Die wandinalereien aus tell misrifel qatna im kontext iiberregionaler kommullikalion.

AuthorFeldman, Marian
PositionBook review

Die Wanclinalereien aus Tell MigrifelQatna int Kontext iiberregionaler Konzrnuttikation. By CONSTANCE VON RODEN. Qatna. Studien, vol. 2. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOW1TZ VERLAG, 2011. Pp. x + 278, 70 pits. [euro]84.

Publication of the recent finds of wall paintings from Qatna has been greatly anticipated. Located 18 kilometers northeast of the modern city of Horns in western Syria, Qatna (present-day Tell Mishrife) lies approximately 100 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast in the Orontes River Valley, at the juncture of important east-west and north-south trade routes. It has long been known that the site played a critical role in second-millennium Aegean--Near Eastern relations; however, its poor excavation and publication record by Robert du Mesnil du Buisson in the early twentieth century have severely hampered its contribution to the study of this topic. In 1999 a joint expedition between the Syrian Direction Gdnerale des Antiquit6s et des Musees (under Michel Al-Maqdissi), the University of Tubingen (under Peter Przilzner), and the University of Udine (under Daniele Morandi Bonacossi) returned to the site. One research objective was a reevaluation of the architecture that du Mesnil du Buisson had uncovered on an elevated rise in the western part of the city. Identified by du Mesnil du Buisson as containing distinct religious and palatial structures, this area is shown by the renewed excavations to have housed the main city palace, begun in the Middle Bronze Age (MB IIA according to Pfalzner) and destroyed in the Late Bronze Age around 1360/1340 B.C.E.

It was in this area that du Mesnil du Buisson found several fragments of wall painting. Between the years 2000 and 2004 the German division of the expedition added to this small and poorly published corpus in spectacular fashion with the discovery of more than 3000 fragments of painted plaster. The majority of them derived from a cistern area (Rni U), into which they had slid from a small (7 by 4 meters) neighboring room (N) during the final destruction of the palace. The fragments confirm what had been suspected already, namely, that the city had strong ties to the Aegean world and its remarkable fresco tradition. As such, they join a growing body of evidence for wall (and floor) painting in the second millennium B.C.E. around the eastern Mediterranean, including remains at Tell ed-Daba in the Egyptian Delta. Tel Kabri along the coast of the modern state of Israel, Tell Burak in Lebanon, Tell Sakka near Damascus, Alalakh in the Alum plain, Hattusa in central Anatolia, and Miletus in western Anatolia, as well as the finds from Crete, the Aegean islands, and the Greek mainland.

Central questions that propel the study of this material are, first, whether any given instance uses a -true" al fresco technique, and second, its implications for understanding Aegean--Near Eastern interrelations. The volume under review presents the results of Constance von Rilden, who undertook the reconstruction and study of the new Qatna painting fragments as her doctoral dissertation. A catalogue of the fragments from Room N accompanies the study, as do two appendices: the first on the analysis results of the painting technology by Ann Brysbaert, and the second documenting the restoration process by Ilka Weisser.

Von Rliden concentrates the principal part of her study on the frescoes from Room N, which are the only...

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