228 dominik bonatz
reflects his leading role in the panthea of northern syria—a role he con-
tinued to play in the context of aramaean religious policy.100
From the perspective of religious history and iconography, an interest-
ing problem arises when the sculptural works depicting the storm-god
in the Luwian-hittite tradition were created in places heavily influenced
by the aramaeans. there are at least five stelae from til Barsib that por-
tray the storm-god with the traditional iconography of a smiting god with
an axe and a trident-like thunderbolt, a short kilt, a short sword, a long
pigtail with a curling point, a square beard, and a horned tiara (pl. X).101
these stelae also show him under a winged disk and in least two cases
(tell aḥmar 1 [= pl. X] and 6) he appears on a bull above a guilloche. this
type of smiting storm-god under the winged disk, which has been found
elsewhere in northern syria, can be identified as “celestial tarḫunzas,”
that is, as the “storm-god of the skies.”102 Despite the transregional pres-
ence of the storm-god, he performed the function of a city-god in til
Barsib.103 If it is true, as has recently been supposed (see section B.3), that
the local ruling dynasty descended from semitic-aramaean tribes in the
first half of the 9th century B.c., the stelae dating from this period would
have to be seen as a reflection of the worship of the storm-god in a non-
Luwian ruling family. While it is true that the inscriptions on the stelae
mention the Luwian name of the storm-god together with his epithet (e.g.,
celestial tarḫunzas), it is also known that this manifestation of the deity,
in particular, was associated with the aramaean Baʿalšamayin.104 Just as
there was complex religious identification on the linguistic level, the same
identification could have occurred on the visual level. this is why—to
emphasize the point once again—the style and iconography of sculptural
100 novák 2004b: 333; see also hutter 1996 and schwemer 2001: 612–626.
101 tell aḥmar 1 (= pl. X), 2, 6; aleppo 2, with a hieroglyphic Luwian inscription; til Bar-
sib B/3, with the image of the storm-god without an inscription. Illustrations in: Orthmann
1971: til Barsib B/1, B/2, B/3; hawkins 2000: tell aḥmar 1 pls. 99–100; tell aḥmar 2 pls.
91–92, aleppo 2 pls. 97–98; Bunnens 2004: tell aḥmar 6 fig. 1a and Bunnens 2006: fig. 7
and 8 (drawing) for the same stele (tell aḥmar 6). tell aḥmar 4 also bore a relief showing
the storm-god, but it was completely destroyed; cf. hawkins 2000: 231 pls. 95–96. hawkins
argues that the stele “Borowski 3” cannot have come from tell aḥmar; cf. hawkins 2000:
230, contra Bunnens 2004: 58.
102 Bunnens 2004: 61f. see below for a discussion of the concrete symbolism of the
winged disk on the stelae from tell aḥmar. this symbolism was apparently associated
with the moon-god.
103 Galter 2004b: 179f.
104 Bunnens 2004: 61f.