Girsu - Sumerian City of Mysteries

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Girsu is an ancient Sumerian city located in modern-day Iraq. Girsu was located in southern Mesopotamia, halfway between the Tigris and the Euphrates. In the III millennium BC. e. the city was in an alliance with two closely located cities connected by water: Nina-Sirara (modern. Zurghul) and Lagash (modern. Al-Hiba), which dominated the union.

Girsu was the first site in which traces of the Sumerian civilization were found. In addition to this, Girsu was the first site to be thoroughly investigated by archaeologists. The French expedition began in 1877 and lasted a total of 20 seasons. The excavation site was constantly raided by treasure lovers.

In addition to 40,000 clay tablets, two striking pieces of sculptural art have been found. The first of these is a stone bas-relief depicting Ur-Nanshe, the ruler of Lagash, piously carrying a basket on his head full of clay to make bricks for the construction of a new temple. The second is the Stele of Kites, depicting the military triumph of Ur-Nanshe's grandson Eanatum. The stele got its name from the part that depicts the heads and limbs of enemy soldiers, carried away by hungry kites.

The Pushkin Museum (Russia) contains five stone fragments from two Sumerian statues. They could be found in the area of the Iraqi city of Tello, where the Sumerian city of Girsu was located in antiquity, or in the area of the Iraqi city of Nuffar (ancient Nippur). The three presented fragments are identical in composition - that is, most likely, they belonged to the same statue (as well as the remaining two - to another). The statues are made of volcanic (diabase) rocks, available only to rulers in Sumer. Our fragments include the fingers of a person's right and left wrist, and two fragments of a cap. A hat is a characteristic sign of the ruler: if he was depicted in a headdress, then in that very one. As for the hands, not only the material, but also the stylistic features are similar to the statues of the famous Sumerian ruler Gudea, which were found in large numbers at Tello. And this is what makes the exhibits on display especially noteworthy.

In the middle of the 19th century, many scientists were skeptical about the idea that the Sumerians lived in Mesopotamia before Assyria and Babylon - until in 1887 Ernest de Sarzec, the French consul in Basra (a city in the southeast of modern Iraq), who was interested in Mesopotamian antiquities, did not find in the same Tello a statue depicting the king-priest. It was completely different from the Assyrian and Babylonian sculptures that were found in Mesopotamia before, and was stylistically more archaic. Even the most cautious Assyrian scholars were forced to admit the existence of the Sumerian civilization, since the sculpture found belonged to a culture older than Babylonia and Assyria.

It soon became clear that the statue found by de Sarsec represented the head (or ensi) of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash, which ruled in the second half of the XXII century BC. e. His name was Gudea, which in translation from the Sumerian language means “Called”. Perhaps this is not a name, but a title that Gudea needed to justify the violent seizure of power, although the exact circumstances of his coming to power are unknown: according to one version, he inherited the throne after the death of his father-in-law Ur-Bau (who ruled immediately before him).

In total, in the area of the Sumerian city of Girsu, about 30 statues of standing or seated Gudea were found (the most famous of them are kept in the Louvre), most of them are volcanic rocks (most often from diorite). The images of the ruler of Lagash standing in a prayer pose were intended for the temple in honor of the god Ningirsu, which Gudea built in Girsu, and were a kind of substitutes for the ruler: they acted as guarantors of the promises given by Gudea to the deity. Until recently, images of a seated Gudea were interpreted in the same way. However, it is now generally accepted that they themselves could serve as an object of worship: in the era of the III dynasty of Ur (late XXII - late XXI century BC) Gudea was deified, sacrifices began to be made to his statues, and places of commemoration and afterlife feeding arose around them. ruler.

Found 13 statues of Gudea with full text, as well as a number of fragments of statues with fragments of text. In addition, two inscriptions from his face are on large ceramic cylinders and over 2,400 more - on small objects: vessels, votive clay nails.

(2075 pieces), etc. In the inscriptions Gudea positions himself as one of the brightest figures in Sumerian history and culture. From them we learn that Gudea traded with the countries of Western Asia, with India and Western Arabia, and for the construction of a temple to the god Ningirsu received materials from all parts of the civilized (40 centuries ago!) World: cedars from the Aman mountains, stones and forest from Phenicia, marble from "Tidan, mountains to Amurra", copper, golden sand and wood from the Melukhhi mountains, and diorite for statues from Magan. It is curious that the inscriptions of Gudea do not describe the wars of conquest, only one casually says that he destroyed the city of Anshan in Elam.

Considering all the subtleties, one can be 95% sure that the fragments stored in the museum were once parts of the statue of Gudea; Let's leave 5% of skepticism to the incompleteness of our knowledge about the diversity of art in the ancient Near East.