"Die Glyptik der mittelassyrischen Zeit aus Dūr-Katlimmu"
During the reigns of the Middle-Assyrian kings Shalmaneser I (1263-1234 BC) and Tukulti-Ninurta I (1233-1197 BC) the city of Dur-Katlimmu, that is modern Tell Sheikh Hamad on the Habur in Syria (35° 37’’ N, 40° 45’’ E), served as a supra regional center/capital headed by a grand vizier administrating and controlling the western part of the empire. We owe this knowledge from an archive of 666 registered fragmentary cuneiform tablets that were excavated in a sealed deposit of room A of Building P on the western slope of the mound/citadel between 1978 and 1983. Associated with it were thousands of clay safety devices. Building P turned out to have served as the chancellery of an alleged palace east of it that remained unexcavated. 57 seal images on tablets are allocated to the modelled or mature, cut, “elaborate and common”, and elusive configuration groups. Arranged to the date of the tablets the first three groups occur simultaneously from the start of the reign of king Shalmaneser I; around the middle of the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I the cut and “elaborate and common” group fade out while the modelled group dominates and the elusive group first appears. Usually the provenance of the seals is assumed to be synonymous with the place where they were found. Here, however, the contents of the texts clearly indicate a number of other cities from where the texts – and the application of the seals – must originate. Allocated to the configuration groups is another 52 seal images applied on the clay safety devices; yet another 50 images are too fragmentary to be safely associated. The social hierarchy of the city is indicated in the texts and possibly also in the images. Finally, the investigation of the back of the clay safety devices will shed some light on their function and possibly their socio-economic significance.
The publication project is directed by Dr. Hartmut Kühne.
