“Between Heaven and Hell in Ancient Urkesh,”
Backdirt 175, pp. 68-73.
In 2005, Tell Mozan received an official visit of the Minister of Culture, interested on visiting the monumental structures on the top of the mound, composed of a stairway (leading to temple BA), flanked by an ‘apron’, probably “serving to accommodate an audience that might witness the early phase of a ritual, starting in the plaza in front of the staircase and then leading up to the temple above” (p. 66).
The whole complex (dated to the mid of the third millennium BC) represented “a suggestive backdrop to the urban landscape of Urkesh today as it undoubtedly was in antiquity” (p. 66).
The composite structure was finally abandoned around 1350 BC, with the coming of the Assyrians. Very likely, the cultic use of the area already started during the Late Chalcolithic and the sacrality of the place during the centuries can be argued from the absence of other installations in the area. The temple itself could be connected to a Hurrian origin, and the dedication of a first temple by king Tish-atal to Nergal (attested on the inscriptions on two copper alloy lion statuettes kept at the MET and the Louvre Museum) who can be better interpreted as Kumarbi, the poliad deity of the ancient site.
The other stone lion sculpture found within the sacral area could have been placed near to the temple’s altar, while two smaller lion-shaped statuettes were place as a foundation deposit nearby the temple.
The paper focuses in the end on the Palace (slightly later than the temple, probably around 2250 BC) and on the ābi, the necromantic pit leading to the Netherworld. Both the sacral area of the temple and the necromantic pit represent a ‘trait d’union’ between the living and the ancestors, defining “a very special Hurrian ideological landscape” (p. 69).
[For a brief but effective description of all the structures and finds mentioned above, see Tell Mozan, ancient Urkesh - At a glance].
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