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Nergal y la deidad doble del friso del Banquete infernal de Pozo Moro

2009; Spanish National Research Council; Volume: 82; Linguagem: Espanhol

10.3989/aespa.082.009.002

1988-3110

Fernándo López Pardo,

Historical and Literary Analyses

An enthroned figure with human body and two identical and superposed animal heads rules the scene called Underworld Feast from Pozo Moro’s Orientalizing monument. Identification of this figure with a deity assimilated with Nergal and his twin, Erra, or their corresponding Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea, Lords of the Underworld, is proposed. Though their cult spread through Syria and the Phoenician environment, especially in Samaria, it is in the Upper Euphrates where there seems to be a concentration of a surprising amount of clues that would allow us to specify that it was there that the idea or the image that we finally see shown in Pozo Moro was conceived: the implantation of Nergal’s cult in the zone; the special proximity of the iconographic elements of Neohittite origin that can be seen at the Pozo Moro friezes; the frequency of the representation of Hybrid beings devouring humans that find their reflection in the Underworld Feast; the permanence in the zone of Phoenician communities still in the 7th century B.C., etc. It is possible that the transference process took place through a Phoenician deity related to the Underworld, but we do not have enough clues to specify which one it could be.