† AN EXTREMELY RARE AND IMPORTANT SANDSTONE RELIEF FRAGMENT DEPICTING A SCORPION-MAN, GIRTABLULLÛ, NEO-BABYLONIAN, 8TH-6TH CENTURY BC

Finely carved in relief on a sandstone orthostat—a large upright slab set against the base of palace walls both to protect their mudbrick superstructure and to serve as a monumental decorative program—the panel depicts a powerful hybrid guardian. The figure combines the muscular torso of a man, complete with a carefully modeled, curling beard, with the hindquarters and taloned feet of a raptor, and a sinuous tail that terminates in the sting of a scorpion.
Broad wings extend from the shoulders, their surfaces articulated with dense, feather-like striations, while the segmented tail is rendered with striking naturalism, culminating in a sharply defined telson. Such composite beings, blending human strength with the predatory force of animals and the deadly potency of the scorpion, were conceived as apotropaic protectors, warding off malign forces at thresholds and reinforcing the authority of the ruler who commissioned the palace complex.

Provenance: With Robert Haber, New York, USA, circa 2005. The collection of Cindy Elden, New York, United States.

Cindy Elden, philanthropist and collector, belongs to a lineage of distinguished art patrons that includes her great-uncles—David Archibald Smart (1892–1952) and Alfred Smart (1895–1951)—renowned Chicago publishers and art patrons whose legacy is commemorated in the naming of the Smart Museum of Art. Her father, Richard Elden (1933–2018), the visionary hedge-fund pioneer who founded Grosvenor Capital Management, upheld that legacy through decades of leadership as Governor of the Museum. As a current Board member of the Museum, Cindy Elden has supported acquisitions and exhibitions spanning antiquities to modern art, with a special emphasis on South and Central Asian sculpture. She is the President and Co-Founder of the Usher III Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to curing the rare genetic disorder that causes both hearing and vision loss.

Robert Haber & Associates, Inc.
Founded in New York in the early 1980s, Robert Haber & Associates is a respected gallery and advisory firm specializing in ancient art. Under the leadership of Robert Haber, the firm has built a strong reputation with private collectors and museums for carefully vetted, high-quality works. Combining rigorous provenance research with professional integrity, the company has contributed to important institutional collections worldwide. It is recognized in the British Museum’s dealer records and maintains long-standing relationships with major cultural institutions. Despite its small scale, Robert Haber & Associates sets standards of quality, transparency, and responsibility in the international antiquities market.

Condition: Very good condition overall, commensurate with age. With expected losses and natural surface imperfections, including fissures, fatigue cracks, and areas of rubbing, weathering, and erosion, as well as some encrustations. Structural cracks may have been stabilized in the past. Possibly with older conservation or restoration, though none is visible, even under strong UV light.

Weight: 47.3 kg
Dimensions: Size 84 x 62 cm

One of the many fabulous creatures of the Ancient Near East is the scorpion-man, generally called the Girtablullû, and seen as a benevolent creature that has some connection to Shamash, the Sun God. The name Girtablullû is a composition of gir-tab "scorpion" and lú-ùlu "untamed man". The hybrid guardian figure combines the torso, arms, and head of a man with the body, tail, and pincers of a scorpion, sometimes with wings; first appearing among the monstrous offspring of Tiamat in the Enūma Eliš (Epic of Creation) and more vividly described in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where a pair guard the gates of the Mashu mountains at the edge of the world, their deadly gaze warding off intruders yet permitting Gilgamesh passage, these figures embody both danger and protection, and in Mesopotamian art and amulets they served as apotropaic beings marking thresholds, city gates, and cosmic boundaries, symbolizing the liminal space between human and divine realms. See a Neo-Assyrian orthostate depicting a Girtablullû, dated 883-859 BC, size 218 x 84 cm, in the Louvre, numéro principal AO 19850.

Literature comparison:
Compare a closely related basalt orthostat depicting a scorpion-man (girtablullû) from the Neo-Hittite/Aramaean palace complex at Tell Halaf (Guzana), dated 9th century BC and now in Berlin, Pergamon Museum, inv. OP 14. This example formed part of Kapara’s narrative façade of alternating black basalt and painted limestone slabs set along the base of the palace walls, where hybrid guardian beings flank gates and thresholds. The Berlin panel shows the characteristic Tell Halaf manner—low relief with emphatic contouring, patterned surfaces, and a composite figure combining human upper body with a scorpion’s tail—consistent with the site’s repertoire of protective apotropaia (cf. the “Scorpion(-bird) man” from the so-called Scorpion Gate). These points of iconography, function, material, and workshop practice make the OP 14 relief a close parallel to the present example.
The Berlin orthostat was among the Tell Halaf sculptures shattered in 1943 and later reassembled from thousands of fragments in the Pergamon’s large-scale restoration campaign (2001–2010), which returned the series to display in 2011.
Compare also a related Babylonian boundary-stone and memorial tablet depicting the scorpion-man, Middle Babylonian, in the British Museum, registration number 90858.