art 219
the citadel and consisted in an encounter with the reliefs on the small
orthostats on the southern side and the eastern corner of the palace, while
the second occurred when he reached the terrace leading to the porch
bedecked with caryatids and reliefs in the northern section of the palace.
the scorpion Gate on the eastern side served as a functional and symbolic
interlocking point between these two areas.
since the original sequence of the 187 small orthostats was obviously
altered when they were reused, it is impossible to reconstruct the origi-
nal pictorial context.63 nevertheless, even in this later combination,
the themes of the individual scenes make it clear that these works pre-
sented the image of an economically, politically, and religiously idealized
landscape.64 several depictions point to the cultivation of the land, with
palm trees, the harvesting of their fruit, and the flourishing of transport
and trade, in which the camel played an important role (pl. vIIa). they
include some 20 different wild and domesticated animals, and show fish-
ing and the slaughter of fowl as activities associated with daily life. For the
early aramaeans in Guzana, the landscape in this imagery clearly served
as a mnemotope, as a domain in which their newly achieved urban iden-
tity was enhanced. the images of warlike conflict (pl. vIIb) interspersed
among these “peaceful” images introduce an element into the visual dis-
course that is perhaps connected with the emergence of the aramaean
dynasty of Guzana. these concrete places of memory were combined with
abstract historical and mythological locations in which gods, monsters,
heroes, and ancestors acted as tutelary figures for the self-image of society
(pl. vIIc). this may be considered the dynamic process of aramaean art
in Guzana, in which objects relating to the past were produced and tradi-
tions were invented.
In this relief series, the images relating to the past, in particular, fea-
ture motifs associated with a distinctively local Bronze age tradition.
Mittanian and Middle-assyrian glyptic art from the second half of the
2nd millennium B.c. provided models for the representations on the
orthostats, including two bull-men supporting the winged solar disk,
winged griffins, winged lions, and other monsters, as well as caprids
appearing next to a stylized palm tree.65 this leads to two alternative
conclusions regarding the development of early aramaean art in Guzana:
63 pucci 2008: 95f.
64 Bonatz 2001a: 72–75.
65 e.g., von Oppenheim 1955: pls. 19a, 86a, 89b, 91a, 95b, 99a.