The Bronze Age 4. Syria (c.30001150 B.C.

)
A. Introduction
(i) Early Bronze Age (c.30002000 B.C.)

Leila Badres thesis, completed in the later 1970s and published in 1980, remains fundamental to any study of Bronze Age anthropomorphic terracottas from Syria. However, there has been a virtual explosion of archaeological excavations across the whole of Syria in the last quarter of a century, very few of which yet have full reports on the terracottas found during them. Badres basic organization into Coastal, Orontes and Euphrates groups is used here, though at least the latter is now in need of revision, since it covers an enormous area and a great variety of archaeological sites. When sites in eastern Syria are represented in this catalogue (cf. nos 158159); nos 268295), it is primarily at two sites, Chagar Bazar and Brak, originally excavated by Mallowan and both the subject of fresh excavations in recent years. Terracottas from the earlier excavations are included in Badres catalogue. Her system of classification is retained here. Amongst preliminary reports relatively few throw new light on typology, whilst only in rare cases is important information about associations and contexts available (cf. Badre 1982; Dornemann 1989; Liebowitz 1988; Toueir 1978; Meyer and Pruss 1994). The nature of the evidence at present available does not usually allow for any statistical comparisons, even of major types. At Hammam et-Turkman it was specifically reported that there was a more or less even number of male and female figurines in the sample recovered (Rossmeisl-Venema in van Loon 1988, 567). The ever more intensive controlled excavation has been matched by no less intensive recovery through uncontrolled, illicit digging of numerous terracottas (cf. Serhal 1995). This has indicated an exceptional level of production, particularly from Early Bronze IV, in the later third millennium B.C., through Middle Bronze III, not only of anthropomorphic figurines, but also of zoomorphic terracottas as well as models of inanimate objects, primarily of vehicles, more rarely of furniture. They are usually in such a remarkable state of preservation that it has commonly been assumed that they were from tombs; but this is best regarded as an open question. Controlled excavations do not indicate, in general, that terracottas at this time were regular funerary equipment (cf. Pruss and Novak 2000, 1845). If they were, it would appear to be in graveyards either away from settlements or cut down into the surface of abandoned settlement sites. Here, as so often elsewhere, these were disposable objects, usually thrown out battered and broken, with routine rubbish in residential areas, where their use in private or domestic contexts is more evident than in public buildings. As archaeological investigations of contexts of use rather than of disposal are so rare, establishing their functions and meanings remains hazardous (see below). (a) Early Bronze IIII (c.30002250 B.C.)

Anthropomorphic terracottas remain extremely rare from the fourth through much of the third millennium B.C. (cf. Pruss and Novak 2000, 184), although a production of animal figurines is more evident. Other subjects do not appear until the end of this phase. It is now regarded as unlikely that the copper figurines, three nude females clasping their breasts and three males with beards, wearing helmets and belts, and brandishing their weapons, attributed by the excavators to Amuq G (Uruk III to Early Dynastic I), were made before the Early Bronze IV to Middle Bronze I transition at the end of the third millennium B.C. (cf. Marchetti 2000). They would appear to be the metal counterparts to the anthropomorphic clay images so evident at this time. Significantly, they appear to be human suppliants or worshippers not deities (cf. Moorey and Fleming 1984, 71). They are copper-tin alloys originally modelled in wax for lost-wax casting, exactly as the terracottas were handmodelled in clay for baking.

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At Hama, further south in the Orontes region, another still fundamental stratigraphic sequence was established in the 1930s (Fugmann 1958). There in level K together with the characteristic bevel-rimmed bowls, eye-idols and archaic cylinder seals of the later fourth millennium B.C. (Uruk IVIII horizon), there was a dumpy headless clay figurine of a prehistoric type and a headless plaque-like clay female figure, anticipating the body forms of the typical late Early Bronze Age terracottas (Fugmann 1958, fig. 46: 7A5556: K65; cf. Badre 1980, 161ff.). Here then, as in the Amuq Plain, there would appear to have been no regular production of anthropomorphic terracottas for much of the fourth and third millennia B.C. comparable to that in the earlier prehistoric periods. At Hama nude female figurines and other anthropomorphic types are again evident in levels H54 in the late third to earlier second millennium B.C. (Fugmann 1958, figs 10910, 117). (b) Early Bronze IV (c.23502000 B.C.)

Intensive rescue archaeology in the face of dam building has given the area round the great bend on the Middle Euphrates a high profile in recent years in Syrian archaeology (cf. Dornemann 1989). Every excavated settlement in this area, occupied from sometime in the third quarter of the third millennium B.C. until early in the next millennium (Early Bronze III/IV to Middle Bronze I), has yielded terracottas, primarily from domestic contexts, in considerable numbers. (See now: N. Marchetti, Clay Figurines of the Middle Bronze Age from Inner Northern Syria... P. Matthiae et al, Proceedings of the First International Congress the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East I (Rome), 839867).

The anthropomorphic figurines of Early Bronze IV are solid and handmodelled. They are most often depicted standing. A pillar-shaped lower body, usually featureless, allows them to be free-standing when complete. Anatomical features are summarily represented save on the head, where prominent beak-shaped noses are set between eyes represented by circular applied pellets. The mouth and chin are rarely shown and, at this stage, not much attention is paid to the ears. On the body it is the position of the arms and hands alone that distinguishes male from female in many cases. Males generally have very short arms projecting forward with one or both routinely pierced vertically for insertion of an attribute in another material. When the arms are bent at the elbows with the hands variously placed on the upper body they are generally taken to be female, although the breasts are not always represented. The columnar types are still present in Middle Bronze I at Hama (Fugmann 1958, figs 117, 120 (Hama 43)).
Both on males and females personal ornaments are represented on the upper body by clay strips and incisions. The males wear elaborate neck ornaments at times like the females. Both sexes appear to be wearing ankle-length garments similar to those shown on contemporary stone sculptures from the region (cf. Halawa Stela: Rouault and Masetti-Rouault 1993, no. 289). Most attention is paid to modelling hairstyles and headdresses. One of the most distinctive headdresses is crown-like and would appear, to judge by correlation with the hand gestures, to be a male characteristic; but is not unknown on figurines with arms bent rather than straight that are probably female. It rises high above the brow like a turret, sometimes with applied or incised details. Males also appear with either a pointed headdress, again with incised decoration, that may be a helmet, or a cushion-like cap. Some males carry a cup, a drinking horn or other devices so stylized as to be hard to identify. As in Mesopotamia, the hair of females may be elaborately curled, rolled and bunched, often projecting markedly at the back and less so at the sides. In the case of both sexes two heads sometimes appear on a single body. Representations of females with one or two babies are relatively rare. Males are shown riding various animals (Serhal 1995, nos 346), amongst which equids, including horses, are prominent for the first time. It is not always certain whether the ears of an equid or the horns of a bovid are shown (cf. Serhal 1995, no. 35: a bovid rather than an equid?). As clay plaques from Babylonia show men riding bovids (cf. Auerbach 1994, pl. 30) in a manner then transferred to horses initially (see no. 141), these figurines show real-life situations. The rider may sit astride, grasping the animals neck or else appear facing sideways, as if riding side-saddle, though his lower body simply fuses with the animals back (cf. Serhal 1995, no. 34).
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Animals are also commonly represented, without human partners in the case of bovids and equids, in some cases as pack animals (cf. Strommenger 1969, 63, fig. 24). Sheep and goats are not easily distinguished, whilst some dogs may be represented. Hedgehogs also appear (cf. Serhal 1995, nos 2225). Birds, in a tradition that was to endure into the Iron Age, appear on low pedestals, both with wings spread and closed (cf. Serhal 1995, nos 2628). A range of horned animals are too schematic for certain identification (cf. Hama: Fugmann 1958, fig. 139, 5A 483). Vehicles are a recurrent and distinctive element in the repertory of Syria in the Euphrates region at this time. As in Mesopotamia, chariot body fragments and detached wheels are relatively common, both from four- and two-wheeled types. Occasionally applied and incised decoration depict both anthropomorphic and zoomorphic designs, both on the front and on the seat. Although the mould was not used in Syria at this time for any type of terracotta models, handmodelled or incised additions to the structure appear to have been influenced by the mouldmade chariot models of Babylonia with deities illustrated on the inside of the chariot front (cf. nos 11618, 1246, 134, 138 (mould), 1434). Most distinctive are the covered wagon models (cf. no. 257 and commentary) which are virtually unknown in Babylonia. An alluvial plain criss-crossed by canals and waterways was not the type of environment in which they might be expected regularly, if at all (in general, see Bollweg 1999). The steppe lands of northern Mesopotamia, in modern Syria, not only supported a distinct economy, but also required overland transport, often for long periods of time over considerable distances. The distribution of model clay boats in the south, and their virtual absence in the north, reflects this contrast. In the Syrian steppe pastoralism depended on grazing animals (goat, sheep and cattle), on equid-riding and on wagon-transport. This is precisely the repertory reflected in the terracottas, strongly suggesting that, whatever their function, these images depict the real rather than the supernatural world. It is likely that this was the first period in the Near East during which horses, as much as domesticated asses, and their hybrids significantly improved the means for long-distance scouting for pasture and herdmanagement amongst pastoralists. In the Syrian steppe wagons, probably drawn by oxen rather than by equids, provided bulk transport for the portable shelters, food and supplies that freed herders from a dependence upon logistical support from the local river valleys. Thus, they would have been able to penetrate deeper into the adjacent steppe for a whole season with their herds in a manner already developed in the vaster steppe of southern Russia (cf. Anthony 1995). Indeed, particular impetus for the widespread domestication of the horse in the Middle Bronze Age may well have come first to this part of the Near East, late in the Early Bronze Age, from the north and with it the craft of bent-wood technology employed in the manufacture of carts and tilts (covered wagons). About this time the same influences generated the replacement of the heavy traditional four- and two-wheeled chariots of Babylonia and Syria, replicated in clay models, with light chariots on a pair of spoked wheels (cf. Moorey 1986). Although Badre did not subdivide her Euphrates Group, there would now be good reasons for doing so in the light of an ever increasing intensity of fieldwork in southeastern Anatolia and eastern Syria. On the Euphrates, southwards to Mari, it would appear that figurine production revived in the middle of the third millennium B.C. after a hiatus comparable to that in Sumer. Also at Tell Melebiya (Lebeau 1993, 50610, pl. 18891, pl. XLIIIIV), on the middle Khabur river, in early Dynastic III levels, the terracotta repertory included nude female figurines as at Mari, reminiscent of the prehistoric tradition, with animals, including equids and model vehicles, not reported from Mari. In the period from about the twenty-fourth to the nineteenth century B.C. this vast region of eastern Syria was dominated by a few major centres, like that at Brak in the east and Mari in the west. When the terracottas from sites like Tell Chuera are fully published, they will illustrate the Early Dynastic III to early Akkadian repertory between the Balikh and Khabur rivers (cf. Badre 1980, 288296). Of particular interest in the Chuera repertory is at least one ceramic stand decorated with groups of terracotta anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines in conjunction: free-standing males and females and animals copulating (Moortgat 1965, figs 711).
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Mari, on the river Euphrates just over the border into modern Syria, provides the primary link between the terracotta production centres of Babylonia and those of the Middle Euphrates area, where handmodelled clay images prevailed well into the second millennium B.C. Barrelet (1968, nos 685714) published those in the Louvre, whilst Badre (1980, 266282) published those made available to her in Aleppo and Damascus. A significant number of the Middle Bronze Age examples are mouldmade. In the absence of detailed archaeological information on the handmade figurines at Mari, their date has proved debatable with Badre (1980, 71) placing them in the later third millennium (Syrian EBIV) rather than some centuries earlier. The classic female type at Mari (Badre 1980, 6971, pl. XXVI: 12) at this time is a freestanding nude with hands on the abdomen and genitals emphasized; the hair is dressed in a prominent bun projecting at top and bottom parallelled on free-standing contemporary terracottas in Babylonia. There is a complementary group of male nudes (Badre 1980, 857, nos 3841), without obvious relatives in Babylonia. These would all appear to be human devotees or worshippers, probably ritually nude in both cases, with the females in a category distinct from the earliest Nude Female moulded plaques of Babylonia, which were contemporary with them. Some at least of these terracottas were found in and adjacent to the Ishtar Temple at Mari (cf. Parrot 1956, 2004, pl. LXVIII), recalling those associated with the Archaic Ishtar Temple at Assur (cf. Andrae 1922, 8794 (levels HG), pl. 51ff.; Klengel-Brandt 1978, pl. 1). There would appear to be no evidence yet for the terracotta repertory, if any, at Mari in the first three quarters of the third millennium B.C. (Early Dynastic IIII). (c) Context: Problems of Function and Meaning

Many of the terracottas from excavations in Syria are either from soundings or cuttings where the architectural context is not clear. Often when reported from coherent buildings, either the method of the publication or the fact that they were discarded randomly as rubbish precludes reconstruction of associated groups. Thus, any contextual study, a vital preliminary to understanding use, has to be based on a few selected cases, where the relevant information is available. (1) Orontes Area: Tell Mardikh (Ebla)

Marchetti and Nigro (19956) have studied the small finds from a public building (P.4), dated to Early Bronze IV at Tell Mardikh (Ebla), to establish its function and the role of individual rooms. The main room (L.5220) appeared to have been used for the processing of food, both meat and vegetables. Among three anthropomorphic figurines found there one has a high polos with a complex hairstyle (Marchetti and Nigro 19956, fig. 11). Room 5005, perhaps a workshop for assembling statuary in a variety of materials, contained no figurines; but one in human form was reported from a storeroom and ancillary workshop (L.5009). In a separate set of rooms (L.5032, 5033, 5035), devoted to processing cereals, another anthropomorphic figurine was reported. In the main storage room (L.5007) there were four human-shaped terracottas, whilst in another room for food production (L.5021) three of the five figurines reported were animals. This is a significant illustration of the role of terracotta imagery in craft and industrial activities. To some extent all acts of manufacture involve successful reproduction; consequently craftsmen in all ages and places have invoked appropriate supernatural assistance through rituals to ensure the successful outcome of their procedures, which may be metaphorically associated with stages in the human life-cycle. (2) a. Euphrates Area Jerablus-Tahtani

It is still very rare for archaeologists to recover clearly unbaked clay figurines at any period since they are so vulnerable in any but mortuary contexts or when placed in protected foundation deposits (cf. nos 1856). In a tomb at Jerablus-Tahtani, near Carchemish, dated to the Early Bronze IIIIV horizon, Peltenburg ( et al. 1996, 12, fig. 13) reported that: the crude male figurines... belong to a tradition of coarse, unfired or poorly fired representational work first recorded at Jerablus Tahtani in monumental T.302 which contained (baked clay) bull figures. These objects were made intentionally as funerary
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offerings and, since they are so fragile, probably just before their deposition in graves. Other examples from Mumbaqa (Machule et al. 1987, figs 27, 29) and Hammam et-Turkman I (= votive offering deposit: Van Loon 1988, 5712), although stylistically different, show that the deliberate burial of unfired, handmade crude figurines was widespread in the Balikh-Middle Euphrates area. This practice recalls that used in the later fourth millennium B.C. at Bab-edh Dhra, immediately to the east of the Dead Sea, in Jordan (cf. Lapp 1966, 110111). b. Selenkahiye

The eight hundred and twenty-five terracottas discovered during excavations at this site, to the south of Jerablus-Tahtani on the Euphrates, in 1965 and 1967, were prepared for publication by Liebowitz in 1975, but not published until 1988. It is still one of the few monographs on Syrian terracottas available. The excavator, Maurits van Loon, reported some instructive contexts. In a house three broken, but complete female figurines had been buried below the floor between the hearth and the wall of a room. Two of the three figurines were of the well-known praying-woman, the third [and tallest] one, measuring 25cm., has both fists sticking forward, the left one holding a jarlet and the right one perforated to hold a staff... in another room a male figurine was buried under the floor. He wears a pointed cap and is seated sideways on a donkey. His left fist is perforated to hold a staff or the like and his right hand holds onto the donkeys mane (van Loon 1975, 24, pl. VI: 78; cf. van Loon 1973, 1489, figs 78). On the analogy of contemporary sculptures van Loon identified these terracottas as representations of divinities. In the 19745 excavations, in phase III of houses in square U.21, after the street had been repaved with pebbles it became necessary to raise the floors, alter some doorways, and rebuild some walls. In this process two baked-clay figurines were deposited beneath the new doorsill... The taller figure (33cm.) clasps a drinking horn in the right hand, while the left fist is cored to hold a staff of perishable material... the smaller figurine (18cm.) is of the common praying woman type. Van Loon (1979, 1023) identified the taller one as a major deity, the smaller as a worshipper or perhaps the well known interceding goddess. In a general comment on these finds he (1973, 148) suggested that these pious burials indicate that the figurines had a cultic significance and could not be simply discarded. By incorporation into the structure they helped protect it even after they had served their use. Burial under doorways to keep evil out is a widespread phenomenon in time and space. When later in Assyria clay figurines were placed in foundation deposits, they represent a range of supernatural beings distinct from deities rather than the household gods van Loon had in mind. A clay figurine of an enthroned person found at Selenkahiye had been impressed with a cylinder seal, when still wet, across the throne. This showed a praying figure before an altar above which the sun and moon are visible. Behind the altar are two quadrupeds, one represented upside down as on other local seals of the twenty-first century B.C. (Van Loon 1973, 148). Here again there is no definitive sign that this statuette represents a deity rather than a human dignitary. Indeed, there is a contemporary terracotta fenestrated stand, in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, with a chariot and charioteer modelled on the top, which had been sealed in the same way. This may portray a mortal, with the sealing as dedication of a votive offering. Its origin, within Syria, is unknown (Bretschneider 1991, no. 55). In Badres Euphrates Group there are few characteristics that might be taken to indicate divine status in the absence of any headdress comparable to the horned crown of Babylonia in form or consistency of use nor, so far, is there any context where interpretation of the terracottas as supernatural beings would seem compelling. It might be argued that the headdress in the form of a crown or tiara, apparently worn by both males and females, on the one hand, the exaggeratedly tall conical headdress for males on the other hand, separate their wearers from the general run of males and females. Yet still the status they conferred might as easily be within a natural social group as within a supernatural one. All these terracottas give a vivid impression of the real world. The burden of proof may then be upon those who want to see them as supernatural beings rather than as images of devotees or worshippers from the natural world or, at most of their ancestors, the deceased members of families remembered in family cults.

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Comparison with the Akkadian to Ur III handmodelled figurines of Mesopotamia may be instructive in this respect even if, unlike the mouldmade plaques, they do not appear to have travelled northwards along the line of the Euphrates or Tigris. There are apparently none amongst them equipped with horned crowns (which appear first on mouldmade plaques in the Ur III Period). Consequently, they are usually identified as male and female suppliants or worshippers, as their gestures often indicate. Anthropological analogies suggest that even the sub-floor deposits at Selankahiye might embody in human forms the social identity of a family group, manufactured as competition between households began to generate social stratification more widely in the towns of Syria towards the end of the Early Bronze Age. The production of clay images of human rather than divine subjects at that time, with elaborate individualistic ornamentation of the upper bodies, especially the head, might have been a means for the creation of common bonds within households and separation from other households, perhaps as an aspect of ancestor cults. (3) North Eastern Syria: Tell Mozan (ancient Urkesh)

At this site, just to the north of Chagar Bazar, numerous figurines were found in the later third millennium B.C. strata of the Queens Storeroom and ancillary rooms. Amongst various handmodelled humanoid types are examples of the small, highly stylized anthropomorphic forms first found in the 1930s at Tepe Gawra, where they were published as gaming pieces. Subsequent finds appear to suggest that these may simply be tokens for recording human beings. The excavators have commented on the remarkably realistic modelling of the associated zoomorphic terracottas amongst which sheep and goats, bovids, felines, dogs and equids, equipped with head harness, have been recognized (cf. Hauser in Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 1997, 87). The presence of terracottas in public buildings with administrative and craft functions, as at Tell Mardikh (Ebla), alerts the modern commentator to the potential plurality of their meanings and uses. As has already been noted in Sumer during the Early Dynastic Period, incipient literacy does not in itself remove the possibility that clay images of all types may often still have had utilitarian, as well as cultic, roles in daily life amongst the illiterate.

(ii)

Middle Bronze Age I and II (c.20001600 B.C.)

In this phase in the history of terracottas in Syria the handmodelled figurines broadly follow wellestablished categories, though forms and styles may change. In the course of the period the mould was introduced into Syria for the manufacture of clay plaques, following on its first appearance in southern Mesopotamia some centuries earlier. In Syria, in marked contrast to Babylonia in the earlier second millennium B.C., it was used only for a very restricted range of images focused on the nude female. This almost exclusive emphasis on a single category of female images is also evident from the earlier second millennium in the hand modelled repertory, then characterised by what Badre (1980, 45) termed the Classic Type of the Orontes Region (MAI). This has two broad divisions, on one the standing nude female has arms bent at the elbows with hands below the breasts (Badre 1980, 163, no. 10 (Hama), pl. I); on the other the arms are pointed stubs projecting sideways in what may simply be a stylization of arms bent with hands cupping the breasts. At Hama figurines of both types appear in tombs, as well as elsewhere, in level H. Mortuary contexts may explain why complete, well preserved examples, as here in the Ashmolean collection, so often appear on the antiquities market. They have a distinctive flat form, as if cut out of a flattened piece of clay, before details were filled in on the blank form either with applied clay or by incision. The hair, or wig, flares outwards at the top, and sweeps down on each side to indicate ears, which are pierced to take ear-rings. In the holes pierced along the top of the head strands of real hair may have been inserted. The navel is often emphasized and pierced to take applied metal ornaments. Necklaces are both applied in clay and incised, as are crossing-straps on the chest (cf. Dales 1963) and girdles; neither breasts nor genitals are invariably depicted.

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One of the most instructive published contexts for Badres Orontes Middle Bronze types MAI1 and MAI2 is the Sacred Area of Ishtar at Tell Mardikh (Ebla), particularly the favissae (rubbish pits) within it. Clay figurines had been disposed of in them with other objects, predominantly pottery, after use in cult activities there (cf. Marchetti and Nigro 1997). Of the figurines from favissa F.5327, dated to MBIB (c.19001800 B.C.), four belong to the naked female type with open arms and parallel combings on the back and on the front representing the pubis, which is the main feature of the MBIB female figurines in Inner Syria. The stratification of favissa F.5328, slightly later than F.5327, allowed for fine distinctions: Many features are typical of MBIB, such as heads with only one hole in the ears and an applied strip from the front to the top... common to the beginning of the following period (MBIIA, c.18001700 B.C.) (are) the modelled face... and small heads rounded at the top... two main types, with triangular pubis... one with open arms and one with hands holding the breast with more elaborate ornaments, such as necklaces and bracelets and three or four lateral holes (Marchetti and Nigro 1997, 23, fig. 11). The latter form is typical of Middle Bronze II (c.18001600 B.C.); but the former disappears after MBIIA. It is now evident that the contemporary silos holding pottery and figurines at Hama were favissae (Thuesen 2000). Associated with these female terracottas in this cult centre for Ishtar were clay animal images, mainly rams and equids, as well as two types of male images in clay: riders and seated figures holding an object (axe or sceptre) against their shoulder. Both may represent lite officials devoted to Ishtar. An unusual clay model of a zoomorphic chariot (a ram or bull) has wheels with four spokes indicated (Marchetti and Nigro 1997, fig. 12). This type of deposit also included miniature vessels. It is significant that these rites were performed in courtyards, where members of the community might participate, involving them in the direct relationship of believer with deity. The quality of many objects in these favissae at Ebla, however, would appear to indicate participation of the lite rather than by the common people. Domestic contexts for figurines are best illustrated at present by the well-published evidence from Tell Halawa, almost due east of Aleppo, on the east bank of the Euphrates. Exceptionally, the distribution of terracottas from the excavated areas there was plotted, by type, on plans of the excavated urban complex, level by level (level 2 = Middle Bronze I; 3 = Early Bronze IV) (cf. Meyer and Pruss 1994, plans 712). These plans make clear that the three major categories of broken miniature clay images: anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and inanimate (vehicles) are still similarly distributed throughout private houses and adjacent open areas as part of the general debris of living, indicating that whatever their uses it was within private rather than official spaces. Associated with them here, as at Ebla, were terracotta incense burners. Here it is particularly evident how disposable these objects were once their purpose had been served. A marked decline in the range of handmodelled male figurines (Badre 1980, 978), and vehicles that might be described as male-specific, in the Middle Bronze Age, and the increasing popularity of handmodelled images of nude females is marked. It was complemented at some uncertain point in this period by the first appearance in upper Mesopotamia, west of the Tigris and through to the Mediterranean coast, of mouldmade nude female images comparable to those so popular in Babylonia since late in the third millennium B.C. The palace at Mari, destroyed sometime in the eighteenth century B.C. (Middle Bronze II), illustrates, chronologically and geographically, the transitional stage (cf. Parrot 1959; Margueron 1997). Margueron (1997) has drawn attention to the fact that the terracottas were found in two specific non-lite areas in the palace: the rooms of the staff of the Kings House and the rooms of the Womens House. Consequently, he believed that they may have been associated particularly with the presence of people from the north (the Khabur plain) brought to Mari after Zimri-Lims campaigns there. However, the iconography of these mouldmade plaques, apart from what may be mountain imagery on some, is as easily linked with Babylonia. Various themes recur: mountain deities; males wearing conical caps (without signs of divinity), who carry axes and birds (often an offering to Ishtar); soldiers and captives; male musicians with lutes and nude females, some with musical instruments (tambourines). Indeed, the variety of motifs contrasts markedly with what was to come.

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(iii)

The Late Bronze Age (c.16001200 B.C.)

In the first two or three centuries of the second millennium B.C., in Babylonia, as has been seen (nos 72ff.), there was a range of imagery on mouldmade terracotta plaques unmatched elsewhere, then or later. When this technique was diffused along the line of the Euphrates only the nude female, which had been the most popular of the mouldmade types in Babylonia, and one or two subsidiary motifs associated with her, survived to form the most widespread moulded terracotta images west of the Euphrates through to the Mediterranean coast in the Late Bronze Age. If so much else of the Babylonian repertory was eclipsed, why did this particular image alone prove so enduring? In Babylonia the nude female, without attributes, was associated with the goddess Inanna-Ishtar, who epitomized love and sexual attraction and was the most revered and popular goddess of ancient Mesopotamia (Westenholz 1998, 72). She was the goddess whom both men and women with problems of love and sex petitioned. In this capacity, particularly, her appeal was universal. Consequently, in various parts of the Levant this image was easily identified with the local goddess closest to her in character. Once Egypt was established as the imperial overlord in Canaan her nearest equivalent in the Egyptian pantheon, Hathor, (cf. Pinch 1993), was also represented there in objects and ornaments characteristic of her cult in Egypt (cf. Keel and Uehlinger 1998, 689). It is not then surprising that the nude female was portrayed with some of her characteristics, notably the distinctive hairlocks, curled over at the bottom, framing her face. This hairstyle has Babylonian precursors; but in Canaan and coastal Syria the Egyptian connection is more likely to have established it there. Geraldine Pinch (1993, 32660) has argued, in the light both of the material remains and of the rich and diverse literary evidence available from Egypt, that Hathor formed the link there between two primary aspects of religion and daily life: folk religion, defined as the religious and magical beliefs of the common people focused on family and home and personal or individual piety, centred on one of the major deities of the state cults. Amongst the great variety of votives found in houses, burials and shrines in Egypt related to Hathor in the second millennium B.C., are handmodelled and mouldmade nude female figurines in various materials, including clay, which relate to those magical and religious practices designed to promote and protect fertility in daily life. This embraced the whole process from the conception of children through their successful rearing (Pinch 1993, 198234). Across those parts of the ancient world with which this catalogue is concerned, as in Egypt, these figurines, though they may vary in details, epitomize the fact that all ranks wanted children to work their land or inherit their professions and offices, care for them in old age, and carry out their funerary rites. High rates of infant mortality and women dying in child-birth made human fertility an almost obsessive concern (Pinch 1993, 224). The distribution and character of nude female plaques in Canaan will be discussed below in relation to no. 300. Here the role of such plaques in the terracotta imagery of Syria (cf. nos 272 and 273) is briefly surveyed on the basis, primarily, of the sample provided by Leila Badres (1980) catalogue. There is no other more recent general study though many examples have been excavated in Syria in recent years. She (1980, 118) contrasted the popularity of the type in coastal Syria with its relative rarity eastwards, many more are now known from sites on the Euphrates. At least one example with the distinctive Hathor hairstyle was reported from Mallowans excavations at Tell Brak (Mallowan 1947, pl. 189,5 = Badre 1980, 287, pl. XXXI:15). This feature is otherwise rare in her Orontes and Euphrates groups (Badre 1980, 119). In classifying these plaques the position of the arms (bent at the elbows, hands covering or cupping breasts; both arms down the sides; one bent, one hanging down) and hairstyles provide the minimal criteria. As so many are reported incomplete, variations in the position of their feet in Syrian examples has not assumed quite the prominence give to it by scholars of Canaanite examples for separating reclining from standing figures, goddesses from human votaries (see below). Significantly, occasional examples from Syria, as in Babylonia, appear to stand on a small podium (cf. Badre 1980, pl. VIII.16 (Kamid el-Loz); pl. LX.1 (Ras Shamra (Ugarit)). When she is represented thus on seals, as a filling motif, the podium has been taken to indicate that a statue rather than the nude female
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BRONZE AGE: INTRODUCTION SYRIA

per se is intended. The Syrian plaques listed by Badre fall into the so-called Astarte group in the classification used for Canaan (see below). Some typical mouldmade Syrian terracottas reached Canaan (cf. Conrad 1985). In Syria Anatolian traits are occasionally evident (see no. 263 here = Badre 1980, pl. XX:48), whilst coastal sites like Ras Shamra (Ugarit) (cf. Badre 1980, pl. LX) have clay plaques and metal jewellery most evidently recalling Egyptian imagery. As in Canaan, zoomorphic figurines are ubiquitous in Middle and Late Bronze Age Syria, though rarely published in a way that permits either contextual study or information on the association of species in time or place. The horse continues to be conspicuous, whilst the zebu now emerges in the recurrent repertory. It appears that the popularity of vehicle models sharply declined after the earlier second millennium B.C. Clay model buildings, a distinctive feature of terracotta production in Syria during this period, is not represented in the Ashmoleans collection (cf. Bretschneider, 1991). In ancient Syria, as in Canaan, in the Late Bronze Age, what evidence there is at present for context indicates that terracottas had a varied role in private rather than in public cult practice. Their imagery was very restricted, primarily to female images in the anthropomorphic group, mass-produced by moulding. They very rarely appear in graves (cf. Pruss and Novak 2000); notably at Murek (Riis 1987, 65), Alalakh (Tell Atshana) (Woolley 1955, 223) and Hama (Fugmann 1958, pl. 10: grave T11(3)). At present, though scattered through preliminary excavation reports, the best evidence for the role of terracottas in Late Bronze Age Syria has been reported from Tell Munbaqa on the Euphrates (cf. Eichler et al. 1984, figs 245; Machule et al. 1986, figs 245; 1987, figs 10, 14; 1989, figs 8,10; 1990, figs 4, 6, 7, 11). Primarily they came from urban housing, including special cult rooms within it. Part of an unusually large plaque (up to 50cm. high) was found leaning against the wall of a room that had been used for cult purposes. The excavator argued that it had been modelled after an actual cult statue of a widely venerated deity. The repertory of other cult objects included empty model shrines and moulded plaques of nude females, with and without babies, as well as plaques with profile images of male deities with horns, seated holding floral (?) attributes (Machule et al. 1990, figs 4, 6, 7, 11); Czichou and Werner 1998, 30732). Similar clay plaques were found at Meskene-Emar, in the same region, in the popular quarter of the town, as well as model houses and jar fragments to which mouldmade images of the nude female had been applied (Margueron 1976, pl. II:1, III:3; figs). Representation of the nude female as part of model terracotta buildings which might have served as household altars or offering tables, had already appeared in the Middle Bronze Age in Syria at Rumeilah (Tell Ali el Haji) in a house (cf. Bretschneider 1991, no. 27, pl. IV). Whatever her identity, such models confirm her role in the cults of family, hearth and home, perhaps with particular reference to ancestors.

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