Urn with Assyrian scenes

Following the excavation of Assyrian palaces in the mid-nineteenth century, ancient Mesopotamian imagery began to be used in European decorative arts, including jewelry and ceramics. Publicity in the form of news coverage and popular books around the excavations, removal of many sculptures from sites in northern Iraq to England and France, and public spectacles such as the reconstructed ‘Nineveh Court’ in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, London, fostered a fascination with Assyria and Assyrian art among the Victorian public.

Examples of this Matifat urn design were included as representatives of French metalworking at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London. The decoration combines and reworks scenes of hunting and war drawn from the recently discovered Assyrian palace reliefs. One side shows a procession, at the center of which the king, recognizable by his tall cylindrical crown, stands in a chariot, shaded by a parasol, raising his hand in a pious gesture frequently seen in the reliefs. Behind him, figures carry objects including the statue of a deity, the model or symbol of a city, and elaborate furniture; in the ancient reliefs these were depicted as the booty captured in foreign military campaigns. The other side of the urn shows the progress of a lion hunt, with archers in a chariot (in a real Assyrian hunting scene the main figure in the chariot would be the king) and horses running over a lion that has been shot with arrows. The scene also includes figures carrying the bodies of antelope that have been killed, and mastiffs, large dogs used in hunting and herding, all of which are pictured in the ancient reliefs. The stems of the urns carry a different kind of imagery, musicians and dancers whose forms and dress blend Assyrian and classical sources. The handles are in the form of winged lion-sphinxes, whose long beards and divine, bull-horned headdresses are based on the winged bull and lion guardian figures found at important entrances in the Assyrian palaces. Finally, where the handles meet the body and around the base of the urn, are quite faithful reproductions of the so-called ‘sacred tree,’ a fantastic plant seen in many Assyrian reliefs (for example 32.143.3). The tree’s exact ancient significance is uncertain, but it seems to have represented the fertility, abundance, and wellbeing of the Assyrian state itself.