ABSTRACT
The transportation of the severed head from one place to another is a manifest image in Syria in the third millennium bc, recurrent in the visual documentation of the turn of the second to first millennium bc and prevalent during the first millennium bc in the art of the capitals and provincial towns of the Neo-Assyrian empire. Teumman's head passes from hand to hand until it eventually comes to be transported on a chariot, which is not that belonging to the chief king. The final act of circulating Teumman's head on the chariot that was to take it to the capital of the empire represents the culmination of a dense succession of events, in space and time, within the epic account of the battle and the victory. The chariot is again central to the final act in the circulation of the head of the Elamite king Teumman in the saga that unfolds on the reliefs depicting the battle of Til-Tuba.
