This month for our new series Curators Cornered, we are pitting British Museum
curators against each other and asking them to answer the same question with an object
that they are personally in charge of. And this week that question is 'What's your Best
Bovine Object'? Now in case you haven't uh HERD of that term before - bovine we're taking to mean
loosely cows, bulls and oxen. So cattle. And curator of the Ancient Levant and
Anatolia Jamie Fraser has chosen something a little bit left field... Take it away Jamie!
Thanks Nick! Yeah I'm the curator for the Ancient Levant and Anatolia. This is
the part of the Middle East that borders the Mediterranean; so Anatolia is Turkey and the
Levant are those countries that come down the side so; Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan.
And I'm going to tell you why this relief statue of an old Turkish Hittite king called king Pisiri
is actually the sexiest cow related object I reckon in the entire British Museum. So
this is the relief statue of king Pisiri, it dates to about 730 BC and it was excavated in
1879 in a city called Carchemish. Carchemish is an ancient city that sits on the Euphrates
river which now lies directly on the border between Syria and Turkey. In fact,
half the archaeological site lies in Turkey and half the archaeological site lies in Syria,
a really important site in a really important position. And it was one of the capitals of the
Neo-Hittite civilization. So the Hittite civilization is a Bronze Age civilization that
emerged in ancient Turkey in the second millennium BC that actually pushed its borders south
through the Levant right up against an expanding Egyptian Empire. But at some point at the end of
the late-Bronze Age around about 1200-1150 BC the entire East-Mediterranean network of civilizations
one by one collapsed but for the Hittites out of the ashes of this ruined civilization
small Iron Age kingdoms emerged called the Hittites and one of those kingdoms
was centred on the city of Carchemish on the border between what is now modern Syria and
Turkey on the Euphrates river. And in 730 BC one of its kings was called king Pisiri, and
at that time Pisiri built a monumental staircase leading up into the citadel of the ancient city.
And this statue, this relief of king Pisiri sat alongside the wall going up with the stairs that
you would walk past as you come into the city. And what you're seeing on this statue is Pisiri
standing side on holding probably a sceptre or a symbol of his authority. His face has been
destroyed, probably ripped apart when the city fell to the Babylonian armies in 605 BC. But none
of that is what I want to talk about. Because what I want to talk about is what's in the background
behind him because what you're seeing behind Pisiri is extraordinary. It's an ancient
hieroglyphic script that was almost forgotten about for thousands and thousands of years. Now
when you think hieroglyphs you think Ancient Egypt right. And that is one of the most well-documented
hieroglyphic scripts of the ancient world but there was actually two hieroglyphic scripts in
the Mediterranean basin. Sure the ones of Ancient Egypt and this strange bizarre hieroglyphic script
that grew up in central and western Anatolia. The language that it's written in is a language called
Luwian and Luwian L-U-W-I-A-N Luwian was a language that a lot of ancient Turkish or ancient
Anatolian people spoke in the Hittite empire. Think of say for example Troy about 1200 BC
while the Greeks are at the the gates of Troy with their wooden horse,
it was probably Luwian curse words that were being thrown down upon them by the Trojans themselves.
Luwian was written in two different scripts. It could be put into cuneiform;
the sort of wedge-shaped script that we know so much about from ancient Mesopotamia and
what Irving Finkel studies. But they also reserved hieroglyphic script for monumental
inscriptions dealing with particularly civic structures, religious structures,
commemorations, dedications, things like that. And that is what you're seeing behind king
Pisiri here. Now I've said all of this without, I know, saying the word cow or ox or bovine
and this is all coming to this point. This is why I think this particular stela
sings to a topic of ancient cows. And we're thinking a little left brain here, so go with me.
There are three reasons. First of all the way the script is read it's done in a way that we
refer to as boustrophedon; an ancient Greek term it means 'as the ox ploughs'. So if you think of
an ox ploughing a field that goes through the field then it turns and it comes back
the other way like this. The earliest Greek inscriptions around about the 6th century BC
are written in this way which is why this term is a Greek term boustrophedon - as the ox plows.
So you start in the top right, you read from right to left and you come down the other way. So you're
reading boustrophedon - you're reading like the ox plows. Ancient Greek did it at the beginning,
ancient Etruscan some of these trusts and scripts are done like this. For all you gurus out there
who can read the Rongorongo script of Rapa Nui Easter Esland that's a boustrophedon script
as well. What this says in the opening lines - it's a royal dedication to king Pisiri upon him
ascending the throne. It says: 'I'm Pirsiri the hero, the country lord of the city of Carchemish
and the Malizi land, beloved of the goddess Kubaba. To make me great, my father, Sasturas the
sun-blessed prince beseeched the goddess Kubaba to cause me to sit upon my father's throne.'
So we start at the top right and we start reading right to left and that's the opening 'I
am Pisiri the hero the country lord of the city of Carchemish' and then we come to one of the symbols
which is that of a calf head. Representing a sound called 'ma'. And see how the calf head is on top
of two hills or two peaks? That indicates that it's part of a land and this is the symbol that
indicate the Ma-lizi land so the calf head being 'ma' - mazili land over which Pisiri is ruling.
We then jump across his head to the other side and here you can see sort of a symbol of like a
split egg above a diamond. It kind of breaks up at this point but we know what this says because
on the other side of where his hand is holding the mace you can see the same word repeated
and you see split egg diamond shape over a hawk or a falcon. And that is the word for
'the goddess Kubaba'; who's the main goddess of ancient Carchemish. And then behind her
a lovely beautiful hieroglyph of two people embracing and that's the sign for 'beloved'.
So together that says beloved of the goddess Kubaba who's the main goddess of
ancient Carchemish. Then we come down the next line and then we hit the third reason why this is
kind of cool for cows because the next hieroglyph is not a calf but actually of an ox head.
So the these hieroglyphs can work in a couple of ways. It could just mean an ox. So I sold 50
oxen or something you would use that to symbolize an ox. But like the calf 'ma' this is actually a
syllabogram it means it represents sounds. And in this case it is from the phrase 'make me great'.
And this is why I think the statue is the best cow related object in the British Museum because
imagine: With your fedora, your leather jacket on, you've come into the ancient city of Carchemish.
You've found some of these inscriptions like this one of king Pisiri and you slowly read it aloud as
you trace your finger over the hieroglyphs working out what it says. And when you get to that glyph
that is the face of an oxen it makes you say aloud the sound "MOO". And I think that's pretty cool.
Now you know how to pronounce a Luwian hieroglyph that looks like a cow
and makes you say "Moo" and if that makes you feel like 'liking' this video then please do
because that is how the voting system works. The curator with the most likes at the end of the week
will be declared winner of this round of Curators Cornered and will go on to face other successful
curators such as Sue Brunning from last week's competition. However if you haven't yet watched
Julia's video it's right here. It has nothing to do with ancient Anatolia or Mesopotamia.
It has everything to do with Iron Age Britain and it is beefy, beefy goodness.