Relief panel
The king is immediately identifiable by his crown, a distinctive truncated cone with a smaller cone emerging from the center, with a long ‘streamer’ hanging from its back. He is also recognizable by his luxuriant beard, and in the relief’s original state would have been further distinguished by his clothing, more elaborately embroidered than that of any other figure. The pigment that originally colored these reliefs is now lost, but the embroidery is still faintly visible in the form of fine inscised lines made by the sculptors over most areas of the king’s clothing. The king wears elaborate jewelry, including rosette bracelets, thick armlets worn above the elbow, large pendant earrings, and a necklace whose beads and spacers would probably have consisted of semiprecious stones and gold. The king carries a sword on his left hip, as well as two daggers tucked into his clothing, and in his left hand holds the tip of a bow. In his right hand, balanced on his fingertips, is a shallow bowl. In other reliefs the bowl contains wine and is used for pouring libations, for example on the bodies of slain animals following a royal hunt. Here, however, there is no apparent object for the libation. The relief comes from an area of the palace that seems to have held sarcophagi and might have been devoted to the cult of royal ancestors, and one possibility is that the libation is here being poured for the dead. For similar reasons, while it is normally thought that all such images of the king represent Ashurnasirpal, it has also been suggested that some may represent ancestral kings.
The second figure on the relief is beardless, and probably represents a eunuch. He is richly dressed, with jewelry including rosette bracelets, armbands, a collar of beads, probably of semiprecious stone with gold spacers, pendant earrings, and a crescent-shaped pectoral. At the ends of his short sleeves are bands of incised plant motifs representing embroidery; another incised band below the waist shows further plants but also birds, possibly ostriches. He carries a sword whose scabbard, like the king's, ends in the image of two roaring lions. At the sword's hilt another lion head can be seen; an object in the Metropolitan Museum's collection may be just such a hilt (54.117.20). In his right hand the eunuch holds a fly-whisk whose handle is carved in the shape of a ram's head. The object in his left hand may be an oil lamp, though it has also been suggested that it might be a ladle to replenish the wine in the bowl held by the king. Its handle terminates in the head of a snake, or more likely a fantastic composite creature, called Mushhushshu, associated with the god Ashur.
A distinctive feature of the Northwest Palace is the so-called Standard Inscription that ran across the middle of every relief, often cutting across the imagery. The inscription, carved in cuneiform script and written in the Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language, lists the achievements of Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–859 B.C.), the builder of the palace. After giving his ancestry and royal titles, the Standard Inscription describes Ashurnasirpal’s successful military campaigns to east and west and his building works at Nimrud, most importantly the construction of the palace itself. The inscription is thought to have had a magical function, contributing to the divine protection of the king and the palace.
Artwork Details
- Title: Relief panel
- Period: Neo-Assyrian
- Date: ca. 883–859 BCE
- Geography: Mesopotamia, Nimrud (ancient Kalhu)
- Culture: Assyrian
- Medium: Gypsum alabaster
- Dimensions: 92 1/4 x 92 x 4 1/2 in. (234.3 x 233.7 x 11.4 cm)
- Credit Line: Gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1932
- Object Number: 32.143.4
- Curatorial Department: Ancient West Asian Art
Audio
128. The Director's Tour, Second Floor: Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Part 1
Gallery 401
Your walk from the European painting galleries to this extraordinary room has carried you 2,500 years back in time, and thousands of miles eastward. The reliefs here were carved for a royal palace at Nimrud, in what is now Iraq. In the ninth century BCE, when the palace was constructed, Nimrud became the capital of the formidable Assyrian empire. This decoration is intended to reflect the majesty and divine right of the king, Ashurnasirpal the Second. Here you see the co-mingling of the supernatural and the natural and in this way the king appeased the gods and protected his people.
On either side of the arched doorway, there are especially impressive creatures: each has a human’s head, and a divinity’s horned cap. The body integrates parts of a bird of prey, with a bull, or a lion. Let’s look at the reliefs on the wall. The king is shown with signs of his authority: distinctive headgear, ritual vessel, and weapons. He is depicted with members of his entourage; the beardless human figures are eunuchs in the king’s service. And you also see divine protectors; they are the figures with wings and other animal features.
The band of text cutting across the images repeats again and again the titles of the king and his accomplishments—as a builder of palaces and a conqueror of peoples. The system of writing is called cuneiform; it was invented more than five thousand years ago here in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Beyond the arched doorway is a map you may find helpful. It shows you where Assyria is within the greater region. Mesopotamia is sometimes called the cradle of civilization. To hear why, press play.
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