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The Adana Museum possesses a statue of a lion some aspects of which merit attention. The site of its discovery, Çolaklıköy, is discussed below.
The animal, carved in the round from brownish black basalt, stands on a base now in bad condition. Its position is upright, front paws together, hind left-paw advanced. The belly and paws are not detached from the block. The surface is badly worn, the muzzle damaged and the claws broken. The jaws are shown open and partly hollowed out. The head is wreathed by the mane, the ears were meant to be lying back and pointed in shape (Fig. 3). Around the eyes and on the muzzle the basalt surface has flaked off. The mane, covering the shoulders and the belly, seems not to have been marked out in tufts. The right-hand section of the back from the shoulder to the rump is flattened into a horizontal surface in the middle of which is a rectangular hole (length 5 cm., width 3.5 cm., depth 3 cm.). Lastly, the rear end is squared off in a vertical plane. The treatment of the back and of its extension shows that the sculpture has been used for some purpose (Fig. 4).
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- Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1976
References
1 The object is as yet unregistered. Dimensions: max. ht. 105 cm., length of base 80 cm. Information for publication was kindly supplied by Mr. O. Aytuǧ Taşyürek, director of the Adana Museum, to whom I am most grateful.
2 This is not the place to deal with the methodological problems posed by this operation. Cf. Orthmann, W., Untersuchungen zur Späthethitischen Kunst, Bonn, 1971, 12–18Google Scholar.
3 Compare particularly Öney, Gönül, “Lion Figures in Anatolian Seljuk Architecture”, Anatolia (Anadolu) XIII, 1969, figs. 7–10Google Scholar.
4 von Oppenheim, M. Fr., Tell Halaf, III, Berlin 1955, pls. 120, 127–8Google Scholar.
5 Özgüç, T., Ausgrabungen in Karahöyük, Ankara 1949, fig. 16Google Scholar.
6 W. Orthmann, op.cit., pl.52, Sevdili I(=Selvili).
7 Cf. Bossert, H. T., in Orientalia, NS 28 1959 figs. 24–6Google Scholar; idem and others, Ausgrabungen auf dem Karatepe (Erster Vorbericht), Ankara 1950, fig. 70Google Scholar. Catalogued by W. Orthmann, op. cit, Karatepe cat. B/5, B/22, and A/25, dated to Late Hittite IIIb.
8 W. Orthmann, op.cit., p. 160; cf. Akurgal, E., Späthethitische Bildkunst, Ankara 1949, pp.74–5Google Scholar.
9 W. Orthmann. op.cit., p. 133.
10 Cf. Alkım, U. B., “The Road from Samal to Asitawandawa”, in JKF II, 1965, pp. 1–45Google Scholar (= Belleten, 95, 1960, pp. 349–401Google Scholar); idem, “The Amanus Region in Turkey”, Archaeology, XXIV, 4, (October, 1969) p.280–9.
11 Actually National Route No. 6.
12 Alkım, , JKF, II, 1965, p. 3, n. 5Google Scholar.
13 The means of moving a sculpture of this kind appear to have existed in neo-Hittite times: cf. Alkım, , Anatolia I, 1968, p. 241Google Scholar.
14 The first item of material evidence cited by U. B. Alkım is the 8th/7th cent. B.C. Phoenician inscription that comes, according to E. Sachau, from Hasanbeyli (see Alkım, , JKF II. 1/2, 1965, p. 3, n. 5Google Scholar. who gives a bibliography of the inscription.) Professor Alkım, to whom I am much obliged for the details with which he has supplied me, believes that this inscription could have come, like our lion, from Çolaklıköy, since the “survey” of Hasanbeyli and its immediate surroundings made since 1947 (originally by B. Landsberger and K. Balkan, then by U. B. Alkım) disclosed no archaeological remains there of the 9th–7th centuries B.C.