Stele of the Storm God Tarhunza from Til Barsip
Unknown · Neo-Hittite period, c. 860 BC
A god strides to the right across a basalt slab more than two metres high, an axe raised in his right hand and a bundle of lightning in his left. A winged sun disc floats over his head to mark him as a heavenly being. He wears a horned crown, a long curled beard drawn forward over his chest, a lock of hair that falls in a spiral, a short kilt with a braided hem and a belt carrying a sword. The relief is bold and deeply cut. On the edge and the back are inscriptions in Luwian hieroglyphs, the picture-writing of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms.
The god is Tarhunza, the Luwian name of the storm god, described in the museum's record as Tarhunza of the sky. Fittings on the back show that the slab was a door jamb, so he guarded an entrance in the city of Til Barsip, modern Tell Ahmar on the Euphrates in northern Syria, capital of an Aramaean kingdom with Hittite traditions around 860 before our era. The Assyrians conquered the city soon after. The stele was excavated by François Thureau-Dangin's mission and came to the Louvre through the partage of 1929.
Did You Know? The inscription is in Luwian hieroglyphs, the last picture-script of the Hittite world, still in use three centuries after the Hittite empire had collapsed.
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