The Iconography of Power

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During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.E.), much of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East was carved up among a group of civilizations: Egyptians in the south, Babylonians and Assyrians in Mesopotamia, the Mittani in northern Syria, Hittites in Anatolia, and Mycenaeans in Greece and Crete.

Many of these states had active diplomatic relations with one another, as well as with smaller kingdoms on Cyprus, in Anatolia, in Syria and in the Levant. The ruling dynasties of these great civilizations created a kind of supraregional sphere of power in which they were tightly bound together despite cultural differences and national loyalties. Not only did Late Bronze Age kings make formal treaties with one another but they forged interdynastic alliances, addressed one another as “brother” and exchanged expensive gifts—much like the interbred European monarchies before World War I.

We know a good deal about how Late Bronze Age rulers behaved toward one another because of two archives. In the late 19th century, a hoard of clay tablets was found at the Egyptian site of Tell el-Amarna, where the “heretic pharaoh” Akhenaten (1352–1336 B.C.E.) had built his capital. Another group of clay tablets was unearthed at the Hittite capital of Hattusa, modern Bogazköy in central Turkey. Many of the tablets in these two archives are foreign correspondence inscribed in cuneiform script with text in Akkadian—a Semitic language spoken in Babylonia and Assyria and used as a diplomatic lingua franca throughout the Near East during the Late Bronze Age.

One of the Amarna letters was written by the 14th-century B.C.E. Mittani king Tushratta, who had earlier sent his sister and daughter (separately) to become wives of Pharaoh Amenophis III, the father of Akhenaten:

Great King, the king of Egypt, [my] brother, my son-in-law, who loves me, and whom I love: Message of Tushratta, Great King, [your] father-in-law, who loves you, the king of Mitanni [sic], your brother. For me all goes well. For you may all go well. For your household, for my sister, for the rest of your wives, for your sons, for your chariots, for your horses, for your warriors, for your country, and for whatever else belongs to you, may all go very, very well. As far back as the time of your ancestors, they always showed love to my ancestors.¹

These royal letters were delivered by messengers who carried with them concrete manifestations of this 028royal fraternity: greeting-gifts (sáulmanu in Akkadian). Many of the letters spend much time listing, describing and requesting gifts, as well as complaining about the lack of them. The Babylonian king Burna-Buriash, for example, chided Akhenaten for failing to furnish his messengers with gifts:

Now, though you and I are friends, 3 times have your messengers come to me and you have not sent me a single beautiful greeting-gift, nor have I for my part sent you a beautiful greeting-gift.²

Sometimes the letters make the royal correspondents sound like spoiled siblings. But the language is highly stylized, and the kings who send the letters are trying to strike the right diplomatic notes. In using this “high” style, rulers demonstrate not only that they know how to converse as royalty but that their correspondents deserve to be addressed in such a manner. They are communicating according to the rules of international imperial decorum, as we see in the following letter from Pharaoh Ramesses II (1279–1213 B.C.E.) 029to the Hittite queen Puduhepa, whom he warmly addresses as his “sister”:

[When] I heard of the health of my brother and of the health of my sister—“They are well, [safe], and healthy.” And when I saw the tablet which [my sister] sent to me, when I heard all the matters which my sister wrote me about, when I received the gift which my sister sent to me, and when I saw that it was secure and in good condition, I was indeed overjoyed. The Sun-god and the Storm-god [Teshub] will give us brotherhood and peace, even in this good relationship in which we find ourselves forever.³

Ramesses was not a blood relative of the Hittite ruling family, and he had not sent 030members of his family to marry Hittite royalty (though one of his wives was a Hittite princess). He was simply using the language with which kings addressed one another—and he even had the refined good sense to honor the storm god Teshub, the highest god in the Hittite pantheon.

These diplomatic relations were also given visual expression. Almost 40 years ago, the American Egyptologist William Stevenson Smith described an “international style” of Late Bronze Age artworks from the eastern Mediterranean and Near East that includes “objects of a small, costly, ornamental character, which we know were exchanged between distant lands.”⁴ Smith also noted a peculiarity about objects in the international style: They were composed of an eclectic mixture of elements, making it difficult to determine exactly where they were manufactured.

Now it seems clear that the very meaning of these objects is suggested by their hybrid nature—in their not belonging anywhere in particular so that they might belong everywhere. Objects in the international style, or koiné (a Greek term meaning “shared in common”), were meant to signify royal power itself, not specifically the might of Hatti (the land of the Hittites) or Egypt. They represented a transcultural iconography of power from the Late Bronze Age.

Such objects have been found in Egypt, the Levant, Cyprus, the Aegean, Anatolia and Mesopotamia. They are mostly portable items like vessels, furniture, chariot equipment and weaponry, and they are generally made of such expensive materials as ivory, gold, faience and alabaster—suggesting their connection to aristocracy and royalty.

Notably, the Late Bronze Age koiné style carries depictions of a limited number of themes, which can be broadly divided into (1) scenes of animal attacks or hunts and (2) scenes of animals flanking vegetation. These themes were not invented by the koiné artists; they were part of longstanding iconographic traditions in the Near East that reached back a millennium or more. The koiné artists simply borrowed and adapted earlier images, taken from various places, for their symbolism: Hunting scenes, for example, often represent royal might, while scenes of animals flanking vegetation (or animals flanking a king who tends to a lotus flower or a palm tree) often represent royal power as bound up with earthly and heavenly forces.

In the animal attack scenes, lions, griffins or hunting dogs are shown perched on the back of their prey—typically a herbivore—or leaping from below toward their prey’s exposed neck and underbelly. Such Late Bronze Age images appear on gold pieces from the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (1336–1327 B.C.E.), including a gold dagger sheath, on ivories and a gold bowl from Ugarit, and on Late Bronze Age ivory inlays found buried in an early first-millennium B.C.E. Artemision (temple of Artemis) on the Aegean island of Delos. Given monumental form, the image of a lion springing on a calf is carved on a large block of stone in the gateway of the Hittite town of Alaca Hüyük, not far from Hattusa.

Scenes of animal combat date back to third-millennium B.C.E. Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Egypt, scenes of hunting dogs bringing down quarry and fights between wild beasts occur in private 032tombs as early as the Old Kingdom (2575–2134 B.C.E.). These images are generally vignettes within larger compositions showing hunting in the desert; they seem to represent a region of chaos and disorder—which will eventually be subjected to civilized rule.

Early Mesopotamian scenes of animal combat, found frequently on third-millennium B.C.E. cylinder seals, often include men and mythological creatures. What especially characterizes these struggles is their uncertain outcome; the equally powerful combatants are balanced one against another, perhaps symbolizing forces of good and evil, life and death, or heaven and earth.

The later, Late Bronze Age koiné depictions of animal combat are syncretic, 033drawing on Egyptian as well as on Mesopotamian traditions. The sheer violence of the koiné scenes, with one animal viciously subduing another, is reminiscent of the old Egyptian reliefs, while their use of fantastic, mythical, otherworldly creatures is reminiscent of the Mesopotamian seals. Did the koiné artists choose elements from the different traditions at random? Or were they representing two ideas: The king submits chaos to order, and the king acts as an intermediary between heaven and earth? In any event, the hybrid nature of the koiné scenes make them serviceable not only to Egyptian or Mesopotamian kings, but to all Late Bronze Age kings as images of royal power given dignity by ancient tradition.

Particularly common in both animal combat scenes and hunting scenes is the lion, which also has deep roots in Mesopotamian and Egyptian iconography. The Mesopotamian ruler Shulgi (c. 2100 B.C.E.), king of Ur, is described as a terrifying lion. A stela from Uruk in southern Mesopotamia dating around 3000 B.C.E. depicts a king-like figure slaying lions with a bow and arrow and a spear. In ancient Egypt, pharaohs were often shown hunting lions or taking the form of a lion, as in the sphinx images. Egyptian kings also brought captive lions with them into battle.

The koiné objects commonly show composite creatures based on the leonine form—both as predators and as prey. The sphinx has a human head, the griffin has a bird’s head, and the horned lion has bull’s horns on an otherwise leonine body. Although the sphinx occurs throughout the Near East, the koiné sphinxes most closely resemble those from Egypt, which are often shown trampling fallen enemies—for example, on the magnificently carved wooden side panels of a throne of Tuthmosis IV (1400–1390 B.C.E.).

Unlike the sphinxes or griffins of Egypt, the leonine figures in koiné images also assume benign positions, as on the outer band of the gold bowl from Ugarit. This benignity suggests a symbolism drawn from ancient Mesopotamia, where composite creatures of demonic form, subdued by the gods, acquired apotropaic qualities enabling them to serve as guardians. In the koiné, these fantastic beasts appear to fulfill a dual role as predator and protector, a supernatural manifestation of royal traits.

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The most common hunting scenes in the koiné involve chariots: An animal (or enemy) flees before the onrushing horses of the chariot. Such scenes appear on a carved ivory gaming box from Enkomi, Cyprus (see photo of carved ivory gaming box), on a painted chest from the tomb of Tutankhamun and on monumental pylons at Luxor showing Ramesses II hunting from a chariot. The Middle Assyrian king Ninurta-Tukulti-Assur (1133–1132 B.C.E.) had himself depicted hunting from a chariot on a seal found at Assur, in northern Iraq. (In the Neo-Assyrian period of the first millennium B.C.E., relief carvings of kings hunting from chariots were frequently carved on palace walls in various Assyrian cities.)

Although chariot scenes are also commonly depicted at such places as hilly, rugged Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, and at Ugarit, which lies on a plain surrounded by mountains, it seems unlikely that chariots could have been effectively used at either site. This suggests that the chariot became a symbol of political and military authority. Like the images of animals in combat, the chariot may have gained dignity from its association with the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia, where it was indeed an effective military and hunting weapon.

The other koiné theme, that of animals flanking vegetation, stands in stark contrast to the combat scenes. The most frequently occurring variant shows a goat, ram or antelope on either side of elaborate, stylized palmettes with volute-shaped leaves, suggesting nourishment and fertility. These scenes appear, for example, on a polychrome faience jar found at Kition, Cyprus, as well as on an incised 061ivory pyxis (cosmetic box) from Assur. Interestingly, on some koiné objects such bountiful scenes alternate with the often harsher, more aggressive combat scenes, with the artists balancing one image against the other. For example, on both a gold bowl from Ugarit and an embroidered robe from the tomb of Tutankhamun, volute-palmettes, sometimes alone and sometimes flanked by animals, are used to separate other scenes, including depictions of animal combat and hunts. The palmettes evoke a sense of calm, balancing the dynamism and violence of the other vignettes.

The volute-palmette itself exemplifies the hybrid nature of the international koiné iconography. Scholars have debated whether it derives from the date palm, the lily, the lotus, the iris, or even the Minoan lily from the Aegean. More likely, however, the volute-palmette is a complex combination of various sources—especially those tracing to Egypt and Mesopotamia.⁵ The thick, fleshy volutes and rounded umbel of the koiné plants resemble representations of the lotus, lily and papyrus of Egypt. In Egypt, the papyrus of Lower Egypt and the lotus or lily of Upper Egypt are often shown intertwined in a charged image of a unified land. In the Old Kingdom, the entwined plants were carved on the throne of Khafre (2520–2494 B.C.E.), who built both the Sphinx and one of the Great Pyramids at Giza. In the New Kingdom (1550–1070 B.C.E.), the vegetal motif appears on pillars erected by Tuthmosis III (1479–1425 B.C.E.) in the temple of Amun at Karnak, as well as on painted representations of columns supporting divine and royal pavilions. The use of these plants as architectural supports emphasizes the inextricable relationship between god, king and earth.

The palmette of the koiné plants also suggests a link to Near Eastern art. Mesopotamian art has numerous examples of depictions of god, king and fruit-bearing trees. At the Syrian city of Mari, for example, a palace wall was painted with representations of date palms and fantastic trees framing a central scene in which the goddess Ishtar hands the insignia of kingship to a king, possibly the 18th-century B.C.E. king Zimri-Lim. In 062the palace of the later Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 B.C.E.) at Kalhu, modern Nimrud in Iraq, two images of the king flanking a highly stylized palm tree were carved in relief on a wall. Above the tree hovers a winged disk from which a male torso, probably the state god Ashur, gestures to the king—undoubtedly a cosmic image connecting royal authority with heavenly authority.

The Late Bronze Age koiné style provides emblems of two related aspects of kingship: the power it exercises on earth, and the beneficence it offers in association with the gods. Although the images are drawn from well-established earlier traditions, they do not show culturally or ritually specific dress, paraphernalia or activities that might single out a specific region. Their lack of regional affiliation, in fact, makes possible a universalized meaning—the legitimization of an exclusive group of Great Kings.

During the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.E.), much of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East was carved up among a group of civilizations: Egyptians in the south, Babylonians and Assyrians in Mesopotamia, the Mittani in northern Syria, Hittites in Anatolia, and Mycenaeans in Greece and Crete. Many of these states had active diplomatic relations with one another, as well as with smaller kingdoms on Cyprus, in Anatolia, in Syria and in the Levant. The ruling dynasties of these great civilizations created a kind of supraregional sphere of power in which they were tightly bound together despite cultural differences and […]