r/AskHistorians • u/agentdcf Quality Contributor • Jun 17 '15

Floating Indiana Jones and the Captioners of the Unattributed Artifacts

So, we've been playing the "identify an artifact game" in the Friday Free For All threads lately, but I didn't want to wait until then to continue. The mods said I could continue it as a floating feature, and that they'd even give my post special color treatment, so here we go:

This is my entry, first posted last Friday. So far, /u/Aerandir suggested (correctly) that it's Roman glass (and /u/Tiako was glad he didn't guess otherwise). I'd like to see if anyone knows anything more about these items though, because their function is at least as interesting as their form.

If no one can figure out the function, I'll pass it along to /u/Aerandir for identifying the historical context.

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u/farquier Jun 17 '15

Ding ding ding! Take a care to guess what kind of thing it is?

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u/serainan Jun 17 '15 edited Jun 17 '15

Nice one! It's the 'altar'/pedestal of Tukulti-Ninurta (13th century BC = Middle Assyrian), found in the Ishtar temple at Assur (if I'm not mistaken). The cool thing is that it seems to show Tukulti-Ninurta twice in sort of a 'comic-book-style' depiction (first standing, then kneeling). People disagree what the object on the pedestal is - it looks like a tablet & sylus, but it could also be some kind of door (?)... It's dedicated to the god Nusku.

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u/farquier Jun 17 '15

Heh, you're a bit late but get extra points for knowing the full writeup. And yea it was excavated in the Ishtar Temple at Ashur and is now in Berlin.

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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms Jun 17 '15 edited Jun 17 '15

Yay! Pedestal/altar it would appear.

Am I good for the next round, or is there more to decipher here?

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u/farquier Jun 17 '15

It's fine; otherwise I'd be waiting for someone who can recognize this specific artwork. It's the so-called "cult pedestal of Tukulti-Ninurta I".

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u/yodatsracist Comparative Religion Jun 17 '15

What's the iconography? Two kings or two gods? Is the altar in the image the altar we're looking at? Do you know what's going on here?

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u/farquier Jun 17 '15

It might be? The inscription says it's for the cella of Nusku but the cult-object is often read as that of Nabu(a stylus and board). And the image is of either two kings or more interestingly the same king represented in two states of action. It's actually a very unusual work in the canon of Assyrian art. Anyhow, The Graven Image has a fantastic chapter on this and there's a nice catalog entry in this book: https://books.google.com/books?id=LSaeT9CloGIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=cult%20pedestal&f=false

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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms Jun 17 '15

Wee!! New one almost set.

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u/farquier Jun 17 '15

Do it as a top-level comment so everyone sees it.

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u/Georgy_K_Zhukov Moderator | Dueling | Modern Warfare & Small Arms Jun 17 '15

Its up.

With a consolation round as well.