Aleppo National Museum – #3

See our previous articles on Aleppo here, here, and here.

We have one more nice Neo-Hittite piece displayed in the courtyard of the Aleppo National Museum. It shows genii with the symbols of the sun and the moon. These symbols are typical on Neo-Hittite and Assyrian reliefs.

Neo-Hittite genii with image of sun and moon on a block in the courtyard of the Aleppo National Museum. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

Assyrian. The museum has one stele depicting Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib and his successor as king of Assyria (680-559 B.C.; 2 Kings 19:37; Isaiah 37:38; Ezra 4:2). I am not certain about the identity of the rulers who are bowing before Esarhaddon, but I suspect this represents the same persons as the much better stele in the Berlin museum. The stele there depicts the king holding ropes leading to the lips of Tirhakah of Egypt and Ethiopia [Cush] (in ANET, 293, he is referred to as king of Nubia) and Ba’alu of Tyre. If so, then the bowing figure with Negroid features was an ally of Hezekiah against the Assyrians (2 Kings 19:9. The Berlin stele comes from Zinjirli and was discovered in 1888.

First, here is the Aleppo stele.

A broken relief showing Esarhaddon with two captured rulers, one on bended knee, before him. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

And here is the Berlin stele (VA 2708).

Stele of Esarhaddon displayed in the Pergamum Museum, Berlin. VA 2708. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

I have the impression that the stele displayed in Aleppo may be one made by a beginner and was never finished. Notice the lack of proportion in the legs of the kneeling figure, and the absence of clear decorations at the top.

One final post on the Museum coming next.