The Bronze Age
4. Syria (c.3000–1150 B.C.)
A. Introduction
(i)
Early Bronze Age (c.3000–2000 B.C.)
Leila Badre’s 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. Badre’s 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 158–159); nos 268–295), 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 Badre’s 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 I–II, 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, 184–5). 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 I–III (c.3000–2250 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 IV–III 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:
7A555–6: K6–5; 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 H5–4 in the late third to earlier second millennium B.C.
(Fugmann 1958, figs 109–10, 117).
(b)
Early Bronze IV (c.2350–2000 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), 839–867).
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 4–3)).
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 34–6), 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 animal’s neck or
else appear facing sideways, as if riding side-saddle, though his lower body simply fuses with the animal’s
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 22–25).
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 26–28). 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 116–18, 124–6, 134, 138 (mould), 143–4). 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,
506–10, pl. 188–91, pl. XLIII–IV), 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, 288–296). 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 7–11).
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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 685–714)
published those in the Louvre, whilst Badre (1980, 266–282) 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, 69–71, 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, 85–7, nos 38–41), 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, 200–4, pl. LXVIII), recalling those associated with
the “Archaic Ishtar Temple” at Assur (cf. Andrae 1922, 87–94 (levels H–G), 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 I–III).
(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 (1995–6) 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 1995–6, 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)
Euphrates Area
a.
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
185–6). In a tomb at Jerablus-Tahtani, near Carchemish, dated to the Early Bronze III–IV 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, 571–2), 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, 110–111).
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 donkey’s
mane” (van Loon 1975, 24, pl. VI: 7–8; cf. van Loon 1973, 148–9, figs 7–8). On the analogy of
contemporary sculptures van Loon identified these terracottas as representations of divinities. In the
1974–5 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, 102–3) 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 Badre’s “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 “Queen’s 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.2000–1600 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 Badre’s 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.1900–1800 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.1800–1700 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.1800–1600 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 élite 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 élite 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 7–12).
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, 97–8), 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-élite
areas in the palace: “the rooms of the staff of the King’s House and the rooms of the Women’s 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-Lim’s 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.1600–1200 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, 68–9). 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, 326–60) 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, 198–234). 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 Badre’s (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 Mallowan’s 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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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 Ashmolean’s 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 24–5; Machule et al. 1986, figs 24–5; 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, 307–32).
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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