The soul of a royal official in the service of King Panamuwa of the eighth century B.C. was believed to reside in this carved stone.
Photo by Eudora Struble, University of Chicago
Archaeologists in southeastern Turkey have discovered an Iron Age chiseled stone slab that provides the first written evidence in the region that people believed the soul was separate from the body, University of Chicago researchers announced.
The Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago found the 800-pound basalt stele at Zincirli (pronounced "Zin-jeer-lee"), the site of the ancient city of Sam'al.
The inscription reads in part: "I, Kuttamuwa, servant of Panamuwa, am the one who oversaw the production of this stele for myself while still living. I placed it in an eternal chamber(?) and established a feast at this chamber(?): a bull for [the storm-god] Hadad, ... a ram for [the sun-god] Shamash, ... and a ram for my soul that is in this stele."
"The stele is the first of its kind to be found intact in its original location, enabling scholars to learn about funerary customs and life in the eighth century B.C.," the researchers said. "At the time, vast empires emerged in the ancient Middle East, and cultures such as the Israelites and Phoenicians became part of a vibrant mix,"
The northeast city wall of the site of Zinceril.
Photo by Eudora Struble, University of Chicago
The man featured on the stele was probably cremated, a practice that Jewish and other cultures shun because of a belief in the unity of body and soul. According to the inscription, the soul of the deceased resided in the stele.
"The stele is in almost pristine condition. It is unique in its combination of pictorial and textual features and thus provides an important addition to our knowledge of ancient language and culture," said David Schloen, associate professor at the Oriental Institute and Director of the University's Neubauer Expedition to Zincirli.
Once the capital of a prosperous kingdom, Zincirli is now one of the most important Iron Age sites under excavation.
German archaeologists first excavated the 100-acre site in the 1890s and unearthed massive city walls, gates and palaces. A number of royal inscriptions and other finds are now on display in museums in Istanbul and Berlin. Schloen and his team from the University of Chicago have excavated Zincirli for two months annually since 2006.
A sketch that is a reconstruction of the citadel at
Zincirli.
Sketch by Robert Koldewey
A geomagnetic map showing the buried walls.
Map by Jason Herrmann,
"A handsome, bearded figure, Kuttamuwa is depicted on the stele wearing a tasseled cap and fringed cloak and raising a cup of wine in his right hand," the researchers said. "He is seated on a chair in front of a table laden with food, symbolizing the pleasant afterlife he expected to enjoy. Beside him is his inscription, elegantly carved in raised relief, enjoining upon his descendants the regular duty of bringing food for his soul. Indeed, in front of the stele were remains of food offerings and fragments of polished stone bowls of the type depicted on Kuttamuwa's table."
Students looking at stele recovered in Zincirli are Virginia Rimmer and Benjamin Thomas, both Ph.D. students in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago.
Photo by Eudora Struble, University of Chicago
The inscription on Kuttamuwa's stele was written in a script derived from the Phoenician alphabet and in a local West Semitic dialect similar to Aramaic and Hebrew, according to the researchers. "It is of keen interest to linguists as well as biblical scholars and religious historians because it comes from a kingdom contemporary with ancient Israel that shared a similar language and cultural features," the university release said.
"The finding sheds a striking new light on Iron Age beliefs about the afterlife. In this case, it was the belief that the enduring identity or "soul" of the deceased inhabited the monument on which his image was carved and on which his final words were recorded."
David Schloen will present the Kuttamuwa stele at the meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research on Novemnber 22 in Boston, the major annual conference for Middle Eastern archaeology. Dennis Pardee, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at the University of Chicago, will present his translation of the stele's 13-line inscription the following day at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, also in Boston, in a session on "Paleographical Studies in the Near East."
