スーサ出土と伝えられる凍石製容器についての総括的観察 -ニンギシジダ神の象徴の成立と変容-

抄録

In a thesis presented to “Near Eastern Studies dedicated to H. I. H. Prince Takahito Mikasa”, I treated mainly archaeological features of a steatite vessel, allegedly found at the site of Susa, together with other analogous finds from Western Asia. Here I want to make a summary studies from the viewpoints of wider range on the formation of these kind of steatite vessels, transformation of their bas-relief decorations and the problems about their chronology and uses.
The steatite vessels in question have three features fundamental and common to each other: no. 1. taking form of cylinder or cone with a wide mouth, no. 2. decorating the whole surface of the vessel wall with designs or figures in bas-relief, no. 3. material being mostly steatite, but rarely such similar stone as serpentine. With these fundamental and common features, the steatite vessels are quite distinct from other stone vessels of ordinary uses contemporary with or antecedent to the former ones in Western Asia. So this fact, together with their bas-relief figures which seem to represent religious symbols or mythological worlds, suggests that steatite vessels were used especially for ritual purposes or offerings by worshippers to temples. Their frequent occurrences at temple sites of early Sumerian periods may well support these inferences.
The steatite vessels are classified in three main- and seven subtypes (A I, II; B I, II, III; C I, II), according to the components and elements of their figures and designs. 1) C I type is decorated only with designs which seem to originate from basketry made of such plant as reed or cattail, suggesting the form of the vessel itself came from reed or cattail basket. 2) C II type added a twisted rope design and/or building figures to C I type, the former design being interpreted as a sign of fertilizing water by some and the latter figures as those of temple by many scholars. Here we may recognize the first appearance of some religious elements in the steatite vessels. 3) A I type lost the basketry designs of C I, C II types, but left the twisted rope designs and/or the building figures of C II type, adding as the main decorative figures, something like mythological world where such wild beasts as goat, deer, bird and serpent, and human beings or gods in animal disguise, were represented quite freely and vividly in such chaotic positions and postures that A. Parrot called these figures ‘disorder series.’ 4) A II type the twisted rope designs and the building figures of C II, A I types and left only the mythological figures put more in order toward emblematic stylization. These mythological figures contain personified god of fertility with two serpents grasped in his hands as his symbols and two lions sitting in front of him as his attributes. 5) B type was characterized with figures of both doubled serpents and lions, being perhaps a kind of variation from the mythological figures of A I, II types. Here is none of personified god figure, but his symbol as doubled serpents in twisted form and his attributes as doubled lions outside the serpents show clearly symbolic existence of god relating to fertility, in these figures. But this B type is also sub-divided into two or three, B I being characterized with the serpents in sitting form, B II with those in standing posture and B III with most extravagantly developed figures of the doubled standing serpents and winged, crowned ‘Lion-bird’, which were represented on a large steatite vessel dedicated to the Ningišzida temple by Gudea of Lagash.
So we can see the transformation of the bas-relief figures of the steatite vessels almost from the beginning to the end, the process must be C I→C II→A I→A II→B I, II→B III, which suggests a chronological order of the steatite vessels as well, and moreover the process of the development and configuration of ideas about Ningišzida god in figurative