Ivory

Datos Bibliográficos

ID24075495
AutoresDominique Collon (autor de correspondencia)
Año1977
Volumen39
Número2
Páginas219
Fecha de publicación1977-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaIraq (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0021-0889 • E-ISSN: 2053-4744
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/4200069
OpenAlexW4206833735
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas13

In her Fauna of Ancient Mesopotamia, Mrs. van Buren pointed out that if elephants in the Middle East did not become extinct till about 800 B.C., then it was strange that there are not more representations of them. There is a lapis amulet from Kish which is rather indistinct, a miniature vase of sandstone and quartz decorated with a row of three elephants which was bought in Mosul, two cylinder seals which are related to seals of the Indus Valley type, and a Hittite seal found at Beth Shan which has been dated to the fourteenth century B.C. A terracotta from Diqdiqqeh near Ur shows an elephant being ridden and should probably be dated to the late third millennium B.C. An elephant-shaped cult stand and an elephant-shaped vessel come respectively from fourteenth century Beth Shan and from Hilani I at Zincirli where it can be dated to the time of Esarhaddon, Finally, an elephant is depicted together with monkeys and Bactrian camels on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III in the ninth century.The earliest accounts of actual live elephants are found in Egyptian records of the middle of the second millennium B.C. under Thutmoses I (1525–1495) and of the middle of the fifteenth century B.C. when Thutmoses III killed a herd of 120 elephants “near the water-hole of Niy” or, according to an alternative reading, “for the sake of their tusks.” The water-hole at Niy is probably the Lake of Apamaea.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Fifteenth · French horn · Geography · Mesopotamia · Ancient Near East History · Geology · History