Tar'am-Agade, Daughter of Naram-Sin, at Urkesh Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati In August 1999, on what was meant to be the last day of excavation in Area AA, we began, unexpectedly, to find inscribed clay sealings. The first words that could be read were LUGAL A-ga-dkK'.I t was an unexpected discovery that suddenly brought a whole new dimension to bear on our excavations. There was no question but that we had to alter our projected sche- dule. Borrowing time from the study period planned for the end of the season, we continued our excavations for a few more days, and by the end we had a total of some 200 sealings. Several of these allowed us to determine that the king in question was none other than Naram- Sin. The last fragments recovered told us further that the seal belonged to his daughter, a previously unknown princess'by the name of Tar'am-Agade. Several impressions were also found of two other seals that turned out to be of great importance, even though only the personal names of the seal owners are given, without a title - Ewrim-atal and Ishar-beli. During the 2000 season, we were able to read the impressions of two more seals that also proved to be of great significance; the first belonged to an endan of Urkesh who was possibly the husband of Tar'am-Agade; the second revealed the recutting of a seal of which we had found an impression in the levels of king Tupkish. These five seals, reconstructed from their impressions, are the subject of the present article. The seal impressions recovered in the Royal Palace of Urkesh are the most important single find made so far at Tell Mozan, and it seems especially fitting to publish them in the volume that honours the dean of archaeology in our area, David Oates. His work has blazed a trail in all of Syro-Mesopotamia, and we had the good fortune to encounter him along the way at several of his other stops. But it has been here, between Nagar and Urkesh, that we have come to benefit most fully from his friendship and collegiality, to learn more generously from his unsurpassed understanding of stratigraphy, architecture and geography. He has truly been a mentor for ourselves and for the younger generation that has also had the privilege to get to know him personally. And it is finally emblematic that Mozan should have regaled us with the only mention of Naram-Sin found in the Khabur outside Brak. We are extremely happy to publish this evidence in a volume dedicated to David Oates. The stratigraphic context The reason why the discovery of these sealings came as a surprise is in itself significant. We were removing a thin layer that lay on a damaged floor in room H2 (Fig. l), where there was no indication that it was anything other than an accumulation of discarded rubbish, but it contained a cache of door sealings collected at some previous time and then disposed of in a single episode. The nature of the finds strongly suggests that it was a primary discard, i.e., that this was the original dumping ground of the cache of door sealings, and that they had not been moved around from place to place. These observations have a bearing on the chrono- Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati A. Floor plan: excavated sectors Fig. 1. The Royal Palace of Urkesh. logical relevance of the find. This argument has been developed in one of our recent publica- tions, where a fuller discussion of the stratigraphy and architecture, as well as the general historical significance of these discoveries, can be found (Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 2000; for a recent general overview of the excavations at Tell Mozan, see Buccellati 1998). The conclusion we came to is that the cache of door sealings from room HZ is later than the main floor accumulations of Tupkish and Uqnitum excavated in previous seasons. In other words, the earlier strata of Tupkish and Uqnitum would date to the early part of the reign of Naram-Sin or possibly even slightly earlier. Our stratigraphic argument was to be Tar'am-Agade, Daughter of Naram-Sin, at Urkesh uncontrovertibly confirmed in the 2000 season by the discovery of the two Unap-[ ] seals, which are discussed below (p. 25). To understand better the depositional sequence, we must refer to the architectural layout of the building. The portion of the building which has been excavated almost com- pletely can now be understood as the service wing of the Palace (labeled AK, and including sectors ABCD, Fig. 1); it is from the earliest floor accumulations of this portion of the build- ing that we have the major corpus of seal impressions belonging to Tupkish and Uqnitum. The formal wing (labeled AF, of which so far only sector H is under excavation) had been raised by some 2 metres above the floor level of the service wing AK, and was characterised by very good hard pavements; the large courtyard H3 was surfaced with flagstones. In AK, on the other hand, the floors had only a thin coat of plaster. We do not as yet have stairs to link the two different levels, that is, of the service quarter AK on the one hand and the formal wing AF on the other. Our present evidence indicates that the excavated portion of the formal wing AF had been destroyed, but not the service wing AK which continued in use although no longer with the same function (none of the installations that characterise the early floors continue in the upper strata). Thus the dumping of the door sealings in H2 must have taken place immedi- ately after the destruction of sector H of AF, probably coinciding with the change in function of AK. The seal of Tar'am-Agade, the daughter of Naram-Sin (AFcl) The reconstruction of the seal bearing the name of the daughter of Naram-Sin (Fig. 2) is based on the match of 22 fragments, the composite reconstruction being designated AFcl (AF stands for the locus, and cl for the composite reconstruction) The seal from which the impressions were derived was not large, 3 cm high and about 2 cm in diameter. The sealings had been affixed to a door, demonstrating that the seal had been used locally. The inscription reads, in the usual Syro-Mesopotamian style, '(Of) Naram-Sin, the king of Akkad, Tar'am- Agade, his daughter' (the reading Tar-irm was first suggested by Piotr Steinkeller, for whose generous assistance we are very grateful). The contest scene illustrates a bull-man fighting a lion on one side of the inscription case and a nude hero fighting a water buffalo on the other (see Boehmer 1975; also Boehmer 1965, fig. 232, where the buffalo is shown together with a servant of the god Ea). The end of the elegantly upturned s-curve of the lion's tail overlaps the case of the inscription box, indicating that the inscription was carved first. The carving style is typically that of other contest scenes from the period of Naram-Sin (see Nagel and St rommenger 1968). Two alternatives seem possible for the position of Tar'am-Agade in Urkesh: she was there either as the queen married to the endan or as the priestess of the most important temple. We have opted for the interpretation that Tar'am-Agade was queen of Urkesh, an interpreta- tion made almost certain by the presence in the same cache of a seal that is most likely to have belonged to an endan of Urkesh (p. 18). It is also possible that at the time her seal was in use, Tar'am-Agade was the queen mother rather than the wife of a ruling endan. This would not affect the chronological sequence, which is derived from the stratigraphy and from the recut- ting evidence discussed below. Her filiation alone indicates that she was of the highest rank, as the daughter of the dominant king in Syro-Mesopotamia. Most importantly, the contest scene on her seal is also found on the seals of her brother Ukin-Ulmash and of several admin- istrators linked with the family of Naram-Sin. Nor could she have come to Urkesh except Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati U. Lines 1-3 of inscription ltenl A 1311106.1; photograph V12d5761 C. Tilled head of water bi1fTalo A. Lion's tail slid lines 2-3 Itmi V13q106.1; of inscripliuli photograph VIM575Y Item A13.9; phulograph \I lZd5626 E. Upper rolling: bullman. I.ower roll in^: Leg of lion. F. Lines 1 and 4 of inscription,hero lines 1.44 of inscription, heru. Ilem A 13qY7.8; ItnnA13.Y9; photugraph V 12d5628 photograph V I Zd574I Fig. 2. The seal of Tar'am-Agade, the daughter of Naram-Sin (AFcl). Photographs by Rick Hauser. Drawing by Pietro Pozzi. Tar'am-Agade, Daughter of Naram-Sin, at Urkesh under the most favourable conditions, that is, as the main wife of the endan. Such interdynastic marriages are well known from Ebla (Biga 1987; 1991; 1998), and Naram-Sin himself may have married the daughter of the king of Elam (Hinz 1967). The historical implications are significant. Knowing of the links between Ebla and Nagar (Archi, in press; Biga 1987, 46; 1998), it seems possible that Naram-Sin may have forged an alliance with Urkesh to counter- act the Ebla-Nagar association. If so, Urkesh emerges more clearly in the light of history as the other major power in the Khabur plains. Whether such an alliance took place before or after Naram-Sin's conquest of Nagar (about which we know from his stamped bricks at Tell Brak), it would certainly have strengthened his position, politically and militarily, in the North. There remains also the possibility that Tar'am-Agade was at Urkesh not as queen but as a priestess acting alongside an Akkadian administrator - a situation which would of course imply an Akkadian conquest of Urkesh. This hypothesis is supported mainly by the fact that she uses neither the title queen nor wife of an endan. Moreover, three other daughters of Naram-Sin are known to have served as priestesses (in Ur, Nippur and Sippar; for a summary of the texts related to Naram-Sin, see Frayne 1993, 87). But this interpretation of her role seems unlikely for four reasons. (1) The scene on her seal is specifically linked with political and administrative functions, whereas the seals of her two sisters who served as priestesses bear completely different themes (discussed below). (2) While it is true that she does not have a political title, neither does she use a priestly title, which would have been important since her position as priestess would have served a political agenda. (3) Her seal impressions were found in a palace context and were all on door sealings (though discarded in a destroyed part of the building); thus she is more likely to have been connected with the palace than with the temple. (4) Other door sealings discarded with those of Tar'am-Agade (and therefore pre- sumably used for the same original function) belong possibly to an endan and to a certain Ewrim-Atal, an individual with a Hurrian name (p. 18). Interestingly, the seal of Tar'am-Agade documented in its impressions from Urkesh represents the first example of a seal belonging to a member of the Akkadian royal family that has been discovered where it was actually in use. Moreover, with the exception of the seal of Ukin-Ulmash, all the other inscribed royal seals from the entire Akkadian period, although naming a member of the royal family, indicate that the seal was owned by (or was presented to) a servant of that family member. The seal of Ukin-Ulmash (Boehmer 1964, no. 15; 1965, fig. 256) was not found in an archaeological excavation; we therefore have no evidence, beyond the inscription, to support the idea that it was his personal seal or for that matter how his seal would have been employed. Nor do we know whether he was a brother or half- brother of Tar'am-Agade. On all the inscribed sealings contained in this cache, the figurative scene is less well preserved than the seal legend. This is typical for rollings of inscribed Akkadian seals and one of the reasons why it is thought that in the Akkadian period, for the first time, the inscriptions were considered more important than the seal design. Indeed Frankfort (1996,90) noted that in Akkadian seals the inscription was cut as the central feature of the composition with the pairs of combatants flanking it. In the case of Tar'am-Agade and Ewrim-Atal (below) the reconstruction of the seal design presents no difficulty, since both bear a version of the stan- dard Akkadian contest scene with two symmetrical pairs flanking a full length inscription box (compare for example Matthews 1997, nos. 308, 31 1-321; Boehmer 1965, figs. 160, 164, 182). The personal name Tar'am-Agade, 'She loves Akkad',' proclaims a political programme and, as such, may or may not have been given at birth. If given at the time of her Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati presumed enthronement in Urkesh, one must wonder whether this together with the lack of an Urkesh-related title, was intended to remind the Urkesh court of the predominant role of Akkad in the alliance. However we interpret the specific meaning of the title on her seal, it should be emphasised that the message is political and that her seal was employed in admin- istrative functions within the context of the palace. Akkadian Royal Seals With the addition of the Tar'am-Agade seal, we know of forty seals (or relevant impressions) connected directly through their inscriptions with the royal family of Akkad. These include 32 individuals of whom we have the names or titles or both (Zettler 1997, 33-39). The in- scribed seals and seal impressions connected with Naram-Sin or members of his family, for which a context is known, come mostly from Tello (12 examples); one is from Ur, one from Adab, one from Nippur, while two were excavated at Brak. One of the Brak examples came from the Naram-Sin building and belonged to a servant of Naram-Sin; the second came from Mallowan's 'Sargonid level' in Area ER (Matthews 1997,31 9-20; see also Oates et al. 2001). Thus most of our evidence from these seals has no context. Even when they are found in excavations, little can be gained from their findspots and, except for the two seal impressions found at Brak and the new example from Urkesh, all the evidence for royal seals comes from the south. The contest scene was the widely accepted design for officials directly connected, through their seal inscriptions, to members of the royal family. Furthennore, the only two strictly royal Akkadian seals, that of Tar'am-Agade and her brother Ukin-Ulmash, both bear contest scenes.' Seals of the servants of Binkalisharri depict the same iconography. Both brothers may have held administrative/political positions within the dynasty, since we know from inscriptions that another brother, Nabi-Ulmash, was governor of Tutub, while the crown prince, Shar-kali-sharri, may have been governor of Nippur before he succeeded his father (Gibson 1977,32; Michalowski 198 1, 175). It appears, then, that the seal designs connected with the Akkadian royal family are closely linked to their individual political positions within the dynasty (seals bearing the names of other daughters of Naram-Sin are discussed below). Restrictions on the iconography of the contest scene may even have been controlled directly through an administrative office in Akkad, since we see it so intimately connected with mem- bers of the court. The carving of these seals is also of the highest quality, perhaps indicating that certain court artists were exclusively engaged in their production. With regard to the importance of the contest scene during the reign of Naram-Sin, we may conclude that it did indeed represent the power of the dynasty and as such was employed to project a political message. If this is true, it is not surprising that the use of this image had sharply decreased by the Ur 111 period, when the new dynasty wished to project a more theocentric image. In Boehrner's catalogue (1965) 47 per cent of the scenes can be classed as contest scenes, in contrast with 17 per cent on Ur 111 seals in the collections of the British Museum, the Morgan Library and Yale. The fact that the presentation scene becomes more prominent in the late Akkadian period may reflect some political dissatisfaction, possibly that which resulted in serious disturbances dur- ing the reign of Nararn-Sin (see Oates et al. 2001). However, the connection between the name Tar'am-Agade and the contest scene imagery on her seal strengthens both the power of the iconography and the political message it conveyed. The integration of iconography and text can be studied further through seals con- nected with two other daughters of Nararn-Sin: Enmenanna and Tutanap~humN.~e ither sis- Tar'am-Agade, Daughter of Naram-Sin, at Urkesh ter has a contest scene illustrated on the seals of her servants, and it would appear that the designs are linked with their respective positions as priestesses: Enmenanna in Ur and Tutanapshum at Nippur. In the case of two of their servants' seals we can interpret both the scenes and the depiction of the figures quite specifically. The banquet scene on the seal con- nected with Enmenanna (Boehrner 1964, no. 21) depicts a goddess seated opposite a god wearing a crescent crown; two other goddesses stand behind them. The distinctive character of this scene undoubtedly suggests the possibility that here is a 'portrait' of Enmenanna - the moon god is surrounded by females (priestesses in the guise of goddesses?), one of them seated, indicating a more equal relationship with the god (although the god has a more elabo- rate seat); the two seated figures are also comparable in that each presents a flat cup. The single seal connected with Tutanapshum illustrates a seated woman with a many-pointed crown; in front of her stands a woman holding a musical instrument (Collon 1987, no. 530). A tree appears to indicate an outdoor setting. There is a distinct probability that the seated figure is Tutanapshum herself, depicted in a setting which would identify her. Indeed Zettler (1977,35) has also suggested that the seals 'are extraordinary and specific to two individuals, perhaps an attempt at portraiture'. In the stratified impressions from Urkesh the text of the seal inscriptions and the associated iconography are closely linked in that they too depict the seal owners themselves in settings which are specifically connected with their political and administrative positions. Of the greatest significance is the fact that the scenes are loaded with political meaning. At Urkesh, moreover, we have the only excavated body of evidence from a context within which these seals were actually employed and therefore the only example of how the political mes- sage was specifically promulgated. On the basis of this very clear evidence we think the same connection can be made in the Akkadian royal seals discussed here: just as the priestly status of her two sisters is indicated through their iconography, so the political status of Tar'am- Agade as queen is emphasised. This is not as explicitly rendered as on the seals of her sisters, since we lack a seal impression showing her actually seated in a court setting. However, both the corpus of Urkesh royal seals from the stratum of Tupkish and Uqnitum and the seal im- pression of Tar'am-Agade contribute clear evidence that internal mechanisms were devel- oped through the seal cutting workshops to articulate and disseminate clear political mes- sages. This paralleled the function of Akkadian stelas in the south, although we have none in their original contexts and are therefore uncertain of the settings within which their messages were transmitted (see Buccellati 1993; Goodnick Westenholz 1998; Nigro 1998). Certainly the contrast between the combat scene of Tar'am-Agade and the designs on seals of individu- als connected with her sisters is striking, and if the v e j c lear pattern linking the text with depictions of the seal owner in a specific setting already clear at Urkesh can be extended to the south, then the proposed interpretation of Tar'am-Agade as queen is strengthened. To the small group of Akkadian seals representing specific persons in distinct settings can be added the seal of a servant of Tuta-shar-libbish, the wife of Shar-kali-shani. Here, a woman is seated outdoors with a smaller female attendant standing behind her and another figure in front, a scene in which it is possible that the seal owner, Dada, her majordomo, can be identified as the figure greeting her. The outdoor setting and the differentiation in the sizes of the two standing servants compared with the seated woman contribute to the feeling of specificity in the scene (see Boehrner 1964, no. 34; the seal of a servant of Ubil-Eshtar, 'brother of the king', had already been similarly interpreted by Frankfort, 1996, pl. 24c; also Collon 1982, no. 141). One last example can be cited from Nippur. The seal of a servant of the crown prince Shar-kali-shani, found in an Old Babylonian drain, probably depicts this prince as part Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati of a presentation scene (Gibson 1977,30-32). In the Nippur seal the god Ea stands with his hand extended forward in a gesture of greeting, while the standing man in front of him holds up his hand in homage; the vizier Usmu stands between them. In Akkadian presentation and adoration scenes it is rare for the deity to be standing, thereby giving the impression of a more equal relationship between god and worshipper, while the greeting gesture of the god toward his obviously human subject is also rare in this period (for one example see Boehmer 1965, fig. 650). The seal of an unnamed endan of Urkesh (AFc4) A single sealing found in the same cache as Tar'am-Agade's many sealings bears two rollings of a seal with an inscription that is badly broken but of great importance (Fig. 3). The inscrip- tion box contains three cases, and despite the very fragmentary nature of the text, the reading suggested here seems inescapable: [xxx] I [eln-[da-an] I [U]r-k2S.[KI].4 In the third case, the sign k2S is written in the less frequent sequence attested in a pre- Sargonic administrative document and in a seal of Tupkish (Buccellati and Kelly-Buccellati 1996, 97). What little is left of the sign ur leaves little doubt as to its restoration, especially considering the placement within the case. The determinative KI to the right is broken, but there is just enough space for it. In the second case there is a small portion of a sign that can only be read as en. Given the reading [Ulr-k2S .[KI] in case 3, and considering the dimension of the cases, we can think of no other plausible restoration but the one suggested, [eln-[da- an]. The first case, which would have contained the name of the endan, is missing altogether except for one small but important element. A small fragment of the frame is present, located in such a way as to show that the box extended far enough to the right to accommodate the readings of [eln-[da-an] and of [Ulr-k2S.[KI] in the following two cases, as suggested above. The presence of a sealing of an endan together with the many sealings of Tar'am- Agade suggests very strongly that the two individuals were closely linked, in other words, that they were respectively the ruling endan and his queen, i.e. his principal wife, a hypo- thesis which is also supported by other considerations already discussed. The lack of a refer- ence to the endan in Tar'am-Agade's seal corresponds with several of Uqnitum's seals. At the same time, the explicit reference to Naram-Sin suggests that, when the seal was carved, Naram- Sin was still alive and that its use in the Royal Palace AP may date to the early period of Tar'am-Agade's presence in Urkesh. The seal bears a combat scene but is carved in a style different from the other combat scenes found in the cache. In this seal a short skirted human stands before a human-headed bull with the head shown full-face. A second pair includes a second human-headed bull and a nude hero wearing a belt and shown full-face. The backward tilt of the necks and heads of the human-headed bulls, the twisted tail end which curves behind the back leg, the hero wearing a skirt and the thick modeling of the nose, lips and beard of the figures are characteristics of Early Akkadian seals (Boehmer 1965, figs. 53,58,74; Matthews 1997, no. 283, from Brak?). The seal of Ewrim-atal (AFc2) The only other inscribed seals which recur frequently in the Tar'am-Agade cache are those that belong to two individuals whose names are given, without title, in the legends of the seals. They are significant in different respects. Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati The first (Fig. 4) has the very distinctive Human name Ewrim-Atal and a classic Akkadian contest scene which can be compared with that of Tar'arn-Agade. The reading of the name is IB-ri-im-a-tal. In some impressions the first sign looks like LA, but this may be attributed to a poor rolling of the seal. We owe to the kindness and promptness of Gernot Wilhelm the following remarks on the interpretation of the name: There is a Human name ew,/eb-ri-ba-tal (evri=b=adal)a ttested twice at Urnrna (TCL 5, 6039; DV 5, 329). I am not yet sure how we should interpret the element b-m in this case, but this is a long grammatical story. -b and -m are suffixes of verbal forms (Wilhelm 1998, 130f.). But they should not inter- change in a verbal form before a vowel, and apart from that we presumably do not deal with a verbal form but with a noun (evri, Nuzi ervi/e 'lord'). Ew(P1)-ri-a-tal 'The Lord is strong' or 'The Strong One is lord' (both are possible in Hurrian names of diffei-ent areas, the distributional pattern is not yet fully understood) is attested in the Tigunanu Prism I4 (Late Old Babylonian period), also in Nuzi (with the typical metathesis) er-wi-a-tal, e-er-[wi-a-tall, also with apronominal element of 3rd ps. sg. -n: er-wi-na-tal (erve/Z =n=adal). A LA would cause some trouble. Though UrkeS apparently does not know the phonological rule which does not allow /l/in initial position, or at least does not apply it as strictly as other Human areas (to judge from Lubadag-, else- where Nubadig), a root *lar- should appear as *nar- elsewhere. There is Naraya and Naria at Nuzi, but apparently phrase names of the type *nurib-... or *narim- ... are not attested. The specific contest scene on the seal of Ewrim-Atal has a composition known in other Akkadian examples from the Naram-Sin period, but not frequently. In this type of scene the same two figures (here a bison and a nude hero shown full-face) are placed antithetically, that is they are repeated on both sides of the inscription but not in the same order since the figure next to the inscription on one side is also next to it on the other (i.e. A vs B, B vs A). Thus the one pair is a mirror image of the other. We can postulate a high rank in the Urkesh palace for this Human official both on the basis of the presence of his sealings in the cache with the impressions of Tar'am-Agade and of the design and style of his seal. The latter also links him to holders of other Akkadian royal seals from Nagar and the south. At Nagar (Tell Brak) this specific type of contest scene is found on the seal of a prominent person (probably the king) with the Human name Talpush-atili, 'sun of the land of Nagar'. Additionally, at Nagar, the seals of both Itbe-laba, an ensi of Gasur, and a scribe named Irdani, have this composition; all are obviously important individuals in the city (Matthews 1997, nos. 316, 3 17, 321). In the south the same organisation of the contest scene is found in the seal of the son of Naram-Sin, Ukin-Ulmash, although his seal has different figures in the contest (Boehmer 1965, fig. 175). Another son of Naram-Sin, Bin-kali-shani, is mentioned in a seal of the scribe Abi-ishar from Tello that probably has the same composition (Boehmer 1964, no. 13). The inscriptions on the two seals of the sons of Naram-Sin (and on a seal of Enmenanna and five other officials) contain both the divine determinative before the name of Naram-Sin and the epithet 'God of Agade'. Therefore the most complete proclamation of the divinity of Naram-Sin on the part of one son and the servant of another is connected with this antithetical contest scene composition. As mentioned above, in Nagar also important individuals are ac-