Valeria degli Abbati

     “The presence of an Urkeš^ki 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 [for the different interpretation given by G. Buccellati and M. Kelly-Buccellati, see NOTE infra; note by mDP]. 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].

     [NOTE: as for the interpretation of the title endan and for Tar’am-Agade, cf. mostly Buccellati, G. 2000, Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 2000, Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 2002 and Kelly-Buccellati 2005; in these contributions, the Buccellaties interpret the title endan as the equivalent of the Akkadian šarrum, i.e. 'king'; therefore they present a different historical interpretation about the role of Tar’am-Agade at Urkesh: in fact, according to their suggestion, Tar’am-Agade was indeed the actual endan's wife at Urkesh].

[M. De Pietri – October 2019]