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North Syrian Ivories and Tell Halaf Reliefs: the Impact of Luxury Goods Upon “Major” Arts

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North Syrian Ivories and Tell Halaf Reliefs: the Impact of Luxury Goods Upon “Major” Arts CHAPTER NINE NORTH SYRIAN IVORIES AND TELL HALAF RELIEFS: THE IMPACT OF LUXURY GOODS UPON “MAJOR” ARTS There are striking similarities in overall style, detail, and subject matter between certain of the early fi rst millennium ivory carvings attributed to North Syrian manufacture and the reliefs from Tell Halaf (ancient Guzana), a site located in the abur River basin. Ivories of North Syrian type have actually been found in fragments at Tell Halaf itself, as well as at various other sites: Nimrud, Hama, Zincirli, and Hasanlu, to name the most well known. These parallels led Helene Kantor to argue in 1956 that in fact the ivories, and possibly other minor arts, must have served as the models for the stone reliefs of what was essentially a provincial and culturally backward local center.1 Such a scenario reverses the usual direction of infl uence from one medium to another—a direction generally understood as moving from the so-called major arts to so-called minor arts, with scale often determining what is considered “major.”2 Nevertheless, I believe a number of factors can be adduced in support of the original hypothesis, and I should like to offer these brief notes as a tribute to the extraordinarily sensitive visual observations and historical perceptions of Helene Kantor, whose work on many aspects of the art of the early fi rst millennium b.c. laid the foundations for much of my own. * This article originally appeared as “North Syrian Ivories and Tell Halaf Reliefs: The Impact of Luxury Goods upon ‘Major’ Arts,” in Essays in Ancient Civilization Pre- sented by Helene J. Kantor, A. Leonard, Jr. and B.B. Williams, eds., Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1989, pp. 321–332. 1 H. J. Kantor, “Syro-Palestinian Ivories,” JNES 15 (1956): 173, following a sugges- tion made by P. J. Riis, Hama. Fouilles et recherches de la Fondation Carlsberg 1931–1938. II, 3: Les Cimitières á cremation (Copenhagen, 1948), pp. 198f. 2 See, for example, the study of M.-Th. Barrelet, “Etude de glyptique akkadienne,” Orientalia 39 (1970): 213–51, in which she suggests that seal engravers of palace and temple workshops would have had direct access to the major monuments of the times, and that specifi cally cult statuary and reliefs provided the stimulus for certain imagery on Akkadian seals (cf. p. 217). 382 chapter nine Tell Halaf was intermittently excavated under the direction of the Baron Max von Oppenheim from 1899 to 1929.3 In a royal Aramaean inscription of the tenth to ninth centuries b.c., the site was referred to as the kingdom of Paliē;4 however Assyrian texts make reference to Guzana (bibl. Gozan), capital of Bit Bahiani, which eventually was incorporated into the empire as the province of Guzana, extending from Ras al Ain to Nisibis on the modern Turkish-Syrian border. In terms of archaeological assemblages, both Tell Halaf and the neighboring site of Tell Fakhariyeh, excavated briefl y by McEwan for the Oriental Institute in 1940,5 show the same pattern as a number of other North Syrian sites in the early fi rst millennium b.c.: a pre- Assyrian phase with defi nite affi nities with the west, and then a subsequent eighth to seventh centuries phase with ties to Assyria.6 The picture is complicated somewhat by the complex history of the region during the second millennium, during which time a strong Middle Assyrian presence had been pushed back by the arrival and settlement of the Aramaeans in the late eleventh–early tenth centuries.7 Sometime in the reign of Adad Nirari II of Assyria (911–891 b.c.), however, Assyrian power had been re-established up to the abur, and with the western campaigns of Tukulti Ninurta II (890–884), an Assyrian presence was felt between the abur and the Euphrates—thus preparing the way for the move of his son, Assurnasirpal II (883–859) into Syria beyond the great river. The region of Guzana/Bit Bahiani is mentioned in Neo-Assyrian texts of 894 (Adad-Nirari II), 882 and 867 b.c., prior to the specifi c 3 Cf. synopsis in B. Hrouda, “Halaf, Tell,” RlA 4 (Berlin, 1972–75), p. 54; also M. von Oppenheim, Tell Halaf, eine neue Kultur im ältesten Mesopotamien (Leipzig, 1931), a popular, narrative account of the excavations and the history of the site, and the offi cial excavation reports, Tell Halaf, vols. I–IV (Berlin, 1943–1962). Actual campaign seasons were 1899, 1911–1913, and 1927–1929. 4 Cf. R. O’Callaghan, Aram Nahrain, Analecta Orientalia 26 (Rome, 1948), p. 130. 5 C. W. McEwan et al., Soundings at Tell Fakhariyeh, OIP 79 (Chicago, 1956). 6 One could only wish that the Tell Halaf material had been recorded with as much care as that from Tell Fakhariyeh; (cf. review of B. Hrouda, Tell Halaf IV, by J. V. Canby in AJA 68 (1964): 71–72. Nevertheless, Helene Kantor, in writing on the Fakhariyeh pottery, states that the orientation of the abur area is clearly toward the west in the early part of the fi rst millennium b.c. She notes that the Iron Age pottery at both sites is virtually identical to that from the Amuq plain, and similar to some Palestinian Iron Age pottery as well (H. J. Kantor, “The Pottery,” in McEwan et al., Soundings, pp. 25–29). 7 See F. Dupont-Sommer, Les Araméens (Paris, 1949), p. 21; W. F. Albright, “The Date of the Kapara Period at Gozan (Tell Halaf ),” AnSt 6 (1956): 75–85; O’Callaghan, Aram Nahrain, pp. 103–4..
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