*2.1. Rain Imagery in the Ancient Near East*

Jacques Cauvin demonstrated that two dominant ideological symbols, the woman and the bull, appear in art on both sides of the Taurus Mountains as early as the eighth millennium BCE, representing the advent of the woman and bull religion. Woman and bull, emblematic of the female fertility goddess responsible for both rain and birth, and the virile male god, appear at the very same time as the earliest evidence of rain-fed agriculture and animal husbandry. To this day in Northern Syria and Northern Mesopotamia, agriculture is based almost entirely on rainfall with its concomitant thunderstorms and rainbows. The rolling thunder recalls the lowing of a bull or the sound it makes

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when it paws the ground. Bull heads, even bull figures, surrounded by dots, appear on the Halaf painted pottery of Northern Mesopotamia, dating 6600/6500–6000 BCE. It seems reasonable to interpret these dots as raindrops. Most revealing is the scene on a Halaf bowl from Arpachiya (Figure 3). Here, the outer face of the bowl shows bull heads surrounded by dots, while the inner face of the bowl's wall features next to a bull hunt scene two naked women flanking and holding a square form fringed on three sides, which may be interpreted as a sheet of rain (Ziffer and Shalem 2015, pp. 462– 63).1

**Figure 3.** Bowl from Arpachiya, depicting bulls, naked women and rain (Hijara et al. 1980: Figure 10).

In the Akkadian glyptic period, the storm god, holding flail and forked lightning on a winged lion spewing water streams (Boehmer 1965, pls. XXX: 363, 366, XXXI: 367, 369, 371), stands or drives a chariot drawn by a lion dragon spewing jets of water (Boehmer 1965, pl. XXXI: 372–374). The storm god cracks a whip or carries a mace.2 He is depicted with his consort, the naked goddess, holding with both hands a lightning rod or bundles of lightning rods (Figure 4) or a watery strap, standing on her own lion dragon spewing water (Boehmer 1965, pl. XXXI: 368) or on the lion dragon harnessed to the god's chariot (Boehmer 1965, pp. 372–73). Mounted on a bull with outstretched arms, she stands

<sup>1</sup> (Garfinkel 2018), who regards the scene as the earliest representation of weaving with a loom.

<sup>2</sup> Black and Green 1992, pp. 110–11), Figure 89. Boehmer tends to interpret the whip as thunder, to van Loon the cracking of the whip signifies lightning, (van Loon 1990, p. 365).

in a rain shower depicted as a sheet of wavy lines (Boehmer 1965, pp. 63–64, pl. XXXI: 369; Mayer-Opificius 1984, p. 202). In the background, moon crescent and sun may be depicted, or the moon may be represented alone. One seal shows winged lion dragons diving from heaven along with the storm god and the naked goddess on their lion dragon mounts. The lion dragons represent the roaring dark thunderclouds (Jacobsen 1976, p. 7). Likewise, the lowing of the goddess' bull was the thunder that brought rain. The bull would become the storm god's symbol in the west, and the storm clouds were called "Adad's bull-calves" (Lambert 1985, p. 436; Black and Green 1992, pp. 110–11).

**Figure 4.** Naked goddess with lightning bundles on a lion dragon harnessed to the storm god's chariot (Leinwand 1992: Figure 13).

In the Anatolian glyptic of the Assyrian trade colonies period, the storm god stands on a lion holding a forked lightning symbol and a spear (Özgüç 1965, nos. 8, 11a–b, 13), or on a bull grasping a limp snake by the head (a defeated enemy). A god wearing a moon crescent mounted on a bull may appear with the storm god, possibly signaling him as a local lunar storm god (Özgüç 1965, no. 71; Leinwand 1992: Figure 16; Ornan 2001, p. 16) (Figure 5). He appears with his consort, the naked goddess, who grasps a circle of strokes indicating rain. Between the goddess and the god on the bull grasping a snake are diagonal strokes, possibly rain.

**Figure 5.** Anatolian seal impression showing the storm god on a bull, a naked goddess lifting her skirt and rain (Leinwand 1992: Figure 16).

In the Old Babylonian glyptic, the storm god is identified by his name in the seal inscription. Grasping the lightning fork, he rests his foot on a recumbent bull, his attribute animal, below a crescent. The inscription reads "Adad (dIshkur), son of An-na" (Fales and Del Fabbro 2017, pp. 164– 65, cat. no. 110). The lightning fork, the storm god's symbol, appears on a bull without the anthropomorphic manifestation of the god, together with the naked goddess, moon and sun above her (Figure 6). The seal inscription reads: Adad (dIškur) Shala (dša-la), providing the naked goddess' name.3 Shala was the consort of the god Ishkur/Adad. Adad was the storm god of the north and the west, whose name was derived from the Western Semitic root \**h-d-d*, meaning "thunder", as in the name of the Syrian storm god, Baal/Hadad (Schwemer 2008, pp. 125, 135–37). Shala was a goddess of Hurrian extraction, her name meaning "daughter". Her epithets indicate that she was the goddess of rainfall and therefore she was invested with power over harvests. Her light features allude to lightening (Schwemer 2006, 2008, pp. 147–49). In the god lists, Shala is the consort of the storm god Ishkur. She was venerated with Adad in the Mesopotamian cult centers from the second millennium BCE on. A hymn to the temple of the storm god Ishkur at Karkara, é-u4-gal-gal(-la), "House of Great Storms", where he was head of the pantheon, reads "House of Ishkur, your front (is) abundance, your 'back' (is) luxury/ Your foundation (is) a steer, …". The text is broken and then reads: "the sacred furrow, Holy furrow, teat of heaven (sending) rain for the late barley" (Sjöberg and Bergamann 1969, p. 36, Temple Hymn 27: lines 328–32; 116–17). Here, Shala is described specifically as a rain-giving breast.

**Figure 6.** Cylinder seal inscribed Adad, Shala. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

In Syrian glyptic of the second quarter of the second millennium BCE, the goddess frequently appears lifting her skirt with diagonal protrusions (Figures 7–9), reminiscent of her Anatolian counterpart (Figure 5). She is depicted with the storm god in a smiting stance, holding a spear, or a snake or plant symbolizing his power to generate vegetation. He stands on mountains tethering a kneeling bull, with the animal acting as her pedestal (Figure 9). The bull-mounted structure housing the stripping goddess may take the form of a guilloche (Figure 7) or of striations, resembling those on the goddess' skirt (Figure 8). In ancient Near Eastern art, wings signified the celestial sphere, while the guilloche signified flowing water (Collon 1975, p. 194) and represented fertility in general (Otto

<sup>3</sup> https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection\_online/collection\_object\_details/collection\_image \_gallery.aspx?ass.

<sup>4</sup> According to van Loon (1992) the goddess with up-lifted skirt represented the rainbow.

2016). The configurations of guilloche and wings are therefore pictorial expressions of rain from heaven.5

**Figure 7.** Syrian seal: Naked goddess on the back of a bull, lifting her skirt, under a winged guilloche (Amiet 1960: Figure 11).

**Figure 8.** Syrian seal: Naked goddess in a winged structure and storm god (Amiet 1960: Figure 10).

<sup>5</sup> Compare the Urnamma stele upper register of both faces, showing flying goddesses pouring undulating streams of water from vases above the seated king, which Jacobsen construed as mythopoetic representations of the rain clouds ((Jacobsen 1987), p. 393 note 24; (Suter 2000): Figure 33a–f for the various reconstructions of the stele). The same goddess dives down on Gudea's stele top in Berlin ST. 1–2 (Suter 2000): Figures 17, 19d, pl. B.

**Figure 9.** Syrian seal showing goddess lifting her skirt on a bull tethered by the storm god (Amiet 1960: Figure 14).

In the Hittite-Hurrian sphere, the naked goddess maintained her association with the storm god. Surrounded by a guilloche band, the two deities standing on the back of bulls face each other, with the goddess spreading her sheet garment (Otto 2016: Figure 10d). Disrobing, she stands facing the storm god in his chariot, pulled by a pair of bulls that he controls by reins. Streams flow from her shoulders, which connect to the guilloche (water) that stretches above the storm god's chariot (Figure 10). At Emar, the goddess' skirt is made of globules representing raindrops (Beyer 2001, p. 213, nos. E9, E10).

**Figure 10.** Hittite seal: Disrobing goddess facing the god riding his chariot, guilloche between (Leinwand 1992: Figure 23).

On a seal impression from Nuzi of the 14th century BCE, rain is pictured as a splash of globules accompanying the storm god on his lion dragon, grasping lightning forks with both hands (Figure 11). Instead of the naked goddess, two goats standing back to back stand on (her) lion (Stein 1988, pp. 176–78, Figure 1).6

<sup>6</sup> Undulated lines, possibly rain, appear behind a god on a bull on a Mitannian seal impression from (Beyer 2001, p. 227, no. E41).

**Figure 11.** Splash of dots before the weather god holding lightning forks who stands on a lion dragon (Stein 1988: Figure 1).

The last appearance of the goddess holding open her rain-sheet garment behind her back is on the Hasanlu gold bowl, found in a 9th century BCE context (Figure 12) (Winter 1989). Here, she stands on two rams, alongside Teshshup the storm god, who subdues the stone monster, son of the god Kumarbi, as he fights for preeminence among the Hurrian storm gods. Globules (raindrops or hail) connect the storm god in his chariot, harnessed to a bull spweing jets of water, with the same god as he fights the monster, and with the naked goddess who unfolds her robe, made of a square sheet with delineated columns filled with dots, symbolizing rain. The goddess wears a crescent-shaped pendant on her neck (Figure 12a). Behind the storm god are the sun god and the moon god in their chariots pulled by equids.7

<sup>7</sup> For the moon god's chariot functioning as a celestial visible effect, the halo, see (Rochberg 1996, pp. 479–82).

**Figure 12.** (**a**) Hasanlu gold bowl: rain drops connecting storm god and disrobing goddess (Winter 1989: Figure 6); (**b**) Hasanlu gold bowl, detail: rain goddess wearing three crescent pendants.

The moon and sun that appear along with the storm god and the rain goddess are celestial bodies, and hence they may be understood as a metaphor for the firmament that separates the waters above from the waters below, where the celestial bodies are visible (Mayer-Opificius 1984, p. 201; Rochberg 2010a, pp. 341, 344).8 Additionally, belonging to the celestial sphere are meteorological phenomena—dew, rain, snow, hail, lightning and storm winds—that issue from openings in the sky to release them (Bartelmus 2001, pp. 93–95, 98, 106).9 An Akkadian cylinder seal from Nippur shows the stars as the source for rain above the enthroned sun god (Collon 1987, no. 765). In the Middle Assyrian period, a winged disk supported by a kneeling Atlantid figure separates the upper waters from the lower ones. Undulating lines, indicating water, may issue from the winged disk, embodying the firmament (Matthews 1990, p. 110, note 236, nos. 499, 501) (Figure 13). In Mesopotamian literature, the divine sky had generative powers often described metaphorically in terms of the sky's rains as

<sup>8</sup> Compare Genesis 1: 15–17.

<sup>9</sup> Compare Deuteronomy 28: 12; Jeremiah 10: 12–13, 51: 15–16; Psalms 135: 6–7.

the semen engendering the vegetation on earth (Rochberg 2010a, p. 341).10 In Akkadian, the sky is explained as *ša mê* "of water" (Hebrew: *š¬mayim*) and the rain is the "water of heaven", ŠÈG (written A.AN) (Rochberg 2010a, pp. 344, 354). The iconography of the "water of heaven" always shows the rain coming down from the upper field of the artwork, whether by means of undulated lines, globules or as a sheet of columns filled with dots. The Tell el-FarȆah model conforms with the latter convention.

**Figure 13.** Middle Assyrian seal depicting a kneeling figure supporting a winged sun that separates the waters above from the waters below (Matthews 1990, no. 501).
