230 dominik bonatz
smiting storm-god generally belongs to the iconographic tradition of the
syro-hittite storm deities, but his slit robe, with its netlike structure, and
the snake he is threatening to kill with his axe are details that allude to
an extremely old motif in his mythology.109 a much smaller male figure
in fish garb stands in front of him, the so-called fish-apkallu, who recalls
representations in Middle- and neo-assyrian glyptic art. a second male
figure holds ears of wheat in his left hand as his only attribute. he appears
to be just as tall as the storm-god, but does not wear a horned helmet. he
has been interpreted as a ruler or a portrayal of the tutelary deity Dagan,
who was worshipped in the central euphrates region in the 3rd and 2nd
millennia B.c.110
the difficulties associated with interpreting the iconography of the
tell ašara stele are compounded by the fact that the akkadian inscrip-
tion suggests that the portrayed figures be viewed as the assyrian kings
adad-nirari and tukulti-ninurta.111 adad-nirari II (911–891 B.c.) was the
first neo-assyrian ruler to demand tributes from Širqu and other cities in
Laqe during his campaign in the central euphrates region in 894 B.c. the
figure of the storm-god may stand for this ruler, who, according to line 4
of the inscription, struck off the “bad horn” of the snake as a symbol of the
subjected aramaean tribes in Laqe.112 But this interpretation only makes
sense if the assyrian king had been revered as a god after his death. there
are a number of reasons why we can rule out that the person responsible
for this deification was his son and successor tukulti-ninurta II (890–884
B.c.), who led a renewed campaign against Laqe in 885/884 B.c. It is
109 On the basis of the eblaitic texts written in the 3rd millennium B.c., Masetti-rouault
2009: 144f interprets the storm-god’s netlike robe as a symbol of the hail that this deity
uses like a net to overcome the enemy snake. there are only a few Iron age represen-
tations that take the mythological battle between the storm-god and the snake as their
central theme. they include the neo-hittite relief with the rolling snake on the orthostat
from the Lions’ Gate in Malatya (Orthmann 1971: Malatya a/8) and the fragment of a neo-
assyrian relief from Dūr-Katlimmu/tell Šēḫ-Ḥamad (Kühne 2009: 52f fig. 11). apart from
its different style, the latter fragment is similar to the combat scene on the Širqu stele.
although this motif is rare, its recurrence at three sites with culturally diverse influences
illustrates the existence of a shared pool of mythological and iconographic traditions, cf.
Masetti-rouault 2009: 146.
110 see also the extensive treatment in Masetti-rouault 2001: 100–103, including a dis-
cussion of the various interpretations. nevertheless, Otto’s new analysis of Dagan’s icono-
graphy (Otto forthcoming) does not address the stele from tell ašara. the argument that it
is a ruler is strengthened by the historical parallels to syro-hittite representations of rulers
in similar attire, sometimes holding a bundle of grain (e.g., Bonatz 2000a: c2, c7).
111 a new translation of the inscription can be found in tournay 1997 and a slightly
different version in Masetti-rouault 2001: 104.
112 Masetti-rouault 2001: 102f.