Tibor Sedláček 2014

“The Mythological Background of Three Seal Impressions Found in Urkesh,”
Religio 12, pp. 29-53.
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The author presents in this paper three sealings found at Tell Mozan/Urkesh, in the area of the Royal Palace:

1) A5q680.o, an ‘Etana’ type motif sealing displaying three goats/sheep and a dog watching at a scene that can be reconstructed as the flight of Etana on a eagle. This motif finds parallels on many seals of Old Akkadian period and can be connected to an episode of the so-called ‘Legend of Etana’.

2) A1.483, a sealing presenting a double-face god with a typical divine, horned, conical headgear. This figure has been interpreted by Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati [Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 1996, p. 26] as Isimud, “a vizier of the important Mesopotamian god Enki/Ea” (p. 43); this motif can be retraced on many Old Akkadian seals representing Isimud/Usmu together with the god Ea.

3) The last seal impression, whose nr. is not provided, offers the scene of a horned god, wearing a short skirt, on the top of a mountain, escorted by a kind of wild mountain ungulate. This representation was connected by Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati [Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 1993, p. 93] to the Hurrian myth of Kumarbi, and namely to the Song of Silver, telling the episode of Kumarbi patrolling the mountains around Urkesh (probably the Tur Abdin).

In the last part of the paper (pp. 49-50), the author widens the spectrum of the comparison with Hurrian influences on the Hittite art, attested thanks to the portraying of the divinities in the rocky sanctuary of Yazılıkaya (close to the Hittite capital).