The Bronze Age: Canaan - The Ashmolean Museum

More documents

Recommendations

Info

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN TERRACOTTAS usually identified as papyrus. Her feet point sideways, not forwards. This type of plaque does not appear to have survived in Canaan after the end of the Bronze Age (unlike the ‘Astarte’ type). This type of nude female occasionally appears, on metal and terracotta plaques, associated with animals: the lion and the horse (Keel and Uehlinger 1998, 66–7, figs 70–73). This is the strongest evidence for the nude female in this category representing a goddess or her cult image through her divine identity might have varied amongst a range of possible “Mistresses of Animals” (cf. Wiggins 1991); but without a “familiar” animal or divine headdress she might be a suppliant to the goddess rather than the goddess herself. (2) Type B: Astarte Plaques (cf. no. 300A) This category, again a term of convenience, also depicts full-frontal nudes framed by a groove or ridge round the end of the plaque, which is comparable in shape to the previous type. Both types might have been laid flat, propped up or held in the hand; none is self-supporting. On this type the hairstyles vary, with the occasional appearance of headdresses. There are a number of different arm positions: held down the sides with hands touching hips (the commonest position on comparable figurines in Egypt); with hands cupped under the breasts, sometimes as if displaying or offering them; with both hands placed on the abdomen, which is sometimes slightly bulging as in pregnancy; with one hand held downwards touching or indicating the genitals and the other bent at the elbow with the hand on a breast. On this type the feet are commonly together, pointing forward. They have no attributes. This type survived into the Iron Age. Miram Tadmor (1982) has argued that the figure is represented as if reclining and is most commonly found in tombs, consequently relating them to the so-called “concubine figures” of Egyptian tombs and to limestone examples from the cemetery at Deir el Balah (Dothan, T. 1979). But Keel and Uehlinger (1998, 100ff.) have demonstrated that eighty per cent of published Late Bronze Age graves do not include clay plaques and even when they appear in family graves, there are only one or two. The vast majority, complete and fragmentary, are recovered from family living quarters or in debris. When they appear in graves it is then as “household goods”, in common with the other ceramic equipment. Moreover, Pinch (1983) has convincingly deconstructed the old arguments for identifying such figurines as “concubines” in Egyptian tombs, not least since they are not invariably associated with male skeletons in graves there. Few questions in the study of terracottas in the ancient Near East, as will be evident from the earlier section on the Babylonian nude female plaques, is more difficult to resolve and therefore more contentious than the problem of her (or their) identity when no attributes identify a goddess. Keel and Uehlinger (1998, 108) take the radical approach by arguing that: “the modern question about whether a figurine represents a goddess or a woman, posing strict alternatives, is too short-sighted. The plaques portray the goddess as a woman, and conversely they identify the female worshippers... with the goddess.” There is, however, no unambiguous evidence that they were exclusively associated with women rather than with men, who also petitioned goddesses in the context of sex and family life. Moreover, it is not evident that the modern concept of a “role model” is appropriate even for women. Ancient goddesses, particularly Ishtar (who was also a warrior goddess) and her cognates in the Levant, had diverse functions and may have been worshipped by men and women for different purposes. Van der Toorn (1998, 94) conceived these images as “reflections of official cult images or symbols, used outside the cult for devotional and prophylactic purposes”. This would accord with the view of some Egyptologists that contemporary popular imagery showing divinities there represent well-known cult images of them, not the deity him or herself (cf. Schulmann 1981). This line of argument would be strengthened if it could be demonstrated that the “frame” does not represent the edges of a bed, but rather an architectural feature. In other words, she stands rather than reclines, as indeed the feet together, facing forward, is seen to indicate in other contexts when the nude female is set on a small podium. This would then present the image set in a shrine. Keel and Uehlinger (1998, 101–105) have explored this possibility in the light of some ceramic plaques of such shrine fronts in which the clearly depicted architectural elements confound any suggestion that these figures recline -186-
BRONZE AGE: INTRODUCTION – CANAAN rather than stand. Complications enter in, however, with the appearance of apparently identical pairs of nude females within shrines, as at Tell Qasile in Iron Age IB, late in the eleventh century (Mazar 1980, 82–4, pl. 30; Bretschneider 1991, 128ff., 229, no. 79), and when the nude female appears with a child in an “architectural” context (Mazar 1985). Are they goddesses or suppliants The “goddess or her image” problem arises in Egypt with popular worship of Hathor, the local goddess of women. As Pinch (1993, 94–5) points out “it is difficult to decide whether many votive stelae show a deity or the deity’s manifestation in a sacred animal or a cult image or object. When Hathor is shown enclosed in a shrine or standing on a plinth, a statue is meant. The depiction of such statues on New Kingdom votive statue could be due to a lingering reluctance to show living, private individuals in the presence of a deity”. In Canaan, as elsewhere, in the ancient Near East, the cult statues in major shrines were much more than simple representations of deities. They were made and repaired according to elaborate prescriptions which transformed the lifeless image into a living incarnation of the deity in contemporary eyes and minds. They were then treated exactly as Kings and Queens. The consubstantiality of deity and image might only be destroyed through elaborate rituals. Popular images in clay were of an entirely different order. When they show a deity it is in all probability a famous cult statue not the deity per se that is intended; when a mortal then a devotee or suppliant. The problem in this case is being certain that type A represents a goddess and type B a suppliant (or vice versa). Since in Egypt both goddesses and women hold plants, this is not a criterion for divinity. It may well be that both types represent suppliants or devotees of a goddess. If so, she was the audience, not the image. Consequently, without any inscribed plaques naming her, her identity remains an open question, with Anat or Astarte most often suggested (cf. Hadley 2000, 191–2). (b) Female with a child This is a relatively rare motif among Late Bronze Age mouldmade plaques. It may challenge any easy assumptions that these are images of a goddess rather than of women suppliants. In one pattern, represented by a nearly complete example from Revadim (Beck 1986) and a fragment from Aphek (Kochavi 1990, 20 figs 17, 38), the female has exaggerated “Hathor” locks down to her navel with her arms curved round and hands displaying her genitals. She wears a crescentic neck pendant and on the body, in low relief, a stylized nursing child is shown below each breast. On each thigh a tree and caprids are similarly modelled. More naturalistic representations of a female with a child on her hip being nursed appear in Late Bronze II, from the late fifteenth or early fourteenth century B.C., and survive into the Iron Age (cf. Winter 1983, 118ff. Type 7: Rowe 1940, pl. 68A.4; James 1966, fig. 112:7). Egyptian parallels show Hathor as ‘nurse’, clothed. Keel and Uehlinger (1998, 84) argue that “the nakedness of the goddess on the terracottas is a typically Canaanite feature. The Canaanite nursing goddess is an indigenous form, not just a local adaptiation of an Egyptian theme”. (c) Males The surviving miniature male imagery of the Late Bronze Age is predominantly made of cast metal (cf. Moorey and Fleming 1984, 71–78). An exception is a crude clay plaque from Tel Dan, dated to the fourteenth or thirteenth century B.C., reported to be mouldmade. It shows a dancing man playing a lute. It appears to be a locally made, rather crude, variant of a Late Bronze Age Syrian type of mouldmade clay plaque (cf. Dornemann 1985, fig. on p.55) and as such is isolated in Canaan. (d) Zoomorphic No study has yet been devoted to the handmade animal terracottas of Bronze Age Canaan that continue a tradition established in prehistory. None are mouldmade. They commonly include the primary domesticates; bovids, sheep and goats. Birds are also recurrent, notably pigeons and doves, usually associated with a major fertility goddess (Ziffer 1998). A selection of zoomorphic terracottas was -187-
Page 1 and 2: The Bronze Age 5. Canaan (c.3000-11
Page 3: BRONZE AGE: INTRODUCTION - CANAAN (
Page 7 and 8: BRONZE AGE: CANNAN - CATALOGUE B. C
Page 9: BRONZE AGE: CANNAN - CATALOGUE Bara

The Bronze Age: Canaan - The Ashmolean Museum

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?