Portraits of Ancient Israelite Kings? - The BAS Library

Footnotes

1.

See Hershel Shanks, “The Persisting Uncertainties of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,BAR 38:06.

Endnotes

1.

E. Porada, “Remarks About Some Assyrian Reliefs,” Anatolian Studies 33 (1983), pp. 15–18.

2.

M. Marcus, “Geography as an Organizing Principle in the Imperial Art of Shalmaneser III,” Iraq 49 (1987), pp. 77–90.

3.

O. Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, “Der Assyrerkönig Salmanassar III. und Jehu von Israel auf dem schwarzen Obelisken aus Nimrud,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 116/4 (1994), pp. 391–420.

4.

N. Na’aman, “Transcribing the Theophoric Element in North Israelite Names,” NABU (1997), pp. 19–20.

5.

P. Beck, “The Drawings of Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet ‘Ajrud),” Tel Aviv 9 (1982), pp. 3–68. See also chapter 6 of the final excavation report.

6.

P. Beck, “The Art of Palestine During the Iron Age II: Local Traditions and External Influences,” in Christoph Uehlinger, ed., Images as Media, Sources for the Cultural History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean: 1st Millennium (OBO 175) (Fribourg and Göttingen, 2000), pp. 165–183.

7.

See Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Jerusalem: IES, 2012), p. 69. Nadav Na’aman believes he is Jeroboam II (c. 787–748 B.CE.). See “The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud Through the Lens of Historical Research,” Ugarit Forschungen 43 (2011), pp. 300–324.

8.

Moreover, in the ancient Semitic languages the flower-scepter appears together with the seat in word-pairs employed in poetic language which signify kingship (compare Psalms 45:7). Y. Avishur, Stylistic Studies of Word Pairs in Biblical and Ancient Semitic Literature, AOAT 210 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1984), pp. 579–600.

9.

Irene Winter has shown that as a result of Assyrian expansion in north-Syria monumental architectural form and relief decorations, typically Syrian, were incorporated in Assyrian architecture. Select individual motifs and style were imported, among them the lotus flower. I.J. Winter, “Art as Evidence for Interaction: Relations Between the Assyrian Empire and North Syria,” in H.-J. Nissen, and J. Renger, eds., Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn, Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient 1 (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1982), pp. 355–382.

10.

The king and crown prince appear again in the eastern entrance to the Tripylon. Under a baldachin the king sits on his throne borne by the peoples of the empire, holding lotus blossom and staff. The crown prince also holds a lotus blossom. The faces of both royal figures are mutilated, and the king’s lotus was erased in an act of propagandistic iconoclasm. The mutilators were fully conscious of the lotus’s significance. It must have signified the continuity of the ruling house.

11.

Recalling the bud and lotus garland above the enthroned king on the Ahiram sarcophagus, also painted in tri-color.

12.

I.J. Winter, chapter 2: “Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology,” On Art in the Ancient East, vol. 1 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 78–91.

13.

I. Winter, “When/What Is a Portrait? Royal Images of the Ancient Near East,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 153 (2009), pp. 254–270.

14.

Worthy of mention are a few works of art in miniature from Israel and Judah that show an enthroned figure: an ivory statuette from Tel Rehov (ninth century B.C.E.) in which the head and hands are not preserved; an openwork ivory fragment from Samaria, showing an enthroned figure whose hands are not preserved and an incomplete figure behind the enthroned person, recalling the courtiers behind the king’s throne in the Til Barsip painting and the ‘Ajrud painting; and a painted sherd from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud of an enthroned figure, its arms missing. An Assyrian-style enthroned figure is painted on a jar fragment from Ramat Rahel, dating from the seventh century B.C.E., its hands missing. We cannot tell what all these figures were grasping in their hands, but it would not be a wild guess to say that they were all holding a lotus blossom.

15.

This article was written while I was a guest scholar with the research group Picture Power at Scholion, Interdisciplinary Research Center in Jewish Studies, The Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, fall term 2012–2013.