Dolce, Rita - Losing One's Head in The Ancient Near East - Interpretation and Meaning of Decapitation-Routledge (2018)

“Losing One’s Head” in the Ancient
Near East
Building on a vast documentary record that covers the entire Syro-Mesopotamian

tradition, Dolce’s analysis offers an in-depth study in visual semiotics. She iden-
tifies specific “semantic codes” and an explicit syntactical organization, through
which a strong message was conveyed by means of visual imagery. This is ico-
nology at its best: by highlighting the coherence of a representational program,
and drawing on parallel written statements, our sensitivity is trained to appreci-
ate the “intrinsic meaning” of a topos such as the action of beheading – a topos
with a valence that goes well beyond that of other types of mutilation precisely
because of its ideological import.
Giorgio Buccellati, University of California Los Angeles, USA
In the Ancient Near East, cutting off someone’s head was a unique act,
not comparable to other types of mutilation, and therefore charged with a
special symbolic and communicative significance. This book examines rep-
resentations of decapitation in both images and texts, particularly in the
context of war, from a trans-chronological perspective that aims to shed
light on some of the conditions, relationships and meanings of this specific
act. The severed head is a “coveted object” for the many individuals who
interact with it and determine its fate, and the act itself appears to take on
the hallmarks of a ritual. Drawing mainly on the evidence from Anatolia,
Syria and Mesopotamia between the third and first millennia bc, and with
reference to examples from Prehistory to the Neo-Assyrian Period, this fas-
cinating study will be of interest not only to art historians, but to anyone
interested in the dynamics of war in the ancient world.
Rita Dolce is Associate Professor of Archaeology and History of Near Eastern

Cultures and Fine Arts at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, Italy, and a
member of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Syria, where she has exca-
vated for 40 years at the site of Tell Mardikh-Ebla. Her research interests lie
mainly in the figurative art, urban topography and architecture of the third
millennium bc in Mesopotamia and Syria. She has written numerous books
and articles focusing particularly on visual communication as the language
of power and a means of dissemination in the societies of the Ancient Near
East, and on the urban origins of Ebla, its palatial culture and the structure
and significance of cult places in this important Early Syrian kingdom.
Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East
Series editor: Greg Fisher, Carleton University, Canada
Advisory Board of Associate Editors
Ra’anan Boustan, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Zeba Crook, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA
Matthew Gibbs, University of Winnipeg, Canada
John Lee, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA
Harry Munt, University of York, UK
Bradley Parker, University of Utah, USA
Richard Payne, Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, USA
Lucy Wadeson, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Philip Wood, Aga Khan University, London, UK
Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East provides a global forum for
works addressing the history and culture of the Ancient Near East, span-
ning a broad period from the foundation of civilisation in the region until
the end of the Abbasid period. The series includes research monographs,
edited works, collections developed from conferences and workshops, and
volumes suitable for the university classroom.
Available titles:
“Losing One’s Head” in the Ancient Near East: Interpretation and
Meaning of Decapitation, Rita Dolce
Forthcoming:
Discovering Babylon, Rannfrid Thelle
Reconstructing Israelite and Judean Religions: Religion as Performance

and Materiality, Alice Mandell and Jeremy Smoak
A Story of YHWH: Cultural Translation and Subversive Reception through

Israelite History, Shawn W. Flynn
Comparative Urbanism in the Graeco-Roman and Early Islamic Near

East, Walter D. Ward
Migration and Colonialism in Late Second Millennium bce Levant and Its
Environs: The Making of a New World, Pekka Pitkänen
www.routledge.com/classicalstudies/series/HISTANE
“Losing One’s Head” in the
Ancient Near East
Interpretation and Meaning of
Decapitation
Rita Dolce
First published 2018
by Routledge
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 2018 Rita Dolce
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asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
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ISBN: 978-1-138-06748-6 (hbk)

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Typeset in Sabon
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
List of illustrations vii

Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xiv
Image credits xv
Abbreviations xvi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 3
1.1. From the distant past to the recent past 3
1.2. An unrepeatable act 6
1.3. The headless body: anonymity/identity 7
Chapter 2 12
2.1. Exclusivity/multiplicity 12
2.2. Exhibition/quantification 15
Chapter 3 22
3.1. What happens to the “coveted object”? 22
3.2. Destinations/motivations 25
3.3. Exhibition and multivalence 28
Chapter 4 35
4.1. Human heads and birds of prey 35
4.2. Eannatum of Lagash and the birds of prey 38
4.3. Mari and the birds of prey 40
4.4. Sargon I of Akkad and the birds of prey 43
4.5. Dadusha of Eshnunna and the birds of prey 44
4.6. The Assyrians and the birds of prey 47
vi Contents
Chapter 5 56
5.1. Moving through space and time 56
5.2. How does the head travel? 59
Chapter 6 64
6.1. “Other” decapitations in times of war 64
6.2. What happens to the severed heads of statues? 66
6.3. Moving through space and time 72
6.4. Annihilation/catharsis 73
Bibliography 79
Index 89
Illustrations
Map 1 Area of the Ancient Near East showing the sites of origin
and provenance of the works ( ARCANE Project,
reprocessed by S. Pizzimenti). xvii
1.1a The banquet of Judith and Holofernes. 3
1.1b The decapitation of Holofernes (detail). 4
Strip of fabric in linen and embroidered silk. Avila (?).
Sixteenth century ad. Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire
MAH 441. From Martiniani-Reber 2010, p. 48,
Figures 1–2.
1.2a Teumman at the banquet in the gardens of Nineveh
(detail). 5
1.2b The banquet of the royal couple. 6
Palatial relief. Nineveh (Quyunjik), North Palace,
room S1, slabs B–C, reign of Ashurbanipal. Mid-seventh
century bc. London, British Museum WA. 124920.
From Barnett 1976, Plate LXV.
1.3a Corpses of enemies in the river (detail). 7
Palatial relief. Nineveh (Quyunjik), South-West Palace,
room XXXIII, slab 6, reign of Ashurbanipal. Mid-seventh
century bc. London, British Museum WA. 124802.
From Matthiae 1998, Fig. p. 125.
1.3b Corpses of enemies lying on the ground (detail). 8
Palatial relief. Chalaḫ (Nimrud), North-West Palace,
room B (throne room), slab 4, reign of Ashurnasirpal II.
Beginning of the ninth century bc. London, British
Museum N.G. 12.45.53. From Moortgat 1969, Plate 267.
1.4 Victorious soldiers holding the decapitated heads of
enemies by the hair. 9
Palatial relief. Tell Tayinat, reused in the paving of city
gate VII, originally in the Assyrian provincial palace. Eighth
century bc. T1253–1255. From Gerlach 2000, Plate 5.
viii List of illustrations
2.1 Ongoing execution of an enemy (detail). 12
Stele. Girsu (Tello). Twenty-third century bc. Paris, Musée
du Louvre AO. 2678. From Moortgat 1969, Plate 134.
2.2a Ongoing decapitation of a senseless enemy (detail). 13
room XXXVI, slab 11, reign of Sennacherib. Beginning of
the seventh century bc. London, British Museum WA.
124910. Trustees of the British Museum.
2.2b Military operations during the siege of Lachish. 14
room XXXVI, slab 11, reign of Sennacherib. Beginning
of the seventh century bc. London, British Museum WA.
124908, 124909, 124910, 124911. From Barnett et alii
1998, Plate 339.
2.3 Presentation of the booty of severed heads and weapons
for counting by scribes (detail). 15
Palatial relief. Nineveh (Quyunjik), North Palace,
room M (throne room), slab 13, reign of Ashurbanipal.
Mid-seventh century bc. London, British Museum WA.
124945–124946. From Novotny, Watanabe 2008,
Figure 8.
2.4a Eblaite soldiers transporting severed heads held by the
hair (detail). 16
2.4b Eblaite soldiers transporting severed heads held by the
hair and heaped in baskets (detail). 16
“Victory panel.” Ebla (Tell Mardikh), Royal Palace G.
Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries bc. Idlib,
Archaeological Museum TM.88. G.165, 289 + 290.
 MAIS.
2.5a Assyrian soldiers holding the severed heads of enemies
alternately up and down (detail). 18
room XXXII, slab 6, reign of Sennacherib. Beginning of
the seventh century bc. London, British Museum Or.
Dr. VI, 7. From Barnett et alii 1998, Plate 275.
2.5b Assyrian soldiers holding up the severed heads of
enemies (detail). 18
Palatial relief. Nineveh (Quyunjik), North Palace, room M
(throne room), slab 17, reign of Ashurbanipal. Mid-seventh
century bc. London, British Museum WA. 124928. From
Matthiae 1998, Fig. p. 155.
List of illustrations ix
2.6a Display and transportation of severed heads (detail). 19
Archaeological Museum TM.88.G.165.  MAIS.
2.6b Display and transportation of severed heads (detail). 19
Palatial relief. Tell Tayinat, reused in the paving of city
gate VII, originally placed in the Assyrian provincial
palace. Eighth century bc. T1255. From Gerlach 2000,
Plate 5.
3.1 Display of severed heads to the rhythm of the march
(detail). 22
room XIV, slab 14, reign of Sennacherib. Beginning of
the seventh century bc. London, British Museum WA.
124786a, 124786b. From Barnett et alii 1998, Plate 177.
3.2a Fragment of the lid of a pyxis with an ongoing
decapitation. 24
Assur (Qal’at Shirqat), New Palace. Thirteenth century
bc. Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum VA. 7989. From
Moortgat 1969, Plate 244.
3.2b Fragment of a wall painting with heads (?) grasped
by the hair. 26
Mari (Tell Hariri), Palace of Zimri-Lim, courtyard 106.
Beginning of the second millennium bc. From Parrot 1958,
Figure 36.
3.3a Display of victory and executions of the defeated. 28
3.3b Severed heads affixed to the bastions and city gates of
the conquered city (detail). 29
Embossed band. Balawat (Imgur-Enlil), gate C, band X,
reign of Shalmaneser III. Mid-ninth century bc. London,
British Museum WA. 124656. From Schachner 2007,
Plates 10, 48b.
4.1a Birds of prey falling on headless human corpses. 35
4.1b Detail. 36
4.1c Detail. 37
Wall painting. Çatal Hüyük, “Sanctuary of the Vultures.”
Neolithic Period. From Testart 2008, Figures 2, 3.
4.2 Naked and bound prisoners, whose heads are attacked
by lion-headed birds of prey. 38
Cylinder seal impression. Uruk (Warka). Second half of the
fourth millennium bc. Heidelberg, Uruk Sammlungen Karl
x List of illustrations
Ruprechts-Universität W20486, W20489, W20491/2;
Baghdad, Iraq Museum W20491/1. From Boehmer 1999,
Figure 64.
4.3 Lion-headed eagles with outstretched wings hovering
over human-headed bulls (detail). 39
Archaeological Museum TM.88.G.278, 280, 281.
 MAIS.
4.4 Flying vultures holding severed heads and dismembered
parts of human corpses in their beaks (detail). 40
Stele of Eannatum. Girsu (Tello). Mid-twenty-fifth century
bc. Paris, Musée du Louvre AO 50 + 236-8 + 16109.
From Moortgat 1969, Plate 120.
4.5a Birds of prey attacking the faces of lifeless vanquished
enemies. Severed head displayed on the royal chariot. 41
Seal impression of Ishqi-Mari. Mari (Tell Hariri),
Administrative building (?). Twenty-fourth century bc.
TH00.162.1-42.
4.5b Severed head displayed on the royal chariot. 41
Seal impression of Ishqi-Mari. Mari (Tell Hariri),
Administrative building (?). Twenty-fourth century bc.
TH00.152. From Beyer 2007, Figures 17, 18.
4.6 Birds of prey attacking the lifeless corpses of enemies
(detail). 43
Stele of Sargon I. Susa (Shūsh). Second half of the
twenty-fourth century bc. Paris, Musée du Louvre Sb1.
From Börker-Klähn 1982, Figure 18c.
4.7a Severed heads of notables, their faces attacked by birds
of prey (detail). 44
4.7b Severed heads of notables, their faces attacked by birds
of prey (detail). 45
4.7c Reconstruction of the depiction. 46
Stele of the sovereign Dadusha. Eshnunna (Tell Asmar).
Eighteenth century bc. Baghdad, Iraq Museum IM 95200.
From Miglus 2003, Figure 10 (a); Ismail 2003, Figure 7a (b);
Miglus 2003, Figures 9–12; Nadali 2008, Figure 2 (c).
4.8 Five corpses of enemies on the ground attacked by five
birds of prey (detail). 47
List of illustrations xi
century bc. London, British Museum WA.124801c. From
Barnett et alii 1998, Plate 297.
4.9a An eagle soars with a severed head in its talons next to
the royal chariot (detail). 48
room B (throne room), slab 6, reign of Ashurnasirpal II.
Beginning of the ninth century bc. London, British
Museum WA. 124550. Trustees British Museum.
4.9b Display and counting of the severed heads. From
Meuszyński 1981, Plate 2 (drawing). 48
4.9c Display and counting of the severed heads (detail). 49
room B (throne room), WA. 124550. Trustees British
Museum (photo).
5.1a Accumulation and counting of the severed heads in the
accounts of the victory. 57
Palatial relief (detail). Nineveh (Quyunjik), South-West
Palace, room XXVIII, slab 9, reign of Ashurbanipal (?).
Mid-seventh century bc. London, British Museum WA.
124955. From Barnett et alii 1998, Plate 256.
5.1b Accumulation and counting of the severed heads in the
Palatial relief (detail). Nineveh (Quyunjik), South-West
Palace, room XXXVIII, slab 15, reign of Sennacherib.
Beginning of the seventh century bc. London, British
Museum Or.Dr. I, 44.
5.1c Accumulation and counting of the severed heads in the
Palatial relief. Nineveh (Quyunjik), South-West
Palace, room XXXVIII, slab 15, reign of Sennacherib.
Beginning of the seventh century bc. London, British
Museum Or.Dr. I, 44. From Barnett et alii 1998,
Plate 363.
5.2 The head of Teumman displayed in the heat of the ongoing
battle (detail). 60
5.3 The head of Teumman transported on the chariot (detail). 61
xii List of illustrations
6.1a Statue of Lupad of Umma. 67
6.1b Statue of Lupad of Umma. 68
Girsu (Tello). Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries
bc. Paris, Musée du Louvre AO. 3279. From Woods 2012,
Figure 2.1.
6.2 Statue of Enmetena of Lagash. 69
Ur (Tell el-Muqayyar). Second half of the twenty-fifth
century bc. Baghdad, Iraq Museum IM 5. From Hansen
1975, Figure 31.
6.3 Head of an Akkadian sovereign. 71
Assur (Qal’at Shirqat). Mid-twenty-third century bc.
Baghdad, Iraq Museum IM 890000. From Westenholz
2012, Figure 4.10.
Preface
This book is the English-language version of the volume published in Italian

three years ago and forming part of a broader ongoing research project on
aspects and meanings of “acts of war” in the figurative art of the Ancient
Near East. Their meaning within the value system of those archaic cultures
between the third and first millennia bc is not always accurately perceived
by today’s viewers.
For the communicative impact of the head separated from its body in the
various forms of display fixed in the images, the act of decapitation, and
above all its effects, beyond the mere mutilation in corpore vili, is paradig-
matic and particularly drew my attention.
I believe that taking this approach to the boundless field of visual com-
munication has achieved some results, and perhaps suggested the need for
a transversal look at the numerous documents that still remain unexplored.
Rita Dolce
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Erika Milburn for her exemplary translation of the Italian
text and for her collaboration during all the stages of preparation of this
book.
I thank Gianfranco De Rossi for his valuable assistance in selecting and
acquiring the images that illustrate this book.
Image credits
I thank the following museums and institutions for granting permission to

publish images of the works to which they own the rights:
•• The British Museum, London.

•• Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée/Jean Pouilloux, Université de
Lyon/CNRS/Université Lumière-Lyon 2.
•• Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (MAH), Genève.
•• Musée du Louvre, Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux Grand Palais.
•• The University of Chicago, Oriental Institute, Chicago.
I am also grateful to Antoine Cavigneaux, Klaus Wagensonner and Chikako

Watanabe for generously allowing me to publish images of works to which
they hold the rights.
Abbreviations
AfO Archiv für Orientforschung

AfO Beih. Archiv für Orientforschung. Beiheft
AJA American Journal of Archaeology
ANES Ancient Near Eastern Studies
AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament
ARET Archivi Reali di Ebla. Testi
ARM Archives Royales de Mari
AUWE Ausgrabungen im Uruk-Warka. Endberichte
BaF Baghdader Forschungen
BAR British Archaeological Reports
BCSMS Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies
CMAO Contributi e Materiali di Archeologia Orientale
ERC Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations
FAOS Freiburger Altorientalische Studien
JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JMA Journal of Mediterranean Studies
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
MARI Mari Annales de Recherches Interdisciplinaires
MDOG Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orientgesellschaft zu Berlin
NABU Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires
OE Orient Express
OIP Oriental Institute Publications
OIS Oriental Institute Seminars
Or Orientalia. Nova Series
PKG Propyläen Kunstgeschichte
RA Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie Orientale
RIMA The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods
RIME The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Early Periods
RINAP Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period
RlA Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie
SANE Sources of the Ancient Near East
SMEA Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici
VO Vicino Oriente
ZA Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie
Çatal-Höyük
Tell Leilan
Nagar/Tell Brak Nineveh/Quyunjik

Dur Sharrukin/Khorsabad
Tell Tayinat
Imgur-Enlil/Balawat
Tell es-Sweyhat Tell al-Rimah
Chalah/Nimrud
ur
Aleppo
Nuzi/Yorgan Tepe
Khab
Ugarit/Ras Shamra Assur/Qal’at Shirqat
Ebla/Tell Mardikh
Latakia
Tig
ris
la
ya
Di
Mari/Tell Hariri Samarra
Eshnunna/Tell Asmar
Eu Tell Agrab
Byblos ph
ra Tutub/Khafajah
te
s
Sippar/Tell Abu Habbah Uquair

Jemdet Nasr
Babylon/Al Hillah Kish/Tell al-Uhaymir
Susa/Sush
Borsippa/Birs
Nippur/Nuffar
Isin/Ishan al-Bahriyat
Umma/Tell Yokha
Shuruppak/Fara
Girsu/Tello
Uruk/Warka Lagash/Tell al-Hiba
Larsa/Tell as-Senkereh Nigen/Surghul
Tell el-Ubaid
Ur/Tell el-Muqayyar
Eridu/Tell Abu Shahrain
metres
3000
2000
1500
1000
500 Sites of origin and provenance of the works
200
100 0 100 200 km
0
Map 1 Area of the Ancient Near East showing the sites of origin and provenance of the works ( ARCANE
Project, reprocessed by S. Pizzimenti).
Introduction
This books forms part of a more wide-ranging research project on the tortures
and the physical and psychological injuries inflicted on enemies in times of war
in some pre-classical cultures of the Near East, as represented in the known
figurative sources. It thus belongs to that vast field of research on the dynam-
ics of war that has for decades produced studies and analyses from a broad
variety of perspectives and adopting different methodological approaches.
More specifically, the topic tackled in this book is the current outcome
of a study that has largely occupied my academic interests in the sphere of
visual communication and that here finds an initial attempt at an overview.
It was born out of the need to identify the specific “practices” (war-related,
but not exclusively so) connected to the act of decapitation, which hold a
multiplicity of meanings and vary significantly in the details of the conven-
tions underlying their figurative expression. This form of capital punishment
thus has a more complex meaning than has perhaps been thought until now.
“Losing one’s head” is a psychological or physical state entailing the
annihilation of self-control. This consideration forms the premise for some
reflections on the meanings of decapitation in the archaic cultures of the
Near East, for those who inflict it and those who suffer it. The analysis
starts from the interpretation of some figurative conventions and their dif-
fering associations in the works under consideration. In these works, the
act of decapitation – ongoing or shown as a fait accompli in the form of
the severed head itself – is a significant component or sometimes even the
focal point of the action represented. This study surveys the evidence from
this long period of history and suggests, sometimes with the support of the
textual data where relevant, some iconographical and ideological interpreta-
tions that differ from those hitherto proposed and agreed upon by scholars.
The data presented are drawn from the figurative evidence, from the
interpretations and considerations advanced by numerous other scholars
and from my own personal opinions developed during this study. These
suggest, on the one hand, that the cultures considered here essentially shared
the idea that cutting off someone’s head was a unique act, not comparable
to other types of mutilation, and therefore charged with a special symbolic
2 Introduction
and communicative significance. On the other hand, they also show that
the head, once removed from its body and displayed in different types of
spatial contexts, came to be a vehicle for a variety of visual messages, aimed
at conveying the political and ideological significance of possessing and con-
trolling this human remain within the greater goal of conquest.
The evidence discussed here belongs (primarily) to the cultures of
Mesopotamia and Syria between the third and first millennia bc. The larg-
est set of data, in which the act of decapitation is most prominent, comes
from the visual communication of the time of the Neo-Assyrian empire,
though forms of expression, details and formulations connected to decapi-
tation and its multivalent aspects can already be found in works from Syria
of the third millennium bc, as at Ebla, and in Early Dynastic and Akkadian
Mesopotamia. They can also be identified in the second millennium bc in
the figurative programmes of the official monuments of the Amorite period,
from Mari to Eshnunna, whose spatial and contextual features represent
an innovative prelude to the refined development of this theme in the Neo-
Assyrian palatial reliefs.
However, this study starts from further back in time, recovering evidence
and visual representations from the Prehistory and Proto-History of the
Near East, from Anatolia to the Land of Sumer, a keystone in the perception
and understanding of some aspects and meanings of decapitation as they
developed over about three millennia in the history of the cultures under
discussion.
We also see that some of the same features that recur as constants in
representations of decapitation – in both images and texts – and the related
procedures that precede and follow this definitive act become narrative con-
ventions that endure for millennia in spatial and cultural contexts that are
apparently far removed from one another; exemplary proof of this can be
found in the Iberian tapestries of the sixteenth century ad.
I have therefore attempted to present this topic and the relevant evidence
in a trans-chronological perspective that aims to shed light on some of the
conditions, relationships and meanings that surround this specific act, espe-
cially in times of war or in relation to conflicts, which appears to take on the
hallmarks of a ritual. The same ritual form sometimes also characterizes the
definitive act of losing one’s head outside the ambit in which it is most visi-
ble, that of war, and comes to affect other images, of both humans and gods.
Chapter 1
1.1. From the distant past to the recent past

In today’s standard usage, the expression “to lose one’s head” serves to
describe a variety of sometimes conflicting states in which an individual
may find him or herself. We talk of “losing one’s head” as the result of grief,
love, rage or a broad range of traumatic events, either physical or psycho-
logical in nature, and so forth.
The expression is thus transposed from its primary meaning, describing
an extreme condition afflicting the individual, fatal to their very existence,
to convey other meanings that generally relate to a momentary or some-
times even permanent loss of the mental faculties. But in all its uses, the
expression contains a meaning inherent from the outset in the condition of
anyone who “loses their head,” in either the metaphorical or the real sense:
a sort of extraneity or alienation, in other words a “loss of self-control.”
The artwork used to illustrate the title and the topic of this book is a pre-
cious embroidered sixteenth-century tapestry with the story of Judith and
Holofernes as its central episode, accompanied by short descriptive legends1
(Figures 1.1a and 1.1b). I chose this piece, from a very different time and
place, because a number of its figurative and compositional components are
developed in a similar way in the history of representations of this supreme act
in the Ancient Near East – with the exception of the female protagonist – and
thus form a sort of paradigm for decapitation of unusual expressive efficacy.
In the sequence that unfolds in this work, we see conditions and actions
connected directly or indirectly to the decapitation of human beings in the
Figure 1.1a The banquet of Judith and Holofernes. Sixteenth century ad.
4 “Losing One’s Head” in the Ancient Near East
Near East thousands of years earlier. These include both the significant rela-
tionships depicted and the meanings to be found here, presented within a
“narrative framework” that is differently constructed in its temporal coor-
dinates but effected through analogous visual “expedients.”
To summarize selectively: we first see the banquet of the two protagonists
in a luxurious tent surrounded by plants, perhaps palm trees,2 in an army
camp also evoked by the armed soldiers, during the siege of the enemy city.
This scene forms a counterpoint to the famous banquet of the Neo-Assyrian
imperial couple in the gardens of Nineveh, crowning a victory over power-
ful adversaries and the decapitation of the Elamite king Teumman depicted
on a relief of the seventh century bc3 (Figures 1.2a and 1.2b). This is then
followed – not explicitly depicted, but perceptible – by Holofernes becom-
ing drunk on too much wine and “losing his head,” his mental faculties and
his self-control.
The narrative sequence culminates with the physical decapitation of the
conqueror, again not directly shown, but presented as a fait accompli, as
is almost always the case in the visual documentation of the Ancient Near
East. Judith holds up the severed head of Holofernes by his hair in full view,
about to place it in a sack (held by her maid) to transport it elsewhere as
irrefutable proof of the annihilation of the enemy and as a trophy to be
displayed to her people. The final destination of Holofernes’ head is atop a
spike planted on the tower of the walls of the besieged city, as a perennial
warning to the retreating enemy and a glorious spoil for the victors.
The sequence in which these acts are presented and the conditions under
which they occur are reminiscent of at least three recurrent and I would
say key “situations” in the Near Eastern depictions of severed heads in
Figure 1.1b The decapitation of Holofernes (detail). Sixteenth century ad.

Chapter 1 5
war-related contexts over the course of three millennia (from the third to
the first millennium bc). These are: the exhibition of the severed head held
up by the hair by the victor; its transportation from one place to another;
and the display of the head, placed on the city walls or another representa-
tive part of the city architecture, such as a gate or a tower.
Figure 1.2a T
eumman at the banquet in the gardens of Nineveh (detail). Nineveh,
North Palace. Mid-seventh century bc.
1.2. An unrepeatable act
The topic of decapitation in times of war occupies a special place in the
visual communication of the procedures (or, rather, the rituals) that accom-
pany and conclude armed conflicts, with long-lasting repercussions on
the visual narratives that form the focus of this book and on the written
sources, which will be referenced when they are of particular importance
to my analysis.
The evidence considered here is far from exhaustive; instead, I have
selected some specific examples of relevance to my chosen trans-chronological
approach in order to illustrate a number of the conditions, relations and
values gravitating around this specific act, mainly but not exclusively in
war-related contexts.
The aim of this book is to provide a selective picture of the issues linked
to the representation of severed heads in the Ancient Near East, draw-
ing on the vast repertoire of images currently known. To this end, it will
consider a variety of relevant case studies, from Prehistory to the Neo-
Assyrian Period, outlining the multiple meanings of decapitation and its
peculiarities with respect to other forms of punishment, across time and
space, leaving the results of the analytical study of individual works to
other future publications.
During the process of this research, I have developed the conviction
that in the figurative cultures of the Ancient Near East, and particularly of
Mesopotamia and Syria, decapitation cannot be assimilated to other forms
or acts of violence inflicted on the human body, such as dismemberment, as
some other scholars have claimed.4 Rather, decapitation is from the outset,
and perhaps always, a stand-alone procedure with complex meanings that
are in any case linked to the focal point of the individual, of their energies
and their power, and equally to the focal point of statues representing mor-
tals and gods.5
Figure 1.2b T
he banquet of the royal couple. Nineveh, North Palace. Mid-seventh
century bc.
Chapter 1 7
The prevailing opinion among scholars is that the loss of the head repre-
sents the definitive act of annihilation of the enemy. This is certainly true, but
it is more than that: it is the exemplary way of reducing the other to an inani-
mate object, lacking the breath of life.6 Given the unique nature of this act
and its effects, which will be illustrated below, decapitation is distinct from all
those other mutilations, envisaged or actually inflicted, that do not in them-
selves entail the loss of life (the severing of the hands and limbs, the tongue,
the nose and the ears, or even the genitals), and that therefore lead to a dif-
ferent level of alienation or disabling of the enemy, in fact and in meaning.
Finally, it should be noted that in the visual representations, in contrast to
the anonymity of headless corpses, the head severed from its body is a “cov-
eted object,” something desirable so to speak; an object at the mercy not
only of those directly responsible for the act of decapitation, but also of oth-
ers who participate and interact in the events surrounding the severed head.
1.3. The headless body: anonymity/identity

A general reflection that follows on from these considerations concerns any
potential further treatments that may have been reserved for the bodies of
enemies deprived of their heads, and thus of their recognizable identity.
Were these human remains assimilated to those that had been variously dis-
membered and scattered on the battlefield, or rather to the (intact) corpses
of enemies heaped up and prepared for burning, fates recurrent in both the
images and the written sources?
In the largest surviving corpus of visual documentation on this practice,
that of the Neo-Assyrian Period (ninth to seventh centuries bc), we com-
monly see headless bodies next to intact corpses floating in rivers or lying
on the ground, in perfect anonymity (Figures 1.3a and 1.3b). Unfortunately,
Figure 1.3a C
orpses of enemies in the river (detail). Nineveh, South-West Palace.
Mid-seventh century bc.
Figure 1.3b C
orpses of enemies lying on the ground (detail). Nimrud, North-West
Palace. Beginning of the ninth century bc.
heaps of bodies are rarely shown in the surviving images from the three mil-
lennia under consideration here.7 They are also infrequently mentioned in
inscriptions between the third and the first half of the second millennium
bc8 but are common in the Assyrian sources, even prior to the maximum
expansion of the empire in the Neo-Assyrian Period;9 however, this treat-
ment does not seem to be explicitly contemplated for headless corpses.10
The issue remains open, though it is likely that the defeated and killed
enemy, once deprived of his head, became an entry on the balance sheet of
the massacre that served to increase its extent, often described as numbering
thousands of victims in the accounts of war.
Given the undoubted relationship between severed heads and the bodies
to which they belonged, we could briefly step outside our specific area of
interest to mention one particularly interesting and currently unique piece
of evidence belonging to the vast repertoire of images from ancient Egypt.
This is the Narmer Palette, which shows ten naked enemies, decapitated and
bound, perhaps supine, each with his own head placed between his legs.11
This is a peculiar procedure that has no place among the figurative conven-
tions governing the visual communication of similar subjects in the context
of war in the Near East during the third millennium bc and beyond.
However, another piece of evidence from the site of Tell Tayinat in the
Ἁmuq plain in the south-eastern region of present-day Turkey in my opin-
ion suggests a similar relationship, albeit within a different iconological
formulation.
I refer to the fragmentary sculpted orthostats, seven in total, found at Tell
Tayinat (Figure 1.4), seat of a provincial residence during the Neo-Assyrian
Period,12 depicting a sequence of soldiers, each holding the severed head of
an enemy by the hair. Their bodies are still arranged systematically on the
Chapter 1 9
Figure 1.4 V
ictorious soldiers holding the decapitated heads of enemies by the hair.
Tell Tayinat, Assyrian provincial palace. Eighth century bc.
ground in the vicinity of the victors, indicating that the act has just taken
place; I therefore consider this a variant that, beyond the representation of
the act itself, also tells us to whom the heads belong.
The formulation adopted at Tell Tayinat does not have explicit paral-
lels in other images on this theme, between the third and first millennia bc,
starting from the most ancient example of exhibited decapitation, that of
the Ebla “victory panel.”13 The work from Tell Tayinat remains unique,14
with the exception of some less detailed instances within the vast reper-
toire of images on the Neo-Assyrian orthostats, and representations of
the act of decapitation itself and of prominent individuals about to be
decapitated.15
Notes
1 Martiniani-Reber 2010, p. 48, Figures 1, 2.
2 Martiniani-Reber 2010, p. 48.
3 Barnett 1976, Plate LXV.
4 Minunno 2008a, 2008b; Talalay 2004, p. 139.
5 For considerations on this, see Chapter 6.
6 Developing the proposal advanced by Bonneterre 1997, pp. 559–560.
7 For the third millennium bc, we refer to the only certain instance, that depicted
on the Stele of Eannatum: cf. Winter 1985 (2010), especially pp. 11–20, Figures
8, 12; for the reconstruction of the two sides of the most detailed and famous
figurative monument of third-millennium bc Mesopotamia, depicting heaps of
corpses of defeated enemies, see the excursus in Nadali 2007, pp. 352 ff. The rep-
resentations of the Neo-Assyrian Period are different: here, we often find heaps
of severed heads that are, in my opinion, meant to be understood as parts for
the whole; cf. also note 10. For further considerations on this, cf. Dolce 2014a,
p. 243, notes 18–21.
8 For data on this theme in the Sumerian inscriptions of the Early Dynastic Period,
again from the milieu of Lagash, see Westenholz 1970, pp. 29–31; Gelb 1973,
pp. 70–98. For the albeit rare occurrences of the Akkadian Period with the sov-
ereigns of the second and third generation, and at Mari in the second millennium
bc, cf. Gelb, Kienast 1990, pp. 207, 214, especially on Rimush (C 6, ll. 49–54,
C 8, ll. 19–23, C 10, ll. 30–35) and on Naram-Sin (5, ll. 3: 3–4); Frayne 1990,
p. 606, especially on Yakhdun-Lim (col. III 24; E4.6.8.2.). That the practice of
heaping up bodies in the context of war was widespread in Early Dynastic Syria
in leading city states such as Mari and Ebla is well known from the letter of
Enna-Dagan (T.M.75.G.24367): cf. Fronzaroli 2003, pp. 35 ff.; Fronzaroli 2005,
pp. 193–197. On this issue cf. Richardson 2007, pp. 193–196, Table 10, counting
just 13 mentions in slightly under a millennium.
9 Already with Tukulti-Ninurta I, in the thirteenth century bc: Richardson 2007,
p. 197. It is worth noting that this practice appears in the textual sources of
the third millennium bc, as already noted some time ago by Gelb 1973,
pp. 73–74 regarding the royal inscriptions of the ensi of Lagash and the sover-
eigns of Akkad; cf. note 8. The spectacular practice of heaping up the bodies of
enemies also appears in the texts of Early Syrian Ebla mentioned above and in
Mesopotamia up to the Neo-Assyrian Period.
10 An alternative visual expression, in quantitative terms as well, of the display of
the remains of enemies might be seen in the Neo-Assyrian Period in the heaps of
severed heads packed into the reliefs on the palace orthostats, acting as a “part
for the whole” and in some ways replacing the heaps of corpses in the figurative
formulation.
11 Kaplony 2002, p. 469, Figure 29.11 (recto); according to the two recently discov-
ered seals from the necropolis of Abydos, Narmer was the first king of the first
dynasty of Egypt, the predecessor of Hor-Aha: cf. Köhler 2002, p. 499.
12 McEwan 1937, Figure 10; Gerlach 2000, Plate 5; according to the archaeological
data, at least six of the slabs found improperly reused as part of a paved floor
probably originally belonged to the phase of the “Third Building Period” to be
ascribed to the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III, in the eighth century bc: Harrison
2005, p. 26, Figure 1. Tayinat’s importance as the largest town in the Ἁmuq
plain in the third millennium bc had already emerged from the extensive surveys
conducted at the site between the late twentieth century and the early 2000s;
it may have played a leading political role in the region at the time when Early
Syrian Ebla was a major power: Batiuk et alii 2005, pp. 177–178. This hypotheti-
cal historical reconstruction has continued more recently with the resumption
of excavations and the landscape archaeology project run by the University of
Toronto; research has ascertained the widespread presence of remains between
the EBIVA and B, and uncovered a large complex of the EBIVB, contemporary
with Late Early Syrian Ebla. Furthermore, the evidence provided by the texts of
the Ebla Archives on names of towns in the Ἁmuq may help to paint a picture of the
region already in the third millennium bc and to identify Tayinat as perhaps the
most important population centre in the area at the time of Ebla: Welton et alii
2011, pp. 149–150, 152.
13 For the initial publication and the material and interpretative reconstruction
of the work, cf. Matthiae 1989; the inlaid panel celebrating Ebla’s important
military victory over a powerful enemy has been the subject of several icono-
graphical, historical-cultural and archaeological studies by the present author:
Dolce 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008a, 2014a.
Chapter 1 11
14 The presence of potentially analogous scenes documented on the remains of
orthostats on a similar subject from Carchemish and Zincirli can no longer be ver-
ified given the poor legibility of the works: Woolley 1952, p. 166, Plates B44–46,
especially B46a; by contrast, the series of fractures and recompositions of the
four surviving limestone slabs are clear. According to Woolley, these belonged
to a sequence that was at least twice as long, of which the other four presumed
orthostatic reliefs, now lost, may have been made of marble rather than lime-
stone and reused in a later period: Woolley ibid., p. 166, note 7.
15 From the general diachronic overview of the data, it emerges that in represen-
tations of the act of decapitation of anonymous victims, the latter were often
grasped by the hair before the blow severing the head was dealt. This detail
appears in the images on the bronze cladding of the Balawat Gates of the time
of Shalmaneser III, around the mid-ninth century bc (see section 3.3, Figures
3.3a and 3.3b) and is sometimes of enormous visual potency, as in the example
discussed in section 2.1, Figures 2.2a and 2.2b, and in the partially reconstructed
image of a painting from room XXIV of the Neo-Assyrian provincial palace of
Til Barsip, dated to the eighth century bc: Thureau-Dangin, Dunand 1936, Plate
LI. Those responsible for the decapitation in the images on a valuable artefact
from Assur and perhaps on a wall painting from Mari, both works of the second
millennium bc, discussed in section 3.1, note 6, Figures 3.2a and 3.2b, present
an analogous position of the hand grasping the victim’s hair, in accordance with
a formulation that places visual emphasis on the definitive act of removing the
head; in these two cases, the act of decapitation may be carried out by a king.
Other representations of an ongoing decapitation do not entail the grasping of
the hair; among those probably or certainly involving prominent individuals, a
striking instance is the execution, full of dignified composure, of the defeated
enemy on an Akkadian stele (section 2.1, Figure 2.1) and that on a relief, in the
original drawing, from the Central Palace of Nimrud at the time of Tiglath-Pileser
III, in the eighth century bc, where the victim is held by an ear: Barnett, Falkner
1962, Plate LVIII. A highly significant example is the ceremonious decapitation
of General Ituni, discussed in section 2.2, note 15. Anonymous decapitations or
those presumed to be such in the absence of other evidence, alongside those of
ordinary people, can be found in the repertoire of the North Palace of Nineveh at
the time of Ashurbanipal, in the mid-seventh century bc: cf. Barnett 1976, Plates
XXIV(b), XXV; from room I, Plate LXVII, from the secondary contexts rooms
V1, T1. Among the numerous studies on the theme of eminent severed heads,
particularly cogent are the considerations on the identity of the famous victim
in Bahrani 2004, pp. 116–117; Bahrani 2008, pp. 55, 201 ff.; and in Watanabe
2004, pp. 107–114; Watanabe 2008, pp. 602, 604, all concerning the Elamite
king Teumman and his son Tammaritu. Examples of images showing the decapi-
tation of prominent individuals in the Neo-Assyrian Period and their meaning
are also analysed in Dolce 2004, pp. 126–129.
Chapter 2
2.1. Exclusivity/multiplicity
The act of decapitation itself can be perceived in some eloquent images as
a formal execution already in the third millennium bc (Figure 2.1). It reap-
pears in the same form on the Neo-Assyrian reliefs and finds parallels at
least from Prehistory (PPNB), judging from the proposed reinterpretation of
some paintings from Çatal Hüyük.1
Decapitation may in my opinion also be alluded to in the proto-historical
glyptics from Uruk, in the images of the imminent executions of kneeling
prisoners, fettered in the vicinity of blocks; from the large bow next to one of
the victims, we can deduce that these are not ordinary succumbing enemies.2
When rendered with dignified solemnity, the visual representation of the
act of decapitation enhances the prestige of the victor but also the respect-
ability of the defeated; it thus confers added value on the peculiar act of
Figure 2.1 O
ngoing execution of an enemy (detail). Girsu. Twenty-third
century bc.
Chapter 2 13
cutting off the head, which, as I have already proposed, is not comparable
to other forms of violence or torture inflicted on enemies.
In this context, it is worth noting the very different narrative formulation,
contemptuous in tone, that characterizes the image preceding the capture
and decapitation of the Elamite king Teumman, derided as a coward who
takes flight and is decapitated by “a common soldier,” as the inscription on
the scene recites, in the heat of the battle at the River Ulai.3
Decapitation is nonetheless a procedure frequently adopted on the field
of battle over the three millennia under consideration here, judging from the
epigraphical and other sources.4 It certainly plays a central role in the Neo-
Assyrian Period, both in the textual evidence, as we see from the countless
mentions in the annals of the sovereigns, and in the visual repertoire. The
latter currently offers the most exhaustive documentation of this theme,
of immediate expressive potency in the crowded battle scenes, among life-
less corpses, or in the throng of living and dead men and kicking horses,
or during the final stages of a siege, among apparently “ordinary,” if not
anonymous, enemies (Figures 2.2a and 2.2b).
Figure 2.2a O
ngoing decapitation of a senseless enemy (detail). Nineveh,
South-West Palace. Beginning of the seventh century bc.
Figure 2.2b M
ilitary operations during the siege of Lachish. Nineveh, South-West
Palace. Beginning of the seventh century bc.
At the current state of the evidence, we should therefore ask ourselves

if and to what extent decapitation was reserved for “specific” enemies; in
other words, if this was a selective practice or not.
In the known sources from the broad time span under consideration here
that explicitly mention the decapitation of prominent individuals – from pow-
erful enemy kings to princelings of middling importance to generals – there
is an evident glorification of the act as inflicted on these specific persons.5
However, it is also worth noting that, at least in Assyria, the heaps of severed
heads piled up next to weapons (Figure 2.3) are assimilated to the remainder
of the booty of war and its counting.
This seems to me a precise indicator of the economic value of the heads,
perhaps even more cogent in terms of their visual impact than the numerous
mentions of hundreds of decapitations that recur in the royal inscriptions
even before the Assyrian imperial period.6
While on this subject, it is worth remarking that already in Early Syrian
Ebla, in the context of the celebration of a victory on the inlaid panel men-
tioned above, we can distinguish the “larger,” oversized heads – in my
opinion, an indication of the high status of the individuals decapitated –
from the “smaller” heads of ordinary people heaped up in baskets carried
over the shoulder (see section 2.2).
Chapter 2 15
Figure 2.3 P
resentation of the booty of severed heads and weapons for counting by
scribes (detail). Nineveh, North Palace. Mid-seventh century bc.
2.2. Exhibition/quantification
As a premise to the discussion that follows, it should be noted that the
practice of decapitation does not seem to be envisaged in the law codes of
Mesopotamia7 and that during the Early Dynastic Period the visual evidence
for severed heads is limited to the images found in the upper register on the
reverse of the Stele of Eannatum of Lagash.8 However, in Syria, in Early
Syrian Ebla, this practice does appear both in the administrative accounts in
the texts of the Royal Archive and in the aforementioned work celebrating a
military victory, dating to the beginning of the kingdom’s expansion.9
More specifically, the Eblaite documentation on this theme centres around
the repeated exhibition of the severed heads of the defeated, held up by the
hair or heaped in baskets (Figures 2.4a and 2.4b). Today, this is still the most
ancient evidence for this essential form of visual communication, on a level
that is, in my opinion, perceptibly different from the display of the corpse,
thought by J.-J. Glassner to be inseparable from the act of decapitation itself.10
The same visual conventions and the same figurative formulation that
we see in this Eblaite exhibition of severed heads held by the hair by the
victors as they advance (towards a place or towards an end recipient) reap-
pear in several cases, well over a millennium later, in what was at the time
the preferred medium for official visual messages, the orthostatic relief.
Figure 2.4a E
blaite soldiers transporting severed heads held by the hair (detail).
Ebla, Royal Palace G. Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries bc.
Figure 2.4b E
blaite soldiers transporting severed heads held by the hair and
heaped in baskets (detail). Ebla, Royal Palace G. Twenty-fifth to
twenty-fourth centuries bc.
Chapter 2 17
Examples include the images on the Long Wall of Sculpture at Carchemish,
the scattered reliefs found at Zincirli and Til Barsip, and the partially
reconstructed sequence from Tell Tayinat.11
The same visual conventions endure and multiply, with variants in the
gestures represented, in the figurative programmes of the Neo-Assyrian
palatial reliefs (Figures 2.5a and 2.5b).12
One significant feature connected to display stands out particularly
clearly in the images from Tell Tayinat, where the heads exhibited are
smaller than those of the soldiers, certainly in line with the prevalent con-
ventions adopted in the reliefs from the Neo-Assyrian capitals.13
The fact that this human remain – the vital focal point of all human
energies and potentials – is of reduced size reflects the same convention
employed many centuries earlier at Ebla in the “victory panel” already men-
tioned on several occasions. In the latter, however, this canonical form of
representation and its meaning appear to be altered in two ways (Figures
2.6a and 2.6b). In the Eblaite work, the oversized heads – again held up by
the hair for display – indicate the high status of the decapitated enemies,
a quality that enhances the prestige of the victors. By contrast, the smaller
heads heaped up in baskets belong to “others,” in accordance with a visual
formulation that tends to emphasize the differing value of the object on
display, as I proposed some time ago.14 After the Eblaite example, this for-
mulation does not often seem to be obviously present in the known evidence
from the areas under consideration here.
Telling in this regard are the data from the Neo-Assyrian figurative rep-
ertoire: here, in similar images from the capitals and the provincial towns of
the empire, we usually see the exhibition of very small severed heads, occa-
sionally of almost life-size ones but not of oversized heads. This perceptible
variation may nonetheless have held some meaning within the communica-
tion system and may again suggest an intentional, albeit generic, distinction
between different types of human remains.
Though such details, present in abundance in the refined art of the Neo-
Assyrians, provide valuable information of help in interpreting the images,
the actual qualitative selection of severed heads in the communication
of this period seems rather to take place in the figurative description or
episodic narration, more or less spectacular in form, of individual decapita-
tions, often supported by inscriptions.15
I therefore ask myself if the smaller heads stuffed into the baskets of the
Eblaite soldiers on the “victory panel” might not be equivalent, in terms of
the expression and formulation of this theme, to the severed heads heaped
up for counting on the Neo-Assyrian reliefs. Equally, might not the heads of
enemies loaded onto the backs of the victors in the Eblaite account possess a
quantitative significance equal to that of the heads that serve to increase the
booty of the victorious military campaigns of the Assyrians? It seems to me
that, from its first explicit attestation in the third millennium bc, decapitation
is a widespread and common practice, and not just a selective or targeted one.
Figure 2.5a A
ssyrian soldiers holding the severed heads of enemies alternately
up and down (detail). Nineveh, South-West Palace. Beginning of
the seventh century bc.
Figure 2.5b A
ssyrian soldiers holding up the severed heads of enemies (detail).
Nineveh, North Palace. Mid-seventh century bc.
Figure 2.6a D
isplay and transportation of severed heads (detail). Ebla, Royal
Palace G. Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries bc.
Figure 2.6b D
isplay and transportation of severed heads (detail). Tell Tayinat,
Assyrian provincial palace. Eighth century bc.
Notes
1 See section 4.1 for an examination of the iconographical, contextual and socio-
cultural evidence relating to the visual documentation of headless corpses from
this site.
2 Brandes 1979, pp. 166–173, Plate 13.
3 On this episode and on the sequence showing Teumman in the heat of battle,
see Bahrani 2004, pp. 116 f.; Bahrani 2008, pp. 29–32, 54–55; Watanabe 2008,
pp. 601–604.
4 For a selection of epigraphical data from Mesopotamia and Syria, see most
recently Tonietti 2013; for significant occurrences in the texts of Amorite
Mari, cf. Jean 1950, pp. 74–77, note 33; this is followed by the revision of line
5, with further details in Charpin 1988, pp. 41–42; an exhaustive up-to-date
study of the life and the historical and political context of the king opposed
to Mari, Ishme-Addu, who was decapitated, is in Charpin 1993; Charpin
1994, pp. 51–59, note 59, with a collection of passages of texts from Mari
on the theme of severed heads that, in my opinion, have a dual meaning, as
a tribute to the allied king or as an insult to the enemy king; Durand 1998,
pp. 176–177, note 559; Durand 2000, pp. 322–323, note 1144. Already with
Tiglath-Pileser I, between the twelfth and eleventh centuries bc, the Assyrian
inscriptions refer to hundreds of severed heads, proof of the widespread nature
of this practice: Glassner 2006, p. 50; cf. Richardson 2007, pp. 196–197, who
confirms this primacy and also the practice as reported in the texts of the Neo-
Assyrian Period.
5 From the texts of the Ebla Archives to those of the Neo-Assyrian inscriptions, as
at the time of Ashurbanipal, in the case, among others, of General Ituni, charac-
terized by a solemn atmosphere; cf. also note 15. For the documentation from
Ebla, cf. Archi 1990, p. 103, note 7; Archi 1998, p. 391; Archi 2005, pp. 89–90,
note 28; Archi 2010, p. 32.
6 See note 4.
7 Glassner 2006, p. 52, who is categorical on the subject, with reference to the
work of Roth 1995.
8 The monument is discussed here in section 4.2 with regard to the specific repre-
sentation and composition of severed heads appropriated by flying birds of prey.
9 For the textual evidence, see note 5; for the figurative and compositional charac-
teristics and critical interpretations of the work, cf. Matthiae 1989; Dolce 2004,
2005, 2006, 2008a, 2014a.
10 Glassner 2006, p. 52; on the display of severed heads and its various formula-
tions, see section 3.3.
11 Woolley 1952, p. 166, Plates B44–46; Orthmann 1971, pp. 33–34, 47, 60, 503,
535, 537–538, Plates 25a, 25b, 54b, 54c, 55b; a third slab from Til Barsip, so
eroded as to be virtually illegible, is believed by Orthmann ibid., p. 47, Plate
53a to be similar to the other two given its war-related theme, depicting a
rider and his equid, part of which is identifiable. In my opinion, this subject
is comparable to that on the slab from Zincirli (Orthmann ibid., Plate 55b);
references and considerations on the reliefs from Tell Tayinat were presented in
section 1.3.
12 From Ashurnasirpal II to Sennacherib to Ashurbanipal, over the course of about
two centuries: cf. Meuszyński 1981, p. 21, Plate 2 (slab B6); Barnett et alii 1998,
pp. 89, 92–93, Plates 252, 254, 275; Matthiae 1998, pp. 154–155; Barnett 1976,
p. 59, Plate LXVII (B).
13 For the chronological attribution and the original context proposed for these
reliefs, see section 1.3, note 12.
Chapter 2 21
14 Dolce 2005, p. 153.
15 I allude to the prominent instances of General Ituni and the Elamite King
Teumman: Dolce 2004, p. 129, Figure 12; in the case of Teumman, Bahrani
2008, p. 38 ff. strongly emphasizes the extent to which the inscriptions describ-
ing salient moments in the chronicle of the battle give meaning to the images; I
would add that their visual perception elicits a strong emotional response from
the viewer, ancient or modern.
Chapter 3
3.1. What happens to the “coveted object”?

Before going on to consider some of the fates reserved for the severed head
(preceding its natural extinction), I wish to call attention to the fact that the
act itself of exhibiting this “inanimate but coveted object” holds a strong sym-
bolic meaning. This display takes a variety of forms: grasped in the hands of
individual victors in the most ancient figurative representations, or suspended
from their bodies, or held aloft,1 or displayed in each hand in a chiastic ges-
ture that seems to have an almost rhythmical cadence (Figure 3.1) as in the
Figure 3.1 D
isplay of severed heads to the rhythm of the march (detail).
Nineveh, South-West Palace. Beginning of the seventh century bc.
Chapter 3 23
repertoire of Neo-Assyrian images. Indeed, as formulated in the images, this
is a “two-person” relationship: between the victorious soldier – the first link
in the chain – and the inanimate object that he owns or possesses temporarily,
regardless of its final destination.
The most frequent fate of heads is to become booty for counting. We
have already mentioned this in the context of some interpretative theories
for works belonging to the long time span under consideration here, and the
practice appears certain in the most exhaustive documentation of the theme,
that of the Neo-Assyrian Period.
On the one hand, it should be stressed that even before they become
vehicles for specific messages and are subjected to a variety of fates, severed
heads in any case form part of the booty of war as generally understood.
At the same time, we should note that the quantification of heads removed
from their body and their assimilation to spoils of other types in the count-
ing procedures of the Neo-Assyrian Period make it clear that their primary
purpose is as part of the booty of war, perhaps with different connotations,
in my opinion, if they are shown in the presence of the sovereign.
The sources also contain countless mentions of heaps of severed heads
left on the field of battle or in the vicinity of conquered cities, evidence of a
collective practice of display centred on the quantification of the losses suf-
fered by the enemy and of the booty amassed by the victors.
These specific human remains are not explicitly mentioned in the memo-
rable Eblaite texts describing ongoing or imminent conflicts, such as the
letter from Enna-Dagan of Mari to his counterpart in Ebla.2 However, we
cannot rule out that “commodities” of this type, represented so repeatedly
and in such detail on the inlaid panel celebrating a victory on the eve of the
Eblaite kingdom’s maximum expansion,3 were also part of the booty.
Thanks to the vast corpus of epigraphical documents from Assyria, we
know that the practice of display was mentioned in inscriptions (and thus
in the communications system) at the time of Tiglath-Pileser I, between
the twelfth and eleventh centuries bc.4 The first Neo-Assyrian sovereign to
introduce headless corpses and the display of severed heads into the images
as well was Ashurnasirpal II, in the ninth century bc.5 However, already
with one of his illustrious and controversial predecessors, Tukulti-Ninurta
I, in the thirteenth century bc, the decapitation of the enemy came to repre-
sent the focal point of the depiction of the rout of the adversaries sculpted
on a luxury artefact, where the individual responsible for this deed has been
interpreted as the sovereign in person (Figure 3.2a).
Generally speaking, there are no obvious presentations of the supreme
leader as personally responsible for decapitation in the known repertoire of
images, in contrast to the mentions in the written sources (though the latter
are rhetorical in nature). One potential exception is another precious frag-
ment – this time belonging to the painting cycle of the so-called Palace of
Zimri-Lim in Mari, from the Amorite Period of the great king Shamshi-Addu I
(Figure 3.2b) between the late nineteenth and early eighteenth centuries bc.
Figure 3.2a F
ragment of the lid of a pyxis with an ongoing decapitation. Assur,
New Palace. Thirteenth century bc.
In this case, there has been a persuasive attempt to identify the king in the
few surviving remains of an arm and hand of a life-size individual who
seems to be holding up the head (or heads) of the enemy by the hair, in my
opinion already severed or about to be so.
If these interpretations are correct, these two images created several cen-
turies apart during the second millennium bc would thus depict a highly
significant personal deed on the part of the king; in the case of the painting
at Mari from official courtyard 106 of the Royal Palace, this would be a
media operation of enormous potency.
As concerns the act itself, evident in the work from Assur and presumed
in that from Mari, I would suggest that the sovereign in person is also
present in the visual communication as he cuts off the head of his enemy,
presumably of equal rank; or as he holds the “coveted object” in his hands,
evidence of a leading role that may be purely virtual but that would none-
theless have had an enormous impact on its reception by contemporaries
and its transmission to posterity.6
In contrast to the most ancient documentation, the repertoire of images
preserved on the palatial relief orthostats of the Neo-Assyrian Period tells
us explicitly that the “coveted object,” initially a quarry and then a trophy,
Chapter 3 25
is finally transformed into a spoil of war by a series of actions, multiple
and complementary, enacted by several active subjects: the removal of the
heads and their transportation, in the form of a spectacle, to the place of the
“counting.”7
The quantification of the booty takes on more refined connotations
when it occurs in the presence of the sovereign or his representative, as
in the instance depicted on the painting from Til Barsip, in Syria. This
work still seems to be unique in terms of its context and visual formu-
lations, though there are significant parallels with the scenes on some
Neo-Assyrian reliefs.
In these fragmentary remains of paintings from the Neo-Assyrian provin-
cial palace,8 we can identify numerous severed heads lying on the ground.
Various individuals, presumably of high status and perhaps from the ranks
of the military, advance among them, some holding these human remains in
their hands, directed towards their leader, the turtanu, the local representa-
tive of the Assyrian king, or the king himself.
The original intact painting may have included the procedure of
“counting” this macabre booty and its recording by scribes. Regardless,
I believe that the presentation of the severed heads directly to the high-
est political authority (as also documented, for example, in the majestic
scene before king Sennacherib standing on his royal chariot (Figures 5.1b
and 5.1c) in the South-West Palace of Nineveh), had a further meaning.
The idea of the quantification of these (predictably prominent) human
remains persists, but the act takes on the magniloquent tone of an hom-
age to one’s own lord.
The human remains crowded into the Til Barsip sequence and the proce-
dure underway seem to be shown in a space and at a time distant from the
battlefield, and in any case after the conclusion of the conflict. They may be
evidence of a ceremonial and ritual practice that is echoed precisely at the
time of Tiglath-Pileser III among the images on the carved orthostats from
the Central Palace at Nimrud.9
3.2. Destinations/motivations
As we can infer from the textual and figurative sources, a variety of other
fates are reserved for the severed heads that allow us to identify a number
of variables in the meaning of handling these remains: once again, these
emerge mainly from the Neo-Assyrian evidence. In some cases, we can asso-
ciate the “coveted object” with individuals of varying importance in the
political and cultural history of a given period, thanks to the details pro-
vided about the event.10
The data discussed below and the resulting observations are not intended
to be exhaustive, but rather to provide some information indicative of the
nature of decapitation and the prevalent motivations given for this act.
To this end, I will survey some of the most frequently recurring instances
Figure 3.2b F
ragment of a wall painting with heads (?) grasped by the hair. Mari,
Palace of Zimri-Lim. Beginning of the second millennium bc.
described in the written sources between the third and first millennia bc in
Mesopotamia and Syria, accompanied by evidence from the visual docu-
mentation where available.
The payment of homage to the highest hierarchical authority by pre-
senting them with severed heads, mentioned above with reference to its
peculiar formulation in the painting from Til Barsip, is often formalized in
the written sources as a gift to the chief king on the part of other sovereigns
or notables of the kingdom. Accounts of the delivery to the most power-
ful king, through emissaries, of the heads of other kings and princelings
defeated and killed by faithful vassals can already be found in the texts
from the Royal Archive of Early Syrian Ebla11 and reappear in those of
Amorite Mari.
At Ebla, for example, it is recorded that two severed heads of the rul-
ers of smaller kingdoms12 were delivered as an homage by one or more
faithful allies13 to king Irkab-Damu of Ebla alongside some luxury goods,
and that the senders were rewarded with precious artefacts and textiles.
Similarly, notables and the sons of the serving Eblaite prime minister
received clothing in exchange for the severed heads of enemies brought to
the sovereign.14 Yet more importantly, the head of the king of Kakmium,
Chapter 3 27
a controversial figure already known from the documents of the Ebla
Archive,15 was delivered to Ebla by a certain Tūbī who received a gold
artefact in return.16
Some of the information to be found in the Eblaite administrative records
referenced here (belonging to a type that is not exclusive to this kingdom
or to this period), in my opinion, invites two general considerations. First,
the recurrent practice of materially rewarding the executioners/senders
of severed heads establishes what we could describe as a relationship of
“exchange” between those involved in this event, regardless of any differ-
ences between them in terms of hierarchical position or political role. Second,
the absence of mentions of decapitation in the Chancery texts of the Eblaite
Archives referenced above17 (though this practice was certainly adopted
since it is documented in the administrative sources and in the images) can
be explained by the primary and original meaning of the “coveted object”
as booty, and therefore as an economically quantifiable commodity, as we
have already mentioned several times above.18
At Mari, the heads of enemies were very frequently fated to become a
tribute of loyalty to the king on the part of vassals and other allied kings;
this was almost a sort of macabre privilege, since it exempted these human
remains from merely being quantified as booty.
From the documents of the period of the Amorite rulers of the kingdom
of Mari, we learn that Ishme-Addu, king of Ashnakkum, initially an ally
and later a traitor to the king of Mari, was destined for decapitation and
that many people aspired to cut off his head to bring it as a gift to the great
Zimri-Lim. Similarly, an enterprising princeling announced to the king of
Mari, Yashmakh-Addu, that he would send as many as ten severed heads of
enemies to his illustrious father, Shamshi-Addu I.19
The albeit scarce figurative documentation showing the act of tribute
to the king of the heads of enemies – presumably prominent since they are
represented on official monuments – comes from the Neo-Assyrian Period
and suggests that at least in some cases this event took place indoors, or at
any rate away from the scene of the ongoing conflict.20
On the reliefs and in the texts of the Neo-Assyrian Period, the presenta-
tion of severed heads to the victorious sovereign may also take place in the
open. In some cases, heads are “thrown at his feet,” directly before his char-
iot near one of the city gates of Nineveh, a spectacular gesture of celebration
following the victory, as we read in the surviving inscription of a lost relief
from Nineveh belonging to the cycle depicting the battle of Til Tuba.21 A
similar scene already appears in the original drawing of one of the reliefs of
Sargon II, of the eighth century bc, from the Palace of Dur-Sharrukin.22 This
is an act of obsequy to the conqueror and at the same time of ostentatious
contempt for the “inanimate object” itself.
A further noteworthy variant in the practice of homage, documented in
the written sources, is of considerable expressive power, and of equal and
opposite nature to the gift of the enemy’s head to the most powerful king
on the part of his allies: the gruesome tribute sent by a king to his direct
counterpart of the head of his faithful ally.
References to this practice can already be found in the texts from Mari of
the second millennium bc. A representative example is that of Zazaya, who
sends the enemy king, Ishme-Dagan, the severed head of his ally, king of the
city to which Zazaya himself has laid siege.23
In these cases, the gesture is tinged not just with the arrogance of the
act itself, but also with the rival’s (implicit) contemptuous refusal to keep
the head for himself, sending it instead as a second-rate commodity to the
enemy king.
Within these dynamics, as well as representing a warning of the future
fate of the adversary and his kingdom, decapitation may also hold a further,
subtler meaning: as irrefutable evidence of the definitive loss of a loyal ally,
a precious and rare resource in a future or ongoing armed conflict, whose
final outcome is thus compromised by this absence.
The prevalent motifs associated with the fate of severed heads as a tribute
to the highest authority (from a boast to proof of loyalty to performative
act, etc.) belong to the sphere of the enduring and shared values that under-
lie the act itself: the delivery of the head to its more illustrious recipient
places maximum emphasis on the tangible proof of the enemy’s definitive
annihilation and of the glory won by the victor.
3.3. Exhibition and multivalence

These two prerogatives, so to speak, that coexist in the “coveted object” – as
definitive proof of the annihilation of the defeated enemy and of the manifest
glory of the victor – run through all the other treatments reserved for the
decapitated head.
We see this in the mentions made in the written sources of the suspension of
heads from trees. Heads may be hung from trees located in open and accessible
Figure 3.3a D
isplay of victory and executions of the defeated. Balawat, city gate.
Mid-ninth century bc.
Chapter 3 29
spaces, and from those standing outside and inside towns where the remains
are exposed to the gaze and the judgement of the collectivity or of the major-
ity, acting as a warning to the allies of the moment and to enemies. Heads are
even displayed inside, in the gardens of courtyards and royal palaces,24 in a
crescendo of apparently private settings, as is evident in the palatial relief of
the seventh century bc from the striking presence of the head of the Elamite
king Teumman depicted hanging from a tree in the gardens of Nineveh, the
third “guest” at the royal couple’s banquet25 (Figures 1.2a and 1.2b).
The multivalence of the severed head is also apparent from another vari-
ation on the theme of display, in which it is affixed to architectural or urban
features with a strong ideological significance, such as city walls and gates.
The heads of prominent individuals, notables or co-protagonists in conflicts
are often hung here not just as proof of the annihilation of the enemy and of
the glory of the victor, but also to ostentatiously demonstrate control of an
area that has been secured or recently conquered, of its borders and of the
security of the kingdom.
From the information found in the texts of Early Syrian Ebla, among
the most ancient to mention this practice, we learn that the severed head
of a certain Ilbi-Ishar, guilty of an offence in times of war, was attached
“to the gate of the King” of Ebla after the application of a “decoration”
in bronze.26
Figure 3.3b S evered heads affixed to the bastions and city gates of the conquered
city (detail). Balawat, city gate. Mid-ninth century bc.
The affixion of severed heads to city gates is also attested in satellite
towns of the Eblaite kingdom, such as Danash, where the gate of the same
name bore the head of a certain Iram-damu, a man from Dubadu.27
For the first two millennia under consideration here, there are currently
no surviving images showing the display of decapitated heads on city walls
and gates from the areas discussed. By contrast, in the Neo-Assyrian Period
this practice is manifest in depictions of the multiple exhibition of severed
enemy heads.
On the embossed reliefs of the bronze bands covering the monumen-
tal Balawat Gate, a celebratory manifesto of the glories of the reign of
Shalmaneser III, in the mid-ninth century bc,28 these remains are in turn
shown hanging from the city gates (Figures 3.3a and 3.3b). We can deduce
that in such cases, the intention is again to convey, employing different
visual expedients, the quantity of these “commodities” – of the booty as
such – just like the counting on the field of battle. At the same time, as
I have already proposed, they proudly affirm that complete control over
one’s territory and the security of dominion inherent in this way of using
the heads.
A peculiar way of displaying the severed head of a single enemy,
attested in both the written sources and the images, is to hang it from the
shoulders and neck of an ally of the defeated adversary, still living and
reduced to slavery.
In the Neo-Assyrian annals of Esarhaddon, of the seventh century bc,
it is told that the severed heads of two illustrious defeated kings, Abdi-
milkutti and Sanduarri, one from the city of Sidon, the other from Kundu/
Sisu, were carried on the shoulders of their still living notable allies in the
triumphal procession accompanied by music and singing, in the presence of
the sovereign, for public humiliation. A similar practice was adopted shortly
afterwards by Ashurbanipal, in the spectacular ceremony celebrating his
victory over the Elamites.29
To the latter Neo-Assyrian sovereign we owe the fairly detailed images
of king Dunanu and his brother,30 allies of the defeated Elamites, paraded
with the heads of Teumman and perhaps of his son, defeated, humiliated
and approaching their own deaths, in the triumphal procession covering the
orthostats of the South-West Palace of Nineveh.31
This is a subtly perverse practice inflicted on both enemies: one now
reduced to no more than his inert head, the other living and reduced to
carrying the former, in a sort of ostentatious double dominion over the
defeated on the part of the victors, and, most importantly, in a state of
manifest humiliation.
The latter state is also an added factor in the representation of the
defeated in times of war, which became evident to me in tackling the theme
of decapitation, the corpus of images and their contexts.32
Finally, the harsh punishment inflicted on those about to die, used as a
means of transport and forced display of the severed heads, indicates that
Chapter 3 31
this use of the human remain is, so to speak, more temporary than others,
and in my opinion serves to dynamically spectacularize the event; at the
same time, it also prepares for their final and irrevocable placement.33
Notes
1 Alongside the examples shown in Figures 2.2–2.4 and the references in Chapter
2, notes 11 and 12, I note here that of the rider on his horse holding up and dis-
playing the severed head of an enemy on an orthostat from Zincirli, mentioned
in Chapter 2, note 11: Orthmann 1971, pp. 60, 537–538, Plate 55b.
2 Fronzaroli 2003, pp. 35–42; Fronzaroli 2005, pp. 193 ff.; most recently men-
tioned by Tonietti 2013, p. 160.
3 Cf. Dolce 2005, pp. 154–155, for a proposal that the original date of this monu-
mental work, around 3 metres tall, was before the reign of Igrish-Khalam and
probably during that of Kum-Damu. I suggest a conflict with Mari already in
the phase preceding the flourishing of the Eblaite kingdom in which that king of
Ebla may have prevailed and celebrated his albeit temporary victory in spectacu-
lar fashion, as was customary on the monuments celebrating war-related events
from the city states of contemporary Mesopotamia.
4 Grayson 1991, p. 14 (87.1.).
5 Meuszyński 1981, pp. 20–21, Plate 2 (B4, B6, B9).
6 The fragment of the marble lid of the pyxis from the royal furnishings found in
the New Palace at Assur bears the remains of two registers in relief with scenes
of an ongoing battle and a decapitation, perhaps at the hands of the king himself,
according to A. Moortgat; the refined tone and the high compositional quality of
the work, a prelude to the pictorial narratives of military campaigns on the Neo-
Assyrian reliefs, have for some time been perceptively noted: Moortgat 1969,
pp. 119–120, Plate 244; Matthiae 1997, p. 32 agrees that the figure of which an
arm and hand survive, grasping the enemy by the hair, can be identified as the
king himself. Cf. Andrae 1938, p. 113, Plate 49b, note 1 for the first published
data on the artefact and its chronological attribution to the Middle Assyrian sov-
ereign. This fragment of the painting from the Royal Palace in Mari, alongside
numerous other remains, has given rise to a new reconstruction of the figurative
programme of room 106 by Muller 2002, also proposing the royal identity of
this figure, accepted by Matthiae 2000, p. 133. Nonetheless, both authors offer
an interpretation of the act and the relations with the figure on the ground that
are distinct and different from those proposed here: according to Muller ibid.,
p. 86 these are two supplicants; according to Matthiae ibid., p. 133 they are the
vanquished, about to be killed with a mace blow to the head, in accordance with
the Egyptian cultural and iconographical formulation. For considerations and
discussions on this painting from Mari, cf. Dolce 2016; for a re-examination of
the principal painting cycles from the long-lasting palace of Mari, cf. Dolce 2010.
7 This operation only apparently seems to form part of the procedure of counting
the severed heads, as rightly noted some time ago by S. Donadoni, and rather
aims to display the inferiority of the enemy compared to the solidity of the other’s
victory: Donadoni 1985, p. 502. The theory is reported by Nadali 2001–2003,
pp. 64, 69, note 41, who remarks, as agreed by most scholars, that the counting
serves to render perennial the death of the enemy in the eyes of all and simultane-
ously to exalt the personal victory of the king. Though present, these motivations
nonetheless affect the act itself of displaying the severed head, as we have already
noted, and in my opinion do not specifically sideline the meaning of the image
and its visual perception as an ostentatious counting procedure, together with
and on the same level as other “commodities” taken from the defeated enemy.
8 From room XLVII: Thureau-Dangin, Dunand 1936, pp. 63–67; Thureau-Dangin,
Dunand ibid., pp. 42–74, Plates XLIII–LIII dedicates the first analysis to the com-
plex of paintings from the Neo-Assyrian residence. On the prevailing opinion
that the painting cycle from the palace dates to the eighth century bc and on my
own motivations for identifying its sponsor as the sovereign Tiglath-Pileser III,
see Dolce 2004, pp. 126–127, note 26. Updates on the progress of excavations
at the site, occupied from the Chalcolithic to the Neo-Assyrian Period, and sum-
maries of the results are presented by Bunnens 2014, pp. 38–42.
9 Barnett, Falkner 1962, pp. 16, 18, Plates XLIX, LIX; in the former, we see the sol-
emn bow made by the soldiers with the decapitated heads, probably before the
king, preceded by a functionary or high official. It should be remembered that,
according to the testimony of H. Layard, this relief stood between another two
with battle scenes; if this is correct, the image of the solemn tribute of decapitated
heads to the chief authority may have represented the sequence catalysing the
victorious outcome, outside the fray, in the figurative and narrative formulation.
In the latter, of which only the original drawing survives and whose setting sug-
gests an interior, we see two decapitated heads being offered by high dignitaries
directly to the king on his throne; behind them is a soldier leading a prisoner
by an ear or by a lock of hair. The heads offered are among the smallest docu-
mented in proportion to the size of the figures in the scene, suggesting that this
representation employed a canon inverse to that formulated on the Ebla “victory
panel” for the illustrious oversized heads already mentioned, and therefore held
semantic meaning in the Neo-Assyrian visual programme.
10 The information on this comes from the textual sources, direct and indirect,
on these events and appears in the sources from the third to first millennia bc,
from the data in the Ebla Archives to those of the annals and other official Neo-
Assyrian inscriptions; exemplary instances can be found in the Eblaite texts and
in those from Mari: cf. Chapter 2, note 5.
11 In the recent analysis and reinterpretation of one of these texts, Tonietti 2013,
p. 160 opportunely recalls information already stressed by Archi 1998, p. 388,
regarding the fact that we find direct references to decapitation only in the
Eblaite administrative documents; we will return to this later given its implica-
tions for our topic. Archi 2014, especially pp. 19–20, returns to the issue when
discussing the military campaigns launched by the kingdom and recorded in the
administrative texts, and claims that the absence of “royal inscriptions” in the
Ebla Archives is an intentional choice on the part of the Chancery, going against
the Mesopotamian tradition of this genre.
12 Those of Sumedu and Zamarum, TM.75.G.10219: cf. Archi 1998, pp. 388–389;
Biga 2008, p. 307 and again in Archi 2010, p. 32; the Eblaite document was
recently mentioned by Tonietti 2013, p. 164, for helpful philological parallels
with another, also mentioned below, concerning another decapitation, certainly
of greater importance.
13 Cf. on this the reading of the passage in Tonietti 2013, p. 164.
14 Cf. Archi 1998, pp. 388–389, texts TM.75. G.10219; TM.75.G.1902; Biga 2008,
p. 307 and Archi 2010, p. 32, text TM.75.G.1741.
15 This king’s wavering loyalty to the kingdom of Ebla is proven, on the one hand,
by the support he provided to Ebla against various smaller cities, from Garaman
to Adabig: cf. Biga 2008, pp. 313–314; on the other, by the account of a puni-
tive military expedition against his city state, listed, among others attacked,
in Archi 2011, p. 13. The mentions of this military event in numerous Eblaite
texts were already published exhaustively in Biga 2008, pp. 314–316; it was fol-
lowed by another alliance with Ebla, even in the war against Mari: Biga 2008,
p. 325. Cf. Tonietti 2013, pp. 161–169, for the recent examination, reading and
Chapter 3 33
philological interpretation of text TM.75.G.1358, and the decapitation of
the king of Kakmium, alongside the numerous and divergent earlier opinions
reported there.
16 Most recently, Tonietti 2013, p. 164; Tonietti’s re-examination of the text (see note 15)
has persuasively confirmed the reading proposed some time ago by Archi 1998,
p. 392 that this king was decapitated and that his head was delivered to Ebla.
17 On this, see note 11.
18 Tonietti 2013, pp. 168–170 raises the issue of whether the heads sent as a gift on
the part of loyal allies to the dominant king were accompanied by their bodies
or rather by concrete marks of their more or less exalted rank, their “insignia.” I
consider this second hypothesis more plausible as it is supported by the dossier
of written sources from Mari and also by the realistic considerations of Charpin
1993 cited within on this; last but not least, the “dépouilles” mentioned by
Charpin 1993, p. 171, associated with the severed head of king Ishme-Addu,
seem to be in line with the information that we can glean from the images on
this theme from the third millennium bc, again on the Ebla “victory panel.”
Here, the victorious soldiers drag the severed heads of eminent enemies by hand
and carry their clothes – their spoils – over their shoulder, hung from poles or
more plausibly from their lances, as on the victory panels from Mari-Ville II:
Dolce 2006, p. 38, Figure 5; Dolce 2014b, p. 201, Figure 14a. Importantly, in
the Eblaite case, this appropriation of the clothes of enemies (and not of their
dismembered arms, as has also been proposed: Minunno 2008b, pp. 10–11),
aside from recurring as elsewhere in the ostentatious parades of the defeated,
naked and bound (cf. Dolce 2014b, p. 201, Figure 14b), is also associated with
the transportation of the severed heads, hitherto absent in this form from the
visual documentation of third-millennium bc Mesopotamia. The spoils taken
from the enemy, an additional booty to the severed head, present in the Eblaite
work, may allude to a customary practice in both Syria and Mesopotamia, of
special symbolic importance when it concerned remains indicative of the elite
rank of the decapitated.
19 Charpin 1993, p. 170 (text ARMT 25, 447, 1–7); also in Archi 1998, p. 388;
Charpin 1994, no. 59 p. 52.
20 For the document from Til Barsip and for those from Nimrud see section 3.1,
notes 8, 9.
21 Glassner 2006, p. 48.
22 Albenda 1986, pp. 89, 144, Plate 111; the original drawings are in Flandin 1849,
Plates 53–54.
23 Lafont 1988, pp. 479–482, especially p. 481 (52–58).
24 This practice is documented mainly, but not exclusively, in the Neo-Assyrian
sources; it should be noted that all the various ways of suspending the severed
heads described above appear in the inscriptions of Ashurnasirpal II: Grayson
1991, pp. 201 ff., nos 101.1 i.64, i.118, ii.18–19, ii.71–72; Grayson 1976, p. 132.
25 See section 1.1, note 3; the relief depicting the banquet of the victorious Assyrian
sovereign and his consort, in an artfully idyllic atmosphere and as if suspended
between two dimensions of reality, comes from the North Palace, the definitive
residence of Ashurbanipal in the last Neo-Assyrian capital: Barnett 1976, Plate
LXV (detail).
26 The translation of the passage of text TM.75. G.2429 is in Archi 1990, p. 103, in
turn based on a mention by Biga, quoted by Archi ibid., note 7; later, Archi 1998,
p. 391 interprets the use of bronze as a necessary support for the severed head,
noting the accuracy of the accountants in recording the quantity; more recently,
he explains that the head of Ilbi-Ishar was covered with the metal “for decorat-
ing”: Archi 2005, pp. 88, 89–90, note 28.
27 Archi 2010, p. 32, text TM.75.G.2451; it is worth noting that this unfortunate
person does not seem to be either a prominent individual nor involved in war,
according to Archi ibid.; his decapitation may suggest a different purpose from
those discussed here, as a punishment for various types of crimes, though the
procedure of individual and presumably deliberate display on a city gate remains
noteworthy.
28 King 1915, pp. 80–81, Plate LVI; Schachner 2007, p. 56, Plates 10, 47b.
29 For the sources of Esarhaddon, see already Luckenbill 1926–1927, II, pp. 211–212,
no. 527; more recently, Leichty 2011, p. 29; Borger 1956, pp. 49–50. For those
of Ashurbanipal, cf. Weissert 1997, pp. 349–350 and the detailed reconstruction
by Villard 2008, pp. 258–260 based on the textual data on this triumph and its
various phases, of enormous communicative impact on the collective imaginary;
for further considerations on this event, cf. section 5.2, note 6.
30 According to some: Glassner 2006, p. 49; Villard 2008, p. 258.
31 Barnett et alii 1998, pp. 96–97, Plates 304–305.
32 For an examination of this theme, which often accompanies the condition of the
defeated, cf. Dolce 2014a, pp. 244 ff.
33 The carriers of severed heads in the triumph of Ashurbanipal are also fated to
die; as vanquished enemies, they are not just subjected to the harsh trial of being
forced to display the “coveted object,” rather than bragging of it as is customary
for the victors, from the Eblaite images to those of the Neo-Assyrians: they will
also “have their throats slit like rams,” according to the sources: Borger 1996,
especially p. 108. This is a common end, given its recurrence in the Assyrian texts,
from Tiglath-Pileser I to Shalmaneser I to Esarhaddon.
Chapter 4
4.1. Human heads and birds of prey

Another fate reserved for the severed head is to become food for birds of
prey, as famously exemplified on the stele of the ensi Eannatum of Lagash
of the mid-third millennium bc.1
Just as decapitation finds expression in the visual communication of the
Near East at least from Prehistory (PPNB) onwards, as we know thanks to
the figurative evidence from Çatal Hüyük mentioned above (see section 2.1),
the presence of birds of prey in combination with headless corpses also appears
at the same site and in the same context, inviting some reflections.
In light of the re-examination and reinterpretation of the paintings found
at Çatal Hüyük in spaces previously described as “sanctuaries,”2 the attack
by huge birds of prey on human corpses, all headless, depicted along the east
and north walls (Figures 4.1a–c) is thought to be the celebration of a victory
over enemies. Their severed heads may be those reduced to the condition of
Figure 4.1a B
irds of prey falling on headless human corpses. Çatal Hüyük.
Neolithic Period.
treated skulls deposited in the same rooms as a future reminder to the col-
lectivity, rather than as relics for funerary practices honouring the illustrious
ancestors of the community.3
Were this theory correct, the appropriately treated and preserved severed
heads would thus be a (first?) form of possession and display of the head of
the enemy to celebrate events in the history of the site.
The aforementioned documentation from Çatal Hüyük tells us that the
deposition of skulls treated to preserve them is always associated with
rooms decorated with large figures of flying birds of prey attacking head-
less human corpses,4 and that the relationship between birds of prey and
heads, and perhaps between birds of prey and defeated enemies, may be a
very ancient one.
If Testart’s well-argued theory is correct, as I believe despite the heated
debate it has provoked,5 this complex programme, which in my opinion
Figure 4.1b D
etail. Çatal Hüyük, “Sanctuary of the Vultures.” Neolithic
Period.
Chapter 4 37
Figure 4.1c Detail. Çatal Hüyük, “Sanctuary of the Vultures.” Neolithic Period.
could be described as a figurative media operation, is a trace of the per-

manent celebration of victory after a conflict.6 It is therefore more likely
that the skulls preserved and displayed in the “painted houses” belonged to
important decapitated enemies than to heroic ancestors.7
We would thus be dealing with a way of displaying this specific remain
of the defeated enemy that is already codified, taking on the meaning of a
timeless reminder of both the enemy’s irreversible annihilation and the glory
of the victors.
In the Proto-Historical Period, the relationship between birds of prey and
heads, and between birds of prey and defeated enemies, is manifest in the
image on a cylinder seal impression from Uruk, where the bird presents a
peculiar feature that deserves special attention (Figure 4.2).
The impression shows several naked prisoners kneeling and with their
arms probably held fast by fetters,8 just like the kneeling prisoners awaiting
execution in the image on a cylinder seal impression of the Proto-Historical
Period from the same site mentioned above (see section 2.1). Two of the
prisoners face large jars9 and they are all preceded by their leader, recogniz-
able as such from his larger size, the fact that he still wears a kilt, and above
all his large belt.
Over each of the prisoners hovers a lion-headed bird of prey attempting
to attack his head.
The key point that I wish to stress concerns the imminent attack by the
birds on the heads of prisoners who are still living. The latter is an unu-
sual feature that may hold a different meaning, as a separate punishment
inflicted on the prisoner rather than the final act in the mutilation of lifeless
Figure 4.2 N
aked and bound prisoners, whose heads are attacked by lion-headed
birds of prey. Uruk. Second half of the fourth millennium bc.
corpses – and especially their heads and faces – left to birds of prey, a feature
later recurrent in the visual documentation. Also significant is the hybrid
nature of the birds of prey, which have lion heads, engaged in an action that
is usually the prerogative of natural birds.
We could ask ourselves whether this image might not evoke a mythical
theme incorporated into the depiction of an execution following a victory
over the enemy as the supreme legitimation of this act, transfigured by divine
intervention. In this context, we should recall the lion-headed eagles with
outstretched wings grasping human-headed bulls in their talons on the Ebla
“victory panel” (Figure 4.3), interpreted by P. Matthiae as symbolizing the
destructive force unleashed on the defeated.10
4.2. Eannatum of Lagash and the birds of prey

A seminal work on the theme of war in the figurative culture of
Mesopotamia during the Early Dynastic Period, in the third millennium
bc, is the Stele of Eannatum of Lagash.11 Both the visual programme of
this monument and its inscription have been repeatedly and variously
analysed, and the overall reading of the document has been the object of
divergent interpretations.12
On one of the main sides of the stele,13 we certainly see a sequence con-
densed into several registers and various phases of an ongoing conflict that
are technically linked by the definitive attack on the enemy, snapshots from
the chronicle of a crucial battle – or one that is presented as such – during
the perennial border conflict between two states.14
In other words, we are not dealing with images that aim exclusively
to convey representative meanings linked to the concepts of the “just”
war and victory sanctioned by the god, immanent on the other side of
the monument, but with an “account” in the form of salient images of
Chapter 4 39
Figure 4.3 L
ion-headed eagles with outstretched wings hovering over human-
headed bulls (detail). Ebla, Royal Palace G. Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth
centuries bc.
historical and celebratory actions taking place at a specific time and in a

specific context.15
The presence of (natural) birds of prey is recorded on the side of the
stele depicting infantry attacks on the enemy as they unfold under the direct
command of the ensi of Lagash: the vultures soar in the upper part of the
figurative space crowning the scene of war and attack various dismembered
parts of the corpses of the defeated, especially the severed heads held fast in
their beaks as they fly (Figure 4.4).
Despite the fragmentary state of the monument, we thus see that, though
explicit, the decapitation does not (or not yet?) seem to be the object of dis-
play on the part of the victorious soldiers, but of other agents.
The relationship between vultures and heads is made explicit on the
“Vulture Stele,” as it is also known, and here this “two-person relationship”
involves the flying birds seizing the heads and carrying them elsewhere, just
like the soldiers holding the heads and taking them elsewhere for the count-
ing of the spoils or other purposes.
This practice on the part of the victors is common from the “victory
panel” of Early Syrian Ebla to the reliefs showing the military campaigns of
Figure 4.4 F
lying vultures holding severed heads and dismembered parts of human
corpses in their beaks (detail). Girsu. Mid-twenty-fifth century bc.
the Luvian and Aramaic kingdoms of Syria and of the Neo-Assyrian sover-
eigns, but is not documented in the visual communication of Early Dynastic
Mesopotamia nor on the official monuments of Akkad.
We do not currently know of any comparable instances of birds of prey
transporting severed heads in the figurative culture of the third millennium
bc; we must await the refined art of the Neo-Assyrian reliefs before we
again find a majestic bird displaying a severed head next to the chariot of
the victors.16
This is another instance of the same figurative convention that endured
for millennia, albeit elusively and intermittently, according to which owner-
ship of the severed head is shared among various agents and destinations:
as the temporary property of the individual anonymous soldier, as part of
the spoils of victory to be quantified in the counting, as food for vultures to
satisfy their senses.
4.3. Mari and the birds of prey

By contrast, the action most frequently performed by birds of prey and
recurrent in the images is an attack on the faces and on the naked and
lifeless corpses of the defeated as they lie on the ground, bringing to mind
the different and unique evidence from Proto-Historical Uruk (see section
4.1). We already find evidence of this in the royal glyptics of Early Dynastic
Mari,17 in the seal impressions of the lugal Ishqi-Mari (Figures 4.5a and
4.5b),18 long known from his statue accompanied by an inscription found in
the temple of the goddess Ishtar in the city of Mari itself.
Chapter 4 41
Figure 4.5a B
irds of prey attacking the faces of lifeless vanquished enemies. Severed
head displayed on the royal chariot. Mari. Twenty-fourth century bc.
Figure 4.5b S evered head displayed on the royal chariot. Mari. Twenty-fourth
century bc.
The scenes of warfare on the seal impressions from Mari – part of the
repertoire already known in antiquity from Ebla to Ur, and on some of the
most famous monuments of the period of the Syrian and Mesopotamian
city states of the third millennium bc – which include hand-to-hand com-
bats or the passage at a gallop of the chariots of the victors running down
the defeated, now also present images of raptors attacking the faces of their
prey, in accordance with a visual convention that was destined to endure in
the future. By contrast, the triumph seems to be excluded from the visual
representation as traditionally developed, from Kish to Mari, on the inlaid
panels celebrating deeds of war, unless it is evoked here in a different man-
ner by the enthroned sovereign present in both depictions.
In the archaic cultures of the Near East, the seal was a vehicle used to
convey “narratives” of various types and an instrument of economic and
political governance. The evidence from the royal glyptics of Mari shows
that seals were used here to consolidate and carry messages of strong his-
torical and political significance concerning the deeds certainly performed
by the protagonist/sponsor of the work in contexts of war and victory, pro-
viding details of the actions in the field. In Mesopotamia, such messages
are usually entrusted to other types of artefact after the period of Uruk and
before the rise of Akkad: inlaid panels in palaces and temples and, in some
cases, steles.
The images of war from Mari are thus evidence of a peculiar way of
using seals that is uncommon in the figurative culture of the period; or more
accurately of an established production that is poorly documented and that
invites some further reflections.19
It is worth noting that, alongside the topos of birds of prey attacking the
face and throat of their victims present in one of the images, the figurative
programme on both royal seals of the lugal Ishqi-Mari introduces a direct
reference to decapitation through the presence of severed heads, as on the
Stele of Eannatum; however, the display is formulated in a different way
that appears here for the first time.
The severed head of an individual who was certainly prominent,20 per-
haps the defeated king himself, lies in full view on the chariot of the victors
to be taken elsewhere. The densely packed composition lacks any trace of
spatial reference points or subdivisions of the figurative space, with the
exception of the sharp line beneath the images of the bulls. Nonetheless,
on both seals we can identify the ideal diagonal connecting the severed
head placed on the chariot with the head of the victorious king seated on
his throne, in a subliminal pictorial gesture of enormous communicative
potency that highlights the symbolic importance of the relationship between
the two “prominent heads,” of the victor and the vanquished. Here, per-
haps, the allusion to Ishqi-Mari’s role as the representative of the god Enlil,
still legible in one of the inscriptions accompanying the seal impressions,
forms part of the message developed in the depiction, in accordance with
relations that nonetheless remain to be interpreted.
This way of formulating the display of the “coveted object,” moved onto
the chariot, thus already forms part of the conventions of accounts of war
and of visual communication at the time of Ville II at Mari in the mid-third
millennium bc. It reappears, as far as we know from the available data, in
the treatment reserved for prominent defeated enemies on the Neo-Assyrian
reliefs celebrating the empire’s achievements in war.21 As such, it parallels
the image mentioned above with the flying eagle clasping the head of an
important defeated individual in its talons, or the flying birds of prey on the
Stele of Eannatum holding the severed heads of decapitated enemies in their
beaks (see section 4.2).
Chapter 4 43
4.4. Sargon I of Akkad and the birds of prey
The Stele of Sargon I of Akkad,22 the remains of which are more corroded
than those of the Stele of Eannatum (section 4.2), does not appear to
develop the image of the birds of prey in the same way as the monument
from Lagash, though it borrows from this work its underlying theme and
some iconographical and compositional formulas.23
On the relief of Sargon, vultures and starving dogs attack the lifeless bod-
ies of enemies lying on the ground, who have not “lost their heads” as far
as we can currently tell24 (Figure 4.6), in accordance with the formulation
already known from the royal glyptics of Early Dynastic Mari (Figure 4.5a)
and also attested in later periods.
This sequence from the Stele of Sargon has aptly been described as “real-
istic,”25 an interpretation that in itself seems to me to mark the ideological
distance that separates the flying vultures with their “treasure” on the mon-
ument of Eannatum of Lagash from the earthly disfigurement perpetrated in
the victory manifesto of the founder of Akkad.
The perceptible distance between these two official monuments and the
ideological programmes that underpin them lies less in the extraordinary
communicative power of the second26 and more in the existence of two
distinct levels of visual communication, each connected to the different
implications of the actions underway.
Figure 4.6 B
irds of prey attacking the lifeless corpses of enemies (detail). Susa.
Second half of the twenty-fourth century bc.
Figure 4.7a S evered heads of notables, their faces attacked by birds of prey (detail).
Eshnunna. Eighteenth century bc.
These two levels of visual communication, and the different implications that
characterize the actions and their non-human protagonists, developed in the
figurative culture of the mid-third millennium bc between Mesopotamia
and Syria, coexist and recur over time as demonstrated by the substantial,
albeit discontinuous, nature of the surviving evidence.
4.5. Dadusha of Eshnunna and the birds of prey

About half a millennium after the Stele of Sargon I, a third official monu-
ment celebrating a victory over enemies includes birds of prey attacking the
vanquished in its figurative programme. Again, we are dealing with a stele
found in the area of Eshnunna, the capital city of the sovereign who com-
missioned the work, Dadusha (Figures 4.7a–c), now dated by a wealth of
evidence to the reign of this king during the eighteenth century bc.27
One of the two sides of the monument bears the representation of partial
sequences showing the salient phases – in the form of iconic scenes – of the
event celebrated and described in the inscription placed on the other side.28
The episode in question is Dadusha’s capture, according to his version of
events29, of the city of Qabra, capital of the kingdom of Arbela. Adopting
the posture of the victor crushing the vanquished beneath his foot, Dadusha
towers above the city walls facing a high-ranking individual in the topmost
of four registers.30
Below are another two registers also dominated by the compositional
scheme of two facing individuals engaged in mirror-image actions connected
Chapter 4 45
Figure 4.7b S evered heads of notables, their faces attacked by birds of prey
(detail). Eshnunna. Eighteenth century bc.
to the war; these probably show the imminent execution of bound prison-
ers. The depiction concludes in the final register with the severed heads of
nine enemies arranged in two rows, probably on the ground, whose faces
are attacked by small birds of prey; we should identify these as belonging to
notable warriors.31
It seems to me of some significance that the heads devoured by the birds
of prey are used to cover the base of the monument of Dadusha, just as the
corpses lying on the ground, their heads attacked by vultures, occupy the
lower register on the Stele of Sargon I of Akkad. In both cases, this may sug-
gest that the carnage inflicted on the vanquished forms an epilogue to the
“narrative” sequence developed on the monument.
The nine severed heads on the Stele of Dadusha are also anonymous
(though we could suggest that they belonged to high-ranking individuals), as
Figure 4.7c R
econstruction of the depiction. Stele of the sovereign Dadusha.
Eshnunna. Eighteenth century bc.
is prevalently the case in the known evidence. This anonymity is intentional,

given that in the long royal inscription on the stele only the identity and the
fate of the severed head of the king of Qabra, Bunu-Eshtar, transported to
Eshnunna by Dadusha himself, is described in emphatic terms.32 There is no
Chapter 4 47
reference in this inscription to other such executions33 but kings and allies
of the defeated king are mentioned without naming them; I assume that the
severed heads in the images may have belonged to them.34
Finally, it is worth noting that a significant feature of the stele’s figurative
programme is the representation of the walls and city gate of the vanquished
city, named above; this is an original feature in the known visual repertoire.
The compositional scheme and the ideological conventions underlying
the image of the triumphant victor standing atop the walls of the defeated
city and its gate, in the foreground of the main register, appear here for the
first time in a depiction glorifying a victory in war. A particularly interesting
feature of the organization of this work is the spatial and urban connota-
tion that subsequently, in multiple variants, came to enjoy enormous favour
in the figurative programmes of Neo-Assyrian art, where the urban setting
enhances the visual impact of acts of war.
4.6. The Assyrians and the birds of prey

It is precisely on the Neo-Assyrian reliefs, from Ashurnasirpal II’s North-
West Palace at Nimrud in the ninth century bc and from the South-West
Palace at Nineveh at the time of Ashurbanipal in the seventh century bc,
that we see the recurrent presence of birds of prey intent on devouring the
heads of lifeless enemies on the ground.35
Within the chaotic and highly animated scene depicting the apex of the
battle to end all battles, that of Til-Tuba, already carved on the orthostats
of the South-West Palace, Ashurbanipal’s temporary residence at Nineveh,
the sequence of five birds of prey devouring parts of the faces and limbs of
the same number of corpses of Elamites lying on the ground36 (Figure 4.8)
stands out for its intentionally slow cadence, over a millennium and a half
after the most ancient instances of similar images on the theme and its for-
mulation on the Stele of Sargon I of Akkad (see sections 4.3 and 4.4).
Also an enduring presence under the aforementioned first Neo-Assyrian
sovereign, Ashurnasirpal II, is the image fixed on the Stele of Eannatum with
the flying birds of prey transporting the severed heads of the vanquished.
Figure 4.8 F
ive corpses of enemies on the ground attacked by five birds of prey
(detail). Nineveh, South-West Palace. Mid-seventh century bc.
Thus on the relief in the throne room in the North-West Palace of Nimrud,
the head is that of a distinguished enemy, held fast in the talons of an eagle
that flies forwards majestically, flanking the triumphal chariot and keep-
ing pace with it, like a soldier marching in time as he displays his trophy37
(Figures 4.9a and 4.9b).
It is worth noting that on the very same orthostat, soldiers depicted on
a smaller scale are crowded into the other half of the scene, displaying and
Figure 4.9a A
n eagle soars with a severed head in its talons next to the royal
chariot (detail). Nimrud, North-West Palace. Beginning of the ninth
century bc.
Figure 4.9b D
isplay and counting of the severed heads. Nimrud, North-West
Palace. Beginning of the ninth century bc.
Chapter 4 49
Figure 4.9c D
isplay and counting of the severed heads (detail). Nimrud, North-
West Palace. Beginning of the ninth century bc.
taking for counting severed heads of relatively small size, as is prevalently

the case in this period, and far smaller than that at the mercy of the eagle38
(Figures 4.9b and 4.9c).
The choice – certainly intentional – to employ two different size scales
in the same figurative representation and in the same context in the scene
depicted on this Neo-Assyrian relief of the early ninth century bc may be
a visual expedient aimed at emphasizing the perceptible difference between
the severed heads in terms of size and value. In this case, which is not unique,
it confirms that the semantic meaning attributed to the size of the “coveted
object” proposed above (see Chapter 2), recurrent in the visual language of
individual cultures of the Ancient Near East in accordance with different
conventions and with different meanings, is identical to that expressed on
the Eblaite “victory panel” of the Early Syrian Period.
The above examples show that the actions of the birds of prey, like the
practice of decapitation itself, are not selective. These birds may appropriate
both anonymous heads and heads of individuals who can probably be iden-
tified as prominent, given the figurative conventions that single them out or
the information of other types that can be inferred.
A final consideration on this theme concerns some passages from the
Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, especially those from the sources of the
ninth century bc from Ashurnasirpal II to Shalmaneser III, in which we read
metaphors describing victorious soldiers who “. . . swoop down on their
prey like birds . . .” or “. . . fall on the enemies like Anzu.”39
The fundamental meaning of these rhetorical images refers back
to visual conventions already developed in the third millennium bc on
the Ebla “victory panel.” Here, the lion-headed eagle with outstretched
wings, the Anzu/Imdugud, the bird that is the attribute and symbol
of Ningirsu, the god of storms in the mythical creation story of Early
Dynastic Mesopotamia, grasps other hybrid beings in its talons, identified
as defeated enemies (see section 4.1, Figure 4.3). Similarly, on the Stele of
Eannatum of Lagash (see section 4.2, Figure 4.4), vultures carry the sev-
ered heads of enemies and mimic (or anticipate) the actions of the human
victors first known in the Syrian milieu.
The Neo-Assyrian sources thus seem to support the interpretative
hypothesis that I have proposed concerning the role of birds of prey as
“co-protagonists” in the exhibition of victory in specific iconological
formulations.
Notes
1 This work will be discussed below in section 4.2.
2 According to Testart, these are in fact dwellings: Testart 2008, pp. 34–36, 38,
note 12, Figures 2–3, where he reports the contested definition by J. Mellaart as
“the sanctuary of the birds of prey.”
3 In contrast to the theory of Mellaart 1967, pp. 167–169, Figure 47, Plates 45,
48–49. On the inappropriate use of the term “war” for conflicts in the Neolithic
Period, see the recent analysis by Müller-Neuhof 2014, and the persuasive final
conclusion, Müller-Neuhof ibid., pp. 547–548.
4 Testart 2008, pp. 33–34, Figures 2–3.
5 Contrasting opinions and the theories of various scholars prompted by Testart’s
new hypothesis, on which many agree, were collected in 2009 in the journal
Paléorient, no. 35.
Chapter 4 51
6 Testart 2008, especially pp. 35–39.
7 The latter is an alternative hypothesis that Testart cautiously keeps open: Testart
2008, p. 39.
8 Brandes 1979, pp. 159 ff., Plate 12; more recently, Boehmer 1999, p. 54, Figure
64. The impression is stratigraphically dated to layer IVa.
9 An interpretation of the jars in the context of the representation will be presented
elsewhere in the analytical examination of the evidence.
10 Matthiae 1995, pp. 277–278.
11 The stele dates to around the mid-twenty-fifth century bc (2460 bc), in line with
the reign of its sponsor: Winter 1985 (2010), pp. 7, 38. The monument presents a
hyperbolic and certainly flattering celebration of Eannatum’s temporary victory
during one phase of the long-standing conflict between the city states of Lagash
and Umma. This conflict over control of water resources, lasting around a cen-
tury and a half, seems to have punctuated the most eventful historical phase of
the conflicts between Mesopotamian city states in the second half of the third mil-
lennium bc, probably due to the patchiness and scarcity of the data, before their
short-lived unification under the sovereign Lugalzaggesi of Uruk and the rapid
rise of Sargon I of Akkad. For an interpretation of the inscription, cf. Cooper
1986, pp. 33–40. On the historical nature of the events represented on the vul-
ture stele, Winter 1985 (2010), pp. 4–6, 11 ff., 17, 19 is already of this opinion,
as is Alster 2003–2004, and the present author, in Dolce 2005, pp. 149–150; cf.
also Nadali 2007, pp. 355–356 and Miglus 2008, p. 231; to the objection by
Miglus ibid., pp. 231–232 that the king could not have fought on the front line
given the obvious need to safeguard the most important political and military fig-
ure, we can respond that on the stele, the actions are narrated in the form of key
events and, more generally, that even if the king is not personally involved, his
role as protagonist is evident, as is also the case on the Neo-Assyrian reliefs and
in the related textual narratives. The preferred viewpoint in Asher-Greve’s recent
reading of the stele is that the monument, in its visual and textual wholeness, is
oriented towards a state of peace, the fundamental objective in this constant and
never fully resolved conflict between the two states of Lagash and Umma, as we
see from the sources. Again according to Asher-Greve, the gods who intervene
in the events and preside over the swearing of a – time-limited – treaty between
the parties are supra-regional in nature, such as Enlil and his wife Ninkhursag:
cf. Asher-Greve 2014, pp. 32–34. In this context, I note, on the one hand, the
hyperbolic presentation of the deed narrated on the stele with respect to the
limited importance of the actual historical events and their recurrence for several
generations, as noted above, and, on the other, the fact that Ningirsu can be
clearly identified in the majestic figure on the other side. The hierarchy of roles
and powers that runs through the images on the two main sides of the monument
between the “Lord” of the city – the patron god – and the ensi of the city – the
sovereign – lead us to believe that the god and goddess involved in the scene are
those that have been proposed for some time and by various scholars.
12 The inscription on the stele does not make detailed reference to the event rep-
resented, but more generically to the long conflict between Lagash and Umma
according to Cooper 1983, pp. 13–14, 45–48. The discrepancy between the rep-
resentation and the text on the stele was noted by Winter 1986, p. 210, and
interpreted by Pollock 1999, p. 184 as resulting from the different forms of com-
munication in text and images in relation to their different recipients, in accordance
with a practice perhaps already employed in the mid-third millennium bc in the
Early Dynastic Period. More generally, Cooper is sceptical about the existence of
genuine correspondences between texts and images in works that include both
and that are of importance in the historical context to which they belong, con-
sidering them instead to be the outcome of figurative repetitions of traditional
literary clichés: Cooper 1990, pp. 45–48. Of a somewhat different opinion is
I. Winter, who some time ago outlined a new reconstruction of the monument,
contextualizing it historically based precisely on the figurative and textual appa-
ratus: cf. Winter 1985 (2010); for some opinions in support of her theory, see
note 11. In my opinion, the inscription on the Stele of Eannatum makes some
clear references to the sequential nature of the acts of war and the associated
procedures adopted by Eannatum and stigmatized in the figurative apparatus of
the work. These include acts ranging from moving against his rival from Umma,
Enakale, to piling up heaps of corpses on the battlefield itself for extinction,
to the erection of the stele in honour of the city god Ningirsu, ostentatiously
celebrated with his image on the monument, and the predictable arrangement
for it to be placed in his temple at Girsu, a chosen place, in agreement with the
considerations on this sanctuary expressed by Winter 1985 (2010), pp. 30, 35.
13 The definition of this side as the “human side” in contrast to the other described
as the “divine side” in Nadali 2007, pp. 355–356, though appealing, does not
seem wholly persuasive given the highly fragmentary nature of the work, where
we also see libation rituals before an enthroned figure of which only the lower
part survives, of controversial and unascertained identity in the interpretations
hitherto proposed, cited by Winter 1985 (2010), pp. 12–13, in an exhaustive
analysis that also recalls the names proposed for the two main sides of the stele
by other scholars and offers an eloquent definition for both, as “narrative” and
“iconic,” respectively: Winter 1985 (2010), pp. 17–18, 34.
14 Cf. note 11 and section 4.2 for subsequent events in the same conflict docu-
mented in textual sources and images.
15 Dolce 2005; the conviction set out there finds support from many other scholars:
cf. note 11.
16 For considerations on this and other images from the palatial reliefs of the ninth
century bc, see section 4.6. A similar condition can be seen, significantly, in the
data from the sources of the royal inscriptions of the third millennium bc and
beyond, where mentions of raptors attacking human victims are absent: cf.
Cooper 2008, p. 78, note 58.
17 This precious figurative and textual evidence comes from seal impressions
stamped on the bullae used to seal doors from official and royal contexts in Ville
II of Mari, the apex of this city whose historical and chronological definition is
still complex but falls within the late Early Dynastic Period or the start of the
period of Akkad: Beyer 2007, pp. 236–237; cf. pp. 249–253 for the cylinder
seal impressions of the lugal Ishqi-Mari. After some analytical comparisons with
figurative works certainly dating to the Early Dynastic III and parallels, in my
opinion more tenuous, with the representation on the Stele of Sargon I of Akkad,
the only certain work of this sovereign given the inscription bearing his name,
Marchetti attributes the statue of king Ishqi-Mari (cf. note 18) to the end of
the Early Dynastic IIIb: Marchetti 2006, pp. 137–138; and alternatively to the
“proto-imperial” period: Marchetti ibid., p. 158; on the other hand, the author
claims that the same two images on the two seal impressions of the king discussed
here present similarities with the Stele of Sargon I, considering them chronologi-
cally close to this work. Marchetti’s examination leaves the issue open, essentially
confirming the time frame proposed by Beyer.
18 As attested by the short inscription with the name and title of the sovereign on
the impression from one of the two original seals: Beyer 2007, p. 249, note 63; on
the other impression from a second royal seal, we also read, alongside the proper
name and rank, the title of representative of the god Enlil: Beyer 2007, p. 253. At
the round table on “L’Iconographie de la guerre au Proche-Orient ancien” held at
the Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditeranée in Lyon in December 2012, D. Beyer
Chapter 4 53
presented some new information on the two impressions from Mari following a
detailed and updated analysis of the outline of the figure of the king that appears
on both, noting that the representations of the same sovereign Ishqi-Mari do not
belong to two different periods of his reign, one as a younger, the other as an
older man; in my opinion, they may relate to the memory of a single victory of
particular importance in the history of Mari: Beyer 2016.
19 In this context, it is worth noting that in the figurative and ideological pro-
gramme of the seals of the lugal Ishqi-Mari where the focus is on the theme of
war and victory over enemies, we see mythical subjects and symbolic elements
that play a role in organizing the event celebrated and its visual communica-
tion, tentatively interpreted by Beyer 2007, pp. 252–253; this is also true of the
hybrid creatures – lion-headed eagles – that punctuate the representation on the
Early Syrian “victory panel” from Ebla (see section 4.1). The presence of scenes
of warfare or of war-related events in the surviving glyptic documentation from
Syria and Mesopotamia, though mentioned by Beyer 2007, p. 252, based on the
collection in Jans, Bretschneider 1998, pp. 167–173, is nonetheless limited to
around 40 impressions. Of these, only five of certain provenance (from Ur, Tell
Brak-Nagar) explicitly represent this theme; they date to between the end of the
Early Dynastic IIIb and the start of the Akkadian Period. In my opinion, we can
identify only a single scene that certainly shows ongoing clashes and the memory
of a battle, in the evidence from Tell Beydar from the area of the royal palace:
Jans, Bretschneider 1998, pp. 158–160, especially p. 158, Plate I, Bey. 1., and p.
164 for the specific mention of this seal impression. The scene represented was
again recently classified in the group of wagon scenes, and is in my opinion the
most exhaustive piece of evidence for this among the glyptics from the Syrian
town: Jans, Bretschneider 2011, pp. 75–77; Jans, Bretschneider 2014, p. 403,
Figures 14, 48.
20 Noted by Beyer 2007, pp. 251–252; for further considerations on the presence
of the severed head on the chariot and the compositional organization of the
representation, cf. Dolce 2014b, p. 202, note 99. On the issue of the sovereigns
of Mari and Ebla as destroyers or victims of their respective enemy city, see the
summary in Charpin 2005; for some considerations on the historical circum-
stances and theories on the destruction of Mature Early Syrian Ebla, see Dolce
2008b, pp. 550–551, note 21. The textual data that have emerged at Mari over
the past decade certainly suggest that this city state was still active after the dis-
appearance of Ebla, which probably fell at the hands of its Mari rivals: cf. Archi,
Biga 2003, pp. 29, 31, 35; and under the leadership of the king of Mari Hida’ar,
according to Charpin 2005. A similar hypothesis on this was advanced by the
present author in 2001, in the paper presented at the International Conference
“From Relative Chronology to Absolute Chronology: The 2nd Millennium BC
in Syria-Palestine” at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, whose proceedings were
published only in 2007: Dolce 2007, p. 172, note 3.
21 In the frenetic choral tapestry of the battle of Til-Tuba, the most celebrated battle
in the images and written sources of all of Ashurbanipal’s victories: in the crucial
phase of the ongoing actions on the field of battle, the severed head of the Elamite
king Teumman appears on the chariot, proudly displayed by an Assyrian soldier.
This is a significant detail that marks a distinction from the solitary display of the
head of the enemy, perhaps the enemy king, on the royal seal impressions from
Mari; in my opinion, it reveals the priority of communicating tactile ownership
of this human remain and not just the performance of the act. For the sequence
under consideration, cf. Barnett et alii 1998, pp. 94–95, Plates 288–289.
22 The identity of the individual who commissioned this work can be determined
with certainty from the albeit short inscription bearing his name; a wide-ranging
examination of the monument was fruitfully conducted by L. Nigro after semi-
nars held by the present author in the 1990s and discussions on official Akkadian
art: Nigro 1997, pp. 367–377; Nigro 1998, pp. 93–100.
23 These considerations and the others that I propose on the theme of birds of
prey for the only monument ascribed to the founder of the dynasty of Akkad do
not concern the chronological attribution of the work, thought by Nigro 1997,
p. 378 to be more recent than the stele with a carved representation of the sovereign
triumphing over a prestigious rival; this attribution does not affect our evaluation
of the programme and ideology of the specific theme tackled in this book.
24 Though a degree of caution is obligatory for the incomplete or missing parts of
the work.
25 Nigro 1997, p. 376.
26 Nigro 1997, p. 377.
27 In around 1780 bc: Charpin 2004, p. 151; I refer to this study by D. Charpin for
the dossier on previous research, the detailed analysis of the historical and politi-
cal context updated with new documents and the state of the art on the Dadusha
stele with particular reference to the exegesis of the inscription (among other
things).
28 Charpin 2004, pp. 152–157, with a critical apparatus and comments on previous
translations and interpretations. After conservation work on the stele, the images
and the long royal inscription that accompanies them describing this historical
event have been restored to conditions of partial legibility.
29 A version contested by Charpin 2004, p. 166 on the basis of the textual data,
demoting Dadusha to co-protagonist for the dispatch of a large contingent of
soldiers; an opposing interpretation is proposed by Nadali 2008, pp. 132–133.
The protagonists of this deed, as the inscription recites, are the king of Eshnunna,
Dadusha, and the more powerful Shamshi-Addu I, king of Ekallatum, tem-
porarily allied for the ambitious conquest of northern Mesopotamia. An
alternative version, so to speak, of this historical event, of considerable politi-
cal importance, can be found in the few figurative and inscribed remains of a
stele from Mardin, where the protagonist and the sponsor of the work is con-
sidered to be Shamshi-Addu I himself; on the primary role of Shamshi-Addu
I in a more ambitious political and territorial plan to expand into northern
Mesopotamia that also includes the conquest of the kingdom of Qabra-Arbela,
cf. Ziegler 2004, pp. 22–23; cf. Moortgat 1969, pp. 72, 84–85, Plates 204, 205,
among the first scholars to develop considerations on and detailed art historical
attributions of the monument; for further and more recent interpretations, cf.
Matthiae 2000, p. 132.
30 For the analysis of the figurative programme and the proposed interpretations
of individual subjects hitherto advanced by various scholars, cf. Nadali 2008,
pp. 133 ff. and bibliography. The second individual in this first register of the
stele is unlikely to be Dadusha again, as Nadali ibid., pp. 135–136, has rightly
noted; we could remark that he seems to belong to a different level of representa-
tion and communication within the figurative programme of the work, albeit in
the role of interlocutor.
31 The proposal that there are nine heads instead of ten, as previously assumed
by Miglus 2003, p. 401, was persuasively advanced by Charpin 2004, p. 158,
note 14, based on the mention in the eponym of a text from Mari of nine kings
defeated in exactly the year of the conflict celebrated on the stele, as noted by
Ziegler; the term “kings” used for the nine in the Mari document supports my
proposed identification of the heads present on the stele of Dadusha as “promi-
nent.” Cf. also note 34.
32 Charpin 2004, p. 154, 5.
Chapter 4 55
33 Charpin 2004, p. 158.
34 The identity of these lords, deprived of their heads in battle, remains an open
question: the generic mention in the inscription of kings and allies of the defeated
and decapitated sovereign is followed by a passage that reads “. . . j’ai étendu sur
eux le silence,” according to the reading of Charpin 2004, p. 154, 5; from other
textual sources, we learn that Dadusha spared some members of the defeated
king’s family: Charpin 2004, pp. 165–166, note 53; this fact, if true, is not
contemplated in the inscription on the stele by the victorious protagonist who,
comprehensibly, is keen to stress his complete victory over his enemies and their
annihilation.
35 Meuszyński 1981, p. 21, Plate 2, slab B11, upper register, slab B3, lower register
(Ashurnasirpal II, North-West Palace of Nimrud); Barnett et alii 1998, pp. 94–95,
Plates 297, 299, upper register (Ashurbanipal, South-West Palace of Nineveh).
36 Barnett et alii 1998, pp. 94–95, Plates 297, 298, detail of slab 3 from room
XXXIII from the cycle of reliefs sculpted during the reign of Ashurbanipal.
37 Meuszyński 1981, pp. 20–21, Plate 2, slab B6, upper register. The bird’s partici-
pation in the exhibition of the severed heads is also alluded to by its grip on the
“coveted object” and its anthropomorphically boastful attitude.
38 Meuszyński 1981, p. 20, Plate 2, slab B6, left-hand side of upper register.
39 Grayson 1991, text A.O.101.1, p. 204 (33–38), where Ashurnasirpal II in per-
son is the “hero” who soars over his enemies and the heaps of corpses, and
who is thus recognizable as a bird of prey; cf. pp. 197–198 (58b–69a); p. 210
(103b–110a), where by contrast it is his soldiers who hover like birds over their
terrified adversaries or like the bird of the storm, the lion-headed eagle, the
Sumerian Imdugud. Similar metaphors appear in texts A.O.101.17, pp. 241, 248
(81b–90), p. 250 (60b–83a) and A.O.101.19, p. 260 (70–77a). These inscrip-
tions were placed on official monuments in Nimrud, including some of the
most famous of Ashurnasirpal II’s reign, such as steles (nos 17, 19), or carved
on the walls of cult places (no. 1), as in the temple of the god Ninurta, a major
deity with characteristics resembling those of the Sumerian god Ningirsu, also a
Lord of War. A similar metaphor comparing the victors to Anzu/Imdugud fall-
ing on the enemy is found on the inscriptions on the Balawat Gate, a work
of Shalmaneser III in the mid-ninth century bc: Grayson 1996, text A.O.102.5,
pp. 29–30 (3b–6); for the representations on the embossed bands placed on the
cedarwood door leaves, see section 3.3. At the site of Balawat, a short distance
from the first Neo-Assyrian capital, Ashurnasirpal II had already had two gates
erected with bronze-embossed bands presenting figured decorations, including
some on military themes and accompanied by inscriptions, placed in his local
Palace and the Temple of Mamu: cf. Curtis, Tallis 2008.
Chapter 5
5.1. Moving through space and time

One feature shared by some of the procedures connected to decapitation
after the accomplishment of this definitive act is the mobility of the head
through space and time.
The spoil par excellence taken from the enemy, the focal point for all of
the individual’s energies, positive and negative, and for his potential, may
be removed from the place of execution, presumably in its immediate after-
math, and transferred to another destination as part of the “booty” of war
(see Chapter 3).1
The transportation of the severed head from one place to another is a
manifest image in Syria in the third millennium bc, recurrent in the visual
documentation of the turn of the second to first millennium bc and prevalent
during the first millennium bc in the art of the capitals and provincial towns
of the Neo-Assyrian empire. The formulations, contexts and meanings of
this procedure are not always identical in every case and can sometimes be
distinguished thanks to “details” of the visual message.
This act connected to decapitation is the catalyst for actions developed
in the representations of war, alongside the parade of living prisoners
displayed in fetters, the first image to populate the depictions of the Proto-
Historical Period from Mesopotamia to Elam.2 It prevails on the official
monuments of the sovereigns of the city states of the Early Dynastic Period,
from Mesopotamia to Syria, and of the dynasty of Akkad.3
The mobility of some heads and their destination are sometimes described
in the textual sources, and we find mentions of the procedure starting from
the most ancient documents, which we have frequently referenced here, in
the Royal Archives of Early Syrian Ebla.4
It is evident that in some important instances, the mobility of the “cov-
eted object” and accounts of its journey from one place to another becomes
an event that confers added value on the definitive act of decapitation. This
is a consequence of the political and ideological importance ascribed to the
objective of placing the remain in its designated place and, in some special
cases, of the attention devoted to it during its transferral.
Chapter 5 57
Figure 5.1a A
ccumulation and counting of the severed heads in the accounts of the
victory (detail). Nineveh, South-West Palace. Mid-seventh century bc.
On a more general level, in the Neo-Assyrian visual representations

(Figures 5.1a–c) the transportation of severed heads from the place of the
massacre to that of accumulation and quantification, depicted in numerous
Figure 5.1b A
ccumulation and counting of the severed heads in the accounts of the
victory (detail). Nineveh, South-West Palace. Beginning of the seventh
century bc.
cases, in my opinion also holds illustrative value, aimed at maximizing the

extent of the victory.
The insistent presence of this “inanimate and coveted object” that runs
through the dynamic images of battles and multiple acts of war nonetheless
succeeds in increasing its value and keeping attention focused on this icon
of triumph.
Chapter 5 59
Figure 5.1c A
ccumulation and counting of the severed heads in the accounts of
the victory. Nineveh, South-West Palace. Beginning of the seventh
century bc.
5.2. How does the head travel?

The mobility of the head, which travels over distances great or small to be
placed in a variety of locations, is achieved using human and other means
of transport, as we have already mentioned, connected to the different aims
of exhibiting this spoil.
The principal means of transport is the soldiers who remove this “cov-
eted object” from the battlefield and carry it by hand, or the emissaries of
allies of the victor who aspire to the role of favourites and deliver this incon-
trovertible proof of the enemy’s annihilation to the sovereign in the form of
a “gift.” Heads are also transported by the allies of the defeated king, forced
to carry the heads of the supreme leader and of other prominent individuals
attached to their own body, in a macabre and humiliating journey involving
halts and temporary displays of these precious remains.5
Another form of transportation, this time choral in nature, is the dra-
matic procession of soldiers, musicians and singers that accompanies the
prominent heads of enemies on a “journey” punctuated by stopovers and
rituals to their final destination. Within the hierarchy of power, this treat-
ment was probably reserved for figures of equal rank to their victorious
rivals.6 Finally, birds of prey also become a means of transport when they
seize these remains and carry them elsewhere.
The most effective means of display, and of particular communicative
potency, is the chariot, used to carry the heads of important individuals,
exposed to public view during a journey that may cover long distances as a
sort of moveable icon of the adversary’s definitive annihilation.
Figure 5.2 T
he head of Teumman displayed in the heat of the ongoing battle
(detail). Nineveh, South-West Palace. Mid-seventh century bc.
This means of circulating and exhibiting the “coveted object” forms a

central component of both of the depictions of war on the royal sealings
of Mari-Ville II, and thus already belonged to the iconological repertoire
and ideological programme of visual communication in this Early Dynastic
metropolis of Syria7 (see section 4.3, Figures 4.5a and 4.5b).
The chariot is again central to the final act in the circulation of the head of
the Elamite king Teumman in the saga that unfolds on the reliefs depicting
the battle of Til-Tuba. In this case, the mobility of this spoil of the powerful
adversary makes use of a variety of vehicles and develops in several tem-
poral and symbolic stages, becoming a sort of synthesis of the concurrent
forms taken by the final journey of the “coveted object.”
A first soldier, responsible for the decapitation, displays the trophy with
evident pride, advancing through the thronging crowd of soldiers while the
battle is still underway (Figure 5.2). Teumman’s head then passes from hand
to hand until it eventually comes to be transported on a chariot, which is not
that belonging to the chief king. This detail may serve to underline the insult,
compounding the humiliation to which the Elamite king was subjected through
the acts preceding his execution, of not just having lost his head at the hands of
a “common soldier,”8 but of making his final journey on a “common chariot”9
(Figure 5.3).
Chapter 5 61
Figure 5.3 T
he head of Teumman transported on the chariot (detail). Nineveh,
South-West Palace. Mid-seventh century bc.
The final act of circulating Teumman’s head on the chariot that was to
take it to the capital of the empire represents the culmination of a dense
succession of events, in space and time, within the epic account of the bat-
tle and the victory.10 This is a scene of strong visual impact with enormous
communicative significance, enhanced by the importance of the specific
identity of the individual who “has lost his head.”11
Notes
1 Even for the most exhaustive repertoire of images, that of the Neo-Assyrian
empire, it is impossible to state or ascertain whether the entire “booty” of sev-
ered heads was managed in accordance with this practice or not. However, the
aforementioned countless references in the texts of the Assyrian sovereigns to
hundreds of remains of this type suggest an intentional obliteration.
2 Cf. Dolce 2014a, pp. 240–241 and note 8, Figures 1a (from Tepe Gawra), 1c
(from Susa).
3 From the slab of Palace A at Kish to the Standard of Ur to the important evidence
from the Pre-Sargonic Palaces of Mari and the workshops where inlays (an art
in which Mari was pre-eminent) were made, to the “victory panel” from Ebla
at the start of its predominance, up to the steles of the first and second genera-
tions of sovereigns of Akkad: Dolce 1978, pp. 78–80, 185 ff., Plates IX, X, XXI;
Margueron 2004, pp. 290–291, Figures 279, 280; Margueron 2014, pp. 267 ff.,
284–288; Matthiae 1995, Plate p. 274; Amiet 1975, Plate 98; Moortgat 1969,
Plates 134–138.
4 On this, see section 3.2; for the data from the Ebla Archives, cf. Archi 1998,
pp. 388–389; Archi 2005, pp. 88, 89–90; Biga 2008, p. 307; Archi 2010, p. 32;
Tonietti 2013, pp. 161–169.
5 Like king Dunanu, represented in the epic triumph of Ashurbanipal: Barnett et alii
1998, pp. 96–97, Plates 304–305; Dolce 2014a, pp. 249–250; cf. section 3.3.
6 Villard 2008, pp. 258 ff. has painted a compelling picture of the atmosphere and
meaning of the striking and solemn triumphal ceremony in which the head of the
Elamite king Teumman is always at the centre of the action and the stages punctu-
ating the long journey from the battlefield to Nineveh and Arbela; cf. Chapter 3,
note 29.
7 We ask ourselves if decapitation, though practiced and attested on the royal glyp-
tics, were not displayed in the visual communication in the form already known
at Ebla also at Mari, the site that has yielded the largest production of inlaid
panels on war-related themes of the entire Early Dynastic Period; for an overview
of the production, cf. Margueron 2004, pp. 290 ff.; cf. note 3. We also ask about
the absence in the images of evidence for this way of displaying severed heads in
contemporary Mesopotamia. One fact, at the current state of the evidence, is that
some key visual aspects of the exhibition of the severed head during the follow-
ing centuries in Mesopotamia can be traced back to the Syrian milieu of two of
the most important kingdoms of the mid-third millennium bc, Ebla and Mari.
8 Barnett et alii 1998, p. 95.
9 Watanabe 2008, p. 602, note 6, remarks that the structure of the chariot used to
transport the head of Teumman looks Elamite, in my opinion shedding light on
further aspects of the visual formulation: what we see is a double booty, the char-
iot and the “coveted object,” and a double insult, the head of the king displayed
and placed on a chariot belonging to the vanquished by the Assyrian victors. This
is a sort of parable of the condition suffered by the royal head of Teumman itself
when it circulates hanging from the neck of one of his faithful allies, Dunanu.
This additional detail distinguishes the visual message from that which, under
similar circumstances and many centuries earlier, appears on the royal victory
seals of the late Early Dynastic Period of the king of Mari Ishqi-Mari, discussed
above, where we see a severed head, probably that of the defeated king, dis-
played on the chariot of the victorious king. I expressed the opinion some time
ago, based on the observation of the narrative contexts in the most comprehen-
sive scenes, that the chariots represented in the celebrations of victories in war
already in Early Dynastic Mesopotamia are to be considered, symbolically and
factually, the moveable seat of victorious royalty: Dolce 2010, p. 50, note 28.
10 In the deliberately rushed narration, among the clashing of arms and the shouts
of the contenders, of the battle on the River Ulai and the victory, preserved in
the historical memory though ephemeral in terms of the fate of the Neo-Assyrian
empire, the various factors that concur to develop the rapid sequence in time and
space of the actions and their consequences within the figurative framework are
insightfully captured from different perspectives by Bahrani 2004, pp. 116 ff.;
Bahrani 2008, pp. 54–55; and Watanabe 2008, pp. 602 ff.
11 This form of mobile display, so to speak, of the severed head and its temporary
placement considered above appear to be significant details in the motivations
underlying the communication of the performance of this definitive act against
the important enemy rather than a “common detail” in Mesopotamian represen-
tations of the theme as proposed by Miglus 2008, p. 234, evoking the images on
the seal impressions of King Ishqi-Mari of Mari; for the different considerations
of the present author on the royal glyptics of Mari, the earliest known evidence
for a severed head placed on a chariot in the context of war and for its long-
lasting importance in the visual communication up to the Neo-Assyrian Period,
Chapter 5 63
see section 4.3. The conclusion of the media operation represented by Teumman’s
journey before reaching the gardens of the North Palace of Ashurbanipal can, in
my opinion, be identified in the ritual act of the sovereign himself, grasping in his
hands the head of the Elamite king at the gates of Nineveh, offered to him by the
soldiers; he offers it in turn as a gift to the divine powers, pouring libations of
wine, as a passage of the text on the celebration of the victory mentioned above
recounts (section 3.2, note 21); this is the only surviving trace of the lost relief
from which it came.
Chapter 6
6.1. “Other” decapitations in times of war

Many aspects of the procedures and meanings relating to decapitation in
the visual communication of the Ancient Near East remain to be explored,
though I believe that one underlying fact emerges as a selective priority.
To recap the remarks made at the start and throughout this study, decap-
itation is a stand-alone procedure in the visual communication and one that
had an enormous emotional impact; it holds a complex meaning connected
to both the passive and active subjects involved in this act.
As indicated by the case studies examined here, the enduring evoca-
tive power of the head severed from its body, an inanimate yet not a silent
remain, and its effects on the collective memory tell us that a sort of original
sacredness underlies the act of cutting off the head, conferring on this prac-
tice the hallmarks of a form of ritual.
This connotation feeds this definitive act, leading to the loss of the head
even outside the most visible context, that of war, and comes to affect
“other” images, of mortals and gods.
The practice of intentionally mutilating images of gods and mortals has
been known for some time and is a long-standing subject of research and
debate,1 with some studies focusing specifically on the damage inflicted on
faces and on the decapitation of statues,2 up to the recent work on icono-
clasm that contains much food for thought on the meaning of this act.3
The aspect that I wish to highlight here concerns the parallels to be found
between the decapitation – and the actions connected to the loss of the
head – of prominent human individuals and the decapitation of statues of
mortals and gods, both of which are catalysts for the vital energies; the scope
of our analysis will be limited to those statues involved in some way in histori-
cal events of war.
Are the heads severed from statues of mortals and gods also a means
of conveying specific and long-lasting meanings and values, like the sev-
ered heads of illustrious enemies defeated in battle and represented in the
images?
Chapter 6 65
The prevailing opinion among scholars is that the destructive act of
decapitating statues and images in general is motivated primarily by politi-
cal and ideological considerations.4 However, as concerns this widespread
belief, it is worth noting that, among the various ways of demolishing images
in accordance with a very long-lasting practice,5 in the Ancient Near East
the removal of the head, in my opinion, remains the final and definitive act,
not “negotiable” with other types of damage, in full agreement with that
“magic and performative” significance of Mesopotamian images identified
by Z. Bahrani.6
However, motivations of a different order appear to underlie the deposi-
tion of headless statues in “secondary” contexts in the cultic and religious
sphere, as we can deduce from the progress of studies on the known docu-
mentation from Mesopotamia and as we can assume based on the data from
the most recent excavations at Mari.7
Among the treatments reserved in times of war for the statues of promi-
nent individuals from defeated countries, those of sovereigns and deities
were deported, sometimes decapitated and often displayed in the lands of
the victors.8
More specifically, we know from the Neo-Assyrian texts9 that the statues
of defeated kings were mutilated and taken from Elam to Assyria alongside
those of other sovereigns of that country, deported from Susa and from
other sites.10 How could we fail to see these practices as a parallel to the
transportation and exhibition of the severed heads of illustrious defeated
enemies by means of the procedures described above?
A different fate befalls the important statues and images of protagonists
of Mesopotamian political history who make the inverse journey, migrating
from Mesopotamia to Elam with the Elamite sovereigns, from the Stele of
Naram-Sin of Akkad to that of Hammurabi of Babylon.11
From ancient times, the “journey” made by very famous artworks from
their land of origin to that of their temporary invaders is in itself a way of
displaying a special booty that, after reaching its forced destination, becomes
a historical and political legacy commemorating the past glory of the enemy
country, acquired by the conquerors and exhibited in its official seats.12
This work of “safeguard” (of the remains of monuments belonging to the
illustrious rival) demonstrates political acumen and enhances the prestige
of the victor, who appropriates the images of the enemy, now no longer a
threat, rather than obliterating them. He thus implicitly extends his control
to the past of the Land of Sumer and of Akkad to which he has laid waste.
This operation is the antithesis and the mirror image of the destructuring
of images and has the same objective: to annihilate the existence, the cred-
ibility and the long-term prestige of a powerful adversary.
One interesting fact that has recently emerged is that in the case of statues,
of both gods and mortals, decapitation is often associated with the infliction
of specific damage on the face.13 This act marks a distinction from the standard
treatment reserved for the decapitated heads of human enemies, exhibited in
various ways before they reach their final destination but, judging from the
images, not subjected to further damage.
The disfigurement of the faces of statues in association with decapitation,
and according to the inscriptions possibly preceding this practice,14 is a way
of further cancelling out the recognizability of the individual represented,
with the aim of obliterating all traces of their identity.
The recent results of N. May’s analysis of the decapitation of statues15
are in agreement with my own considerations, advanced some time ago,
concerning the removal of the head as the only definitive way of reducing
the other to something inanimate, lacking life, both for mortals and for the
“living statues” of humans and gods.16
6.2. What happens to the severed heads of statues?

Some passages chosen from among the instances described in the written
sources help to shed light on the parallels between the actions connected
to “losing one’s head” for human individuals and for statues of gods and
mortals, in the context of war-related events and the mobility of both the
former (humans) and the latter (statues).
At the time of the third dynasty of Ur, in the last century of the third
millennium bc, the founder-king Ur-Namma, after acquiring control over
Lagash, seems to have had the heads cut off the statues of the last ensi of
Lagash Namaḫni and of his wife Ninḫedu, and their names obliterated; he
then had the heads taken to the capital of his kingdom at Ur and ordered
that they be displayed on the city gate in public view.17
It seems clear that the decapitation of royal statues (sometimes regardless
of gender, as in the latter case, where the role of the individual prevails),
the transportation of the heads from Lagash to Ur and finally their display
on the city gate of the capital of the largest Mesopotamian state of the last
century of the third millennium bc are media operations of the greatest effi-
cacy and belong to that paradigm of actions and objectives identified for the
severed heads of prominent individuals in this study.
The treatment reserved by the invaders for the statue of the goddess
Nin.e’-iga at Ur is analytically described in the “Lamentation Over the
Destruction of Sumer and Ur” in solemn tones.18 It was first decapitated,
its body abandoned “in the dust” next to the divine throne (correctly
suggesting that the goddess was seated) and then deprived of the horns
on her headgear – the attribute distinctive of the rank of deity – and of
the symbols identifying her as a fertility goddess linked particularly to
the cycle of milk products. The systematic nature of these acts and
of their sequence reveals the extent to which the image was perceived
to be “living” and has the same objective of demolishing the identity of
Chapter 6 67
Figure 6.1a Lupad of Umma. Girsu. Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries bc.
the individual represented by the statues noted above. In several cases,

decapitation is combined with the infliction of damage on the face or the
removal of the distinctive marks of “personhood,” in this case the symbols
of a goddess.
In the context of prominent statues, and not just of sovereigns, some of
the many decapitations presumed or considered to be intentional seem to
me to be more evidently deliberate because they can be supported by the
relevant historical events. Again, these took place in the state of Lagash over
the space of a few centuries in the third millennium bc, according to the
inscriptions still to be found upon the works themselves.
Figure 6.1b Lupad of Umma. Girsu. Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries bc.
The head of the violated statue of the high functionary Lupad of Umma
(Figures 6.1a and 6.1b) found at Girsu lay separate and at a distance from
its other remains, and its mutilation is considered to be clearly inten-
tional.19 From the inscription on the rest of the dismembered statue, we
learn that Lupad, probably thanks to his role as a functionary in the field
recording office of Umma, owned various parcels of land precisely in the
territory of Lagash, a circumstance that justifies the presence of his statue
at Girsu.20 We can therefore reasonably assume that the image of this pow-
erful functionary rightfully resided in the state of Lagash during a period
when Umma prevailed in the long-standing border conflict between the
two city states.
It is possible that Lupad was decapitated by the Lagashites themselves21
during the alternating fortunes of the conflict that also underlies the entire
programme of the Stele of Eannatum.22 In any case, the act itself neces-
sarily requires a clear, albeit temporary, predominance of Lagash over its
rival Umma, rather than a simple incursion of the enemy into the con-
tested territory of the Gu’edena. This is true given both the importance at
Umma as in the state of Lagash of this individual, decapitated in the form
of his statue, and the selective nature of the other mutilations inflicted on
the work.
From Lupad’s story, we can grasp a detail, perhaps purely coincidental,
of the treatment of his statue: in place of the usual display that in various
forms follows the decapitation of individuals in the images and the textual
Chapter 6 69
sources, and also of statues themselves as noted above, the statue of the
high representative of the enemy power was subjected to the definitive act
of decapitation, but perhaps not also to the display of the head, considered
simply an object to be obliterated.
The example of Lupad may tell us that the circumstances under which
the events occurred and the meaning taken on by a specific decapitation,
aside from that of annihilation, may lead to variations in the value of this
spoil, from a “coveted object” to an obliterated object.
The headless statue of the ensi Enmetena (Figure 6.2), originally
erected at Lagash as its inscription recites, was found at Ur23 whence it
Figure 6.2 Enmetena of Lagash. Ur. Second half of the twenty-fifth century bc.
was probably taken during the temporary alliance of this powerful city
state of the Early Dynastic Period with Umma, again during the long bor-
der conflict between Umma and the state of Lagash that we have already
mentioned on several occasions.24 After arriving at Ur, it was decapitated,
as convincingly proposed some time ago by L. Woolley.25
Were the striking gesture of decapitating Enmetena’s statue truly the
work of the momentary victor, the king of Ur, I advance the hypothesis that
the fate of the stone head of the ensi of Lagash might be identical to that
of the heads of the statues of the ensi Namaḫni and his wife at the time of
Ur-Namma, some centuries later, again in Ur:26 to be hung up and displayed
on the city gate.
The statues plausibly ascribed to the Period of Akkad offer significant evi-
dence for the act of decapitation. Specifically, I refer to two famous heads,
both found in Assyria: one at Assur and the other at Nineveh.
The head from Assur (Figure 6.3) was deliberately severed from the
remains of its body in antiquity and the latter were found at the same site,
according to the prevailing unanimous opinion.27 These two sets of remains
lay in two different sacred areas of the city: the head in the temple of the
god Assur, the other remains in the temple of Anu-Adad.28 Finally, the study
of the work conducted by E. Klengel Brandt has ascertained that all the
remains belonged to a single image, perhaps that of Manishtusu, son of
Sargon I and his second heir to the throne.29
While the scattering of the remains can certainly be explained by the
attack on the city of Assur and its consequent devastation by the Elamite
invaders, the same cannot be said for the discovery of the dismembered
statue in two sacred places. I consider it likely, as has previously been pro-
posed,30 that it was originally placed in the religious area where part of the
body still lay. The already decapitated and disfigured head of this statue
was moved, at a certain point in the history of the site, to the city temple
of the god Assur, a final resting place of maximum prestige, according to
J. Reade’s convincing reconstruction.31
We can deduce that the royal statue, if this is what it was, originally
stood in a temple in Assur, and was at some point attacked by the enemy;
its dismembered parts were then deliberately subjected to different fates.32
One part, the body, was obliterated, while the other, the head, was an
object of reverence, perhaps bordering on veneration, and was once again
transported from one (sacred) place to another, the house of the supreme
god Assur.
In my opinion, placing this royal effigy in the temple of the god Assur
thus has additional meanings that broaden the motivations for this act:
the affirmation of continuity expressed by residing in a temple, as it origi-
nally did; and the legitimacy of cohabiting in the ritual space that confers
power on the sovereign, through his image, thanks to his interference in
Chapter 6 71
Figure 6.3 Head of an Akkadian sovereign. Assur. Mid-twenty-third century bc.
the sacred sphere, as I. Winter has long claimed for the royal statuary of
Mesopotamia.33
The very famous head from Nineveh is all that survives of a monumental
copper statue, the rest of whose body was melted down.34 Its exact find spot
in the area surrounding the Temple of Ishtar is still controversial,35 as are
the date and those responsible for its decapitation, considered intentional
and certainly a target of iconoclasm given the deliberate and multiple forms
of damage suffered by the head.36
Various theories have been advanced on the timing and on those responsible
for reducing the statue to its head alone, and especially on its rediscovery at
Nineveh, which may have been either the original home of the intact image
or the final destination of this illustrious remain.37 Two aspects are of inter-
est to us here. First, the decapitated head of the royal Akkadian statue is in
any case a “contentious” relic. It may have been damaged but not destroyed
by the Elamites – if they were indeed responsible for the mutilation after the
collapse of Akkad on the eastern side of the empire in the third millennium
bc – and then later displayed or buried.38 Equally, it may have been defaced by
the Babylonians, if they were the perpetrators of this extremely striking act; in
this case, the head would also be the annihilated symbol of their oldest enemy
on the definitive fall of the last Neo-Assyrian capital.39 Second, regardless of
the historical moment at which it was dismembered, in my opinion it remains
most likely that the statue’s original location was Nineveh, again in a sacred
area of prestigious tradition from as early as the third millennium bc described
as being among the major constructions of Manishtusu of Akkad himself by
later and reliable sources of the Amorite sovereign Shamshi-Addu I, in the early
second millennium bc: the temple of the most important female deity Ishtar,
a prominent member of the astral triad that protected the dynasty of Akkad.40
6.3. Moving through space and time

From the examples considered here, drawn from the textual sources and
the archaeological evidence and concerning statues of individuals of vary-
ing rank subjected to decapitation, we can deduce that the removal of the
head and its transportation from one place to another mirrors aspects of the
treatment inflicted on particularly prominent human individuals defeated
in times of war and documented in images and inscriptions: on some occa-
sions, this figurative canon seems to be applied in reverse.
Indeed, it is the severed head of the defeated human enemy, and not his
body as well, that circulates from one place to another to reach various
destinations of differing communicative significance, as we have seen for
the images examined from the broad time span under consideration. By
contrast, the “living statues,” sometimes damaged but not anonymous, an
object of booty, were transported to the home of the victor and, albeit under
temporal circumstances that are difficult to guess at, definitively deprived of
their identity and energy through decapitation.41
On some of the statues, we can note the presence of remains of inscrip-
tions, erased or damaged but not completely obliterated. In my opinion, this
may suggest that simply damaging the texts accompanying the images was
not considered independently crucial for the “final solution” of annihilat-
ing the status and visibility of the enemy. The act that ensured the definitive
obliteration of the existence of human beings, as of the “living statues” of
gods and mortals, remained that of “losing their head.”42
Chapter 6 73
Numerous variables and analogies exist in the practice and meanings of
the decapitation inflicted on human beings and on images of mortals and
gods in the areas of the Ancient Near East for which we have certain visual
and textual evidence between the third and first millennia bc. A remarkable
shared feature is the fact that this “inanimate object,” the flesh and blood
head of the enemy or that of the image of the king or god, often becomes
a “moveable artefact” at the wishes of others; it travels through space and
time and continues in some way to engage with the actions of the living until
it reaches its final resting place.
6.4. Annihilation/catharsis
It was suggested some time ago that the motivation underlying the act of
decapitation is to provide certainty for oneself and everyone else of the irre-
versible annihilation of the enemy before the world, to be understood as that
of one’s own subjects, enemies, faithful and dubious allies, and other poten-
tial or already imminent enemies; equally, perhaps, the violence inflicted on
the enemy may have been aimed at giving certainty above all to one’s own
subjects.43
The theory that certainty for oneself and trust in the stability of one’s own
world is born out of the assurance of the enemy’s physical annihilation and the
obliteration of their hostile energy, concentrated in the focal point of the indi-
vidual, the head, is taken even further by J. J. Glassner. In light of the mythical
literature,44 he argues that the severed head, once it becomes so, deprived of
the power to direct antagonistic energies at the predominant adversary, emits
an inverse propitiatory force with apotropaic effects;45 I would add that this
force thus becomes a new and positive energy for the victor.
This way of interpreting the arc of potential of the severed head digs
deep into the complex dynamics surrounding the “coveted object,” a driver
of opposing and concurrent forces involving the authors of and the partici-
pants in the act of decapitation and its outcomes. From this perspective, I
can now view in a different light the heads displayed on trees, on the gates
and walls of the victorious city, and those in the “garden of Eden” of the
palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh; and on the tower of the city walls of
the Judaean city of Bethulia rendered free by Judith. A less terrifying light,
perhaps fed more by the ritual and cathartic significance that this act may
have taken on in some archaic cultures of the Near East.
Notes
1 Starting from the pioneering considerations of Brandes 1980, which already
contain many significant elements of a reflection on this subject, summed up
in the author’s own words: “Quelles statues subisssaient ce triste sort? Quand,
comment et pourquoi la destruction a-t-elle eu lieu?” and again: “. . . un des
problèmes fondamentaux est de trouver et de définir des critères infallibles pour
distinguer une mutilation fortuite d’une destruction faite intentionellement,” in
addition to many other crucial points already discussed in the same study, such
as the destinies of the deported statues of gods: Brandes ibid., pp. 31 ff. This was
followed over the next three decades by numerous publications on the practice
of partially demolishing images and on their fairly scanty find conditions, includ-
ing already Jonker 1995, and in the 2000s from Glassner 2006 to Bunnens 2008,
and Suter 2010; see the exhaustive and up-to-date bibliography in May 2012,
pp. 1–2, note 1.
2 Like the studies by Kaim 2000 and May 2010, forerunners of or preludes to the
vast collective study on the destruction of images and written texts also covering
the Ancient Near East; cf. note 3.
3 Edited by N.N. May, Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near
East and Beyond. The Oriental Institute Dedicates this Volume to the Memory
of Eleanor Guralnick 1929–2012 (OIS 8), Chicago 2012; for an overview of
research and the publications by various scholars preceding this work see May
2012, pp. 2–3.
4 As we see most recently also in the studies devoted to iconoclasm in the afore-
mentioned volume (cf. note 3) where May 2012, pp. 7 ff. herself discusses this
and a whole section of papers (the second) is developed in this light. The combi-
nation of different orders of motivation leading to acts of iconoclasm in general
is, however, opportunely stressed by May ibid., p. 3.
5 And of equally broad reach as we can deduce from the cultures and areas consid-
ered in the volume, mainly in the ancient East from Mesopotamia to Egypt, but
not exclusively, for a diachronic view of the phenomenon.
6 Bahrani 2004, p. 118; Bahrani 2008, especially p. 53; the unique nature of this
act and at the same time the complexity of its meanings are already perceived by
Nylander 1980a, p. 331.
7 For a well-argued reflection on this, cf. May 2010, pp. 106, 111, who believes that
the groups of statues of worshippers from the Early Dynastic temples of Khafagia
(Tutub) and of Eshnunna (Tell Asmar) were prevalently decapitated in antiquity;
considerations on this were advanced by the present author in Dolce 2016. The
debate, still underway, makes use of the analytical reconsideration of the group
of statues buried together in Square Temple I at Eshnunna in the critical study
by Evans on the stratigraphic sequence and the re-examination of the ceramic
materials from this sacred area for the chronology of the Early Dynastic Period of
Mesopotamia; she dates the deposition of the 12 votive statues to no later than the
Early Dynastic I: Evans 2007, pp. 623–625. This attribution confirms the propos-
als already advanced by various scholars, from B. Hrouda to E. Porada: on this,
see Butterlin 2011, in press, note xxx; Butterlin 2014, pp. 605–628. Marchetti’s
chronological interpretation of this deposit, based on the stratigraphic sequence
of the Square Temple that can be reconstructed, but on which some doubts per-
sist, goes in the same direction: Marchetti 2006, pp. 26–28. The more exhaustive
stratigraphic sequence of the Temple of Inanna at Nippur for layers VIII and
VIIB made it possible to contextualize the four favissae some time ago, and more
recently to suggest a revised chronology for the statues they contained, based on
a stylistic comparison: Marchetti 2006, pp. 50–51. On the nature and the differ-
entiated function of the four favissae of the Temple of Inanna at Nippur, see the
theory advanced some time ago by the present author in Dolce 2008c, shared by
Butterlin 2011 in press, note xxix, xlviii; I wish to thank the author for having
provided me with the hitherto unpublished data from his research.
8 Cf. Kaim 2000 and May 2010 for the proven deliberate mutilation and decapita-
tion of statues of mortals and gods.
Chapter 6 75
9 Exemplary is the passage from an inscription of the last famous Neo-Assyrian
sovereign, Ashurbanipal, describing the individual mutilations inflicted on the
statue of an Elamite king and detailing the reasons for them, and its transporta-
tion from Susa to Assyria: cf. Borger 1996, pp. 54–55, (prism K3082) and the
translation by May 2010, pp. 108–109.
10 See already Kaim 2000 on this.
11 It is worth noting that, in contrast to Mesopotamian customs, the Elamite kings
brought the works, including statues, to Susa in the conditions in which they
found themselves at the point of their forced removal from their original site for
public display; Mesopotamian statues on human and divine subjects migrated
from Mesopotamia to Elam, and only in part during the Middle Assyrian Period;
cf. Kaim 2000, p. 515.
12 A list of the enormous booty of works taken from Mesopotamia by the Elamite
sovereigns and transferred to Susa has been compiled by Potts 1999, p. 235,
Plate 7.9. The significance of this booty, once displayed, increased its value in
the collective memory of the deeds of the Elamite sovereigns, and conversely
decreased the prestige of the original protagonists of the deeds they celebrated.
Paradigmatic examples of this are the two Akkadian royal statues of the second
generation and even the Stele of Naram-Sin, which were actually dedicated by
the Elamite sovereign Shutruk-Nakhunte I in the temple of the god Inshushinak
at Susa: cf. most recently Westenholz 2012, p. 98; for one of the headless stat-
ues, cf. Tallon 1993. This attitude of the Elamite sovereigns towards the most
important figurative works of Mesopotamia was also recently noted by May
2012, p. 13. The return to their original home of statues, mainly of gods, from
the place to which they had been taken by enemies, is a theme already present in
the Mesopotamian textual sources of the third millennium bc: cf. Woods 2012,
pp. 36 ff. for a select sample of the relevant inscriptions.
13 May 2010, pp. 108 ff.
14 Section 5.2 and note 18.
15 May 2010, pp. 109, 111.
16 On the occasion of the journée d’étude “la guerre en tête” organized by the
Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale and by the Collège de France in 2005, the
proceedings of which were published in the Cahiers d’Anthropologie Sociale 2
(2006): Dolce 2006, p. 33, note 1. The meaning of images of the Mesopotamian
kings already before the repertoire of statues of Gudea of Lagash, a sovereign
active in the last century of the third millennium bc, which represents one of the
most exhaustive examples, lies in the fact that they were not inanimate images,
but direct recipients of complex rituals divided into three separate phases, “con-
secration, installation, maintenance,” studied in an exemplary way by Winter
1992 (2010).
17 Jonker 1995, p. 78, note 23; Westenholz 2012, p. 89, note 3 for the bibliography
of sources. The dominance over Lagash by the sovereign of Ur III is a debated
topic as concerns the form taken by this event and the destiny of Namaḫni; the
theory that the latter was killed has been contested in recent years on a philologi-
cal basis, in relation to the reading of a (complex) passage of the text of the Code
of Ur-Namma: cf. Sallaberger 2004, p. 34, note 42 and the previous literature;
Michalowski 2011, pp. 66–67. In a re-examination of the philological and his-
torical data, P. Michalowski offers a persuasive reconstruction of the political
fact of the annexation of Lagash to the kingdom of Ur III, based on the “promo-
tion” to the highest positions of power of some figures belonging to the elite of
the former city state, starting with Ur-Baba, probably the same individual who
was previously Namaḫni’s minister (as already noted by Hallo 1966, p. 138).
Under the circumstances, it seems to me possible that the last ensi Namaḫni was
obscured and effectively deprived of his prestige in favour of the rise of other
notables from Lagash, with a view to the non-traumatic and more importantly
stable annexation of the latter, as a desirable province under the control of the
kingdom of Ur III. The treatment inflicted on the images of this ensi and his wife
may have been an effective means of visual communication and ideological per-
suasion in support of this operation, aimed at marginalizing the last governor of
Lagash, perhaps “dead” only in the virtual sense.
18 Dahl 2011, pp. 56 ff.; the favour enjoyed by this goddess during the period of
the Amorite dynasties of Isin and of Larsa, in the first quarter of the second
millennium bc, as we learn from the sources, has led scholars to attribute the
composition of the text to this period; for the relevant philological references, see
Dahl ibid., p. 56, note 6.
19 The prevailing opinion is reported and accepted by Woods 2012, p. 38, as is the
damage inflicted on the face and part of the inscription placed on the body of the
statue.
20 As rightly proposed by Woods 2012, p. 38. The inscription attests for Lupad’s
acquisition of three different plots of land in the territory of Lagash and his tra-
ditional profession and paternal descent and is dated to the Fara/Early Dynastic
IIIa by Gelb et alii 1991, pp. 72–74; this attribution is contested by Marchetti
2006, p. 151, note 85 for the Lupad found at Girsu, considered to belong to
the elite production of the mature Early Dynastic IIIb, when the field recording
procedure used in the inscription occurs frequently both on the statues of private
notables and of sovereigns.
21 According to the theory of Woods 2012, p. 38.
22 See section 4.2 for considerations on this monument and the various opinions on
the relations between the figurative programme and the inscription.
23 The statue of the ensi of the state of Lagash in the Early Dynastic Period was
recovered in a late context of the city of Ur, dating to the sixth century bc and
the period of King Nabonidus of Babylon according to Woolley 1955, pp. 47–48,
perhaps intentionally preserved for about two millennia and found in the place
considered by some to be its final intentional destination: cf. Woods 2012, p. 38
and previous bibliography, in apparent agreement with this opinion. The statue
was dedicated to the god Enlil and vowed in his temple at Lagash, as we read in
the still legible inscription giving his name and role and celebrating his peaceful
building enterprises, the erection of temples in the city. The placement of the
inscription on his right shoulder and on the back of the image of the ensi of
Lagash corresponds to the missing parts of an anonymous statue of a worship-
per, also headless and in many ways similar to the Enmetena of Lagash, very
probably subjected to intentional mutilations in antiquity and perhaps to the
deliberate removal of the head: Dolce 2012, pp. 100–103, Figures 6, 7.
24 This historical circumstance (recurrent in the alternating fortunes of the terri-
torial conflict in question) of a triple alliance against Lagash of the city states
of contemporary Mesopotamia, Ur, Uruk and Umma-Zabala itself, is noted by
Cooper 1983, pp. 8–9, 36. For the long-lasting conflict between Lagash and
Umma and the figurative documentation, direct and indirect, on the conflict, see
also section 4.2.
25 Woolley 1955, pp. 47–48.
26 Recalled above based on the textual sources: cf. note 17.
27 May 2010, pp. 107–108 with preceding bibliography; Reade 2011, p. 249;
Westenholz 2012, p. 99.
28 Harrak 1988, p. 27; Klengel-Brandt 1993, p. 133; for an overall entry on the
work, after joining torso and head, cf. Klengel-Brandt 1995, pp. 42–43.
29 Klengel-Brandt 1993, pp. 133–141; however, the scholar elsewhere expresses res-
ervations regarding its supposed identification as a royal statue and specifically
Chapter 6 77
as that of Manishtusu, suggesting that it may also be an image of an important
local lord vowed in a temple at Assur: Klengel-Brandt 1995, p. 43.
30 Westenholz 2012, p. 99.
31 Reade 2011, pp. 248–250.
32 Probably not just because of the difficulty of transporting the body of the statue
from one place to another, as proposed by Westenholz 2012, p. 99.
33 Winter 1992 (2010), especially pp. 183–185; my proposal regarding the des-
tination of the royal head from Assur finds support in the recent mention by
Westenholz 2012, pp. 95–96 of the ostentatious display of royal statues of Akkad
in temples, documented by the written sources. In my opinion, this marks a signifi-
cant change in the albeit long-standing relationship between kingship and divinity,
with the legitimate presence of sovereigns inside the sacred areas of the gods.
34 According to the plausible theory advanced by Reade 2011, p. 249; in the analysis
by Moorey 1982 on recent developments of studies on ancient metalworking and
the new approaches to the archaeological evidence from the Near East, attention
is devoted to the smelting process that can be traced on the Akkadian head from
Nineveh ibid., especially pp. 34–35, and on other more or less famous artefacts of
the same period; it was followed a few years later by the data emerging from the
metallurgical tests carried out on the remains of the head, made of almost pure
copper: Strommenger 1985–1986, pp. 114–115. For data on the discovery and a
detailed image of the work, cf. Westenholz 2012, p. 100, Figure 4.11.
35 For the state of research on this issue, see Westenholz 2012, p. 100, notes 51–55, 60.
36 Already Nylander 1980b, pp. 271–272; an opinion shared by Porter 2009,
pp. 201–203; Nylander 1980a, pp. 329–332; Moorey 1982, p. 34; Reade 2005,
pp. 358–361.
37 Recalled by Westenholz 2012, pp. 100–101, who repeats the theory formulated
in 2004 regarding the vicissitudes of the Akkadian head from the last quarter
of the third millennium bc to the early centuries of the second millennium bc
between Assur, thought to be its original home, and Nineveh itself.
38 According to the reconstruction outlined by Reade 2005, especially p. 361.
39 Nylander 1980a, pp. 331–332. The author believes that the multiple intentional
mutilations of the decapitated Nineveh head, a frequent occurrence in cases of
decapitation, as we have seen in this study, indicate a spectacularly symbolic act
of propaganda, contemporary with the sack of Nineveh in 612 bc.
40 In agreement with Reade 2011, pp. 248–249. On Manishtusu’s construction
work in the sacred building of Ishtar at Nineveh and the ideological relations
with the foundation documents of Shamshi-Addu I, cf. again Reade 2000,
pp. 86–87. The placement of the statue at Nineveh and in the sanctuary of Ishtar
are supported by P. Matthiae, while its workmanship is rightly considered to be
a product of the royal workshops of Akkad: Matthiae 1998, p. 37.
41 On the possibility that the severed heads of individuals travelled with their bodies
and other more cogent theories on this issue, see section 3.2, note 18. As concerns
the essence of the statues as “living,” cf. already Oppenheim 1964, pp. 171 ff.
and Cassin 1982, pp. 332 ff., pp. 364 ff., who has attempted to note the similari-
ties and symmetries identifiable between the creation of mankind, as conceived
in the Mesopotamian texts, and that of divine statues; on “birth,” “life” and
the cultic/ritual and political factors of relevance to the statues of deities and
sovereigns, cf. Matsushima 1993; Winter 1992 (2010) and, in a transcultural
and comparative perspective, Winter 2000 (2010), pp. 377 ff. On the mīs pî, or
“mouth-opening,” ceremony for divine statues, cf. Dick 1999; reservations have
recently been expressed on the actual practice of this complex ritual from the last
century of the third millennium bc, the time of the third dynasty of Ur, despite
some mentions in the sources interpreted in this way, given the elusive nature of
the data on this up to the eighth century bc: Richardson 2012, pp. 244–245.
42 Apparently of a different opinion is Westenholz 2012, pp. 89 ff.; she observes
that destroying the name of the person is tantamount to destroying the per-
son himself, considered a fundamental belief in the religious ideology of ancient
Mesopotamia, and identifies its origins in the Akkadian Period in the curse for-
mula, as a way of countering the obliteration of the identity of the subject and
therefore of their memory; however, the same scholar, Westenholz ibid., pp. 90,
92, 104, compares the meaning of this practice to that of the destruction of
images.
43 Richardson 2007, p. 198.
44 The reference is to the mythical epic of the god Ninurta who, like Ningirsu, is
the god of storms and hurricanes, the aggressive forces of the cosmos, but also
warlike gods, as we know from the written sources. Similar trials befall the sev-
ered heads of monsters and heroes more generally, culminating in their display
in temples, often with an apotropaic function. Significant details in this context
appear, for example, in the texts of the epic of Gilgamesh, when the mythical
king-hero of Uruk himself and his companion Enkidu take the severed head of the
hybrid monster Ḫumbaba, “the lord of the cedar forest,” to Nippur together with
a cedarwood door and place it before the god Enlil in his most important temple,
the Ekur. Equally, in Old Babylonian versions of the texts, Ḫumbaba, “like a cap-
tured hero,” is led before the god Enlil at his temple at Nippur, perhaps destined
for the same fate as the heroes captured by the god Ninurta, as trophies on his
chariot or in the temple of the god himself. We also find frequent mentions in the
sources that the severed head of Ḫumbaba is displayed at the gates of the temples
of Mesopotamia as a protection against evil: cf. Wiggermann 1992, p. 146 and
the relevant references to individual historical and critical studies on these texts.
45 Glassner 2006, p. 50.
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Index
Note: Index prepared by a freelancer, facilitated by the publisher.
Abdimilkutti 30 counting of booty 14, 15, 23, 25, 31,

accumulation 57–8, 59 48, 49, 57–8, 59
allies: hanging heads on allies of coveted objects 7; fate of 22–5
defeated adversaries 30–1, 34, 59;
severed heads sent as gifts between Dadusha of Eshnunna 44–7, 54–5
kings 27–8 damage to inscriptions 72–3
annihilation 7, 72–3 Danash 30
anonymity 7–9, 45–7 destinations 25–8
Anzu/Imdugud 50, 55 disfigurement of faces of statues 65–6
Ashurbanipal 30, 34, 47, 55, 63, 75 display of heads 4–5, 22–5, 28–31,
Ashurnasirpal II 23, 47, 55 48, 49; on human carriers 30–1, 34,
Assur: fragment of the lid of a pyxis 59; statues 65; suspended from trees
from the New Palace 23, 24, 31; 28–9; see also exhibition of heads
head of a statue 70, 71, 77 Dubadu 30
Assyrians: and the birds of prey 47–50; Dunanu 30, 62
see also Nimrud, Nineveh Dur-Sharrukin Palace 27
Balawat Gate 11, 28, 29, 30, 55 Eannatum of Lagash Stele 9, 15, 51–2;
banquet of the royal couple in the and the birds of prey 35, 38–40,
gardens of Nineveh 4, 5, 6 47, 50
baskets, heads heaped in 15, 16, 17 Ebla 2, 10, 15, 29, 53, 56, 62;
birds of prey 35–55, 59 exhibition of severed heads 15, 16;
booty 56, 61; artworks 65, 75; payment of homage 26–7
counting 14, 15, 23, 25, 31, 48, 49, Ebla ‘victory panel’ 9, 10, 15, 23, 31,
57–8, 59; weapons 14, 15, 30, 75 33; exhibition of heads 15, 16, 17,
Bunu-Eshtar 46 19; lion-headed eagles 38, 39, 50;
size of depicted heads 14, 17
Carchemish Long Wall of Sculpture Ekur 78
11, 17 emissaries of allies of the victor 59
carriers of severed heads 30–1, 34, 59 Enakale, King of Umma 52
Çatal Hüyük 12, 35, 36, 37 Enlil 42, 51, 76, 78
catharsis 73 Enmetena of Lagash 69–70, 76
ceremonial execution 12 Enna-Dagan of Mari 23
certainty 73 Esarhaddon 30
chariots 41, 42, 48, 59–61, 62 Eshnunna 2, 74; Square Temple 74
city walls and gates 4, 28, 29–30, 47 exchange 27
corpses, fate of 7–9, 9–10, 35, 36, 37 execution, ceremonial 12
90 Index
exclusivity 12–15 ‘Lamentation Over the Destruction of
exhibition of heads 17, 18, 22–3; Sumer and Ur’ 66
heaped in baskets 15, 16, 17; Larsa 76
held up by the hair 4–5, 8–9, lion-headed birds of prey 37–8, 39, 50
15–19, 22–3, 23–4; see also display Lupad of Umma 67, 68–9, 76; statue
of heads 40, 52
faces of statues, disfigurement of 65–6 Manishtusu 70, 72, 77

fate: of severed heads of statues 66–73; Mari 2; and the birds of prey 40–2,
of severed human heads 22–5, 52–3
35–8 mobility see transportation
motivations 25–8
Gilgamesh, epic of 78 multiplicity 12–15
Girsu 12, 52 multivalence 28–31
glorification of decapitation 12–13, 14
grasping of the hair before Nabonidus, King 76
decapitation 11 Namaḫni 66, 70, 75–6
Gudea of Lagash 75 Narmer 10
Narmer Palette 8
headless bodies, fate of 7–9, 9–10, 35, Nimrud: Central Palace 25, 32;
36, 37 North-West Palace 8, 47, 48–50
heaping of severed heads 14, 15, 23; Nin.e’-iga, statue of 66
in baskets 15, 16, 17 Nineveh: banquet of the royal couple
holding up heads by the hair 4–5, 8–9, in the gardens of 4, 5, 6; head of a
15–19, 22–3, 23–4 statue 70, 71–2, 77; lost relief 27;
Holofernes 3–4 North Palace 15, 18; South-West
homage 25, 26–8, 32, 33, 59 Palace see South-West Palace of
Ḫumbaba 78 Nineveh
Ningirsu 50, 51, 52, 78
identity 7–9 Ninḫedu 66
Igrish-Khalam 31 Ninurta 78
Ilbi-Ishar 29 Nippur Temple of Inanna 74
Imdugud 50, 55 Nippur Temple of Enlil 78
Iram-damu 30, 34
Irkab-Damu of Ebla 26 obliteration 72–3, 78
Ishme-Addu 27
Ishme-Dagan 28 Palace of Zimri-Lim, Mari 23–4, 26, 31
Ishqi-Mari seal impressions 40–2, 52–3, prisoners 12, 37–8, 56
60, 62 processions 59, 62
Ishtar 72 pyxis from New Palace at Assur 23,
Isin 76 24, 31
Ituni, General 21
Qabra 44
Judith and Holofernes tapestry 3–4 quantification see counting of booty
Kakmium, king of 26–7, 32 ritual 64

kings see sovereigns/kings royal inscriptions 50, 55
Kum-Damu 31
Kundu-Sisu 30 Sanduarri 30
Sargon I of Akkad 51, 70; stele of and
Lachish, siege of 14 the birds of prey 43–4, 47
Lagash 39, 51, 75–6; Eannatum of Sargon II reliefs 27
Lagash Stele see Eanneatum of seal impressions: Mari 40–2, 52–3, 60,
Lagash Stele; statues 66, 67–70 62; Uruk 37–8, 40
Index 91
Shalmaneser III 30 Til-Tuba 27, 47, 53, 60–1, 62–3
Shamshi-Addu I 27, 54, 72 transportation: means of 59–61; of
Shutrukh-Nakhunte I 75 severed heads 4–5, 16, 25, 56–63,
Sidon 30 72–3; of statues 65, 70, 72–3
size of severed heads in depictions 14, trees, suspension of heads from 28–9
17, 49–50 Tūbī 27
sovereigns/kings: holding up severed Tukulti-Ninurta I 10, 23, 55
heads 23–4; presentation of severed
heads to 25, 26–8, 32, 59 Umma 51, 68, 70
South-West Palace of Nineveh 18, 30, Umma-Zabala 76
47; accumulation and counting of unrepeatability 6–7
heads 57–8, 59; corpses in the river Ur 66, 69–70, 75–6
7; decapitation during battle 13, Ur-Baba 75
14; transportation of severed heads Ur-Namma 66, 70, 75
57–8, 59, 60, 61 Uruk 12; cylinder seal impression
statues 64–78; fate of severed heads of 37–8, 40
66–72
victory celebrations 35–7
Tammaritu 11 Vulture Stele see Eannatum of
Tell Beydar 53 Lagash Stele
Tell Tayinat 8–9, 10, 17, 19
Teumman 4, 5, 13, 21, 29, 53, 60–1, Yashmakh-Addu 27
62–3
Tiglath-Pileser I 23 Zazaya 28
Tiglath-Pileser III 25 Zimri-Lim 27
Til Barsip 17, 20, 21, 25, 26, 32 Zincirli 11, 17, 31

Dolce, Rita - Losing One's Head in The Ancient Near East - Interpretation and Meaning of Decapitation-Routledge (2018)

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“Losing One’s Head” in the Ancient

Building on a vast documentary record that covers the entire Syro-Mesopotamian

Rita Dolce is Associate Professor of Archaeology and History of Near Eastern

Reconstructing Israelite and Judean Religions: Religion as Performance

A Story of YHWH: Cultural Translation and Subversive Reception through

Comparative Urbanism in the Graeco-Roman and Early Islamic Near

ISBN: 978-1-138-06748-6 (hbk)

List of illustrations vii

This book is the English-language version of the volume published in Italian

I thank the following museums and institutions for granting permission to

•• The British Museum, London.

I am also grateful to Antoine Cavigneaux, Klaus Wagensonner and Chikako

AfO Archiv für Orientforschung

Nagar/Tell Brak Nineveh/Quyunjik

Sippar/Tell Abu Habbah Uquair

Eridu/Tell Abu Shahrain

1.1. From the distant past to the recent past

Figure 1.1b The decapitation of Holofernes (detail). Sixteenth century ad.

1.3. The headless body: anonymity/identity

At the current state of the evidence, we should therefore ask ourselves

3.1. What happens to the “coveted object”?

3.3. Exhibition and multivalence

4.1. Human heads and birds of prey

could be described as a figurative media operation, is a trace of the per-

4.2. Eannatum of Lagash and the birds of prey

historical and celebratory actions taking place at a specific time and in a

4.3. Mari and the birds of prey

4.5. Dadusha of Eshnunna and the birds of prey

is prevalently the case in the known evidence. This anonymity is intentional,

4.6. The Assyrians and the birds of prey

taking for counting severed heads of relatively small size, as is prevalently

5.1. Moving through space and time

On a more general level, in the Neo-Assyrian visual representations

cases, in my opinion also holds illustrative value, aimed at maximizing the

5.2. How does the head travel?

This means of circulating and exhibiting the “coveted object” forms a

6.1. “Other” decapitations in times of war

6.2. What happens to the severed heads of statues?

Figure 6.1a Lupad of Umma. Girsu. Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries bc.

the individual represented by the statues noted above. In several cases,

Figure 6.1b Lupad of Umma. Girsu. Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries bc.

Figure 6.3 Head of an Akkadian sovereign. Assur. Mid-twenty-third century bc.

6.3. Moving through space and time

Note: Index prepared by a freelancer, facilitated by the publisher.

Abdimilkutti 30 counting of booty 14, 15, 23, 25, 31,

faces of statues, disfigurement of 65–6 Manishtusu 70, 72, 77

Kakmium, king of 26–7, 32 ritual 64

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Figure 6.1a Lupad of Umma. Girsu. Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries bc.

Figure 6.1b Lupad of Umma. Girsu. Twenty-fifth to twenty-fourth centuries bc.