The Manisa relief, also known as the Akpınar relief and the Cybele relief ( (Cliff image) or Sipil Heykeli (Sipylos Monument)), is a Hittite

rock relief A rock relief or rock-cut relief is a relief sculpture carved on solid or "living rock" such as a cliff, rather than a detached piece of stone. They are a category of rock art, and sometimes found as part of, or in conjunction with, ro ...

at Akpınar, about 5 km east of the Turkish provincial capital of

Manisa Manisa (), historically known as Magnesia, is a city in Turkey's Aegean Region and the administrative seat of Manisa Province. Modern Manisa is a booming center of industry and services, advantaged by its closeness to the international port cit ...

above an amusement park on the road to

Salihli Salihli is a large town and district of Manisa Province in the Aegean region of Turkey. Geography The city of Salihli, the seat of the district, is located on İzmir-Ankara (E 96) highway and the parallel railway connections. The urban zone is ...

. It depicts a Hittite divinity. Rock reliefs are a prominent aspect of

Hittite art Hittite art was produced by the Hittite civilization in ancient Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey, and also stretching into Syria during the second millennium BCE from the nineteenth century up until the twelfth century BCE. This period falls under ...

Description

KybeleStatue19thCenturyPostcardMountSipylusManisaTurkey

The relief is located in a niche about 100-120 m up a granite cliff-face of

Mount Sipylus Mount Spil ( tr, Spil Dağı), the ancient Mount Sipylus ( grc, Σίπυλος) (elevation ), is a mountain rich in legends and history in Manisa Province, Turkey, in what used to be the heartland of the Lydians and what is now Turkey's Aegean Re ...

, overlooking the city of Manisa, the ancient

Lydia Lydia (Lydian language, Lydian: ‎𐤮𐤱𐤠𐤭𐤣𐤠, ''Śfarda''; Aramaic: ''Lydia''; el, Λυδία, ''Lȳdíā''; tr, Lidya) was an Iron Age Monarchy, kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the mod ...

n city of

Magnesia ad Sipylum Magnesia Sipylum ( el, Mαγνησία ἡ πρὸς Σιπύλῳ or ; modern Manisa, Turkey) was a city of Lydia, situated about 65 km northeast of Smyrna (now İzmir) on the river Hermus (now Gediz) at the foot of Mount Sipylus. The cit ...

, and the Gediz river valley (the ancient Hermos). It is over 6 m high and in poor condition. A seated figure 8-10 m high is depicted in high relief (but not completely separated from the cliff face), who looks northwards and wears a tall pointed headdress. Its hands seem to rest on its breasts, the feet rest atop a footstool. The head has partly cleaved away, from natural causes. Two remnants of

Luwian hieroglyphic Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once commonly known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian, not Hittite, and the ter ...

inscriptions are visible to the right of his head, which indicate that the relief dates to the Hittite period. Cecil John Cadoux thought a date in the time of Suppiluliuma I or his son

Mursili II There were three Hittite kings called Mursili: *Mursili I, ca. 1556–1526 BCE (short chronology), and was likely a grandson of his predecessor, Hattusili I. His sister was Ḫarapšili and his wife was queen Kali. *Mursili II, (also spelled Mursil ...

(i.e. 14th century BC) was probable.

Helmuth Theodor Bossert Helmuth Theodor Bossert (September 11, 1889 – February 5, 1961) was a German history of art, art historian, philology, philologist and archaeology, archaeologist. He is best-known for his excavations of the Hittite fortress city at Karatepe, Tur ...

read the leftmost inscription (Akpınar 1) as "Prince Kuwalanamuwa", the same name which is found on the

Hanyeri relief The Hanyeri relief (or ''Gezbeli relief'') is a Hittite rock relief near Hanyeri on the road from Tufanbeyli to Develi in Tufanbeyli district in Adana Province, about 80 km southeast of Kayseri, in Turkey. In Hittite times, the route over ...

and

İmamkullu relief The Hittite İmamkullu relief (previously also ''İmamkulu'') is a rock relief near the town of İmamkullu in Tomarza district in Kayseri Province, Turkey. In Turkish it is known as ''Yazılı Kaya'' ("inscribed cliff") and ''Şimşekkaya'' ("l ...

, but it is unclear whether all the three refer to the same individual. If they do, the prince under discussion must have been extremely influential, as there are no other individuals, except for Hittite kings, whose reliefs accompanied by hieroglyphic inscriptions are found in three distinct locations in Asia Minor. The right inscription (Akpınar 2) was not legible to

Hans Gustav Güterbock Hans Gustav Güterbock (May 27, 1908 – March 29, 2000) was a German-American Hittitologist. Born and trained in Germany, his career was ended with the rise of the Nazis because of his Jewish heritage, and he was forced to resettle in Turkey. A ...

, who studied the relief with R.A. Alexander in 1978.Horst Ehringhaus: ''Götter, Herrscher, Inschriften.'' 2005, p. 87.

Reception

In the second century AD,

Pausanias Pausanias ( el, Παυσανίας) may refer to: *Pausanias of Athens, lover of the poet Agathon and a character in Plato's ''Symposium'' *Pausanias the Regent, Spartan general and regent of the 5th century BC *Pausanias of Sicily, physician of th ...

recorded the figure in his ''Description of Greece'' as a depiction of the mother goddess,

Cybele Cybele ( ; Phrygian: ''Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya'' "Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother", perhaps "Mountain Mother"; Lydian ''Kuvava''; el, Κυβέλη ''Kybele'', ''Kybebe'', ''Kybelis'') is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forer ...

, made by

Broteas In Greek mythology, Broteas (Ancient Greek: Βροτέας), a hunter, was the son of Tantalus (by Dione, Euryanassa or Eurythemista), whose other offspring were Niobe and Pelops. Broteas was also one of the Lapiths, killed at the battle of the La ...

the son of

Tantalos Tantalus ( grc, Τάνταλος ) was a Greek mythological figure, most famous for his punishment in Tartarus: he was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the wate ...

. Several travellers in the 18th and 19th centuries described the work, including Richard Chandler,

Charles Texier Félix Marie Charles Texier (22 August 1802, Versailles – 1 July 1871, Paris) was a French historian, architect and archaeologist. Texier published a number of significant works involving personal travels throughout Asia Minor and the Middle Eas ...

Gustav Hirschfeld Gustav Hirschfeld (4 November 1847, Pyritz – 10 April 1895, Wiesbaden) was a German classical archaeologist. He was the great-uncle of Walter Benjamin. Life Born into a Jewish merchant family,Jonathan M. Hess, ''Middlebrow Literature and the ...

and

Archibald Henry Sayce The Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce (25 September 18454 February 1933) was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919. He was able to write in at least twe ...

. The interpretation of the figure is disputed. Bossert's identification with Cybele was rejected by

Kurt Bittel Kurt Bittel (born 5 July 1907 in Heidenheim an der Brenz, died 30 January 1991 in Heidenheim an der Brenz) was a German prehistorian. As president of the German Archaeological Institute (''Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts'' - DAI) and excava ...

as unsustainable, but he still saw a female goddess, as did

Ekrem Akurgal Ekrem Akurgal (March 30, 1911 – November 1, 2002) was a Turkish archaeologist. During a career that spanned more than fifty years, he conducted definitive research in several sites along the western coast of Anatolia such as Phokaia (Foça), ...

. Peter Z. Spanos, however, interprets the figure as the Weather god,Peter Z. Spanos: "Einige Bemerkungen zum sogenannten Niobe-Monument bei Manisa (Magnesia ad Sipylum)." ''Beiträge zur Altertumskunde Kleinasiens. Festschrift für Kurt Bittel.'' Zabern, Mainz 1983, pp. 477-483. which conforms to the general tendency today to interpret the image as a male god; Ehringhaus suggests it is a mountain god. As a result of confusion with a different natural rock formation near Manisa, which resembles a sitting figure and is known as ''Weeping

Niobe In Greek mythology, Niobe (; grc-gre, Νιόβη ) was a daughter of Tantalus and of either Dione, the most frequently cited, or of Eurythemista or Euryanassa, the wife of Amphion and the sister of Pelops and Broteas. Her father was the ru ...

'', this relief is sometimes, incorrectly, known as the ''Niobe cliffs''.

References

Bibliography

Kay Kohlmeyer The name Kay is found both as a surname (see Kay (surname)) and as a given name. In English-speaking countries, it is usually a feminine name, often a short form of Katherine or one of its variants; but it is also used as a first name in its own ...

. "Felsbilder der hethitischen Großreichszeit." ''Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica'' 15 (1983) pp. 28-34. * Peter Z. Spanos: "Einige Bemerkungen zum sogenannten Niobe-Monument bei Manisa (Magnesia ad Sipylum)." ''Beiträge zur Altertumskunde Kleinasiens. Festschrift für Kurt Bittel.'' Zabern, Mainz 1983, pp. 477-483. * Maarten J. Vermaseren. ''Corpus Cultus Cybelae Attidisque (CCCA)'' Vol. 1: ''Asia Minor'' (= ''Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire Romain'' Vol. 50.1). Brill, Leiden. 1987, , p. 129
in Google Books
*

Horst Ehringhaus Horst may refer to: Science * Horst (geology), a raised fault block bounded by normal faults or graben People * Horst (given name) * Horst (surname) * ter Horst, Dutch surname * van der Horst, Dutch surname Places Settlements Germany * Horst, ...

. ''Götter, Herrscher, Inschriften. Die Felsreliefs der hethitischen Großreichszeit in der Türkei.'' Zabern, Mainz 2005, , pp. 84–87.

External links

Description on hittitemonuments.com
{{coord, 38.5978, N, 27.5000, E, source:wikidata, display=title Hittite art Archaeological sites in the Aegean Region Hittite sites in Turkey Luwian inscriptions Tourist attractions in Manisa Province Rock reliefs in Turkey