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Ceremonial Threshing in the Ancient Near East, I. Archaeological Evidence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

M. A. Littauer  and
J. H. Crouwel
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Extract

Although well known from Roman times on, and still in use today in parts of the Near East and North Africa, two early threshing implements—the tribulum or threshing board and the plostellum punicum or threshing wheel—appear now to be documented in ceremonial contexts in the ancient Near East. The first may be identified on three figured documents of the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods and the second in cuneiform texts of the Early Dynastic period. A recently published cylinder-seal impression, an unpublished cylinder seal and a long-known, small stone plaque in the British Museum provide early illustrations.

The seal impression, of Uruk style, from recent excavations at Arslantepe, near Malatya in southeastern Anatolia, preserves the greater part of a scene centering around what has been described as “a regal figure in a sledge vehicle” (Fig. 1). The figure is on a seat with short legs and beneath an arched baldaquin. Roughly rounded projections at front and rear of the seat suggest litter-pole terminals, an interpretation supported by two early documents from Egypt. One is king Narmer's macehead (Fig. 2) which illustrates a figure seated in an arched litter, the latter's legs set on the ground and its carrying poles—with terminals—shortened to conform to the available space. The other is the reconstructed open litter of queen Hetepheres, showing actual pole terminals reminiscent in profile of those mentioned above.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 52 , 1990 , pp. 15 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1990

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Footnotes

*

This paper is dedicated to Edith Porada.

References

1 White, K. D., Agricultural implements of the Roman world (Cambridge, 1966)Google Scholar, s.v. Tribulum, pp. 152 and 156, s.v. Plostellum Poenicum, pp. 152 and 156.

2 Palmieri, A., Anatolian Studies 31 (1981), pp. 106–107Google Scholar and pl. XVa; idem, in Scavi e ricerca archeologiche degli anni 1976–1979 vol. IGoogle Scholar. Quaderni della ‘Ricerca Scientifica’ 112 (CNR, Roma), 1985, p. 90Google Scholar and fig. 11.11; Palmieri, and Frangipane, M., Dialoghi diArcheologia 3rd series 4 (1986), p. 42Google Scholar and fig. 5a (our Fig. 1); Sürenhagen, D. in Studie di Paleethnologia in onori di S. M. Puglisi (ed. Liverani, M., Palmieri, A., Peroni, R.; Roma, 1975), pp. 230–232Google Scholar and fig. 1; Collon, D., First Impressions, Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East (London, 1987), p. 14Google Scholar, no. 10.

3 Seal in collection of Mr. J. P. Rosen, New York. Made of black chlorite; two holes on top which communicate by meeting at an angle below the surface. H. 2.34 cm., diam. 2.28 cm. Professor Porada informs us that the means of suspension is characteristic of Syrian cylinder seals of the late 4th and early 3rd millennia B.c. (Our Plate 11a).

4 London, British Museum 12885 (formerly coll. E. Herzfeld); Sürenhagen, supra n. 2, pp. 231–232 and fig. 2; Amiet, P., La glyptique mésopotamienne archaïque (Paris, 1961), p. 92Google Scholar and pl. 47; Littauer, M. A. and Crouwel, J. H., Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in the Ancient Hear East (Leiden-Köln, 1979), pp. 13–14Google Scholar and fig. 2 (our Fig. 3).

5 Moorey, P. R. S., Ancient Egypt (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 1970), p. 19Google Scholar and fig. 2 (our Fig. 2) = Vandier, J., Manuel d'archéologie égyptienne I (Paris, 1952), pp. 602–605Google Scholar and fig. 394; Reisner, G. and Smith, W. S., A History of the Giza Necropolis II (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), pp. 33–34Google Scholar, fig. 34 and pls. 27–29 = Kayser, H., Aegyptisches Kunsthandwerk (Braunschweig, 1969), p. 277Google Scholar and fig. 249 (litter of Hetepheres, mother of king Cheops). For a scene from the Near East itself, roughly contemporary with the Arslantepe sealing and showing someone being carried in a litter with arched covering and short legs, see Amiet, P., Glyptique susienne (MDAI/43; Paris, 1972)Google Scholar, no. 691 and pls. 18 and 85; Collon, supra n. 2, p. 158, no. 711 (sealing from Susa).

6 Sürenhagen, supra n. 2.

7 Brandes, M. A., Siegelabrollungen aus den archaischen Schichten in Uruk-Warka, (Freiburger altorientalischer Studien 3; Wiesbaden, 1979)Google Scholar, Index s.v. Menschen a) “Priesterkönig; Collon, supra n. 2. p. 15.

8 White, supra n. 1; Crawford, O. G. S., A primitive threshing machine, Antiquity IX (1935), pp. 335–39Google Scholar and pls. I–III (Cyprus); Bordaz, J., “Flint flaking in Turkey”, Natural History (02 1967), ill. p. 77Google Scholar; Wulff, H., The Traditional Crafts of Persia (Cambridge, Ma., 1966), pp. 274–75Google Scholar and fig. 384; Salonen, A., Agricultura mesopotamica (Helsinki, 1968)Google Scholar, pls. XXXIV, XXXVIII–XXXIX; Mantran, R., Turkey (London, 1959)Google Scholar, pls. 70 (our Plate IIb: chair on sledge) and 71 (stool on sledge). In 1971 one of the present authors observed an ox-drawn sledge circling a mound of grain on a threshing floor within the walls of Boǧazköy itself.

9 White, supra n. 1, s.v. Ventilabrum, pp. 32–35; Theocharis, D. (ed.), Neolithic Greece (Athens, 1973)Google Scholar, pl. 163 (our Plate IIc: four-fingered shovel almost identical in appearance with those on the Arslantepe sealing); D., and Oates, J., The Rise of Civilization (Oxford, 1976), p. 69Google Scholar.

10 Falkenstein, A., Archaische Texte aus Uruk (Berlin 1936)Google Scholar, nos. 741–742; Langdon, S., Excavations at Kish I (Paris 1924)Google Scholar, pl. XXXI: 1–2; also Littauer and Crouwel, supra n. 4, pp. 12–13 with fig. 1.

11 London, British Museum (from tomb PG 800). Woolley, C. L., Ur Excavations II. The Royal Cemetery (London-Philadelphia, 1934), pp. 74, 78-80, 556Google Scholar (no. UE 10438. Total height 1.15 m.; width across front 0.85 m.; depth of sides 0.52 m.) with pls. 122 (reconstruction), 123–126, also 36 (plan of tomb). For the identification of the draught animals as bovids, see Dyson, R. H. Jr., Iraq 22 (1960), pp. 102–104Google Scholar. For Pu-abi see especially Moorey, P. R. S., Expedition 20:1 (1977), pp. 25–40Google Scholar.

12 Tallon, F., Métallurgie susienne I (Paris, 1987), p. 297Google Scholar (Donjon tomb A 32).

13 See A. O. Woolley's Ur ‘of the Chaldees’, as revised by P. R. S. Moorey (New York 1982), ill. p. 100.

14 Woolley, L., Ur Excavations IV, The Early Periods (London and Philadelphia, 1955), p. 14Google Scholar; cf. Adams, R. McC., An ancient threshing sledge or harrow, Sumer 31 (1975), pp. 17–19Google Scholar and figs. 1–2.

15 White, supra n. 1, pp. 152:3, 153:h.

16 White, supra n. 1, pp. 155–156 with fig. 117; Buisson, Du Mesnil du, L'ethnographie 25 (1932), pp. 112–113Google Scholar with pl. IV (Syria); Meissner, B., Babylonien und Assyrien (Heidelberg, 1925), IGoogle Scholar, fig. 83 (Iraq); Wulff, supra n. 8, p. 273 and figs. 381–383; also Desmet-Grégoire, H. and `Fontaine, P., La région d'Arak et de Hamadân. Cartes et documents élhnographiques. Studia Iranica Cahier 6 (1988), pp. 3Google Scholar, figs. 5–6 and pl. Va.

17 Supra n. 14.