the hasanlu gold bowl a view from transc
TRANSCRIPT
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Yeki Bud, Yeki Nabud
Essays on the Archaeology of Iran
In honor of William M. Sumner
Naomi F. Miller and Kamyar Abdi, eds.
The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, UCLA
2003
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CHAPTER 21
THE HASANLU GOLD "BOWL"
A Viewfrom Transcaucasia
K A R EN S . R UB IN S O N
I NTHE COUR5E OF EXCAVATION, precious objects
are occasionally found that stimulate extensive discus-
sion and study by virtue of their special, even unique,
nature. Such is the so-called Gold Bowl excavated at
Hasanlu, Iran in 1958 (Barrelet 1984; Winter 1989). J Wil-
liam Sumner's career in Iranian archaeology, as well as my
own, began at Hasanlu. This discussion is offered in recol-
lection of those days.
When the Gold Bowl was first published by Edith
Porada, she noted a few comparisons between the piece
from Iran and the silver goblet [rom the excavations at
Ti-ialeti, in what is today the Republic of Georgia (figures
21.1-21.4). Porada (1959:22) remarked, "While certain de-
tails of costume and furniture such as the tail-like tassels of
the garments and the hull's feet of the throne suggest some
relationship with Hasaniu customs as reflected in the bowl,
and while even the chinless short-bearded men seem like
caricatures of the ethnic type found on the bowl, the style
of the Caucasus vessel is stiffer, cruder, less accomplished."
She further suggested that the artists who produced the
Trialeti goblet may "have been influenced by Hasanlu"
(Porada 1959:22).
We now know that the Tria1eti goblet is earlier than the
Hasan1u "bowl," since the goblet was found in a burial dat-
ing to the first few centuries of the second millennium BCE.(Miron and Orthmann 1995:238; Rubinson 1977:243) and
the Gold Bowl is later, made either toward the end of the
second millennium or the beginning of the first (Winter
1989:90-92). Since these earlier discoveries, a further
silver piece belonging to the Trialeti culture that sheds light
on this problem has become available. It is a goblet exca-
vated from the G rand North Kurgan at Karashamb in
Armenia (Oganesian 1992; Pilipossian and Santrot 1996:65-
67). Like the other two vessels, the goblet from Karashamb
has human figures with tails attached to their garments and
offering stands (in this case with objects on them) with
hoofed animal feet, as well as figures with a similar kind of
stylized face, although beardless. In addition, the Karashamb
goblet has, in the third register, a group of daggers or swords
suspended in space, an image also found on the Hasanlu
bowl (Pilipossian and San trot 1996:66; Shahnazarian and
Mkrtchian N.D.: 16; Tiratsian 1992:39 [where the image is
reverscdj) .
Since the Transcaucasian silver vessels and the Hasanlu
Gold Bowl are separated by at least five hundred years,
what might explain the occurrence of this shared imagery
in both areas? The imagery does not seem to be native to
Transcaucasia but rather borrowed from Anatolia, imagery
recorded particularly in the Anatolian-style seals of the
Assyrian colony period (Rubinson 1977:243,N.D.). Itis likely
that the transfer of this imagery to the Trialeti cultural
sphere is a reflection of an e conomic exchange, a
phenomenon known in other times and places, as, for
example, the West Asian imagery, particularly Sasanian,found in Tang China (Vollmer et al. 1983:46--47,65,70-
73). But given the lack of contemporaneity of the Tnaleti
culture and the Gold Bowl, regardless of its date of
manufacture, economic interchange cannot be the
237
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21.1 Detail of Hasanlu Gold "Bowl" showing offering table/altar. Photograph courtesy"of the University
of PennsylsxmioMuseuui (neg. #835-78114:31)
21.2 Detail of Thaleti silver goblet showing offering table/altar. Photograph bX KS. Rubinson, with
perm issio n 0 / the National Museum cf Oecrgia
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Karen S . Rubinson
21.3 DetailofHasanlu Gold"Bowl"showing"hero"with aruma!tails suspendedfromhis garment.
Photograph courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Museum (neg. #535- 78113:0)
explanation in this case. Is it possible to suggest another
plausible explanation for how, as Burney (Burney and Lang
1972:95) puts it, the Trialeti culture imagery is "echoed"
in the Gold Bowl?
The ethnolinguistic and cultural context of the silver
vessels of the Trlalcti culture is not certain, since we have
no written documents from the area (Dzhaparidze 1995:87).
The excavator made the case that the Karashamb goblet
displays tales of an Indo-European tradition, with the boar
hunt as the essential element, also found in myths of the
Greeks, Ger-mans, Scandinavians, Celts and others
(Oganesian 1992:97-99). The boar hunt, however, is a sub-
sidiary motif on this piece, much smaller than the two
central registers, and seems to me not visually significant
enough to support Oganesian's argument for the centrality
of the boar hunt to the myth depicted on the vessel. Addi-
tionally, the imagery on the Trialeti goblet has often been
compared to that found in Hittite art, from the original
publication by Kuftin (1941:89-92), where he compared
the standing human figures to those at Yazrhkayawho wear
similar garments, to recent exhibition catalogues where
general comparisons of gift-bearing processionals are made
(Miron and Ortlunann 1995:238), sometimes with efforts
to draw ethnolinguistic interpretations (Kuftin 1941:90-
91, 163). These visual parallels are indeed quite striking,
but imagery in Hittite art has Hurrian influence and is not
strictly Indo-European (Archi 1995:2373-2374; Kohlmeyer
1995:2649; Wilhelm 1995:1250).
The Hasanlu Gold Bowl is also found in an archaeologi-
cal milieu without texts, and the ethnolinguistic context of
its manufacture has also been long-discussed (Barrelet
1984:57). Even with some images corresponding closelyto
known Hurrian myth, Winter (1989: 104) concludes only
that "the identification of Hurrian components on the
bowl... has been strengthened" by the investigation of her-
self and others. How much more difficult the situation is
for the identification of the ethnolinguistic/cultural origin
of the Trialeti culture goblets, where no known story can
be clearly seen in the silver images. Nevertheless, there are
arguments to be made for a Hun-ian-related population in
Transcaucasia in the early second millennium, based on the
relationship between the Hurrian and Urartian languages
(Wilhelm 1989:4-6, 1995:1244), and even earlier if one
accepts that the EarlyTranscaucasian culture was Hun-ian-
speaking. Both arguments rely on the evidence for the late
third-millennium appearance of Hurrian names and words
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HE HASANLU GOLD "BOWl:'
21.4 Detail of the Trialeti silver goblet showing walking figures with animal tails suspended from their garments.
Photograph by KS Rubinson, with permission of the National Museum of Georgia
at the northeastern borders of Mesopotamia, and assume
an east Anatolian-Transcaucasian origin for the Hurrian-
speaking population (Burney and Lang 1972:49).
In looking at the silver vessels, there is nothing in the
overall narrative that links the imagery to the Gold Bowl.
Rather, it is the small details noted by Porada, as well as the
weapons placed in the field on the more recently found
Karashamb goblet, also seen on the bowl. Of those, am y
one image, the weapons in the field, may possibly suggest a
tie to known Hurrian myth. The Hurrian connection is
summarized by Winter (1989:95) and need not be repeated
here. It is true that on the Karashamb goblet the weapons
are grouped with shields and bounded by scenes of men
fighting (Pilipossian and Santrot 1996:66; Tiratsian
1992:39). But it might be possible to read the images on
more than one level, both literally and as reference to a
symbolic figure or concept. On the other hand, perhaps
the weapons in the field of the Gold Bowl are a shorthand
reference to the expanded battle seen on the Karashamb
goblet. It may prove to be instructive to collect the
Anatolian-style seals bearing weapons in the field of the
Assyrian trading colony period for comparison. For ex-
ample, O zgU
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Karen S . Rubinson
hoofed table is associated with figures of human form
holding goblets or cups. In her analysis, Winter (1989:95)
stresses the empty top of the piece of furniture as part of
its meaning, so perhaps it is not related to the early sec-
ond millennium examples, of which only the Trialeti goblet
table is unburdened. But it is worth considering that the
'hoofed feet of the altar/table/stool may themselves have
meaning, a motif seen also on a clay tripod stand from
Kultepe Kanesh II (Ozgiic; 1965:86, Pl. XXXII: 100), as
well as on the feet of many Urartian bronzes, including a
candelabrum and cauldron stand (Azarpay 1968:56-58,
Pis. 30,41,47-48) and other pieces of furniture (Merhav
1991:252-253). It is a stretch to take the use of this im-
age in Urartu and connect it to its earlier use in a possible
Hurt-ian-related area in Transcaucasia simply because of
the relationship of the languages (Zimansky 1995.: 1135-
1136), much less extend it to the probably Hurrian context
of the Hasanlu Gold Bowl. However, given the lack of
texts in the latter two areas, such circumstantial evidence
is worth noting.
An equally tenuous tie is the appearance of animal tails
on human-form figures on the three precious-metal objects.
However, this image is rare in the ancient Near East. The
tails illustrated on all three objects are quite different in
appearance; those on the Hasanlu Gold Bowl look like lions'
tails, with tufts on the ends, those on the Trialeti goblet
look like wolves' tails, with bushy long hair along their whole
length, and the tails on the Karashamb goblet, extending
from the figure's waist to the ground in most cases, consist
of a stylized herring-bone pattern that is harder to identify
with a specific animal. The stylization of the Karasharnb
tails is close to that on an Anatolian-style seal from Kultepe
Kanesh, where it appears on a bull-man (Ozgtic; 1965:82,
•
Pl. XX:61). Whether this type of well-known Near Eastern
image was the inspiration for the Transcaucasian metalwork
cannot be proven, but is a tantalizing thought. Perhaps on
the Trialeti-culture metalwork, a Near Eastern pictoral
image was conflated with a native cultural tradition to yield
human-form figures with attached tails, Again, could this
"Ii-anscaucasian image be inspired by stories related to some
of those illustrated on the Gold Bowl?
Of course, imagery traditions had a long life in the ancient
Near East, and were used in many cultures and geographical
areas, transformed in style and even meaning (see, for
example, Winter 1980:11-12). This conservative tendency
in artistic vocabulary may be the explanation for what could
be an accidental similarity between the Trialeti culture and
Hasanlu precious vessels. But given the probable Hurrian
relationships of the Gold Bowl and the possible Hurrian-
related context of Iranscaucasia in the Bronze Age, perhaps
we can say of the Trialeti and Karashamb goblets what Stein
(1989:84) said of the Hasanlu Gold Bowl, which she wrote
" ...ultimately derived from the same cultural milieu in which
the Hurrians also participated prior to their entry on the
northern plain of Syria and Mesopotamia, where the process
of acculturation can be traced from the third millennium."
Only further excavation and study of the Late Bronze and
early Iron Age remains inTranscaucasia and Iran will be able
to help solve this question. Surely William Sumner's students
and colleagues will contribute to this research.
Acknowledgment. Trialeti photographs taken through a
grant from the American Philosophical Society.
NOTE
1. In her important study of this object, Winter (1989) identi-
fied it as a vessel taller than a bowl.
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