Tello, Vingt campagnes de fouilles (1948) 95. The purchased piece was acquired by the British Museum in 1900 (BM 23580), and was given to the Louvre at the time the restoration was done. 54 chapter seventeen close examination of the stele, there are signifi cant gaps—both in the iconography and in the continuous text that covers all available back- ground, obverse and reverse. The fragmentary nature of the completed stele notwithstanding, however, we can with some assurance argue that the obverse represents the god Ningirsu, tutelary deity of Girsu and chief god of the pantheon of Lagaš as well.5 The god is shown holding a battle-net fi lled with defeated enemies—an attribute associated in the text only with gods; he also holds his emblem, the Anzu—symbolic reference to the god’s own mythological history.6 The accompanying fi gure behind (to the left of ) the god would then represent his mother, the goddess Ninursaga, whose characteristic headdress also includes the head of the Anzu, an allusion to her signifi cant role in her son’s epic victory. Ningirsu is thus shown after the battle is over, with the defeated forces of Umma clearly in his power—the “icon” of the state’s victory.7 Perhaps because the reverse is divided into more registers, the losses are more signifi cant. We are tantalized with images of battle and ceremony (cf. fi g. 1); but there has been great diffi culty in reading the narrative here represented.8 In the assumed sequence of actual battle (upper two registers) and celebratory ceremony (third register), one of the greatest impediements to understanding has been the apparent resumption of battle in the very fragmentary bottom register—where 5 This identifi cation argued farther in I. J. Winter, “After the Battle is Over: The ‘Stele of the Vultures’ and the beginning of historical narrative in the art of the ancient Near East,” in: H. L. Kessler/M. S. Simpson (eds.), Pictorial Narrative in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (= Studies in the History of Art 16, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, 1985) 11–32, esp. 13–16. 6 That the head of this emblem is indeed a lion, appropriate to the Anzu, and not merely a bird’s head, can be seen clearly on pre-restoration photographs (kindly made available to me by Agnès Spycket, Départment des antiquités orientales, Musée du Louvre), before further damage was incurred. 7 As argued in Winter, Pictorial Narrative . (see note 5) 16 and 20. 8 Cf. H. Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, 4th revised ed. (1977) 71;—H. A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement: An essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East (1951) 158;—A. L. Perkins, “Narration in Babylonian Art,” in: AJA 61 (1957) 58;—A. Moortgat, The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia (1969) 63;—D. P. Hansen, “Frühsumerisches und frühdynasti- sches Flachbild,” in: PKG 14 (1975) 189—of which, summary in Winter, Pictorial Narrative . (see note 5) 16–21. See also V. K. Afanasyeva, “K probleme tolkovaniya sumerskih rel’efov,” in: Kultura Vostoka: Drevnost’ i Rannoe Srednevekov’e (Leningrad 1978) 19–32, with English summary, “Reading Sumerian Reliefs,” 229–230—kindly made available to me by Piotr Steinkeller in the Spring of 1986..