The figure wears an Assyrian style royal headdress and, although few details are visible, his shawl, tasseled belt and some of the fringe on his skirt are still preserved. The figure has his right hand on a staff that rests on his toe. There may have been an emblem on top the staff but the only the faintest of traces are preserved. The position of the figure is similar to that of Assyrian kings who hold staffs, and the best parallel for the position of the figure is found on the throne base of Shalmaneser III (cf. Mallowan 1966, 477, fig.d). The left hand of the figure is gone but it may once have grasped a flower of which we can only see the rather floppy stem and the faintest of traces of a lotus bud.
Some of the closest parallels for the figure are, not surprisingly, from Zincirli ( e.g., Orthmann 1968, Pls. 63,a; E2 and 66b, J2; Genge 1997, figs. 111-112) . The tasseled belt worn by the figure appears to be local and not Assyrian feature, but the damage to the figure is so great that its not possible to tell whether this is a representation of an Assyrian king or a local ruler. A parallel for an Assyrian king representing himself in a stela is found at Nineveh. Note that the king fills the entire space of the stela - unlike at Incirli. Also note that the stela within a stela on from Incirli frames the royal person in the same way as the Nineveh example frames the Assyrian king.
The text of the stela gives us a date to the time of Shalmaneser V (726-722) in the late eight century. And, if the preliminary translation by Kaufman and Zuckerman remains more or less unaltered in original intent, then the most likely purpose of the stele was as a boundary stone placed in the southern area of kingdom of Gurgum.
One is reminded of the boundary stone found in a village near
Pazarcik (35 km southeast of Marash) which was set-up by the Adad-Nirari
III (810-783 B.C.) and Shalmaneser IV (782-773 B.C.) to mark the northeastern
border of Gurgum with Kuhmuh. (Donbaz 1990, 5-10). Could this stele be
the marker of the south-eastern border of Kuhmuh and Gurgum? Texts from
Zincirli record that Tiglath Pileser III awarded to Panamuwa, the king
of Zincirli, a portion of the territory of Gurgum. The valley between sites
KM-17 and KM-40 would make excellent geographic sense as the southern border
of Gurgum. Whether the monument actually marked the southeastern boundary
between Gurgum, Kuhmuh and Zincirli, 60 km to the west, however, remains
to be established.
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This page modified on June 21, 1998.
