“Riflessioni storiche su un sigillo di epoca akkadica,”
La parola del passato. Rivista di studi antichi 378, pp. 188-193.
“The presence of an Urkeški ugula on the cylinder seal AOD 42, could be very important for understanding the meaning of Sumerian endan. This seal should be probably dated to the reign of Naram-Sin, and we know that the king of Akkad sent one of his daughters, Tar’am-Agade, to the city of Urkeš. Recently, a few impressions of a seal belonging to an endan of Urkeš have been found not far from the context where fragmentary impressions of Tar’am-Agades seal were discovered. There is no evidence that Tar’am-Agade was the endan’s wife, but the very presence of a contemporary ugula indicates that she could not be a queen. Even if, in the texts known, the ugula is always the head of a number of workers or soldiers and is never related to a city, we can surmise that he was, nonetheless, a person in position of coordinating and directing; so D.O. Edzard’s rendering as ‘governor’ is indeed acceptable. Obviously, the interpretation of endan as ‘king’ makes no sense if at the same time and in the same place a governor is attested” (p. 192: author’s abstract).
[For Tar’am-Agade, cf. mostly Buccellati, G. 2000, Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 2000, Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 2002 and Kelly-Buccellati 2005].
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