DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1118#0463
UR RELIEF OF SUMERIAN WAR CHARIOT, TYPE B 813
Happily, Mr. Woolley's excavations at Ur have since brought out a
complete version of the royal Sumerian form.1 The typical character of
this moreover, is now demonstrated by the discovery at Khafaje (about
Fig. 792. Royal Sumerian War Chariot drawn by Four Asses, from Ur Relief
completed by that of khafaje.
15 miles East of Baghdad) of an alabaster votive tablet2 showing the fore-
parts of animals and trappings belonging to a representation of a war
chariot evidently so closely similar that the heads of the driven team of
four asses serve, as shown here in Fig. 792, to complete the Ur relief.
The practical identity of these examples—one from the Northern
region East of the Tigris, the other from the extreme South of Meso-
potamia, near the Euphrates—warrants the conclusion that we have here
true records of the chariot type in general use among the Chaldaean
dynasts round about 3000 B.C.
That this B type of chariot with the initial section of the pole linked
to the box front persisted in Mesopotamia to the Age of the Sargonids is
attested by cylinder types of that date. Three curiously parallel cylinders,3
1 Antiquaries Journal, viii (192S), PI. V
and IX; (1929), PI. II.
Tell Asmar anil Khafaje: the first season's
work in Eshmcnna (1930-31), by Henri
Frankfort, Thorkild Jacobsen, and Conrad
Preusser, p. 9!;, Fig. 44. Dr. Preusser has
rightly called attention (ii., p. 97) to the
Persis-
tence of
Type B on
Chal-
daean
side.
astonishing likeness to the Ur sculpture.
' One of these, in the Metropolitan Museum
at New York, was figured by W. Hayes Ward,
Am.Journ. of Archaeology, ii, p. r6o, Fig. i,
and cf. his Seal Cylinders of Western Asia,
pp. 48, 49, where to this is added another
similar type (No. 126). Another similar
Happily, Mr. Woolley's excavations at Ur have since brought out a
complete version of the royal Sumerian form.1 The typical character of
this moreover, is now demonstrated by the discovery at Khafaje (about
Fig. 792. Royal Sumerian War Chariot drawn by Four Asses, from Ur Relief
completed by that of khafaje.
15 miles East of Baghdad) of an alabaster votive tablet2 showing the fore-
parts of animals and trappings belonging to a representation of a war
chariot evidently so closely similar that the heads of the driven team of
four asses serve, as shown here in Fig. 792, to complete the Ur relief.
The practical identity of these examples—one from the Northern
region East of the Tigris, the other from the extreme South of Meso-
potamia, near the Euphrates—warrants the conclusion that we have here
true records of the chariot type in general use among the Chaldaean
dynasts round about 3000 B.C.
That this B type of chariot with the initial section of the pole linked
to the box front persisted in Mesopotamia to the Age of the Sargonids is
attested by cylinder types of that date. Three curiously parallel cylinders,3
1 Antiquaries Journal, viii (192S), PI. V
and IX; (1929), PI. II.
Tell Asmar anil Khafaje: the first season's
work in Eshmcnna (1930-31), by Henri
Frankfort, Thorkild Jacobsen, and Conrad
Preusser, p. 9!;, Fig. 44. Dr. Preusser has
rightly called attention (ii., p. 97) to the
Persis-
tence of
Type B on
Chal-
daean
side.
astonishing likeness to the Ur sculpture.
' One of these, in the Metropolitan Museum
at New York, was figured by W. Hayes Ward,
Am.Journ. of Archaeology, ii, p. r6o, Fig. i,
and cf. his Seal Cylinders of Western Asia,
pp. 48, 49, where to this is added another
similar type (No. 126). Another similar