Life-Sized Statues in the Ancient Near East: The Case Study of the Warrior God of Early Bronze Age I Megiddo

This article discusses the question of deities’ life-sized statues in the Bronze Age Levant and Mesopotamia. Since well-preserved statues are rare, one must approach the issue through remnants. Here, I discuss evidence for a life-sized statue of a god from an Early Bronze Age I temple at Megiddo, Israel, dated to ca. 3500 BC. The relevant evidence includes an extraordinary copper spearhead and graffiti featuring, among other things, a warrior god with a large spear and a thunderbolt. I suggest that the spearhead is a remnant of the temple’s life-size statue and that the graffiti sheds light on cultic activities that took place in the temple. The deity in question is likely to be the earliest manifestation of a warrior god better known later from Canaanite Ugarit and the Hebrew Bible.