From clay you are
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Date
2021-12
Authors
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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Archaeology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
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Abstract
The people of Mesopotamia believed that they were created by the gods to serve the gods: to
work for them in the fields and care for the herds of animals that, through sacrifice, provided the
gods’ livelihood. Perhaps this is why mythological motifs are almost absent in the art of Assyria
and Babylon. Two small fragments of stone decorated with a convex relief, discovered in 2013
by the archeological team of the Institute of Prehistory at the entrance to the Gūndk cave in
Iraqi Kurdistan, belie this claim. They come from a relief scene originally hewn into the rock-
face around 2200 BC, but blown up by vandals in the 1990s. Thanks to this recent discovery by
the team carrying out the Upper Greater Zab Archaeological Reconnaissance Project in Iraqi
Kurdistan and previous drawings of the relief made in 1850 and 1947, it can be proven that the
scene showed the god Enki and the goddess Ninmah in the process of molding people out of
clay, as described in Mesopotamian myths. Saved for posterity by archaeologists from Poznań,
the fragments of the damaged relief are the only known examples of this unique scene.
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Keywords
Mesopotamia, Early Bronze Age, Mesopotamian art, Mesopotamian mythology
Citation
Treasures of Time: Research of the Faculty of Archaeology of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2021) D. Żurkiewicz (Ed.). pp. 236-255.
ISBN
978-83-946591-9-6