Ancient Kuttamuwa Stele And Iron Age Belief That Soul Lived In Funerary Slab

A.Sutherland  - AncientPages.com  - Ancient cultures in human history have tried to honor and commemorate their dead.

An ancient Middle East tradition among prehistoric cultures in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant (Syria-Palestine) is also closely related to the relationship between the dead,  people’s funerary customs and life in the eighth century B.C

Kuttamuwa Stele from Zincirli. Image credit: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

Food, drink, offerings and stone effigies in maintaining a place for the dead in family life show how the living cared for the dead.

One such object that gives us insight into this tradition is the Kuttamuwa Stele, discovered in 2008 by University of Chicago archaeologists at Zincirli, Turkey, the site of the ancient city of Sam'al, which was once the capital of a prosperous kingdom, and now, an important Iron Age site under excavation.

The stele was found in a suburb of the walled city, probably in Kuttamuwa’s own house.

An inscription on a stone monument in Turkey from the eighth century B.C. indicated a belief that the body and soul were separate. Image credit University of Chicago

Kuttamuwa, an 8th-century BC royal official from Sam'al and a servant of King Panamuwa II (died ca. 733/732 BC) ordered this inscribed stele to be erected upon his death. The inscription requested that his mourners commemorate his life and his afterlife with feasts "for my soul that is in this stele".

“I, Kuttamuwa, servant of [the king] Panamuwa, am the one who oversaw the production of this stele for myself while still living. I placed it in an eternal chamber and established a feast at this chamber: a bull for [the god] Hadad, a ram for [the god] Shamash and a ram for my soul that is in this stele."

The Kuttamuwa Stele is an ancient memorial document of ancestor cult and beliefs about the soul, dated back to about 735 BC. It is also one of the earliest records that relate to a soul as an entity separated from the body.

The basalt stele that weighs 800 pounds and is three feet tall,  is carved with an image of a man named Kuttamuwa seated before a table with offerings to the deceased and to local gods.

Stele showing a deceased man being attended by family members, part of an ancestor cult. Luxor, Egypt, ca. 1295-1069 BC. Image credit: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago

It was believed that Kuttamuwa’s spirit inhabited this funerary slab and the words carved on the stele were the man’s last words. The stele confirms Iron Age beliefs about the afterlife and their belief that the soul separates from the body.

The monument is covered with the longest known memorial inscription of its type that revealed an unknown practice of enacting annual sacrifices for the soul of the deceased. According to the inscription, the soul of the deceased resided in the stele.

An ancient Middle East tradition among prehistoric cultures in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant (Syria-Palestine) is also closely related to the relationship between the dead, people’s funerary customs and life in the eighth century B.C

The script is derived from the Phoenician alphabet and a Semitic language that appears to be an archaic version of Aramaic, a language widely used in the Middle East at that time.

The biblical commandment to “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long” (Exodus 20:12), is rooted in the tradition expressed by the Kuttamuwa text, which also informs that the rituals took place not just at the grave or in the home, but in a special private mortuary chapel next door to a temple, where the Kuttamuwa stela was discovered.

Written by – A. Sutherland  - AncientPages.com Senior Staff Writer

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