The Tablet of Shamash is a stele recovered from the ancient Babylonian city of

Sippar Sippar ( Sumerian: , Zimbir) was an ancient Near Eastern Sumerian and later Babylonian city on the east bank of the Euphrates river. Its '' tell'' is located at the site of modern Tell Abu Habbah near Yusufiyah in Iraq's Baghdad Governorate, som ...

in southern

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

in 1881; it is now a major piece in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

's ancient Middle East collection. It is dated to the reign of King Nabu-apla-iddina ca. 888 – 855 BC. Tablet of shamash impression

Discovery

The tablet was discovered during excavations by

Hormuzd Rassam Hormuzd Rassam ( ar, هرمز رسام; syr, ܗܪܡܙܕ ܪܣܐܡ; 182616 September 1910), was an Assyriologist and author. He is known for making a number of important archaeological discoveries from 1877 to 1882, including the clay tablets tha ...

between 1878 and 1883. The tablet was found complete but broken into two large and six small pieces. By the time of King Nabopolassar, between 625 and 605 BC, it had broken into four parts and been repaired. The terracotta coffer also contained two clay impressions of the tablets presentation scene. The coffer was sealed under an

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term ...

temple floor. It has been suggested that the coffer also contained a second tablet as well as a third clay impression (now in the Istanbul Museum).

Description

It was encased in a clay cast or " squeeze" that created impressions when placed over the face of the stone and protected it. This indicates that the tablet was an item of reverence, possibly stored due to newer traditions. The tablet has serrated edges like a saw. The

bas-relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term '' relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

on the top of the obverse (pictured) shows Shamash, the Sun God, beneath symbols of the

sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

and star. Shamash is depicted in a seated position, wearing a horned headdress, holding the rod-and-ring symbol in his right hand. There is another large sun disk in front of him on an

altar An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, churches, and other places of worship. They are used particularly in paga ...

, suspended from above by two figures. Of the three figures on the left, the central one is dressed in the same fashion as Shamash and is assumed to be the Babylonian king Nabu-apla-iddina receiving the symbols of deity. The bas relief can be superimposed with two orders of

golden rectangle In geometry, a golden rectangle is a rectangle whose side lengths are in the golden ratio, 1 : \tfrac, which is 1:\varphi (the Greek letter phi), where \varphi is approximately 1.618. Golden rectangles exhibit a special form of self-similarity ...

Inscription

The scene contains three inscriptions.British Museum Collection
/ref> The first, at the head of the tablet reads: Above the sun god a second inscription describes the position of the depicted moon, sun, and star as being over against the heavenly ocean, on which the scene sits: The final inscription in the scene reads: The

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sh ...

text beneath the stele is divided into fifteen passages, blending prose, poetic and rhetorical elements in the fashion typical of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions. It tells how

and the Ebabbar temple of Shamash had fallen into disrepair with the loss of the statue of the god. This cult image is temporarily replaced with the solar disk; it is further described how a new figure of Shamash was found in an eastern part of the

Euphrates The Euphrates () is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia ( ''the land between the rivers''). Originating in Turkey, the Eup ...

, from which Nabu-apla-iddina has constructed a new statue of lapis lazuli and

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

to restore the cult. Similar

iconographic Iconology is a method of interpretation in cultural history and the history of the visual arts used by Aby Warburg, Erwin Panofsky and their followers that uncovers the cultural, social, and historical background of themes and subjects in the visu ...

and prosaic parallels have been evidenced from Mesopotamian and later

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

sources where the king who restores the cult is seen like a deity passing on divine symbols. The remainder of the text records the gifts of the royal grant, similar to a '' kudurru'' and discusses the practices of the temple, priestly rules, dress codes and regulations.

References

{{British Museum 9th-century BC steles 1881 archaeological discoveries Archaeological artifacts Stone sculptures in the United Kingdom Archaeology of Iraq Middle Eastern sculptures in the British Museum Sculpture of the Ancient Near East Sippar