The Relief of Harput
-
Eşref Abay
,
Bülent Demir
Abstract
In the spring of 2016 a unique stone slab carved in relief was accidentally discovered on Kurey Tepesi near Harput/Elazığ in eastern Turkey. The relief depicts the capture of a heavily fortified city in horizontally arranged registers. At first sight it comes to recognition that the Harput Relief stands in the tradition of Mesopotamian victory steles, starting with the Eannatum Stele (Stele of Vultures) in Early Dynastic Sumer (c. 2900–2350 BC) and continuing with the kings of Akkad (c. 2350–2150 BC). From a stylistic and iconographic point of view, the relief seems closer to the victory stele of Daduša of Ešnunna and the Mardin Stele of the early Old Babylonian period (c. 2000–1600 BC). The subsequently excavated archaeological context, a heavily burned architectural layer, contained Middle Bronze Age I pottery typical of the Elazığ-Malatya region, corroborating a date in the early second millennium BC.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to those who contributed to the preparation of this article. We would like to thank Selma Arslan, who took the photographs of the relief, and Gürkan Ergün, Bora Tümer and Bilgehan Öz, who helped with the illustrations. We have benefited from exchanging ideas with Mathias Benther, Kimiyoshi Matsumura, Fulya Dedeoğlu and Çiğdem Maner, whom we would like to thank for their contribution in refining this contribution.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- The Relief of Harput
- Kultszenen – Bankettszenen: Die Akteure und die Paraphernalien
- A Middle Assyrian Fragment Mentioning Iron from Kassite Nippur
- The Power of Human Speech in Hittite Anatolia
- “The Shepherd, What Has He Done?”
- Presents in the Palace during the Middle Assyrian Period (1500–1000 BC)
- Active Participles in Hittite
- A Bit of Assyrian Imperial Culture
- Obligations de travail dans les économies palatiales du Bronze récent
- “Both my Cleansed Hands”
- Everything Must Go
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- The Relief of Harput
- Kultszenen – Bankettszenen: Die Akteure und die Paraphernalien
- A Middle Assyrian Fragment Mentioning Iron from Kassite Nippur
- The Power of Human Speech in Hittite Anatolia
- “The Shepherd, What Has He Done?”
- Presents in the Palace during the Middle Assyrian Period (1500–1000 BC)
- Active Participles in Hittite
- A Bit of Assyrian Imperial Culture
- Obligations de travail dans les économies palatiales du Bronze récent
- “Both my Cleansed Hands”
- Everything Must Go
