2024 Assur 2023: die Schriftfunde. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 156 (2024) 49-56 (with Holger Gzella) (original) (raw)

Der „kulturelle Code“ des „aramäischen“ Gōzāna (Tall Ḥalaf)

Zwischen Ausgrabung und Ausstellung. Beiträge zur Archäologie Vorderasiens Festschrift für Lutz Martin, 2020

Tall Ḥalaf in Upper Mesopotamia is particularly known for its buildings and sculptures from the time of the ruler Kapara, when it was the capital of a small principality called Palê / Bīt Baḫiani under the name Gōzāna (Aramaic GWZN, New Assyrian Gu-za-na). Although always outside the former Hittite zone of influence and the distribution area of Luwian hieroglyphic writing, it is nevertheless attributed for good reasons to the "Neo-Hittite" or "Syro-Hittite" cultural complex of the Iron Age. At the same time, it is considered an important early centre of the Arameans, a Semitic population whose language played an important role in the Levant and Mesopotamia for one and a half millennia. As much as the finds and features of Tall Ḥalaf gave important impulses to the discussion about the culture of the Arameans and their contacts with the Luwian and Aramaic principalities of the Levant on the one hand and with the expanding Neo-Assyrian empire on the other, these aspects have not yet been exhaustively clarified. Even if we are fully aware that the following explanations can only minimally change this, we would like to address the question of whether and - if so - in what form the Aramaic Gōzāna exhibited a characteristic cultural code and how this can be located in terms of cultural history.

Brandeisen vom Tell Halaf Zur Praxis des Brandzeichnens bei Pferden

Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient Gesellschaft (MDOG), 2020

During the new excavations at Tell Halaf two metal objects were found belonging to a group of stamps that previously had been observed hardly in research and which were discussed as brick stamps. The depictions in the palace of Ashurnasirpal II in Ninive and Nimrud show horses with striking markings on their hind legs in the form of a four-legged animal stamp running to the right, such as those found in Nimrud. Against this background it must be considered what function the iron stamps found at Tell Halaf had and whether it would be conceivable that they were used to mark horses. To what extent is this a common practice or rather a singular phenomenon during the Neo-Assyrian period in Upper Mesopotamia and its neighbouring regions?

Zum Tempel "A" in Assur: Zeugnis eines Urbizids

K. Kleber, G. Neumann und Susanne Paulus, unter Mitarbeit von Ch. Möllenbeck (eds.), Grenzüberschreitungen. Studien zur Kulturgeschichte des Alten Orients. Festschrift für Hans Neumann zum 65. Geburtstag am 9. Mai 2018. Dubsar 5 (Münster 2018), pp. 621-635.