Iranica Antiqua, vol. XXXIV, 1999 BEYOND THE FRONTIERS OF EMPIRE: IRANIANS AND THEIR ANCESTORS BY Charles BURNEY David Stronach has never been one to look at Iran alone, tempting as that may be to any archaeologist long familiar with its past. After all, one may hear said, are there not now enough answers to problems in the archaeo- logical record of Iran and relevant textual sources, whether Old Persian, Greek or Assyro-Babylonian? For myself two sites, Tepe Nush-i Jan and Hasanlu, pose questions of particular interest. The first is obviously of special concern still to David Stronach, who seems yet uncommitted to any one interpretation of the Central Temple and its carefully inserted filling of shale chips (Stronach 1984). For me the iconography of the Hasanlu Gold Bowl, whose emer- gence from the ruins of Burnt Building I in July 1958 I witnessed on first arrival on the site, and which I alone have been enabled to draw “from life”, remains an intriguing enigma. The tombs of Marlik more straight- forwardly demonstrate the interface between the ancient Near East and the northern steppes (Negahban 1983, 1996; Medveskaya 1982: 61; Burney and Lang 1971: 118-20). A search for ethnic contexts may be thought outmoded by some archae- ologists, though hardly by historians, linguists or specialists in compara- tive religion. Linguists in particular seem absorbed, with some obsessed, by the search for Proto-Indo-European and other origins, a quest which can lead into some strange by-ways (Diebold 1992: note 10; Renfrew 1987: 75-98; Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1995: 859-60; Narain 1987). The last proposes the Gansu region of China as a homeland! At the same time a wealth of evidence of concern to the archaeologist is there for the asking, if often hidden in a welter of etymological reconstructions with supporting comparative examples. This writer is himself fascinated by aspects of ancient ethnicity, at the same time aware — to employ an artistic metaphor — that the distinct colours of the picture need blending by pulling the brush across the wet 2 CH. BURNEY Fig. 1. Proto-Indo-European, Hurrian and Indo-Iranian habitats. IRANIANS AND THEIR ANCESTORS 3 paint, as can be done with oils. At the risk of tedium one passage seems worth repeating here, even if not all will agree: “In the final analysis, ethnic identity is not in any meaningful sense shaped by genes but by cultural identity, where language plays a sig- nificant but not necessarily a dominant role. An Indo-Aryan-Hurrian symbiosis has been suggested (Mayrhofer 1966: 29). One linguist even claims (Justins 1992: 450) that “if the Hurrian language … were not so clearly non-Indo-European in its particulars, one would ask if the Hurrians were not more Indo-European than the Hittites. What more can be said?” (Burney 1997: 189). Though not primarily concerned with the Hurrians, this essay will touch on them, while turning attention principally on those populations to a greater or lesser degree to be termed Iranian. Iranologists have understandably looked to later periods, Achaemenid to Sasanian, to illuminate the dark shadows over the later prehistory of Iran, within and beyond the modern frontiers. There alone may be found the texts they crave. In the quest for origins, however, it is surely safer to rely as far as possible on contemporary and earlier rather than later evi- dence. Of course later sources have their relevance; but they can also hide many a snare and pitfall, such as entrapped the ageing Rustam and Rakush his steed in their last hour. The Central Temple (alias Fire Temple) of Tepe Nush-i Jan still defies clarification (Roaf and Stronach 1973), whether through comparison with building rites in Mesopotamia (Stronach 1974) or in the setting of the early years of Xerxes (486-465 B.C.), who, alone in the succession of Achaemenid kings, seems to have tried to impose specifically Iranian religious practices (Ghirshman 1976a-b). The Neo-Babylonian date of two Mesopotamian examples of a building rite — with careful filling up of a temple with either soil or sand — precludes any influence on the Fire Temple at Tepe Nush-i Jan. For possible influences we must therefore look elsewhere, to other cultural contexts. One point remains absolutely certain, that the greatest respect was shown and care taken with mudbrick, clay and shale not to damage the altar, walls and decoration of the Fire Temple. Were there to be the slightest hint of a burial there, it might have been legitimate to point to the deliberate filling up of the tombs of the cemetery of Marlik. But that is hardly a parallel; nor were the tombs filled with comparable 4 CH. BURNEY care, damage being caused to bones and grave-goods alike. Much as I myself appreciate any arguable comparisons between Urartu and the civi- lization of the Medes and Persians (Stronach 1967), the use of false win- dows at Tepe Nush-i Jan and in basalt on Uçkale, the finest section of the more or less contemporary citadel of Çavu≥tepe south-west of Van Kale, built by Sarduri II (764-735 B.C.) (Erzen 1978: fig. 22), constitute a rather tenuous parallel in the contexts of attempts to explain the function and filling in of the Fire Temple. Two facts stand out, so obvious as scarcely to be worthy of repetition. First, this building was beyond serious doubt a temple or shrine; second, the altar equally clearly indicates a fire cult. Arguments for Mesopotamian rather than Iranian inspiration may be thought to be reinforced by the tradition of open-air worship so characteristic of the Iranian people, as recorded by Classical authors including Strabo (15. 3.13-14). Temples and statues were alien to them. Whence, then, this curious architectural phenomenon? Probably it should be seen in part as a product of a settled economy. Certainly the Fire Temple of Tepe Nush-i Jan should not be seen in isolation from the even more massive mudbrick structures on either side. The Medes would hardly have imported bricklayers from the Mesopotamian lowlands at a time when, in the eighth century B.C., they were barely beginning to achieve any political cohesion (Young 1988; Genito 1986). What then of the cult of fire? Here we are on surer, if heavily trodden, ground, if we seek an Iranian context for the Fire Temple at Tepe Nush-i Jan. Yet here I shall turn my back on the conventional wisdom, which looks to comparative evidence at Pasargadae and Naqsh-i Rustam, with further excursions into Parthian and Sasanian times, when the cult — established (we are told) by Zarathustra — became part of the apparatus of the impe- rial state religion. The literature on the topic is far too voluminous to be cited here (e.g. Boyce 1975; Duchesne-Guillemin 1983). The quest for an Iranian background for the fire cult will lead us into the fields of linguis- tics and comparative religion. First, however, let us note the suggestion of a fire altar in the centre of Burnt Building V, one of the principal struc- tures on the citadel mound of Hasanlu in Period IVC. After a fire dated c. 1100 B.C. this building was used for humbler purposes in Hasanlu IVB (c. 1100-800 B.C.), probably ending its days as a stable. But in the twelfth century B.C. Burnt Building V had as its central feature a brick block with every appearance of an altar, capped by over one hundred layers of burnt IRANIANS AND THEIR ANCESTORS 5 plaster. A reasonable estimate therefore would be that this altar was in use for over a century (Dyson 1989b: 114-5). Of course these burnt layers of plaster do not provide as irrefutable evidence as the fire bowl of Tepe Nush-i Jan that this was a fire altar rather than simply the location for repeated burnt offerings. The suggestion, however, remains attractive. Fur- ther aspects of the fire cult will be discussed below. Meanwhile Hasanlu demands wider attention for its comparability, in the use of columns, with later Median and Achaemenid architecture. With Hasanlu set in a purely Hurro-Mannaean context, such parallels are hard to explain. If, however, Hasanlu is put into a context at least in part Iranian, or Indo-Iranian to be more precise, then the architectural evidence begins to become a little more comprehensible. If a fire cult was practised at Hasanlu, at least in the later second millennium B.C., another piece can be added to the jigsaw. Are there any more pieces? Surely by now there is nothing more to be said on the burnt citadel of Hasanlu? Not so! If we look again at the Gold Bowl, there is yet room for fresh ideas. The most recent full discussion (Winter 1989) comes down with some hesitation in favour of the interpretation proposed a generation ago, of a Hurrian con- text for the complex iconography of this unique vessel, more of a beaker than a bowl (Porada 1959). I myself have long been an advocate of the place of the Hurrians in the cultural patterns of the ancient Near East: this has been acknowledged indirectly, the attribution of the Early Trans- Caucasian/Kura-Araxes culture to a Hurrian population being ascribed to “scholars” (Winter 1989: 100-1); but historians have been more cautious. Now, however, an alternative interpretation comes to mind. The leading figure in the procession of three clearly divine beings, riding a chariot drawn by a massive bull from whose mouth flows an abundance of water, has been identified with Teshub, not only from the association of this god with the bull but also from his leading place in this procession, Teshub being accepted as head of the Hurrian pantheon.