A NEO-ASSYRIAN GREEN MOTTLED AMULET WITH AN EMBOSSED PAZUZU, CIRCA 8TH-7TH CENTURY B.C.

拍品描述

A NEO-ASSYRIAN GREEN MOTTLED STONE AMULET WITH AN EMBOSSED PAZUZU, MESOPOTAMIA, CIRCA 8TH-7TH CENTURY B.C. Of upright rectangular form with a raised, shouldered projection at the top pierced for suspension, the plaque carved in relief on one face with the frontal figure of the demon Pazuzu. The figure stands with legs slightly parted and terminating in taloned bird's feet, the arms held close to the body, and framed by two pairs of outspread wings incised with dense parallel striations to indicate the pinions. The head is disproportionately large, canine or leonine in aspect, with bulging eyes, a broad snout and bared teeth. The stone is a mottled dark and pale green, veined with paler natural fissures, one of which runs vertically across the length of the plaque. The figure is unmistakably Pazuzu, king of the wind demons of the Mesopotamian underworld and son of Hanbi. His iconography is remarkably stable across the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods: the monstrous head combining canine and feline features, the humanoid body with raptor's talons, the four wings, and, where preserved on more complete examples, a scorpion's tail and an erect phallus terminating in a serpent's head. Although widely described as a demon, Pazuzu occupied an ambivalent place in Mesopotamian belief. He was himself a bringer of pestilential winds, but his terrifying aspect was invoked precisely to repel other malevolent forces, above all the female demon Lamashtu, who was held responsible for miscarriage, infant mortality and puerperal fever. Amulets of this type were worn on the body, and larger plaques were hung above the beds of pregnant women and infants to drive Lamashtu back to the underworld. The suspension lug at the top of the present plaque, and its modest scale, place it firmly within the apotropaic amuletic tradition rather than the larger votive category. The choice of a hardstone with a deep green tone is consistent with the medium favoured for the more carefully worked amulets in this group, where serpentine, chlorite and related dark green stones were preferred over bronze for personal wear, both for their durability and, it is generally supposed, for the protective associations attached to green stones in Mesopotamian magical practice. The compact, deeply cut relief, worked so that the figure reads clearly at small scale, is characteristic of the finer end of the production. This amulet exemplifies the domestic and personal register of Neo-Assyrian apotropaic magic, in which the same demonic iconography that appears on monumental palace reliefs and large bronze plaques is reduced to a wearable form. Its interest lies in the survival of the complete plaque with its suspension intact, and in the retention of the full four-winged frontal type at a scale intended to be carried on the body of the wearer it was meant to protect.

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