Neo-Hittite Culture, 950-750 BCE

(BLMJ 1060)

This stela depicts a man and a woman, probably husband and wife, sitting opposite each other with a table between them. The man is holding a staff and a stalk of wheat while the woman holds a cup and a spindle. The table is piled with loaves of flat bread, which insure the couple’s well-being in the afterlife. The banquet scene was probably linked to the cult of the dead, and the stela presumably served as a funerary monument. Similar stelae were found at Marash, capital of the Neo-Hittite kingdom of Gurgum in southeast Anatolia; this stela may have come from there as well.