“A Channel to the Underworld in Syria,”
Near Eastern Archaeology 67:1, pp. 54-56.
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This brief article summarises one of the main discoveries made the Urkesh team in 1999: a structure consisting of a circular chamber with a square antechamber (added later), a pit (six metres in depth, at least and five metres in diameter) found in an area of the exterior southern wall of the royal palace; the pit was probably covered by a vaulted ceiling, unfortunately not preserved. The structure can be dated around 2300 BC, existing already before the palace.
Then the quest for an interpretation of the structure started: a cist burial? A well? A place for making offerings to the dead? The filling of the pit helped in understanding the function of the structure: after having removed some layers of ashes, pebbles and seeds, remains of dozens of animals (including sixty pigs, twenty puppies, sixty sheep or goats and twenty donkeys), all butchered, were found. Furthermore, also copper/bronze pins and silver or lead rings were discovered alongside anthropomorphic vessels and clay animal figurines. Faunal evidences attested in all the strata stand for long-time activities in the pit.
The archaeologists immediately linked these finds with Hittite-Hurrian sources describing offerings (usually made by the royal couple) to appease the gods of the Underworld, put inside a pit, and sacrifices of animals whose blood was poured in a pit. A question arises: “If the monumental structure at Urkesh was a channel to the Underworld, in which animals were sacrificed either for food or for purification to the chthonic powers, who used it? Who would have had a problem so serious that he would have undertaken an activity as dangerous as raising the inhabitants of the Underworld?” (p. 56).
And this is for sure the best answer: “The location of the structure at Urkesh adjacent to the royal palace suggests a similar royal use at this ancient Hurrian capital and the Buccellati's believe that a platform situated between the structure and the palace may have connected them in a kind of ritual complex” (p. 56).
[M. De Pietri – November 2019]