art 223
on the lions found in hadattu (arslan tash), ninurta-bēl-uṣur rendered
his inscriptions in three languages—assyrian, aramaic, and Luwian—and
positioned them on the backs of the figures, where they are harder to see.
this safeguarding of the textual message—namely, the commemoration
of ninurta-bēl-uṣur’s achievements as a builder—took into account the
three potential and, in its author’s view, enduringly effective cultural com-
ponents in this region.78 By contrast, the assyrianizing style of the lions
in arslan tash served as a vivid expression of assyrian hegemony within
the context of an aramaean city.
as is shown by this comparison of two locations that are just a day’s
travel apart, different strategies of textual and visual hegemonic propa-
ganda in the aramaean sphere of northern syria are located very close to
one another in both temporal and spatial terms. they constitute an expres-
sion of a multicultural and multilingual society in which aramaean com-
ponents were able to assert themselves despite a loss of political power.
however, the difficulty facing an archeological method that attempts to
reconstruct history purely on the basis of material artwork remains. In the
case of til Barsib, it would be unable to recognize the aramaean compo-
nents at work without reference to additional, written sources.
2.4 Hamaththe monumental buildings of the citadel of hamath bear structural simi-
larities to the citadels of Zincirli, tell halaf, and tell tayinat. these build-
ings are thus fundamentally linked to urban development in the Luwian
and aramaean city-states in northern syria.79 the walls of the central
buildings in hamath were also clad with stone orthostats, but in contrast
to other sites, these orthostats had no reliefs—with the exception of a
few geometric decorative elements on basalt orthostats not found in situ.80
Figurative architectural sculpture only exists in the form of the lion orthos-
tats flanking the building entrances. W. Orthmann distinguishes between
the two stylistically older lions at the northeast and northwest corners of
the entrance to building I and the younger lions that once stood at the
corners of the main entrance to the same building and to building III.81
78 see the extensive argument by Galter 2004b: 175f, 182–184.
79 see Matthiae 2008 as well as M. novák’s contribution in this volume.
80 Fugman 1958: fig. 257.
81 Orthmann 1971: 102f; hama a/1–2 (“Late hittite” I) and hama a/3–4 and B/1–3
(“Late hittite” II); on the context of the finds and additional illustrations, see Fugman
1958: 149–191 figs. 188, 189, 215.