Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale

Looking for the Signs

An Unfinished Royal Bowl from Karmir-Blur of Minua, King of Urartu

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Abstract

Among the most representative objects not only of metallurgy, but of the Urartian kingship itself, there is a rather conspicuous group of bronze bowls bearing short inscriptions in cuneiform. These texts allow to attribute the ownership of these objects to a series of Urartian rulers. Since 2022, a new project has been underway to study comprehensively these objects, most of which are stored in the History Museum of Armenia. The present article deals with two bowls referable to king Minua, son of Išpuini, one of which, unpublished, bears an unfinished inscription. A reconstruction of this inscription is given based on microscopic analysis of the epigraph preparation marks.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: March 4, 2024 | Accepted: April 15, 2024 | Published July 25, 2024 | Language: en

Keywords Karmir-blur • Bronze bowls • Cuneiform inscriptions • Urartu • Minua

Copyright © 2024 Annarita Bonfanti, Roberto Dan. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2024/01/003