Moving on from Ebla, I crossed the Euphrates: An Assyrian Day in Honour of Paolo Matthiae 9781803271101, 9781803271118

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents Page
Foreword
Publications on Assyria
The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal
Julian Edgeworth Reade
La réception des Assyriens, avant et après l’invention pionnière de Khorsabad par Paul-Emile Botta
Ariane Thomas
David Kertai
The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs: On Cues and Settings of Architectural Decoration
Dominik Bonatz
Assyria, Where Are You?A Striking Gap in the Reception of the Ancient Near East in Western Popular Culture
‘I opened eight gates’: Revisiting the Identification of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s City Gates
Jamie Novotny
Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire.
Omar N’Shea
Back cover

Citation preview

Moving on from Ebla, I crossed the Euphrates An Assyrian Day in Honour of Paolo Matthiae edited by

Davide Nadali, Lorenzo Nigro, and Frances Pinnock

Moving on from Ebla, I crossed the Euphrates An Assyrian Day in Honour of Paolo Matthiae

edited by

Davide Nadali, Lorenzo Nigro, and Frances Pinnock

Archaeopress Archaeology

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Summertown Pavilion 18-24 Middle Way Summertown Oxford OX2 7LG www.archaeopress.com ISBN 978-1-80327-110-1 ISBN 978-1-80327-111-8 (e-Pdf) © The individual authors and Archaeopress 2022 Cover photo: © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre), Thierry Ollivier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners. This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com

Contents Foreword����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� iii Publications on Assyria������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ iv Paolo Matthiae The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal������������������������������������������������ 1 Julian Edgeworth Reade La réception des Assyriens, avant et après l’invention pionnière de Khorsabad par PaulEmile Botta�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������47 Ariane Thomas The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs: On Cues and Settings of Architectural Decoration���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������71 David Kertai Assyria, Where Are You? A Striking Gap in the Reception of the Ancient Near East in Western Popular Culture���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������92 Dominik Bonatz ‘I opened eight gates’: Revisiting the Identification of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s City Gates�������������105 Jamie Novotny Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire�����������������������������������119 Omar N’Shea

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Foreword Paolo Matthiae is universally known because he discovered Ebla: he founded and is still director of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Syria of the Sapienza University of Rome, which worked on the site of Tell Mardikh – modern name of ancient Ebla – since 1964. The Expedition was active for 47 campaigns until 2010, when field activities were nearly completely interrupted for the tragedy which affected and is still affecting Syria. By means of several and important contributions – scientific articles and monographs, but also popular articles and public lectures – based on that ground-breaking discovery, Paolo has masterly contributed to the reconstruction of the history of that capital of north inner Syria, which flourished between 2400 and 1600 BC ca, but he also contributed to the reconstruction of the history of the whole Syrian region, which until the discovery of Ebla was considered only a passage between Mesopotamia and Egypt. On the occasion of his 80th birthday, however, we wished to remember another, by no means secondary, aspect of his research activity, pivoting on the study of the neo-Assyrian world, and not based on a field activity, but rather on the use of methodologies typical of the discipline of Art History, as they were refined through the contributions provided by Henry Frankfort for the ancient Near East, and by Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli for the Roman and Italic worlds. As Paolo himself frequently recalls, his first analyses about the cultures of pre-classical Syria were based on Frankfort’s studies, and, in particular, on the publication by C.L. Woolley of the excavations at Alalakh, in the Plain of Antioch, whereas his studies at the university, putting him in direct contact with Bianchi Bandinelli, were the base for the analytical openings which, overcoming the more traditional formulations of the studies on archaeology, as well as on the history of ancient art, allowed him to deal with great intuition with such distant and different worlds. Thus, as Ashurnasirpal II crossed the Euphrates to reach Syria and the Mediterranean Sea, Paolo in his research sometimes followed the reverse course, crossing the Euphrates and going east, finding in this travel images of his beloved Syria. The choice of a subject with which Paolo’s name is not frequently joined, was accompanied by the choice not to propose – as is usually done – a collection of articles by ‘friends and pupils’, but rather to organize a meeting of partners, of international scholars who are engaged, with different methodologies, in this same field of studies, proposing their thoughts about the neo-Assyrian world; this thoughts are now collected in this volume we offer to our mentor Paolo Matthiae, in homage for his multifaceted and rich activity and in thanks for making us understand that a scholar cannot and must not be monochord. We wish to heartfully thank the Authorities of the Sapienza University of Rome, who enthusiastically welcomed our initiative, supported it within the frame of the meaningful events for the identity of the University and welcomed it in the Aula degli Organi Collegiali. We also thank the colleagues who accepted our invitation and all Paolo’s friends and former pupils, who convened numerous on the exact day of his birthday – January 9th 2020 – for an event which was the first one for the Sapienza in 2020 and the last live conference in our field of studies before the lockdown for the sanitary emergency of the COVID-19. Our warmest thanks go to Archaeopress, and in particular to its editor Mike Schurer for accepting the volume for publication in one of their series. Rome, 30/07/2021 Davide Nadali, Lorenzo Nigro and Frances Pinnock

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Publications on Assyria Paolo Matthiae Books 1986. Scoperte di archeologia orientale (Universale Laterza 686). Roma – Bari: Laterza. 1994. Il sovrano e l’opera. Arte e potere nella Mesopotamia antica (Grandi Opere). Roma – Bari: Laterza. 1996a. L’arte degli Assiri. Cultura e forma del rilievo storico (Storia e Società). Roma – Bari: Laterza. 1996b. La storia dell’arte dell’Oriente antico. I Grandi Imperi, 1000-330 a.C. Milano: Electa. 1998. Ninive (Centri e Monumenti dell’Antichità). Milano: Electa. 1999a. Geschichte der Kunst im Alten Orient 1000-330 v. Chr. Die Grossreiche der Assyrer, Neubabylonier und Achämeniden, Aus dem Italienischen von C. Kuhl. Darmstadt: Wissenchaftliche Buchgesellschaft und Stuttgart: Theiss. 1999b. Ninive. Glanzvolle Hauptstadt Assyriens, Übersetzt von dem Italienischen von E. Ambros. München: Hirmer. 2018. Dalla terra alla storia. Scoperte leggendarie di archeologia orientale. Torino: Einaudi. 2020. I volti del potere. Alle origini del ritratto nell’arte dell’Oriente antico. Torino: Einaudi. Scientific articles 1962. Il motivo della vacca che allatta nell’iconografia del Vicino Oriente antico. Rivista degli Studi Orientali 37: 1-31. 1980a. Ittiti e Assiri a Tell Fray: lo scavo di una città mediosiriana sull’Eufrate. Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici 22: 35-51. 1980b. With A. Bounni, Tell Fray: ville frontière entre Hittites et Assyriens au XIIIe siècle av.J-C. Archéologia 140: 30-9. 1988. Realtà storica e livelli di lettura nei rilievi narrativi di Assurnasirpal II a Nimrud. Scienze dell’Antichità 2: 347-76. 1989. Old Syrian Ancestors of Some Neo-Assyrian Figurative Symbols of Kingship, in L. De Meyer and E. Haerinck (eds), Archaeologia Iranica et Orientalis. Miscellanea in Honorem Louis Vanden Berghe, I. Gent: Peeters Presse: 367-91. 1994a. Da Nimrud a Khorsabad: storia di un modello tra progetto e realizzazione, in S. Mazzoni (ed.), Nuove fondazioni nel Vicino oriente antico: Realtà e ideologia. Atti del Colloquio 4-6 dicembre 1991, Università degli studi di Pisa. Pisa: Giardini: 29-45. 1994b. Nell’antica Mesopotamia: il potere dell’arte. Prometeo 12: 26-33. 1995a. Il sovrano nei programmi figurativi e negli spazi architettonici dei palazzi assiri, in A. Vivante (ed.), Assiri. L’arte, la guerra, il potere. Milano: Guerini: 117-45. 1995b. Il rilievo storico assiro: un grande genere d’arte orientale preclassica, in R. Dolce, M. Nota Santi (eds), Dai palazzi assiri. Immagini di potere da Assurnasirpal II ad Assurbanipal (IX-VII sec. a.C.). Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider: 15-24. 1995c. Ideologia e architettura nella Babilonia di Nabucodonosor II. Studi Miscellanei 29/1 (Studi in memoria di Alessandro Stucchi): 351-60. iv

1999. Un nuovo archivio di testi assiri. Sapere 65/1: 64-5. 2002a. L’origine dell’edificio E di Büyükkale e il problema storico del Hilani, in Anatolia antica. Studi in memoria di Fiorella Imparati (Eothen 11). Firenze: LoGisma: 571-92. 2002b. La magnificenza sconosciuta di Ninive. Note sullo sviluppo urbano prima di Sennacherib. Rendiconti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Cl. Sc. Mor. St. Fil., Ser IX 13: 543-87. 2007. Ideologia e politica della regalità nell’Assiria da Sargon II a Assurbanipal: l’evidenza dell’arte monumentale, in P. Scapri and M. Zago (eds), Regalità e forme di potere nel Mediterraneo antico. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi. Accademia Galileiana di Scienze Lettere ed Arti. Padova, 6-7 febbraio 2004. Padova: Sargon: 49-90. 2010. Une note sur Sargon II et l’histoire du terme ekal māšarti, in S. Dönmez (ed.), DUB.SAR É.DUB.BA. Studies Presented in Honour of Veysel Donbaz. Istanbul: Ege Yayinlari: 197-203. 2012. Subjects Innovations in the Khorsabad Reliefs and Their Political Meaning, in G.B. Lanfranchi et al. (eds), Leggo! Studies Presented to Frederick Mario Fales on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 477-97. 2014. Fire and Arts. Some Reflections about the Consideration of Art in Assyria, in P. Bielinski et al. (eds), Proceedings of the 8th ICAANE. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 93-122. 2015a. On the Origin of the Middle Assyrian Obelisks, in P. Ciafardoni and D. Giannessi (eds), From the Treasures of Syria. Essays on Art and Archaeology in Honour of Stefania Mazzoni (PIHANS, 126). Leiden: NINO: 131-52. 2015b. Les nobles dans l’art de Khorsabad: Images et conception politique de Sargon d’Assyrie. Comptes Rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 159: 1047-74. 2016. Sui simboli del potere nell’impero d’Assiria. Una nota sugli antecedenti delle insegne imperiali di Roma, in A.F. Ferrandes and G. Pardini (eds), Le regole del gioco. Tracce, archeologi, racconti. Studi in onore di Clementina Panella. Roma: Quasar: 613-22. 2018. Le rapport entre text et image dans les reliefs de Ḫorsābād. Tradition et innovation un siècle et demi après Assurnaṣirpal II, in P. Attinger et al. (eds), Text and Image. Proceedings of the 61e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Geneva and Bern, 22-26 June 2015 (OBO SA 40). Leuven: Peeters: 245-54.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal Julian Edgeworth Reade Abstract This paper discusses research on the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It addresses the peculiar circumstances of the excavation, the long delays in publication, and some of the persistent problems that affect interpretation of the evidence. It makes proposals on the ground plan of the palace, on the chronology of Ashurbanipal’s work in both North and South-West Palaces, and on the organisation and evolution of narrative sculpture during his reign. Keywords Ashurbanipal, sculptures, publication, composition, chronology

Introduction About 1964 I was a passenger in a car between Aleppo and Hama and noticed an enormous walled city mound not far away on the left-hand side of the road. It must have been Tell Mardikh, and so I could understand the story later told by the Sumerologist Edmond Sollberger that the prime reason for choosing Mardikh as a site to excavate was its sheer size. Paolo Matthiae has demonstrated that there were additional good reasons for working there. For this auspicious occasion in his honour, I had thought of addressing the relationships between Ebla, Lagash and Ur, but was instructed to talk about Assyria, another theme of his far-reaching research. So I turned instead to Kuyunjik, now the largest mound in the city of Nineveh (Figure 1), and to one of its most remarkable buildings, the North Palace of Ashurbanipal (Figure 2). This paper has developed from the one actually read. It surveys the process of research on the palace in the past, including my own involvement, describes typical difficulties that arise with this kind of material, and considers other questions relating to Ashurbanipal wall-panels. A longer study of the North Palace is in preparation. I am grateful to Richard Beal for enhancing some of the illustrations. Nineveh itself in the seventh century BC, like Ebla long before, was a city of vast importance. As an imperial capital, it formed the hub of a trading network which stretched from western Europe, central Africa and southern Arabia to the heart of Asia. It was located in a fertile region with an elaborate system of canals for irrigation and transport. Its walls were 12 km long, pierced by 18 city-gates, and it accommodated royal palaces, a temple over 2000 years old, and a large military base, quite apart from all the other features of a major centre of population. The first serious examination of the site was 200 years ago in 1820, and excavations in the walled city have continued at intervals ever since (Figure 3). By now there have been over 60 separate periods of work and over 20 excavation directors, with a few capable assistants, quite apart from those who have studied the hinterland of the city. Countless people have concentrated on particular categories of evidence from Nineveh, especially the written documents.

Moving on from Ebla (Archaeopress 2022): 1–46

Julian Edgeworth Reade

Figure 1. South corner of Kuyunjik, seen from Khosr. Photograph by R.K. Uprichard, 1990.

Figure 2. Storks standing by site of North Palace, with Nergal Gate beyond. Photograph by author, 1973.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal

Figure 3. Kuyunjik from the air, 10.40 a.m., 8 January 1932. Royal Air Force photograph.

One consequence of this rich and complicated modern history has been scholarly confusion. It is not just that many things have not been properly published or have been ignored, because these mistakes are commonplace: it is more that specialists have sometimes failed to see the wood for the trees. The North Palace is a microcosm within which problems proliferate and have done since its initial discovery. The section on the palace in my entry covering Nineveh in Reallexikon der Assyriologie, a standard work of reference,1 attempted to give an adequate description, together with many references that will not be repeated here, but it does little more than scratch the surface. In this paper the abbreviation NP refers to the catalogue of sculptures produced by Richard Barnett (1976), with Arabic plate numbers substituted for the original Roman. The abbreviation ABP refers to the first volume of the latest edition of the royal inscriptions of Ashurbanipal by Jamie Novotny and Joshua Jeffers (2018), in which each text is assigned its own Arabic number. The relevant texts for our purpose are terracotta foundations prisms, notably Texts 1, 9, 11 and 14, and the descriptive captions (‘epigraphs’), Texts 24-58 (ABP: 311-349), incised on stone wall-panels. John Russell has just edited a volume that includes further information about the original excavations collected by Geoffrey Turner.2

1 2

Reade 2000a: 416-8. Russell 2021: 678-718.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade

Figure 4. Kuyunjik in 1852. Detail from Jones 1855: Sheet 1. Possible boundary line between Rawlinson’s northern and southern sectors added by author.

Figure 5. Panel fragment found in October 1853 before excavation of North Palace. OD V, 54 (= BM 135108). Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal Excavation and structure of the North Palace The North Palace was the last important building found during the British Museum excavations at Nineveh during 1846-1855 that had been initiated by Henry Layard.3 The first discovery had been the South-West Palace; this was decorated with carved wall-panels that mostly illustrated events of Sennacherib’s reign but also some of Ashurbanipal’s reign and later. Layard found so much there that he paid less attention to the northern half of Kuyunjik. After he left in early 1851, responsibility for overall direction of the project passed to Henry Rawlinson, later celebrated as an Assyriologist but then holding the diplomatic post of British Resident in Baghdad. Later in 1851 Rawlinson divided the mound, probably along the approximate line I have marked on Figure 4, urging the French to adopt its northern side, but nothing was done. The British Museum work continued under its agent, Hormuzd Rassam, whose excavations must have reached the Ishtar Temple in the centre of the mound. In October 1853 a worn fragment of carved alabaster wall-panel was found which could well, in view of later discoveries, have originated in the North Palace (NP: 61, Pl. 70: BM 135108; Figure 5). Rassam had not approved the division of the mound, as the British had rented all of it from the land-owners, and he had reason to suppose there was something important in the northern sector. In December 1853, when the museum money was running low, he made test trenches there and soon encountered mudbrick walls faced with carved alabaster panels belonging to what is now known as the North Palace. Many were destroyed, but others were in excellent

Figure 6. North Palace. Plan by Boutcher, September 1854. OD VII. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum. Possible boundary line between Rassam and Loftus sectors added by author. 3

Larsen 1996.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade condition; they included the so-called Lion Hunt, a ritual massacre of lions, which Rassam sent to the British Museum. Excavation of the palace continued into 1854 (Figure 6). The palace stood on a mudbrick platform, and Rassam cleared about one third of the state apartments which must once have surrounded Court J. Much of the palace plan was eroded or left unexcavated, and there were remains of later structures overlying it. When Hormuzd Rassam departed on 1 May 1854, his brother Christian, British vice-consul at Mosul, became the museum’s official agent at the site, but Hormuzd handed over the excavation equipment to William Boutcher.4 He was artist/ photographer of an independent organisation, the Assyrian Excavation Fund, which had been established, as explained by Larsen, to continue work after the British Museum closed its own operations. Digging was suspended but Boutcher was permitted by Rawlinson to record the wall-panels that Rassam had left behind. Afterwards William Loftus, director of the Fund’s expedition, began excavating at Kuyunjik himself. He chose a nearby part of the mound and soon seemed to be excavating a second palace which was going to undermine the first. Meanwhile, however, the British Museum had provided money to continue its own work, and digging recommenced under Christian Rassam, who stationed guards to repel the incursions. The guards will have been placed roughly along the line which I have added to Figure 6. Rawlinson finally resolved the dispute by appointing Loftus as sole director of excavations, and it emerged that the second, deeper palace was the

Figure 7. North Palace. Boutcher’s plan with full extent of excavations, 1854-5 (after Rassam 1897: plan facing page 36). 4

Rassam 1897: 39.

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Figure 8a. North Palace restored: provisional view from west. Courtesy Donald Sanders. © Learning Sites 2021.

Figure 8b. North Palace restored: provisional view from east. Courtesy Donald Sanders. © Learning Sites 2021.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade western corner of the platform of the building found by Hormuzd Rassam. Loftus was digging a postern gate complex at a lower basement level (Rooms S-W), connected to Rooms A-Q by a sloping ramp along a series of corridors. Rooms A and R were respectively at the upper and lower ends of the series. Loftus also added to the plan by excavating the stone base of the platform around the periphery (Figure 7). The walls of the gate-chamber, like those of the state apartments, had been lined with carved panels. Additional panels and at least one fine ornamental pavement slab were found ‘in the rubbish several feet above and on the floor’,5 into which they must have fallen or slipped from above. This corner of the palace was consequently on two levels. Loftus estimated the difference in height between upper and lower levels as about 20 feet, c. 6 m. The upper level was clearly on about the same level as the main palace, but the original account by Loftus used the term ‘upper storey’ in connection with the fallen panels. The term ‘upper chambers’ had previously been used by Layard to describe some rooms in a palace at Nimrud which were indeed elevated, with floors at a higher level than those of the main palace nearby, but the relationship at Nineveh was not comparable. The true situation was evidently understood by Loftus himself and by others6 although not by everyone, e.g. ‘one question remains which no one seems to have asked before: how did the ancients ascend to these upper chambers?’ (NP: 18). In the same volume Turner7 illustrated the ascent with sectional drawings, showing how a long corridor-ramp from W to A linked the two levels. As the ramp arrangement is not self-evident from the standard ground-plans which conflate the two levels (Figures 6-7), some confusion has persisted. Recently Donald Sanders and I were considering how to illustrate the situation in a three-dimensional image that could accompany the plan and be self-explanatory. It is a kind of problem familiar to all architects. The creation of such images has the added advantage of revealing problems and anomalies that might otherwise be ignored. The accompanying provisional views of the North Palace (Figure 8) make the individual blocks or suites comprising the palace higher than the corridors dividing them, which greatly clarifies the nature of the plan. The view from the west also shows the angle of the ramp although it seems improbable that the existence of this feature was visible from outside once the palace was complete. The treatment of wall-panels The presence of carved wall-panels had been the primary reason for excavating the palace. Boutcher made excellent drawings of many of them; he even photographed a few in position, but his camera soon failed. The carvings mainly comprised narrative scenes which covered long stretches of wall, with protective magical figures on door-jambs. The state of preservation varied, alabaster being a soft stone easily carved but soluble in water and turned to powder by heat. Many panels had been defaced by enemies or burnt in the seventh century, but others were in excellent condition apart from the loss of nearly all the paint that presumably once completed them. Doubtless the plastered wall-faces above the panels had been painted too, 5 6 7

Loftus 1854. Gadd 1936: 114; Meissner and Opitz 1940: 50. Turner 1976: 32-3, figs 11-12.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal but traces of this were only recorded fallen in Room C.8 Carved panel fragments were reused in Greco-Parthian or Sasanian buildings on the same site; these are a likely source for many pieces that have no recorded archaeological context. Boutcher’s successive plans of the palace9 (e.g. Figures 6-7) had colour-coding to illustrate the condition of the wall-panels and who had removed them. About 100 whole or fragmentary panels were sent to the British Museum, but the museum had been struggling to accommodate the influx of Assyrian sculptures since 1847. For the final shipment from Loftus and Boutcher, who had actually found carvings of exceptional quality, it only wished to receive the ‘élite’. The decision must have infuriated them and it led to the dismantling of unique compositions. About 50 panels were sent to the Louvre though some 30 of these were lost in transit. Smaller fragments and duplicates, travelling as gifts, souvenirs and small private collections, were widely scattered and eventually reached other museums or the antiquities market. Many can be traced back to their earliest owners. Rawlinson, Loftus and Boutcher took theirs to England. Those that have emerged in Italy10 must mainly have belonged to priests associated with the Dominican convent in Mosul. Some reached French collections other than the Louvre, perhaps through someone connected with the French excavations. Others were acquired by Protestant missionaries and sent to the U.S. Many of these fragments were neatly trimmed, by the removal of their backs and of abraded or other areas of carving around the edges, evidently in order to reduce their weight and create conveniently portable and superficially self-sufficient units such as detached heads or groups of figures. This had previously been done, with varying degrees of judgement, to panels from other palaces. Fragments were thereby dissociated from the groups to which they once belonged. Maybe, if Behnam the stonecutter did the sawing on site (a capable man of this name had worked for Layard and Rassam and was still active), there is a heap of gypsum offcuts awaiting rediscovery at Kuyunjik, but they could have been recycled for plaster. The composition most severely affected, because it cannot be resurrected definitively without further information, is the one which incorporated the other most celebrated of Ashurbanipal’s sculptures, the Garden Party. This was a royal meal in a garden after a shoot (NP: Pls 63-65), which had been discovered fallen into Room S. The scene, viewed out of context, has been open to misinterpretation. Some fragments of this scene and one fragment of lion-killing from the same group fallen into Room S, which survived but did not reach the British Museum or Louvre, were clearly cut from larger pieces of which no drawings are known. The same applies to important fragments from the wall of Room S itself, as is clear from the reconstruction published by Meissner and Opitz.11 It looks as if part of a hunt of wild asses was discarded. Perhaps some field drawings which illustrated pieces not chosen for museums, and which therefore would not have been needed in the process of reassembling fragments for display, were kept by Boutcher and also await rediscovery. Rassam 1897: 28. Turner 2021: Pls 19-23; NP: text-plates between pp. 24-5. 10 Dolce and Nota Santi 1995; Nigro 2000. 11 Meissner and Opitz 1940: Taf. III. 8 9

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Julian Edgeworth Reade Primary research and publication The Journal of the American Oriental Society published a long letter about Rassam’s work written by a missionary, Henry Lobdell.12 Descriptions and a few illustrations appeared in the reports of the Assyrian Excavation Fund.13 Engravings of some of the best panels drawn or photographed by Boutcher in the field, or copied after arrival in London, appeared in 1856 in The Illustrated London News, a weekly journal in Victorian England which used up-to-date printing technology to present the latest news, including reports on Assyrian discovery, to an enthusiastic public. Soon afterwards Joseph Bonomi14 published many images in what was, for its time, an excellent general work on the relationship between the Assyrian discoveries and the Bible. More engravings from photographs were included in the fine but rare publication of the concurrent French work at Khorsabad.15 In the mid-nineteenth century, however, there was no established system for publishing catalogues of archaeological discoveries. Only Layard with several volumes of descriptions, illustrations and inscriptions, and the French government with eight excavation volumes and subsequent smaller catalogues of material in the Louvre, recognised an obligation to publish their discoveries of Assyrian sculpture. Rawlinson was more interested in texts. Loftus wished to publish an account but needed to earn money; he died young in November 1858. Boutcher’s views are unknown. Rassam,16 as he explains, also had to earn a living and he did not have illustrations of what he had found; then, ‘on my return to England after an absence of nearly fifteen years, I did not think that, at that distance of time, an account of my former discoveries would prove interesting to general readers, inasmuch as I found that most of my discoveries were lost or given away’. He published one account of his work in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology,17 but it is not a thorough record. His 1897 book has much the same nature; it is a valuable account of multifarious activities at Nineveh and elsewhere, but he only managed to find a publisher through the kind interest of an American friend. It is not as if there had been no awareness of the problem. As was remarked by the anonymous reporter, perhaps Loftus himself, in The Illustrated London News (19 January 1856, p. 63), ‘It is to be regretted that the British Museum does not complete its good work by publishing the whole of these works which have been at so great a cost collected, and which portray the latest and best works of Assyrian art’. It was as usual a question of conflicting priorities. There followed a long period during which nearly all the available panels were displayed in the museum, visible in public with brief labels, but few were readily available in print. Some excellent photographs were taken in the 1870s and sold by the Mansell Company in London, and various engravings and many more photographs were gradually published, but there was little contextual information.

Lobdell 1854. Loftus 1854. Bonomi 1857. 15 Place and Thomas 1867. 16 Rassam 1897: vi-viii. 17 Rassam 1882. 12 13 14

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal It may seem strange that the sculptures were not published in the years around 1900, when studies of the ancient Near East were expanding rapidly. This could easily have happened, as the policy of the Trustees of the British Museum was that all the collections should be freely accessible to scholars, but a man named E.A. Wallis Budge, responsible for Assyrian matters there during 1892-1924, had fallen out with both Layard and Rassam, and had no wish to promote their discoveries. He approved of the massive and invaluable catalogue of Kuyunjik tablets,18 but he was also notorious for obstructiveness.19 When Archibald Paterson, an independent researcher, was making a serious effort to publish illustrations of Assyrian sculpture, Budge responded tartly: ‘What is it that you wish to do with Mr Boutcher’s drawings? There are some among the private documents of the Dept, but I may as well say at once that you cannot reproduce any of them’ (BM Correspondence, 11 December 1906). Formal publication of Assyrian art in the museum did begin in this period, but while a catalogue of the Balawat Gates of Shalmaneser III provided most of the basic information,20 two volumes of photographs of sculptures on display, organised by reign, treated them almost as individual works of art, without significant commentary.21 From the early 1930s on, however, the German scholar Ernst Weidner22 initiated the intelligent annotated publication of Assyrian panel fragments kept in European collections outside the great national museums. That may have been the catalyst for the publication by Cyril Gadd,23 an Assyriologist at the British Museum, of a fair selection of the information denied to Paterson. He included many excavation drawings of sculptures from Nimrud and Nineveh, especially from the North Palace, recorded the contexts of many sculptures by reference to the original documentation, and revealed the enormous number of drawings that were still awaiting study. Then in the autumn of 1963 I myself as a student, having read a footnote written by Loftus,24 located in London a portfolio of Boutcher’s drawings of both Babylonian and Assyrian material, mainly panels in the state apartments of the North Palace. It belonged to the Royal Asiatic Society rather than the British Museum, a consequence of there having been the two independent teams at work in 1854. The portfolio was listed in a typescript catalogue of the Society’s collection, the existence of which had been announced in its journal25 but missed by Gadd. The emergence of these original field drawings was a major step forward. At that time I was accustomed to the open and constructive atmosphere of the Iraq Museum and the various archaeological missions passing through Baghdad, and I was ignorant of the Budge legacy. So I obtained the Society’s permission to publish the drawings. At the same time, because Gadd had known that they should exist somewhere and had made a serious effort to find them, I also wrote him a civil note enquiring if he was yet aware of their location. This proved to be a mistake. What ensued is worth recounting as an explanation of why publication of the two great Nineveh palaces took so long and why, even today, the North Bezold 1889-99. Reade 2011: 452-4. 20 King 1915. 21 Budge 1914; Smith 1938. 22 Weidner 1939. 23 Gadd 1936. 24 Loftus 1857: 180. 25 Anon. 1916: 664-5. 18 19

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Julian Edgeworth Reade Palace is still inadequately published. Gadd passed the news of my discovery to Barnett, who was now head of the relevant department in the museum. He did not know me and probably had not read my first paper, which appeared about this time, on a glazed-brick panel at Nimrud.26 It must have been exasperating for him to learn that the drawings resided within walking distance of the museum, listed in a catalogue of a library through which he had already ‘searched twice fairly fully but in vain’ (NP: 17). Barnett telephoned my home to introduce himself and invited me to his office for a talk. Before going I was warned against being tricked into giving up my discovery, but did not take this seriously, and the meeting began amiably enough, with him congratulating me and apologising for the fact that, since learning of the existence of the portfolio, he had himself already gone to the Royal Asiatic Society to inspect it. I saw no reason why he should apologise and assured him I had not the slightest objection. He then proceeded to state that the drawings, which I had just begun to study for a preliminary article and for inclusion in my doctoral dissertation at Cambridge, would naturally be published first, together with other British Museum records of sculptures from the North Palace, in a single volume under his name. He would give me some of his personal research notes on Loftus to publish instead. At that time over a century had elapsed since the excavation of the North Palace. I was a postgraduate student with limited money and prospects, and my proper course of action was to publish these long-lost and important drawings at once. Barnett, as an established scholar, wanted to put them away with the rest of the material under his control. He was acting as if I did not know what I had found and in exchange he was offering some old notes. When I demurred, he was nonplussed. After some hesitation he suggested that my study of the drawings might be included inside his own projected book. It was an interesting proposal. If our conversation had commenced with an offer to cooperate, it could have had an agreeable outcome that suited us both and facilitated the publication of all the old British excavations in Assyria, but his initial gambit had dumbfounded me. I enquired when the book was due to be finished, and he said it would be in two or three years (in fact it took thirteen). I concluded that the delay was too great. I declined the notes on Loftus and said that I would continue what I was doing and publish the drawings as soon as possible. Barnett was furious: he knew the people at the Society, who would concur with his view of the matter. ‘Are you holding a pistol to my head?’ he exclaimed, an accusation I was unable to answer as I did not understand how my intended publication was in any way a threat. In the event the Society sided with me, and I published the more important Boutcher drawings of the North Palace a few months later.27 I left a significant proportion of them and all the Babylonian drawings for Barnett, my paper included respectful remarks about him, and I encouraged the Society to transfer its portfolio to the museum to join the related material already there. I thought I had been generous, but ever after, on the few occasions we happened to meet, he always gave the impression that I was a malign interloper. He wondered whether some of the drawings might have been ‘suppressed’ (NP: 46). Soon after that first interview I innocently requested to see other drawings already in the museum, and learnt that ‘The volumes of Original Drawings to which Professor Gadd refers are reserved for publication by myself ’ (Barnett to Reade, 27 November 1963). I was permitted as a courtesy to spend two hours looking through them, a 26 27

Reade 1963. Reade 1964.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal useful opportunity since it was 1975 before I myself joined the staff there on his retirement and was able to see them again. It dawned on me long afterwards that Barnett’s sudden rage at my insistence on the right to publish my discovery was based on a misapprehension. While he clearly could be friendly and constructive,28 he regarded Assyrian sculptures as his own special domain. He must have been assuming that I intended to behave in the way that he had been trained to do, in the Budge tradition, to reserve the drawings for myself indefinitely and stop him from using them. No such idea had occurred to me. Until our meeting I had imagined that it was normal for scholars to cooperate and help each other. I knew that archaeologists were usually entitled to publish what they themselves had found, but I was unaware until receiving his 1963 letter that the couterproductive practice of ‘reserving’ museum items, as if public collections were curators’ property, even existed. The experience was a salutary lesson for me to remember when I became a curator myself. It is plain in hindsight that I should have rendered a greater service to Assyrian scholarship by deference and acquiescence, skills in which I had not been properly schooled. Barnett knew about the complicated history of excavations in Assyria and he had published the ivories found there. He and Gadd together had also collected extensive information about the Assyrian sculptures, but it was an area, as I came to realise, in which he needed academic support. This had been provided by Margarete Falkner for the volume of Tiglathpileser sculptures from Nimrud;29 sadly she died in 1962 at the age of forty. The next task was publication of the North and South-West Palaces. Hundreds of sculptures and drawings required classification. It was a bulky but straightforward project and could easily have been finished, with appropriate help, well before 1970. The hardest parts were probably how to raise funds and arrange the illustrations. The North Palace volume finally appeared in 1976 (NP). Barnett invited Erika Bleibtreu to collaborate on the South-West Palace volume, but it still needed some work at the time of his death in 1986. A few years later John Curtis, who was by then responsible for the project, showed me what had been prepared. Reluctantly I offered to act as editor, but in the event the work was placed in the capable hands of Dominique Collon and Ann Searight.30 Meanwhile, in 1985, the bar on access to unpublished drawings had been broken, and an excellent book on the South-West Palace had already been written by John Russell.31 Later the Balawat Gates of Ashurnasirpal were edited by Curtis and Tallis.32 That left the genuinely difficult Nimrud bronzes, first described by Layard.33 Fortunately Barnett had delegated responsibility for these, and most were studied in the 1970s and published by Curtis,34 who told me in 2020 that he and Searight were continuing work on the magnificent collection of bronze bowls. So it is becoming simpler to treat all the material from these early excavations as interconnected.

See, e.g., Curtis 1998. Barnett and Falkner 1962. 30 Barnett et al. 1998. 31 Russell 1991. 32 Barnett et al. 2008. 33 Layard 1853: 176-200. 34 Curtis 2013. 28 29

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Julian Edgeworth Reade The North Palace volume contained Barnett’s history of the excavations and a good account of the architecture by Turner.35 The catalogue sections were uncritical but had the valuable feature of bringing together nearly all the known panels and many scattered fragments. Pauline Albenda36 added two British Museum drawings that had been missed. The volume’s size (c. 50 by 40 by 5 cm), however, weight and expense hindered distribution and availability, while the quality of the photographs as printed was disappointing. More informative images have gradually appeared, most recently in a fine multi-authored volume edited by Gareth Brereton37 and increasingly on museum websites. Occasionally another carved fragment emerges. Brereton (pers. comm.) tells me of the figure of a soldier given away by Boutcher that was purchased in 2020 in a charity shop in Axminster for £1.00; the owner has generously donated it to the British Museum. Secondary research on the North Palace The sheer quality and variety of the Ashurbanipal wall-panels, besides the poor publication record, have tended to deter academic attention. They have never fitted comfortably into conventional art-history. They include some of the most famous works of art surviving from ancient Iraq, but they have been transformed and impoverished by the loss of colour, and they represent a school whose bold experiments and achievements not only in the realm of political advertisement but also in the representation of material reality, space, movement and emotion were interrupted by the destruction of Nineveh. There is a degree of lively dramatic tension in some of the hunting scenes that looks forward to the Hellenistic era. These are remarkable features. They should have attracted more attention during the early and mid-twentieth century, a golden age for wide-ranging studies. Anton Moortgat38 and Henri Frankfort39 are among people who approached Assyrian art with intelligence and wrote on it with authority. Studies of the North Palace in particular have been handicapped by the shortage and consequent neglect of contextual data. Gadd40 was the first person to make serious use of Boutcher’s drawings. Those available to him mostly showed panels from the postern-gate area, and he made good preliminary progress in organising the evidence. This made possible the fine more specialised study of the hunting and lion-killing scenes by two German scholars41 that was doomed to long-term obscurity by the circumstances of publication in a Prussian series in Berlin, just after the outbreak of the Second World War. The emergence of the Royal Asiatic Society drawings in 1963 transformed the situation as it established many provenances and enabled me to recognise the different kinds of military narrative composition used on the walls of the state apartments. I presented the basic information at once in a short paper,42 and more fully as part of the doctoral dissertation submitted at Cambridge in 1967. Gadd was an examiner for this but considered that it did not add to what he had done himself; so I resubmitted it in 1970, virtually unchanged but Turner 1976. Albenda 1978: pl. 24; 1980. 37 Brereton 2018. 38 Moortgat e.g. 1930. 39 Frankfort e.g. 1954. 40 Gadd 1936. 41 Meissner and Opitz 1940. 42 Reade 1964. 35 36

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal supplemented by long accounts of palace and temple architecture in all Assyrian metropolitan and provincial cities. This time my examiners were chosen more carefully (Seton Lloyd and David Oates). I have been criticised for my failure to find a publisher for this work. It was the pre-digital age, and I possessed two bound copies and two editable typescripts. The whole was too long for a journal article but at the time very few monographs of this general nature were appearing, at least in Britain. Academics competed for space in a small number of series. As a comparison, Michael Roaf ’s D. Phil. dissertation on Persepolis, a magnificent ground-breaking contribution, was presented at Oxford in 1978. He did succeed in publishing a revised version. It occupied an entire volume of the annual journal Iran43 and it must be one of those still most frequently consulted, but there were subscribers to the journal who would have preferred a more conventional volume of miscellaneous papers. I considered making my dissertation more readable, but a friendly letter from the owner of Thames and Hudson, the fine arts publisher, remarked with some sadness that there seemed to be no market for the ancient Near East. I regret not sending it to Ernst Weidner, with whom I had corresponded. Instead, after a discussion with Barthel Hrouda, I sent it for publication in a series edited by him. He seemed to have accepted it but then, after consulting colleagues, suddenly changed his mind but did not return the typescript. Thanks to Rainer Boehmer the research on the principal Assyrian palaces did eventually appear as four articles in Baghdader Mitteilungen, twelve years after it had been completed.44 The appearance of Barnett’s catalogue attracted some fresh attention to the North Palace. For instance, Pauline Albenda45 dealt methodically with two groups of material. More farreaching attempts at interpretation were made by various scholars but when towards the end of the century two of the most distinguished of them, Paolo Matthiae and Irene Winter, both happened to be compiling comprehensive lists of contributions on Assyrian art by other historians,46 there are fewer names than one might have expected. It would be invidious to attempt to name everyone who has written constructively on the North Palace in the twenty-first century. Among those who have published important contributions are Davide Nadali47 and Lorenzo Nigro,48 two valued colleagues who helped organize the meeting for which the current paper was prepared. An exception must also be made for Geoffrey Turner, whose volume on the excavations at Nineveh, edited by John Russell after Geoffrey’s death in 2019, includes a plan of the building by Boutcher that is earlier than any of the others so far published. He had extricated it from the central archive of the British Museum.49 Yet there is still no reliable and comprehensive account of the whole palace.

Roaf 1983. Reade 1979a, 1979b, 1980a, 1980b. 45 Albenda 1977; 1978. 46 Matthiae 1996: 175-231; Winter 1997. 47 Nadali e.g. 2006. 48 Nigro 2000. 49 Turner 2021: pls 19-23. 43 44

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Julian Edgeworth Reade

Figure 9. Kuyunjik, 640 BC. Sketch with restorations. Drawn by author, 2020.

Ground-plans One problem in attempting to understand the North Palace and its evolution is that only part of it was excavated, and there is no satisfactory plan of the whole mound of Kuyunjik providing the exact location of the palace and its relationship to the other buildings there. The plans created by Boutcher, together with one created by Leonard King and Reginald Campbell Thompson, are helpful for the specialist who already understands Assyrian palace architecture and the nature of Kuyunjik, but there are uncertainties. While Boutcher seems to have had professional training, at least as an artist, King and Campbell Thompson were intelligent philologists; King only obtained a theodolite from London after admiring one used by the Germans at Ashur. He and Campbell Thompson, in proper nineteenth-century tradition, must have taught themselves how to use it on site. Consequently, the location of the North Palace presents the same kinds of problem as noted for the South-West Palace by Russell.50 Some degree of restoration is required also to clarify the internal arrangements of 50

Russell 1991: 86.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal the North Palace. There are many more questions about the carved wall-panels. It is alarming to observe how elementary errors concerning both architecture and wall-panels can persist. I have myself been responsible for some of them. When I made a restored plan of Kuyunjik for the Nineveh entry in Reallexikon der Assyriologie I assumed that the mudbrick platform on which the palace stood was defined by a line of stone facing around its base that had indeed been planned by Boutcher. A line of stone projecting from the north-western side of the platform seemed to be a continuation of the facing, and implied that the palace had service areas extending over a wide area in a north-easterly direction. I had failed to notice a note written by Boutcher in small print at the north-western end of this projecting line of stone. The note indicates that the line at the end was no longer a facing to the platform but a free-standing wall. Turner51 had already recognised this and consequently his own estimate of the size of the palace, published long before my own in the Nineveh entry, is much smaller. I now prefer his version, as in Figure 9. This matter of restoration is always awkward. A general plan like Figure 9, combining excavated and conjectural features, while intended to give a general idea of the context and to encourage discussion, can be more dangerous than I supposed when first creating one. It is liable to be accepted or reused without full appreciation of the speculative element; an unintended consequence is that conjectures acquire spurious authority. For instance, Ashurbanipal in Text 11 stated that the palace platform was not too high, so that it should not compete with the temples. I deduced from this that the unlocated Sin-Shamash Temple was likely to be nearby and once suggested a position for it there, but have since realised that a position much further south-west, in a group of royal temples by the main palace like those in the three other Assyrian capital cities, is more likely. I have sometimes offered a distinct location for the Kidmuri Temple between the Ishtar Temple and the South-West Palace, based on an indication by Sennacherib, but perhaps it was attached to the Ishtar Temple as part of the Emashmash sacred complex. The location of the ziggurrat again relies on an indication by Sennacherib. Also, it would not be surprising if the pattern of roads across Kuyunjik coincided with the drainage system; there is excavated evidence, from King and Campbell Thompson, for a fine drain running along the spaces between the Ishtar and the Nabu Temple and possibly another between the South-West Palace and the suggested position of the East Gate. The two may be part of a single drain, possibly the tebiltu watercourse repaired by Sennacherib. This matter needs further study, and it is not yet appropriate to add such possibilities to Figure 9. Turner also made the sensible suggestion that the free-standing wall projecting from the north-west side of the North Palace might represent one side of the garden which Ashurbanipal records planting beside the palace, and that a thicker area of the wall might have been a gate through the wall. If so, however, there is a question whether the garden was south-west of the wall or behind the palace to the north. The south-west side seems preferable, as now proposed in Figure 9, because it adjoined the domestic quarters of the palace, with a connecting door, and was probably overlooked by a window. At the southern corner of the palace platform there is a kink which looks as if it is intended to leave adequate space between the palace and the north corner of the Nabu Temple platform. 51

Turner 1976.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade

Figure 10. North Palace. Sketch, including postern gate, with suggestions for restoration and organisation of space. Drawn by author, 2020.

Yet the two buildings are a greater distance apart on the plan by King and Thompson. Figure 9 retains this greater distance but it would not be surprising if fresh excavations brought them closer together. Another question concerns the throneroom court or forecourt area. If the plans are correct, the throneroom court itself was either unusually large or unusually small. In the Reallexikon der Assyriologie entry I opted to divide the area into two small courts; the consequent pattern was a smaller version of that suggested for the South-West Palace by Russell.52 On reflection I have come to prefer Turner’s view that the North Palace had a single larger court, as now in Figures 9-10; this would be like the situation in Sennacherib’s house at Khorsabad. The court was subdivided, however: there were five steps up to the throneroom facade, and the area further from the throneroom was c. 40 cm lower. There are many more questions about 52

Russell 1991: 80-2, figs 43-44.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal possible restorations of missing walls, especially those in the area above the postern gate, and about the internal arrangements of the palace. One suggestion for the general plan and for the purpose of the various suites is offered in Figure 10. It is intended not as an assertion but as an encouragement to debate on how the building may have operated. Dates of foundation documents and their relevance There is some flexibility over the date or dates at which Ashurbanipal’s version of the North Palace was intended to be, or actually was, built or rebuilt. This is reflected by the existence of at least three versions of a foundation inscription. One version was built into its walls, however, which guarantees its Assyrian name as the bit riduti. The king’s earliest claim to have worked on the building is written on a fragmentary foundation document that has been dated on other grounds around 666-665 BC (ABP: 3742, Text 1, Exemplars 2-3, column vii, 1’-8’). The text is defective but may at least refer to an enlargement of the site. Both exemplars were probably among pieces of numerous inscriptions of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, together with a few other texts including a clay tablet incised in Luwian, that originated in a dump or store north of Kuyunjik derived from a scriptorium.53 According to Mordechai Cogan,54 ‘The suggestion of Julian Reade that many of the texts were recovered from ‘a dump of unwanted foundation documents’ where they had been thrown because of ‘scribal or other errors,’ or because they had been ‘broken during firing,’ or had become outdated, has not met with acceptance’. Yet Cogan does not say who has not accepted it, except implicitly himself (and maybe his colleague, my good friend Hayim Tadmor, who may have preferred to stay silent), and he does not offer an alternative explanation for the evidence. The issue has some importance because it affects the status of many texts not only from the reign of Ashurbanipal but from the reigns of his father and grandfather too, and my suggestion implies that many more such documents may still be found in the vicinity. In fact, however, the essential idea was not mine at all; I merely expanded a theory put forward by the very man who excavated most of them, Campbell Thompson.55 ‘It does not seem improbable, having regard to this great quantity of prism-fragments found within a few feet of the surface in SH on the ploughland of Nineveh, that the considerable number of Assyrian prism-fragments which have been on the market for some years came from this or a similar provenance ... Why this great number of prisms of the three reigns should have been housed away from the palaces is hard to say; but this much may be noted, that there are, in these prisms, certain variations from what we have been accustomed to regard as standard inscriptions, as well as trifling errors in the copies, and it may be that they did not reach the high standard of accuracy required’. The archaeological background had first been described by Campbell Thompson and Richard Hutchinson.56 ‘We began with a few men, and had hardly dug a yard into the earth before several fair-sized pieces of prisms came to light. Walls of unburnt brick soon began to appear Reade 1986: 216. Cogan 2005: 5. 55 Campbell Thompson 1940: 85. 56 Campbell Thompson and Hutchinson 1929: 84. 53 54

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Julian Edgeworth Reade ... It was a well-drained building, the drains being about five or six feet below the surface of the soil. What was interesting about it was the large number of pieces of historical prisms of Ashurbanipal, Esarhaddon, and Sennacherib, which came daily therefrom, the total reaching about four-score. But the best result of all came within a week of our start’. There follows a translation of the celebrated prism with Esarhaddon’s account of his accession.57 The text ends by describing the ekal mašarti, which indicates that the prism is one of a type originally intended for deposition inside this structure which is located in Nabi Yunus in another part of the city. A fuller discussion of the provenance of these prism fragments in the upper of two building levels, only the lower of which was Neo-Assyrian, was given by Campbell Thompson and Max Mallowan.58 ‘They [the prism fragments] were found usually in sporadic patches of rubble about 2’-3’ [feet, i.e. less than 1 meter] below surface, which consisted of river gravels, sometimes of round stones about 5 lbs each in weight, sometimes of small pebbles, sometimes of potsherds and pieces of limestone, often very troublesome to the pick. Mr Mallowan suggests with a good deal of probability that this rubble may have been used to level up a disturbed area, and presumably the broken prisms, lying about locally when this was done, were included as so much additional rubbish. If so, the levelling up was done after the prisms had ceased to have any value; and, since one of them was perfect, the levelling must have been due to a people who did not care to rescue it, having no interest in cuneiform. The shallow depth at which the majority of these patches were found is an additional argument for the late date of the filling’. So Campbell Thompson proposed that the prism fragments from the area north of Kuyunjik that he named SH (Sennacherib’s House) had been rejects. They would then have fallen into a category of written documents which is generated by all literate cultures - those which are superfluous. Large numbers of royal inscriptions were certainly needed at Nineveh, and rejected items had to be disposed of (i.e. stored, broken, buried, dumped or destroyed) somewhere. My contribution was to propose that their place of origin was a royal scriptorium. Perhaps it would have been more acceptable to philologists had the place of disposal been described by a posh word like geniza rather than dump. Exemplars 2 and 3 of Text 1, given their uninformative provenance, mean that there was at least an intention to enlarge the palace in the mid-660s. Maybe the project was abortive but maybe copies of the text may yet emerge from the foundations of the North Palace. It does so happen that Exemplar 1 of Text 1 (K 1821), a fragment which does not include the passage about building, was probably found at Kuyunjik; Weissert59 proposed a close association between K 1821 and another prism fragment (BM 82-5-22, 2), also probably from Kuyunjik. The latter, which includes a passage about killing lions, was classified by Novotny and Jeffers as Text 14, because of a doubt whether it can have belonged to the same edition as Exemplars 2 and 3 of Text 1. That would not preclude it belonging to an edition written in the same phase if not the same year, and it is entirely possible that work on the palace should have continued for more than a single year and that Text 14 was written for it. The North Palace, however, was not the only building on Kuyunjik on which Ashurbanipal worked during the 660s, as Text 2 shows that he was also repairing the citadel-wall of Kuyunjik. Leichty 2011: 9-26. Campbell Thompson and Mallowan 1933: 75-9, pl. CVI. 59 Weissert 1997: 340. 57 58

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal If any work was done in the 660s in the suites that were excavated on the two northern sides of Court J, it was superseded by what was done there in the 640s. The west side of the palace, in contrast, has the most novel plan and is the most obvious area to have been added by enlargement, as recorded in Text 1. The west area is also where there are important sculptures showing hunts and lion-killing. It does not therefore follow that any of these were carved in the 660s, but the existence of Texts 1 and 14 does raise that possibility. It is very different from the date in the mid-640s that many including myself have customarily assumed in the past. The earlier of the two other versions of foundation document for the North Palace is Text 9, dated by the eponym Nabu-šar-ahhešu of 646 or 645 BC (ABP: 30-33). There are many exemplars of this text; nearly all probably derived from the scriptorium rather than Kuyunjik. So a scheme for building or rebuilding all or part of the North Palace was decided in 646 or 645 BC when Text 9 was being drafted. This is one alternative date for the construction and decoration of the west area. An enigmatic feature of Text 9 is that its historical section mentions but downplays the capture of Babylon in 648 BC. The latest foundation document is Text 11, dated by the eponym Šamaš-da’’inanni for whom suggested dates range from 645 to 640 BC (ABP: 30-33). Its description of the palace is very similar to that in Text 9. It gives much fuller information not only on the capture of Babylon but on other events such as Arabian wars, and it is probably written more than a year later than Text 9. The capture of Babylon in 648 BC occupied a prominent position in Room M, the throneroom, which was the main room in the suite north-east of Court J. The carvings of the adjoining Room L, showing one or more Arab campaigns, could illustrate the long passage on this theme in Text 11. Copies of Text 11 were found inside at least two walls in the area of Rooms H and N in the suites on the north-west and north-east sides of Court J. It is therefore almost certain that the final carving in these rooms was done during or after the year in which Šamaš-da’’inanni was eponym, but the decorative programme could have been designed slightly earlier. There is a question whether work on completion of the palace was continuous from the year of Nabu-šar-ahhešu to the year of Šamaš-da’’inanni, or whether these were two separate operations. In either case there is the possibility that, in addition to the wall-panels that could in theory belong in the 660s, there are many wall-panels which were made either in the mid or in the late 640s. Because the physical carving was entrusted to masters and craftsmen who had individual styles and hands, possibly working in different rooms at virtually the same time, the dating and classification of carved panels and fragments can be no less awkward than that of successive editions of historical texts written on small fragments of prism. There is also the question of possible recarving. Whereas outdated terracotta prisms could be discarded, elaborate decorative programmes and carved alabaster panels represented a deeper investment in time and skill, and could not be replaced so readily, yet some panels in the west area were certainly recarved, and it is theoretically possible that this was done more extensively than has been recognised. Finding the decorative scheme of Rooms L-M-N The North Palace like every other Assyrian royal palace was unique, with its own characteristics which require individual attention. All the carvings on its wall-panels can reasonably be 21

Julian Edgeworth Reade

Figure 11. Room M ground-plan and panels, including restorations and supplementary panel-numbers added by author.

ascribed to the reign of Ashurbanipal. This is supported by explanatory captions (‘epigraphs’) carved on many wall-panels. These were assigned numbers as Texts 24-58, though not in chronological order, by Novotny and Jeffers (ABP: 311-349). For the creation of the carvings we may envisage committees of senior officials, including some with special expertise in architectural decoration, meeting under the king’s eye to propose and approve designs and details. The sophistication of the overall scheme has gradually become more apparent as more carvings have been published with records of their context. A notable example has been the transformation of the scholarly perception of Room M. This was originally called the Babylonian Room, but the presence of one area of panelling that illustrated prisoners and booty from Babylon was not an adequate reason for the designation. The Royal Asiatic Society drawings provided excellent additional information. The status of Room M as the principal reception room or throneroom must have been obvious from an early stage, through comparison with the published ground-plans of other royal palaces at Nimrud, Khorsabad and Nineveh. This was confirmed by the excavation of several large buildings at Khorsabad.60 At Nimrud in the 1950s the term ‘throneroom’ was applied to other types of reception room also. This was legitimate but somewhat misleading in retrospect as the rooms in question may have contained thrones but they did not occupy the specific position between more and less public spaces that was characteristic of the main room in what Turner,61 referring to palaces in general, was to call the ‘principal reception suite’. It is now clear that Room M was once the grandest room in the entire palace, with the highest wall-panels (NP: Pls 34-36) (Figure 11). Smaller rooms at either end were divided from Room M by short walls; this kind of arrangement is sometimes associated with pairs of columns, as indicated speculatively in Figure 10, but no decisive evidence is available. A few panels were carved with magical doorway figures, not considered here. Two panels were certainly plain (M-8, M-9); plans suggest the two may have been flanked on either side by two narrow panels, 60 61

Loud 1938. Turner 1970: 181.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal here assigned the numbers 7a and 9a. Nothing more is known about these but they could have been rabbeted frames of some kind, like the edges of the panels in the equivalent positions in other royal thronerooms. About twenty-eight panels will have had narrative carving in two registers. The condition of the wall-panels, here and throughout the palace, is marked on Boutcher’s plans by various colours. Minor problems arise because the information is not entirely consistent and because of variations in the quality of printing of those plans that have been published. In this room this affects panels M-1 to M-4. One can offer a range of explanations for the discrepancies, but some may simply be mistakes made while Boutcher was using notes to help colour-code his plans in the evening, away from the site. The following details follow the earliest surviving plan.62 Two Room M panels had been sent to the British Museum before Boutcher made his drawings; they duly arrived there and are those showing prisoners from Babylon (M-12 and M-13). Fourteen panels are described as ‘sculptures remaining - more or less injured -’. Seven of these are recorded in original photographs or drawings (M-7, M-17 to M-20, M-22, M-23) and some of them survive in part. Seven may possibly survive in the form of detached fragments without definite provenance (M-4, M-10, M-11, M-14 to M-16, M-21). Only two of the recorded panels (M-7, M-13) preserved part of the upper as well as the lower register. ‘Only bases of sculptures’ remained for eight panels (M-1 to M-3, M-5, M-6, M-24 to M-26). No numbers were assigned to totally ruined panels, i.e. two panels flanking M-8 and M-9 (here M-7a and M-9a), about two carved panels between M-9 and M-10 (here M-9b and M-9c), and about two carved panels to the west of M-26 (here M-27 and M-28). There is the possibility that other surviving detached fragments may have fallen from the upper register and been excavated inside the fill of the room. The carvings illustrated military achievements of Ashurbanipal’s reign in what was almost certainly a total of eight separate compositions, one pair in each corner of the room (M-1 to M-7, M-9b to M-14, M-15 to M-21, and M-22 to M-28). This compendium or relief-cycle, like that in Sennacherib’s throneroom, was the visual equivalent of an edition of the so-called annals. The individual compositions, so far as known, followed a standard pattern, with fighting at one end and the king receiving prisoners at the other. There has been some uncertainty over the identification of the subjects. The best-preserved and most famous panels are M-12 and M-13 (NP: Pl. 35), which include a caption, Text 38. This specifies that the scene represents Ashurbanipal receiving the booty from his conquest of Babylon during what came to be classified in Text 11 as Campaign 6. This scene is in the lower register. The poorly preserved upper register of the same panel shows the removal of loot from a city in Elam. Details demonstrate that this represents the sack of Susa in his Campaign 8.63 The identification is certain because the scene shows large statues of animals being taken as loot, exactly as described in Ashurbanipal’s accounts. It is also logical that the Elamite city chosen for this composition should be the great capital of Susa, just as Babylon in the lower register was the capital of Babylonia. Nonetheless the upper city has also been tentatively identified as the Elamite city of Hamanu, because other representations of Hamanu contain 62 63

Turner 2021: pls 19-23. Reade 1976: 103-4.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade

Figure 12. Engraving from photograph of M-18, lower register. Campaign in Egypt, with row of hills at top and river at bottom (after Illustrated London News, 15 November 1856: 502).

a similar kind of Elamite lintel (NP: 46). The evidence for Susa is plainly better than that for Hamanu but I recently saw the Hamanu identification repeated, a not untypical example of how error can persist. The composition in another lower register in Room M shows a campaign against Nubians in Egypt, identifiable because of the facial features of some of the enemy on M-17. The designation ‘Babylonian Room’ misled Gadd64 into supposing that these people were from Meluhha, here as allies of the Babylonians. A river, which must be the Nile, runs along the bottom. The four panels recorded, M-17 to M-20 (NP: Pl. 36), represent the capture of two towns, one bigger than the other. They invite identification as Kar-Baniti and Memphis, the two places which were captured during Ashurbanipal’s Campaign 1 against Egypt, according to the account in Text 11. It may seem strange, however, that he did not illustrate his most remarkable victory in Egypt. This was the capture of the capital city of Thebes during Campaign 2, when the important booty included two obelisks. M-18 is itself now lost, but a primary record of it survives as a faded photograph in the Royal Asiatic Society folder. Barnett arranged for a new drawing of this to be included in his catalogue (NP: Pl. 36). Thanks to the modern convenience of online auctions, however, it turns out that there was a more satisfactory version. This had appeared in The Illustrated London News. Because this journal was successful for a long time, private and public libraries bound their copies together year by year, and innumerable sets came into existence across the U.K. but gradually, in the later twentieth century, lost their appeal. Someone then had the idea of purchasing sets, cutting them up, and advertising them page by page, classified by their contents, on eBay. Other people have done the same and it seems to be a profitable line of 64

Gadd 1936: 196.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal

Figure 13. Panel M-7. Boutcher’s drawing with author’s annotations. Right-hand end of two standard victory compositions. OD VII, 32. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

business. One excerpt that I myself acquired contains a woodcut of the M-18 panel taken from the same photograph when it was in better condition, and several details can be amended (Figure 12). One detail is a quantity of cross-hatching at the top of the fragment. On first inspection I thought it represented mountainous ground at the bottom of the upper register, and speculated about possible subject-matter.65 On further study I have realised that, because of the scale of the surviving part of M-17, and because there is no plain horizontal band on M-18 separating the cross-hatching from the scene below, the cross-hatching represents a row of hills at the top of the lower register, and does not belong to the upper register at all. Therefore this upper register, now entirely lost, did not have to have a line of mountainous ground at the bottom. In that case there is no visible reason why it should not have represented Ashurbanipal’s Campaign 2 in Egypt, including the capture and booty of Thebes, with the Nile running along the bottom. There is then no objection to the lower register representing the first campaign, and to the identification of the larger town on M-17 as Memphis. A few figures preserved on panels M-22 and M-23 are men and spare horses who must be standing behind the king, who is probably in a chariot, at the left end of a composition. The group is closely paralleled by panels F-1 and F-2 (NP: Pl. 16). There is a question whether in Room M this was part of a standard victory composition, as in Room F, or a scene which 65

Reade 2010: 169.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade showed the king as a killer of lions.66 Lion-killing was shown in the throneroom of the NorthWest Palace at Nimrud, as one of the comprehensive range of royal activities. Although the king’s role as killer of lions is absent from standard annalistic records after the ninth century, it remains omnipresent on the royal seal and Ashurbanipal did present himself as a mighty hunter in some contexts, including the prism Text 14. Yet it seems more probable that the scene in Room M was another military campaign. There is also uncertainty over the compositions shown in panels M-1 to M-7. There was probably a Boutcher drawing or photograph of M-4, but that is lost. Part of M-7 is recorded, with mountainous scenery in both registers (Figure 13). There were mountains both in Elam, which had been invaded in Campaigns 5 and 7, and in Mannea, invaded in Campaign 4 (still according to the arrangement of campaigns produced for Text 11). The lower register on M-7 shows two enemy figures who do not wear Elamite headbands, and the panel is likely by elimination to belong to a composition illustrating events of the campaign against Mannea.67 I repeated this suggestion in the year 2000 in the Nineveh entry in Reallexikon der Assyriologie, but I had still missed the existence of Text 24, a caption that had probably once been inscribed in one of these panels. It was a label naming the town of Birat Adad-remanni in Mannea (ABP: 313). The text of the caption had even been published in 1861; presumably it was one of those sent by Rassam to Rawlinson in January 1854.68 The caption was described in 1861 as cut on to a panel ‘adjoining’ M-13, which cannot be exact, but the inscription may have been on a nearby panel or on a fragment that had fallen from the wall of Room M and been found loose. I only noticed the existence of Text 24 after my Reallexikon entry had been published, so that the latter was promptly superseded in this detail by my own much longer paper on the entire throneroom in Revue d’Assyriologie.69 I opted there for the lower register of M-3 as the caption’s probable original location. I had not thought the matter through, however, because any caption on that panel just in front of the king is likely to have been longer, whereas Text 24 is only a short label. It could have given the name of a town presumably once carved in the upper register of the M-1 to M-7 sequence, which would mean that the Mannean campaign occupied two registers. Novotny and Jeffers (ABP: 313) proposed instead that Text 24 derived from M-5 or M-6, and gave the name of the town being attacked by the Assyrians in the lower register of M-7. I had proposed to identify this as the Mannean town of Arsiyaniš, the execution of whose governor, Rayadišade, may have been shown at the left-hand end of the same composition around M-3 (ABP: 64). The situation has changed, however, since Boutcher’s earliest plan of the palace has been rediscovered and published by Turner.70 According to this (and there is again the question whether Boutcher’s notes were confused) a significant amount of M-4, a panel which is marked as missing on later plans, was still present at the time of excavation. Therefore the missing item 31 in the Royal Asiatic Society portfolio, which I had previously identified as M-2 and M-3, could really have been a drawing or photograph of M-4, and this position is available Reade 1964: 10; 1979b: 105. Reade 1979b: 104. 68 Turner 2021: 680. 69 Reade 2001a. 70 Turner 2021: pls 19-23. 66 67

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Figure 14. Transfer of Ummanaldash, refugee king of Elam, from Murubisi into Assyrian hands. BM 124793. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

for the Text 24 caption. If so the composition in the lower register of M-1 to M-7 could have shown the capture both of Birat Adad-remanni on M-4 and of Arsiyaniš on M-7, just as two separate Egyptian towns are shown in the lower register of panels M-17 to M-20. Meanwhile Barnett’s 1976 catalogue had proposed that quite another fragment excavated about 1878, with Text 49 as a caption mentioning Murubisi (ABP: 339; NP: Pl. 34a bis: BM 124793), belonged in the same M-1 to M-7 sequence (Figure 14). This was impossible. It is a recarved fragment with a different kind of composition and the wrong height of register. So, what does one do? All of us are trying to make constructive progress and may make mistakes in doing so. But there must be a limit to the time we spend conscientiously refuting proposals that are not supported by argument. All I said about this piece was that the provenance was ‘uncertain’ and ‘unknown’ and that the ascription to Room M ‘cannot be endorsed’.71 I once hoped that was adequate, but was mistaken, because the garden of scholarship is like any other: naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. The ascription was casually repeated albeit with a discreet question-mark by Gerardi,72 Russell,73 and maybe others, becoming the ‘general scholarly consensus’ according to Novotny and Jeffers to whom we are now indebted for an extensive discussion (ABP: 339), reaching the same obvious conclusion that the idea has no merit. There is a contrast between Room M, with its misleading ‘Babylonian’ sobriquet, and Room L, which was called the Arab Room (NP: Pls 32-33). The lower parts of twelve panels were partly preserved in the latter, which is about half of those that must once have existed, and Reade 1976: 106; 1979b: 105; 2001a: 72. Gerardi 1988: 23. 73 Russell 1999: 205. 71 72

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Julian Edgeworth Reade all of them showed scenes of warfare against Arabs, arranged in a minimum of three rows. Other panels presumably showed Ashurbanipal presiding over a procession of prisoners and booty, including the Arab king Uaite who appears in the account of Campaign 9 in Text 11. It is doubtful whether there was more than one theme in this room, in which case the original ‘Arab’ designation remains apt. While some of the events of Campaign 9 may have happened immediately before the carving of the panels in Room L, those illustrated in Room M range in date from an invasion of Egypt in the 660s to the captures of Babylon and Susa in 648-647. The detailed information underlying the compositions and the captions, Texts 24 and 38, is therefore significantly earlier than the date at which they were adapted and carved in stone in this palace. There is always the possibility that the images, like the late annalistic accounts, had been updated and were, while meeting royal requirements, anachronistic from the viewpoint of the modern chronographer. The scene of the booty from Babylon on M-12 and M-13 in particular shows people and things that are conceptually linked, in that they are related to the defeat of Babylon, but that are never likely to have been together in a single space. Two of the problems in assigning the Murubisi fragment to the sequence of panels M-1 to M-7 were the episodic nature of the scene, which was incompatible with the standard victory compositions of other surviving Room M panels, and size, specifically the height of the composition. Elementary characteristics such as the heights and widths of panels, registers and rows of figures are often ignored, as indeed happened on this occasion, but can be useful in establishing interrelationships, because the heights of narrative scenes, while carved in various arrangements divided by plain horizontal strips and simple ground-lines, were broadly consistent within each room. Exact heights can be difficult to establish because a plain area at the bottom of each panel must originally have extended below the level of the floor which abutted against it, as illustrated at Khorsabad where panel and floor were recorded in position.74 The plain bottoms of North Palace panels as well as their backs were mostly sawn away before the carvings were shipped to Europe. There are many other doubts over exact dimensions. It is to be hoped that a future catalogue or digital presentation of the entire palace will address questions of this kind methodically. Organising the Ashurbanipal relief-cycles A helpful way of regarding the wall-panels in Room M is as the equivalent of a text, like a building inscription. While the analogy is not exact, the same broadly applies to the other surviving groups of wall-panels. Most of them belong within a limited number of relief-cycles attested in more than one edition. Important subsidiary detail is provided by captions. The artistic and literary evolution of these cycles may be informative in unanticipated ways. Most notably, the suite of Rooms F-G-H-I on the north-west side of Court J in the North Palace was partly decorated by a relief-cycle also known from Room 33 of the South-West Palace and from lists of captions written on clay tablets. The cycle consisted of about eight or ten 74

Loud 1936: 39, fig. 34.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal interlocking episodic compositions. It has been entitled the Teumman-Dunanu cycle after the two principal adversaries whose defeat it illustrates.75 It presents the victory over Teumman, king of Elam, as that of good over evil, incorporating mythological allusions.76 The Room 33 sculptures are probably the earliest surviving from the reign of Ashurbanipal. Their absolute date is uncertain but they must be later than the Battle of Til-Tuba in which Teumman was killed. Frame77 gave an excellent summary of the evidence for the date of this battle. The main alternatives are 663 BC and 653 BC; he preferred the latter, and is supported by Novotny and Jeffers (ABP: 21). The precise nature of the two alternatives derives from a reference to a lunar eclipse but, given the flexible nature of time in Ashurbanipal’s inscriptions, it would not be entirely surprising to learn that the battle really happened in an intermediate year. I myself may be the only person writing in this field who prefers the earlier options. So the earliest possible date for the Room 33 carvings is about 662 BC, but the conventional date is about 652. The Teumman-Dunanu cycle is remarkable for overall design and stylistic innovation. Also, in the same way that Sargon’s wall-panels at Khorsabad displayed the technical skills of craftsmen from recently conquered areas of Syria, the narrative compositions developed for Room 33, at least for the well-preserved Battle of Til-Tuba scene, are indebted to the arts of the Nile valley. Assyrians had become familiar with this region in the course of repeated invasions or occupations during 671-664 BC, and Nineveh had acquired residents with Egyptian names. Egyptian influence on Assyrian architectural decoration went back to the reign of Tiglathpileser I, but the Til-Tuba scene is exceptional. It was maybe first noticed by Groenewegen-Frankfort78 and was explored in detail by Kaelin.79 Large parts of four compositions from the Teumman-Dunanu cycle were preserved in Room 33.80 They were carved in a fine-grained slightly pinkish fossiliferous limestone (calcium carbonate) which can easily be distinguished on close inspection from the alabaster (calcium sulphate) used for most Assyrian carvings.81 The two types of stone are less easy to distinguish from photographs but details of carving in the limestone tend to be crisper. Texts 25-28 and 33-36 were inscribed on parts of Room 33 panels found in position during Layard’s excavations about 1850. A few fragments showing similar scenes, excavated by Rassam about 1880 and assigned the BM date-number 81-2-4 (1881.0204), can be ascribed to Room 33 through their stone and appearance. One of them includes Text 32. Another inscribed fragment82 does not yet have a Text number; it may relate to the fate of Dunanu,83 which is a highly likely theme for another caption in this series. Text 31, on another fragment of similar appearance, was probably sent to Istanbul from King’s excavations in 1904. Text 5384 Weidner 1933: 175-91; Reade 1979b: 96-101; Russell 1999: 156-99; Nadali 2018. Goldstein and Weissert 2018. Frame 1992: 122-3. 78 Groenewegen-Frankfort 1951. 79 Kaelin 1999. 80 Barnett et al. 1998: pls 286-320. 81 Reade 1967: 43. 82 BM 81-2-4, 5: Reade 2000b: 88. 83 Novotny: pers. comm. 84 Barnett et al. 1998: 99, no. 413. 75 76 77

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Figure 15. Panel I-9. Upper register: Arbailu. Lower register: Susa. OD V, 1a. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal also belongs; its original owner travelled to the east in 1886-7. The Assyrian officials carved beside Text 53 show that it derives from a triumphal celebration. Parts of at least three compositions from the Teumman-Dunanu cycle were preserved in Room I of the North Palace. Accompanying captions were Texts 29, 30, 37 and probably 39. According to Reade,85 the arrangement of some of the captions listed on tablets86 fitted the walls of Room I. There are thus at least three independent sources illustrating phases in the evolution and execution of the Teumman-Dunanu cycle - the captions and images carved in Room 33 in the South-West Palace, those chosen or considered for the North Palace, and those actually carved in Room I. The unambiguous identification of the Room I version of the Teumman-Dunanu cycle was perhaps the single most important item of information to emerge from the Royal Asiatic Society drawings. The connection with Room 33 should have already been evident from the contents of Text 29, which refers to an incident illustrated in both rooms, but that parallel seems to have been missed. The connection could also have been deduced from panel I-9, of which a drawing was already known (Figure 15), but the interpretation of this panel had been skewed by an error very common in studies of Assyrian sculpture. People confronted by an isolated panel have been liable to suppose that carvings in the upper and lower parts of it belong to the same composition, not appreciating that they might be parts of two or more separate registers. The discussion of I-9 by Gadd87 exemplifies this kind of misconception. The Royal Asiatic Society drawings of panels I-5 to I-7 and I-10 provided a context for the contents of panel I-9 (Figure 16), showing that the city at the top of the panel was approached by a triumphal procession and that the ziggurrat at the bottom of the panel was connected with a battle and the introduction of a new king. Comparison of the two drawings of I-9 and their relationship to I-7 reveals some error in the modern imagery, as the panels have slightly different proportions, but the parallel with Room 33 is unmistakable.

Figure 16. Panels I-6 to I-10. Upper register: triumphal procession into Arbailu. Below: installation of new king at Susa and/or Madaktu. OD V, 1a; OD VII, 12, 14. I-9 (OD V, 1a) has slightly different proportions. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum. Reade 1979b: 101. Weidner 1933. 87 Gadd 1936: 206-7, pl. 28. 85 86

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Figure 17. Detail of town of Madaktu, from South-West Palace, panel 33-6 (BM 124802c). Photograph by author. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

The upper part of I-9 mostly survives in the Louvre, with a damaged and much-discussed caption, Text 37 (ABP: 328). The new contextual information showed that the name had indeed to be read as Arbailu, as proposed by Unger, in preference to Der, as suggested by Gadd. So the upper register of the panel showed the great Assyrian city of Erbil, while the ziggurrat carved in the register below had to be in Elam, as proposed by Dombart.88 One thing I did not yet appreciate in 1964 is that the juxtaposition of the two places, while they are in independent compositions, emphasises the superior status of the city and temple of Ishtar of Arbailu, vertically above the Elamite shrine; the relationship was displayed prominently at the head of Room I, in the centre of one end-wall. So there is a significant conceptual relationship between upper and lower parts of I-9. There could have been a similar relationship between townscapes at the other end of Room I and at least one end of Room 33 but the evidence is inadequate. There are also notable differences between the versions of the Teumman-Dunanu cycle in the two different palaces. The most prominent, to judge from what survives, is that the Til-Tuba composition in Room 33 was vastly more complicated and lively: Room I is a pale imitation. The registers are about 130 cm high in Room 33 and about 110 cm high in Room I, which is not a great difference, and one may wonder whether there is an ulterior significance in the development. No representation of an Assyrian city survived in Room 33 but that is chance. The Elamite town of Madaktu is represented in Room 33 whereas the equivalent position in Room I is occupied by a ziggurrat, probably that of Susa. Yet only part of Madaktu is preserved; the architecture is becoming more complicated in the broken section (Figure 17), and Madaktu may even have included a ziggurrat. Even if not, the city of Susa is mentioned in the relevant 88

Reade 1964: 6-7; 1976: 101; NP: 43. pls 25-26.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal Room 33 caption, Text 33. By the time Room I in the North Palace was being decorated the Assyrians had sacked Susa, and knew how to draw it properly. There is a less well-known Šamaššumukin-Tammaritu cycle of wall-panels.89 This cycle must have been designed after the capture of Babylon in 648 BC; exactly how long, after that event, depends on one’s interpretation of the internal politics of Elam. There are two sets of wall-panels in the South-West Palace, besides those from Room 33, that can be ascribed to the reign of Ashurbanipal. One group was on the facade of the throneroom (Court H), where earlier carvings presumably of Sennacherib had been erased. The new set apparently represented Assyrians and Elamites in alliance pursuing Elamites from right to left,90 a theme that could belong in both Teumman-Dunanu and Šamaššumukin-Tammaritu cycles. A second group was in Room 22 of the South-West Palace:91 these carvings replaced others from the reign of Sennacherib that had been turned to face the wall. They seem to show a triumph at Nineveh. It may be part of a version of the Šamaššumukin-Tammaritu cycle, because a camel is present, and camels are mentioned in connection with a triumphal procession.92 These two groups were presumably later than those showing the TeummanDunanu cycle in Room 33, but no details have been certainly identified that might determine the chronological relationships either between one and the other or between them and carvings of the Šamaššumukin-Tammaritu cycle in the North Palace. The presence of this Šamaššumukin-Tammaritu cycle in the North Palace is confirmed by Weidner’s lists of captions, two entries in which specify that it was illustrated in the bit riduti. One version could have been in Room H (NP: Pl. 23). There too the few surviving panels illustrated episodes rather than standard victory compositions. The themes were appropriate, with an Assyrian landscape and townscape in the upper register93 and activities including Elamites moving at speed underneath. Turner94 wished to revive an old theory that the upper register did not show Assyria, preferring Iran, but this is another instance of the extraordinarily persistent assumption that there should be too close an association between the themes of upper and lower registers. An isolated panel again with appropriate themes, a triumph above and an advance below, was found fallen in the western corner of the palace (NP: Pl. 68: AO 19008) (Figure 18). The closest parallel is with Room H in the South-West Palace, and this may derive from another version of the Šamaššumukin-Tammaritu cycle. No captions happen to survive on these fragments which belong or may belong in the Šamaššumukin-Tammaritu cycle. It is probable, however, that Texts 40 and 48, that were captions on panels in Room F, and Text 42, that was very probably from Room G,95 all three of which allude to Elamite towns captured during the same operations, were associated with this cycle.

Weidner 1933: 191-203. Barnett et al. 1998: pls 26-28. 91 Barnett et al. 1998: pls 223-226, 228. 92 Weidner 1933: 201; Reade 2005: 22. 93 Reade 1998: 84-90. 94 Turner 2021: 640-5. 95 Nigro 2000. 89 90

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Figure 18. Panel fallen into Room R. Celebration (above) and Assyrian attack (below). OD VI, 57 (= Louvre, AO 19908). Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

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Figure 19. Campaigns in marshes. Above: Panels J-3 to J-4, North Palace. OD VII, 15. Below: Panels 28-2 to 28-4, South-West Palace. OD IV, 34-35. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

Finally, in the state apartments of the North Palace, there are the panels in Court J (NP: Pl. 28) (Figure 19, above). They show a marshland battle located in Babylonia and could be associated with either cycle. They could also have been a model for panels in Room 28 of the South-West Palace, which show campaigns in the same geographical region (Figure 19, below).96 The latter series has been and periodically still is ascribed to Sennacherib because of its provenance, but the soldiers’ uniforms are wrong. It is also ascribed to Ashurbanipal because of these uniforms. However, the king is represented as present among the palm-trees, taking an active part on campaign, whereas Ashurbanipal usually seems to have stayed home. Members of the royal escort in Room 28 have what seem to be unique bow-covers shaped as the head of a cock or jungle-fowl (Figure 20), but these by themselves do not help as they could denote a specific military contingent active through more than one reign. 96

Barnett et al. 1998: pls 233-265.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade

Figure 20. Panel 28-14, South-West Palace. Royal escort with head of cock or jungle-fowl on quivercover. Detail of BM 124960. Photograph by author. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 21. Recarved panel with tops of palm-trees not fully erased between registers. Detail of BM 124919. Fallen into Room S. Photograph by author. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum

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Figure 22. Details from Garden Party series. Above: mockery of Elamite kings, recarved, BM 124794. Below: Ashurbanipal and queen on couch, BM 124920. Fallen into Room S. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade The situation is more clear-cut with another group of scenes often attributed to Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal in Court 19 of the South-West Palace. They too are set in Babylonia and have a novel type of composition. Here the king is undoubtedly present, accompanied by courtiers and crossing a river which, while harking back to the horizontal bands of inscription separating upper and lower registers at Nimrud, is actually part of the landscape.97 This king of Court 19 is likely to be Ashurbanipal’s son, Sinšarriškun, who recorded the renovation of what was presumably this same building.98 Another fragment from this or another similar series was carved after partial erasure of a Sennacherib scene in a similar landscape.99 A different narrative cycle of Ashurbanipal is attested in a few panels mostly found fallen from above in the western part of the North Palace. A notable feature they have in common is that they were recarved, with compositions in three registers, and they make it possible to collect together another group of interrelated captions. The prime example is BM 124919, the recarving of which is obvious (Figure 21);100 it contained Text 41, which gives the name of the Elamite town of Hamanu, also found in Room F. Texts 44 and 46 were captions on a panel AO 19905 of similar size that adjoined AO 19906; since the latter was recarved and the appropriate size, it is virtually certain that these all belonged together (NP: Pl. 61). BM 124793, the Murubisi fragment with the Text 49 caption discussed above (Figure 14), also has clear marks of recarving, and derives from a composition closely related to those in the upper registers of BM 124919 and AO 19905-6. It is an appropriate size, and it seems probable that it belongs with them. Text 52, since it may refer to Arabs mentioned in Text 11, could have belonged too. A theme of this cycle was the capture of Elamite kings, also recorded in Text 11. There is a fragment from the Garden Party which shows Elamite kings as prisoners at the Assyrian court in the 640s. They were forced to prepare food, as described in Text 50. The style of the fragment differs from that of the rest of the Garden Party, with flatter contours, and it was presumably recarved later in Ashurbanipal’s reign (Figure 22). It seems most likely that all this recarving happened about the same time in the later 640s. Other panels found fallen into Rooms S, T and V belonged to standard victory compositions in two registers. They are likely to have been carved about the same time as one another but evidence for and against possible recarving is inconsistent. They include two captions: Text 43 named the Elamite town of Din-sharri and Text 47 probably named another Elamite town. In addition, Text 51 was copied by Loftus and had probably fallen into Room S; it named the town of Bit-Luppi, probably again in Elam. Text 45 named an Elamite town whose name is lost, and is the kind of fragment that might have fallen into Room T or V. So Texts 43, 45, 47 and 51 probably belong to a single group but cannot be positively placed in a more complicated cycle. At least three groups of carved wall-panels, one from Room S in the western area of the North Palace, one from a room above Room S, and one from Room C which led westward from the central area, showed the king killing lions, sometimes in association with Elamite Barnett et al. 1998: pls 187-222. Reade 1972: 89-90. 99 Reade 1967: 42-5. 100 Reade 2000c: figs 4-5. 97 98

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Figure 23. Lion-killing scenes with captions intruding into action. OD V, 4 (= Louvre, AO 19903). Fallen into Room S. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

princes who arrived as refugees in 664 BC. The scenes are associated with the Garden Party, also fallen into Room S. Effectively there was a lion-killing relief-cycle, with linked text and images, comparable in principle with the cycles of military narrative and triumph. Weissert101 discusses two related literary texts, in addition to the information in Text 14. One of the lion-killing groups has explanatory captions, Texts 54-58. An oddity is that, whereas Texts 57-58 have ample space around them, Texts 54-56 have been squeezed into the action, as if they were cut at an indeterminate time after the original carving (Figure 23). The subjectmatter of the carved scenes and captions goes back to the years when Ashurbanipal was a relatively young man, and there could have been earlier versions of the cycle in many media - paint, metal, paper, parchment, clay, textiles. It seems not unlikely that the captions were an 101

Weissert 1997.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade

Figure 24. Panel R-5. Assyrian eunuch with Greek ∆ΕΙΟΓΕΝΕC incised in front of his face. Detail of BM 124895. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

afterthought, added at the same time as the Garden Party was being updated by the addition of captive Elamite kings and Text 50. Conclusion Correct chronology often provides the key to solving awkward questions. While the dates of Ashurbanipal’s carvings remain unsure, it is possible to place them roughly in order. His first narrative carvings were probably those in Room 33 of the South-West Palace, cut after 663 or 653 BC. More were later carved in Court H and Room 22 of the South-West Palace, probably after 648. It was decided to expand the North Palace about 665, as recorded in Text 1. The area added may have been the private sector of the palace on the west. The hunt and Garden Party wall-panels were carved in the private sector of the palace before or after 653 B.C. More rebuilding work is recorded in Texts 9 and 11 of about 645-640. Wall-panels in the throneroom suite and the F-G-H-I suite were probably carved as one operation after Text 11 had been deposited in the walls of Rooms H and N. Those in Court J may have been made at the same time. The humiliations of the Elamites, recorded in Text 11, were carved in the private sector of the palace, over erased carvings. Additionally, when the panels were being carved or probably soon afterwards, there were technical or stylistic adjustments, for instance shortening the length of lions’ tails and altering the relationship between an Assyrian soldier and a chariot-wheel on the Murubisi scene. We may imagine a considerable number of royal visitations, exasperating for the workmen. Ashurbanipal would have been delighted by the fact that, over 2500 years later, the stories told on these panels and their connotations are still being discussed. Also, when Nineveh had been captured in 612 BC, some of the enemies rampaging through the palace 40

The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal

Figure 25. Dying lion. Assyrian fragment framed as work of art. BM 1992.0404.1. Fallen into Room S. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 26. Dying lion of Luzern (Lucerne). Rock memorial to members of the Swiss Guard killed defending the Palais des Tuileries, Paris, 1792. Carved by Bertel Thorvaldsen, 1821. Photograph by Andrew Shiva/Wikipedia/CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade paused to vandalize images of the Assyrian king: in one example his head was battered, and a lion was liberated from his grasp by chipping away its tail. These changes are liable to appear throughout the palace;102 they can be informative about the views and identity of the people who did the damage. The royal stelas of Neo-Babylonian kings, however, the Persian sculptures of Parsagadae and Persepolis, and the lion-killing scenes on the Oxus scabbard, are among many reminders that the enemies who destroyed the Assyrian Empire and its grand palaces were pleased to adopt and emulate its imagery as well as its administrative practices. So far as we know the last deliberate alteration to the North Palace panels in antiquity came in the Greco-Parthian period, when someone dug a drain through the area where Room R was buried, and found some wall-panels still exposed in position. One panel showed a man with a donkey, and someone incised the name Diogenes, in Greek but spelt wrongly with an extra epsilon as Deiogenes, in front of the man’s face (Figure 24).103 Whether to be classified as an enhancement or as an amused graffito, it offers rare evidence of an otherwise unknown individual in later antiquity looking thoughtfully at the imperial Assyrian heritage. Loftus,104 in one of his letters on the progress of the excavation, wrote that ‘the various sculptures here disinterred are the works of four, if not five, different artists, whose styles are distinctly visible’. Modern scholars have generally not shared this interest in technical style. The interest was accompanied, at the same time or soon afterwards, by the ruthless manner in which Loftus, Boutcher and Place removed superfluous areas of carving from fragments in order to create mobile objects that were aesthetically pleasing on their own but less informative on ancient history.105 Two of the reasons must be that the fragmentary nature of the panels distracted attention from their status as elements in elaborate compositions, and that the fine detail seemed both more significant than the broad panorama and more attractive without the distraction of extra bits of carving around it. A third reason was simply salvage, the wish to preserve details that would otherwise have been left on site because they were not wanted in London or Paris, or would have been too expensive to transport. The consequence, as in the case of the ‘Dying Lion’ in its beautiful possibly beechwood frame (Figure 25), could be the creation of an authentic fresh work of art in the tradition of the Dying Gaul from Pergamon. A closer parallel is Thorvaldsen’s Lion of Lucerne (Figure 26), a monument to Swiss guards who died defending the Tuileries in 1792. Finished in 1821, the work was politically contentious. Its story was probably familiar to Victorian intellectuals who later found themselves admiring its Assyrian predecessor. This paper has provided some of the background to the building of the North Palace, its poorly recorded excavation, the various attempts that have been made at publication of the celebrated series of carved narrative wall-panels, their relationship to some of those from the South-West Palace, and the framework within which they were set. While some advanced work has been done, there are still elementary questions to be settled. Really the records of the entire building with its wall-panels and inscriptions and the philological and archaeological evidence for its occupation should be reviewed and published professionally as a unit from scratch. Then, in the future, scholars can lift their heads with greater confidence from the Reade 2000b: figs 2-3, 6; Simpson 2020. Reade 2001b. 104 Loftus 1854. 105 e.g. Curtis 1992. 102 103

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal technicalities, emulating Paolo and his colleagues in their far-ranging contemplation of the evidence from Ebla. The North Palace stands at the junction of two worlds, between Gilgamesh and Socrates. There is much to learn. Bibliography Albenda, P. 1977. Landscape Bas-Reliefs in the bit-hilani of Ashurbanipal. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 224, 225: 49-72, 29-48. Albenda, P. 1978. Assyrian Carpets in Stone. Journal of the Ancient Near East Society of Columbia University 10: 1-19. Albenda, P. 1980. An Unpublished Drawing of Louvre AO 19914 in the British Museum. Journal of the Ancient Near East Society of Columbia University 12: 1-8. Anonymous, 1916. Notes on the Quarter (April-June, 1916). Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, July 1916: 641-72. Barnett, R.D. 1976. Sculptures from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. London: British Museum Publications. Barnett, R.D., E. Bleibtreu, and G. Turner. 1998. Sculptures from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh. London: British Museum Press. Barnett, R.D., J.E. Curtis, L.G. Davies, M.M. Howard, C.B.F. Walker, I.L. Finkel, N. Tallis and E. Sollberger. 2008. The Balawat Gates of Ashurnasirpal II. London: British Museum Press. Barnett, R.D., and M. Falkner. 1962. The Sculptures of Tiglath-pileser III. London: The Trustees of the British Museum. Bezold, C. 1889-1899. Catalogue of the Cuneiform Tablets in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum. 5 vols. London: Trustees of the British Museum. Bonomi, J. 1857. Nineveh and its Palaces. The Discoveries of Layard and Botta, applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ. 3rd edition. London: H.G. Bohn. Brereton, G. 2018. I am Ashurbanipal King of the World, King of Assyria. London: Thames & Hudson, The British Museum. Budge, E.A.T.W. 1914. Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum: Reign of Ashur-nasir-pal. London: Trustees of the British Museum. Campbell Thompson, R. 1940. A Selection from the Cuneiform Historical Texts from Nineveh (1927-1932). Iraq 7/2: 85-131. Campbell Thompson, R., and R.W. Hutchinson. 1929. A Century of Exploration at Nineveh. London: Luzac & Co. Campbell Thompson, R., and Mallowan, M.E.L. 1933. The British Museum Excavations at Nineveh, 1931-32. Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology 20: 71-186. Cogan, M. 2005. Some Text-Critical Issues in the Hebrew Bible from an Assyriological Perspective. Textus 22: 1-20. Curtis, J.E. 1992. The Dying Lion. Iraq 54: 113-8. Curtis, J.E. 1998. Preface, in R. D. Barnett et al., Sculptures from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh: vi. London: British Museum Press. Curtis, J.E. 2013. An Examination of Late Assyrian Metalwork with Special Reference to Nimrud. 1979 dissertation. Oxford/Oakville CT: Oxbow Books. Dolce, R., and M. Nota Santi (eds). 1995. Dai palazzi assiri: immagini di potere da Assurnasirpal II ad Assurbanipal (IX-VII sec. a.C.) (Studia Archaeologica 76). Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade Frame, G. 1992. Babylonia 689-627 B.C. A Political History (Publications de l’Institut historiquearchéologique néerlandais de Stamboul 69). Istanbul/Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. Frankfort, H. 1954. The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gadd, C.J. 1936. The Stones of Assyria. London: Chatto & Windus. Gerardi, P. 1988. Epigraphs and Assyrian Palace Reliefs: The Development of the Epigraphic Text. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 40/1: 1-35. Goldstein, R., and E. Weissert. 2018. The Battle of Til-Tuba Cycle and the Documentary Evidence, in G. Brereton (ed.), I am Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria: 244-73. London: Thames & Hudson, The British Museum. Groenewegen-Frankfort, H.A.1951. Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jones, J.F. 1855. Topography of Nineveh Illustrative of the Maps of the Chief Cities of Assyria; and of the General Geography of the Country Intermediate between the Tigris and the Upper Zab. [Read 2nd July 1853.] Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15: 297-397, Sheets 1-3 ‘Vestiges of Assyria’. Kaelin, O. 1999. Ein assyrisches Bildexperiment nach ägyptischem Vorbild. Zu Planung und Ausführung der ‘Schlacht am Ulai’ (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 266). Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. King, L.W. 1915. Bronze Reliefs from the Gates of Shalmaneser. London: Trustees of the British Museum. Larsen, M.T. 1996. The Conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an Antique Land 1840-1860. Original Danish edition: 1994. London and New York: Routledge. Layard, A.H. 1853. Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. London: John Murray. Leichty, E. 2011. The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680-669 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, Vol. 4). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Lobdell, H. 1854. Letter from H. Lobdell, M.D., missionary at Mosul, respecting some recent discoveries at Koyunjik. Journal of the American Oriental Society 4: 472-80. Loftus, W.K. 1854. Letters written to the Assyrian Excavation Fund, reprinted in Barnett 1976: 71-5. Loftus, W.K. 1857. Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana. London: James Nisbet & Co. Loud, G., H. Frankfort and T. Jacobsen. 1936. Khorsabad, Part I: Excavations in the Palace and at a City Gate (Oriental Institute Publications 38). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Loud, G. and C.B. Altman. 1938. Khorsabad, Part II: the Citadel and the Town (Oriental Institute Publications 40). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Matthiae, P. 1996. L’arte degli Assiri. Cultura e forma del rilievo storico. Roma and Bari: Laterza. Meissner, B. and D. Opitz. 1940. Studien zum Bit Hilani im Nordpalast Assurbanaplis zu Ninive (Aus den Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Jahrgang 1939. Phil.hist. Klasse. Nr. 18). Berlin: Verlag der Akadamie der Wissenschaften. Moortgat, A. 1930. Die Bildgliederung des jungassyrisches Wandreliefs. Jahrbuch der Preuszischen Kunstsammlungen 51: 141-58. Nadali, D. 2006. Percezione dello spazio e scansione del tempo. Studio della composizione narrativa del rilievo assiro del VII secolo a.C. (Contributi e Materiali di Archeologia Orientale 12). Roma: Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’. Nadali, D. 2018. The Battle of Til-Tuba in the South-West Palace: Context and Iconography, in G. Brereton (ed.), I am Ashurbanipal King of the World, King of Assyria: 234-43. London: Thames & Hudson, The British Museum.

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The Progress of Research on the Sculptures of Ashurbanipal Nigro, L. 2000. L’assedio di Bit-Bunakki da Ninive ai Musei Vaticani. La sua collocazione originaria nel Palazzo Nord di Assurbanipal e gli scavi di Giovanni Bennhi. Vicino Oriente 12: 241-59. Novotny, J. and J. Jeffers. 2018. The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668-631 BC), Aššur-etel-ilani (630-627 BC), and Sin-šarra-iškun (626-612 BC), Kings of Assyria, Part 1 (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 5/1). University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns. Place, V. and F. Thomas. 1867. Ninive et l’Assyrie. Vol. I. Paris: Ministère de la Maison de l’Empereur et des Beaux-Arts, Imprimerie impériale. Rassam, H. 1882. Excavations and Discoveries in Assyria. Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 7: 37-58. Rassam, H. 1897. Asshur and the Land of Nimrod. New York/Cincinnati: Eaton & Mains, Curtis & Jennings. Reade, J.E. 1963. A Glazed Brick Panel from Nimrud. Iraq 25: 38-47. Reade, J.E. 1964. More Drawings of Ashurbanipal Sculptures. Iraq 26: 1-13. Reade, J.E. 1967. Two Slabs from Sennacherib’s Palace. Iraq 29: 42-8. Reade, J.E. 1970. The Design and Decoration of Neo-Assyrian Public Buildings. Ph.D. dissertation (PhD 7172, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge). On-line (also Microfim). OCLC 123175366. Cambridge. Reade, J.E. 1972. The Neo-Assyrian Court and Army: Evidence from the Sculptures. Iraq 34: 87-112. Reade, J.E. 1976. Elam and Elamites in Assyrian Sculpture. Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 9: 97-106. Reade, J.E. 1979a. Assyrian Architectural Decoration: Techniques and Subject-Matter. Baghdader Mitteilungen 10: 17-49. Reade, J.E. 1979b. Narrative Composition in Assyrian Sculpture. Baghdader Mitteilungen 10: 52110. Reade, J.E. 1980a. Space, Scale and Significance in Assyrian Art. Baghdader Mitteilungen 11: 71-4. Reade, J.E. 1980b. The Architectural Context of Assyrian Sculpture. Baghdader Mitteilungen 11: 75-87. Reade, J.E. 1985. Texts and Sculptures from the North-West Palace, Nimrud. Iraq 47: 203-14. Reade, J.E. 1986. Archaeology and the Kuyunjik Archives, in K.R. Veenhof (ed.), Cuneiform Archives and Libraries (Publications de l’Institut historique-archéologique néerlandais de Stamboul, 57): 213-22. Istanbul/Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. Reade, J.E. 1998. Assyrian Illustrations of Nineveh. Iranica Antiqua 33 (= R. Boucharlat, J.E. Curtis and E. Haerinck [eds], Neo-Assyrian, Median, Achaemenian and Other Studies in Honor of David Stronach): 81-94. Reade, J.E. 2000a. Ninive (Nineveh). Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 9/5-6: 388-433. Reade, J.E. 2000b. Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum: Technical Notes. Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires 2000/78: 88. Reade, J.E. 2000c. Restructuring the Assyrian Sculptures, in R. Dittmann et al. (eds), Variatio Delectat: Iran und der Westen: Gedenkschrift für Peter Calmeyer (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 272): 607-25. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Reade, J.E. 2001a. The Wellesley Eunuch. Revue d’Assyriologie et d’Archéologie orientale 95: 69-81. Reade, J.E. 2001b. More about Adiabene. Iraq 63: 187-99.

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Julian Edgeworth Reade Reade, J.E. 2005. Religious Ritual in Assyrian Sculpture, in B. Nevling Porter (ed.), Ritual and Politics in Ancient Mesopotamia (American Oriental Series 88): 7-61. New Haven: American Oriental Society. Reade, J.E. 2010. New Lives for Old Stones. Iraq 72: 163-74. Reade, J.E. 2011. Retrospect: Wallis Budge - for or against?, in M. Ismail (ed.), Wallis Budge: Magic and Mummies in London and Cairo: 444-63. Kilkerran: Hardinge Simpole. Reade, J.E. in preparation. Design and Destruction: The Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Roaf, M. 1983. Sculptures and Sculptors at Persepolis (= Iran 21). Russell, J.M. 1991. Sennacherib’s Palace without Rival at Nineveh. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Russell, J.M. 1999. The Writing on the Wall: Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Smith, S. 1938. Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum from Shalmaneser III to Sennacherib. London: Trustees of the British Museum. Turner, G. 1970. The State Apartments of Late Assyrian Palaces. Iraq 32: 177-213. Turner, G. 1976. Notes on the Architecture of the North Palace, in R.D. Barnett, Sculptures from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh: 28-33. London: British Museum Publications. Turner, G. 2021. The British Museum’s Excavations at Nineveh, 1846-1855. Edited by John Malcolm Russell. Leiden/Boston: Brill. Weidner, E.F. 1933. Assyrische Beschreibungen der Kriegs-Reliefs Assurbanaplis. Archiv fur Orientforschung 8: 175-203. Weidner, E.F. 1939. Die Reliefs der assyrischen Könige (Archiv für Orientforschung, Beiheft 4). Weissert, E. 1997. Royal Hunt and Royal Triumph in a Prism Fragment of Ashurbanipal (82-522,2), in S. Parpola and R.M. Whiting (eds), Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 19th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Project Corpus Helsinki, September 7-11, 1995: 339-58. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Winter, I.J. 1997. Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology, in S. Parpola and R.M. Whiting (eds), Assyria 1995, Proceedings of the 19th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Project Corpus Helsinki, September 7-11, 1995: 359-81. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project.

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La réception des Assyriens, avant et après l’invention pionnière de Khorsabad par Paul-Emile Botta Ariane Thomas Abstract La découverte de Khorsabad par Paul-Emile Botta marqua un tournant dans la réception des Assyriens auparavant connus par des sources principalement indirectes. Suite à une ‘journée assyrienne’ célébrant à Rome l’anniversaire de Paolo Matthiae, ce papier rappelle l’œuvre pionnière de Paul-Emile Botta en même temps que son apport à la connaissance de l’antique Mésopotamie et à la naissance d’une discipline dont l’usage conserve encore le nom initial d’assyriologie qui lui fut alors donné. The discovery of Khorsabad by Paul-Emile Botta marked a turning point in the reception of the Assyrians previously known through mainly indirect sources. Following an ‘Assyrian day’ celebrating the birthday of Paolo Matthiae in Rome, this paper recalls the pioneering work of Paul-Emile Botta as well as his contribution to the knowledge of ancient Mesopotamia and to the birth of a discipline whose name still retains the initial name of Assyriology which was then given to it. Keywords Botta, Khorsabad, Louvre, Assyria, reception

Ayant eu l’honneur d’être invitée à célébrer l’anniversaire de Paolo Matthiae dans le cadre d’une journée assyrienne, j’y ai rappelé l’histoire des fouilles pionnières de Khorsabad un peu comme en miroir des découvertes fondamentales de Paolo Matthiae à Ebla tout en évoquant son travail sur les Assyriens en général et sur Khorsabad en particulier. Comme en clin d’œil, rappelons également les résonnances transalpines de la découverte française de Khorsabad. Son inventeur Paul-Emile Botta était en effet né à Turin le 6 décembre 1802, alors que ‘ce siècle avait deux ans! Rome remplaçait Sparte; Déjà Napoléon perçait sous Bonaparte’ ainsi que l’écrira Victor Hugo né en cette même année. Elevé en France par son père bonapartiste, Carlo Botta, Paolo-Emilio n’en resta pas moins attaché toute sa vie au Piémont, de même qu’au musée de Turin qui conserve d’ailleurs quelques beaux reliefs de Khorsabad donnés par Botta. Ce dernier était proche de Bernardino Drovetti, un ami de son père qui protégea le début de sa carrière diplomatique et lui servit peut-être en un sens ou un autre de modèle pour ses recherches archéologiques. Par ailleurs, le dessinateur qui accompagna Botta dès mai 1844, Eugène Flandin, était né à Naples. En partant de ce dont Botta ou son entourage pouvaient avoir eu vent en ce qui concerne l’antique Mésopotamie au moment de sa prise de poste à Mossoul en 1842, nous proposons de rappeler l’œuvre pionnière de Paul-Emile Botta en même temps que son apport à la connaissance de l’antique Mésopotamie et à la naissance d’une discipline, dont l’usage conserve encore le nom initial d’assyriologie qui lui fut alors donné. L’Orient avant Botta en France: un pionnier dans l’air du temps De nombreux voyageurs ont visité l’Orient depuis la fin de l’Antiquité et il ne s’agit pas ici de tous les mentionner mais seulement d’évoquer ce qui avait le plus immédiatement précédé

Moving on from Ebla (Archaeopress 2022): 47–70

Ariane Thomas l’œuvre de Botta en France. Citons ainsi Les remarques de l’illustre pèlerin ... sur ses divers voyages en Syrie, Mésopotamie ... publiées par A. Ollier en 1673. Mais c’est aussi au travers d’ouvrages généraux reprenant les données alors connues – plus ou moins fiables – que l’Assyrie antique était évoquée. En 1779 parut ainsi la traduction de l’ouvrage en anglais intitulé Histoire universelle du monde depuis le commencement du monde jusqu’à présent dont le tome 6 était dédié à l’Assyrie et à Babylone dont le souvenir n’était alors conservé qu’indirectement par la Bible et les auteurs classiques. Dans cette veine, plusieurs ouvrages reprenaient ces éléments dans des sommes historiques telle cette Bibliothèque historique, à l’usage des jeunes gens, ou Précis des histoires générales et particulières de tous les peuples anciens et modernes, extrait de différents auteurs, et traduit de diverses langues, par M. Breton et parue en 1810. Quelques vingt ans avant la naissance de Botta, des voyages plus scientifiques avaient rapporté de Mésopotamie de nouvelles connaissances. Ce fut d’abord le premier géographe du roi, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon D’Anville qui publia en 1779 L’Euphrate et le Tigre. Puis en 1782, le botaniste André Michaux voyagea en Orient jusqu’en Perse, en passant par la Mésopotamie, avec le consul Jean-François Rousseau, cousin du philosophe. Il en rapporta le fameux ‘caillou Michaux’, un kudurru de la Babylonie kassite aujourd’hui conservé au cabinet des Médailles de la Bibliothèque nationale de France1, qui fut le premier objet inscrit en cunéiforme (alors totalement non déchiffré) entré dans les collections royales. À la suite de Michaux, d’autres voyageurs rapportèrent des antiquités de Mésopotamie, embryons de collections qui furent visitées par les savants curieux, notamment en France et en Angleterre. Il y eut ensuite des voyages plus politiques, quoiqu’aucun n’ait eu la résonnance des missions ayant accompagné la campagne d’Egypte à peu près contemporaine. Ainsi Guillaume-Antoine Olivier publia en 1807 le récit en trois volumes de son Voyage dans l’Empire Othoman, l’Égypte et la Perse, fait par ordre du gouvernement pendant les six premières années de la République. Par ailleurs un certain Jules Lascaris de Vintimille, qui aurait été un agent secret envoyé en Orient par Bonaparte dès 1799, livra plus tard des mémoires sur ses missions à travers tout l’Orient. Vendues après sa mort, elles furent achetées par le poète français Lamartine en 1833 qui publia à son tour en 1835 Voyage en Orient. Presque au même moment, comme à la mode, des spectacles mettaient à l’honneur, à Paris comme à Londres, des personnages légendaires de cet Orient antique que l’on ne connaissait encore que par les témoignages indirects et déformés de la Bible et des auteurs classiques. Citons Sémiramis, d’abord imaginée par Voltaire, dont le texte inspira l’opéra éponyme de Catel en 1802, puis ceux de Meyerbeer en 1819 et de Rossini en 1823. Deux ans auparavant, en 1821, Lord Byron publiait son Sardanapale, traduit en français dès l’année suivante et qui inspira à Delacroix le tableau qui fit scandale au Salon en 18272. C’est dans ce contexte plein de curiosité en même temps que d’ignorance pour l’antiquité de l’Orient que Botta, soutenu par des savants, partit pour la Mésopotamie où plusieurs personnages avaient déjà commencé à parcourir les sites antiques pour y regarder de plus près les vestiges qui s’y trouvaient en surface, à l’instar du britannique Claudius James Rich dont la collection était fameuse. 1 2

Thomas 2016: 39, n° 2. Thomas et Potts (eds) 2020: 23, fig. 21.

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La réception des Assyriens L’inventeur d’un site et la redécouverte archéologique des témoins directs d’une culture oubliée En 1842, Botta fut nommé consul de France à Mossoul, sur un poste tout juste créé par le roi Louis-Philippe. Né d’un père piémontais bonapartiste, Botta avait grandi en France, notamment à Rouen. Ayant étudié la médecine, il avait embarqué sur un voilier pour un tour du monde3 avant de se lancer dans une carrière diplomatique en Egypte avec l’aide du consul de France à Alexandrie, Bernard Drovetti, lui aussi piémontais et ami de la famille Botta. PaulEmile Botta s’était également acquitté de missions pour le Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Paris afin de collecter des produits naturels de la côte d’Arabie et du Yémen4. Plein d’atouts, Botta avait une bonne connaissance de la Bible, beaucoup de curiosité, la volonté de connaître les civilisations anciennes et une certaine rigueur scientifique dans l’approche de ce qu’il découvrait tant à Hawaï qu’en Arabie à l’issue de quoi il publia ce qu’il en avait retiré5. Particulièrement encouragé par Jules Mohl de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, il entendait mener des recherches sur l’antiquité de la région de Mossoul et commença dès son arrivée l’exploration du tell dit ‘de Kouyoundjick’ (identifié comme l’antique Ninive au moins depuis le XIIe siècle par le voyageur Benjamin de Tudèle), ainsi que le tell de Nebi Yunus où l’on révérait la mémoire du prophète Jonas. Distant seulement d’une demi-heure de sa résidence à Mossoul, de l’autre côté du Tigre, Kouyoundjick fut exploré par Botta entre décembre 1842 et le 10 mars 1843. Au bout de ces quelques trois mois, il arrêta ses recherches jugées infructueuses; alerté de découvertes faites à Khorsabad (à 16 km environ au nord-est de Mossoul), il décida alors d’y transférer ses équipes. Comme le rappelle Mohl, ‘(…) les habitants des environs, qui voyaient le consul de France occupé à ces recherches, lui apportèrent, de plusieurs côtés, des briques à inscription et d’autres restes d’antiquités (…). M. Botta, désespérant (…), transporta, au commencement de l’année 1843, ses opérations à un endroit situé à cinq heures de caravane de Mossoul, d’où lui étaient venues de très belles briques.’6 Botta décrit ainsi l’état des lieux à son arrivée à Khorsabad sur le monticule dont on saura plus tard qu’il correspond à la citadelle: ‘de rares vestiges indiquaient seuls l’existence [des monuments anciens]; les débris de la façade a7 paraissaient hors de terre, mais les pierres renversées ne laissaient pas voir les sculptures dont elles étaient ornées; les tiares des taureaux de la façade m8, saillantes au-dessus du sol, étaient cachées par les maisons; enfin des débris, des fragments de briques, épars sur le sommet du monticule ou dans ses environs, pouvaient seuls faire soupçonner que le sol recouvrait de vastes constructions.’9 Du 20 mars au mois d’octobre 1843, Botta travailla seul à Khorsabad. Comme il le raconte, ‘ce ne fut cependant pas sans rencontrer des obstacles sans cesse renaissants; les environs marécageux du village de Khorsabad ont une réputation proverbiale d’insalubrité, qui fut bien Qui le conduisit en outre à Hawaï ce qui lui donna l’occasion de publier un lexique franco-hawaïen. Voir Botta 1831. Ses notes furent publiées en 1841 (Botta 1841). Voir aussi Botta 1839: 369-81. 5 Voir notes précédentes. 6 Mohl 1845: VII. 7 Botta et Flandin 1849-1850, vol. 1: pl. 4. 8 Ibid. 9 Botta et Flandin 1849-1850, vol. V: 24. 3 4

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Figure 1. Première copie d’inscription de Khorsabad transmise par P.-E. Botta à J. Mohl et publiée dans le Journal asiatique de 1843 (détail).

justifiée par mon expérience personnelle et par celle des ouvriers que j’employais. Nous en éprouvâmes tour à tour les dangereux effets.’10 Mais cela ne l’empêche pas de déclarer qu’il a ‘été (…) heureux [à Khorsabad].’11 Là, il déclara avoir eu ‘la première révélation d’un nouveau monde d’antiquités’12, y ayant en effet retrouvé des témoins directs tout à fait inédits des anciens Assyriens, jusque-là seulement entraperçus par des découvertes moins monumentales et non contextualisées. Comme il le rapporte d’ailleurs dans sa première lettre à Jules Mohl en date du 5 avril 1843: ‘Je continue à faire déblayer et je le fais avec d’autant plus d’intérêt que je crois être le premier qui ait découvert des sculptures que l’on puisse, avec quelque apparence, rapporter à l’époque où Ninive était florissante.’13. Cette lettre fut communiquée à l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres le 7 juillet 1843. Suivirent plus de soixante lettres de Botta à Mohl, lequel les publia entre mai 1843 et février 1845. Ces lettres de Botta, qui connurent un grand succès littéraire à la fois en France et en Angleterre, sont tout d’abord parues sous la forme de divers articles dans le périodique tenu par Jules Mohl, le Journal Asiatique14. Elles contiennent les premières descriptions jamais faites de l’art assyrien, de même que les toutes premières copies d’inscriptions de Khorsabad (figure 1). Botta joignit en effet à ses envois postaux des planches de grande qualité15 que le président de la Société Asiatique s’empressa de Botta et Flandin 1849-1850, vol. V: 6. P.-E. Botta à Jules Mohl, le 5 avril 1843 (1ère lettre à Mohl). 12 Botta et Flandin 1849-1850, vol. V: 5. 13 P.-E. Botta à Jules Mohl, le 5 avril 1843 (1ère lettre à Mohl). 14 Dès sa fondation, en 1822, l’un des buts que s’était fixés la Société Asiatique était de contribuer au développement des études orientales par des publications, ainsi que le stipulait le règlement. 15 Quoiqu’en dise Botta qui écrivait ainsi le 5 avril 1843 ‘J’y joins quelques dessins faits à la hâte, aussi bien que peut les 10 11

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La réception des Assyriens publier de la même manière. C’est ainsi que, dès 1843, les premiers résultats des découvertes assyriennes faites par la France étaient mis à la disposition du public alors même que les fouilles étaient encore en cours. En Angleterre, le journal Athenaneum, périodique scientifique, publia de même les travaux de l’archéologue français présentés comme ‘les plus importants, dans la mesure où aucun monument sculpté assyrien n’avait jusque-là été découvert’16. C’est d’ailleurs pourquoi, au 31 octobre 1843, Botta interrompit l’envoi des lettres à Mohl, le consul ayant déjà le projet de publier un ouvrage de bien plus grande ampleur pour lequel il souhaitait avoir le soutien du gouvernement et auquel il réservait des informations inédites – cette ambitieuse publication intitulée Monument de Ninive17 parut entre 1849 et 1850 en cinq volumes. Jules Mohl cessa alors la parution des lettres dans le Journal Asiatique, afin de ne pas dévoiler la totalité de ce qu’il comptait lui-même publier sous la forme d’un recueil. C’est en 1845 que Mohl fit paraître l’ensemble18 des Lettres dans un ouvrage19 traduit et publié dès 1850 en anglais sous le titre Mr Botta’s Letters on the Discoveries at Nineveh. Il jouit alors d’une grande diffusion auprès de publics variés; c’était de fait le premier ouvrage dévoilant les relevés d’inscriptions et de bas-reliefs néo-assyriens à peine découverts. Ces lettres constituent une

Figure 2. Dessin de l’état des fouilles de P.-E. Botta au 2 mai 1843 et localisation de ces premiers travaux archéologiques sur un détail du plan du palais (d’après Kertai 2015: pl. 11). faire un homme qui ne sait pas dessiner, et la copie de quelques inscriptions’. 16 Athenaeum, 24 juin 1843. 17 Botta comme Place, son successeur, publièrent respectivement Monument de Ninive et Ninive et l’Assyrie pour relater leurs fouilles à … Khorsabad et non à Ninive. De fait, ils considérèrent avoir trouvé une ville comparable aux descriptions bibliques de Ninive, une ‘grande ville’ (Judith I, 5; Jonas III, 2), une ‘très grande ville, de trois jours de marche’ (Jonas IV, 3) décriée et maudite ‘dans laquelle se trouvent plus de cent vingt mille hommes qui ne savent pas distinguer leur droite de leur gauche, et des animaux en grand nombre!’ (Jonas IV, 11) menacée de devenir ‘une solitude, une terre aride dans le désert (…) Voilà donc cette ville joyeuse, qui s’assied avec assurance’ (Sophonie II, 13-15). A ce titre, le terme de Ninive, tout comme l’adjectif ninivite, semblent alors employés comme des synonymes d’Assyrien, et ce pendant une partie du XIXe siècle. 18 Gardant seulement quelques copies d’inscriptions (Mohl 1845: 72): ‘Il m’en reste entre les mains quelques autres … Je les réserve pour M. Botta; car je pense que la Société Asiatique a publié maintenant une quantité suffisante de matériaux pour servir aux essais de déchiffrement que les savants pourraient faire’. 19 Mohl 1845.

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Figure 3. Dessin de l’état des fouilles de P.-E. Botta au 2 juin 1843 et localisation de ces premiers travaux archéologiques sur un détail du plan du (d’après Kertai 2015: pl. 11).

Figure 4. Relevé du premier relief envoyé en France en place salle 1, mur VII, dalle 1 (d’après Mohl 1845: pl. VI).

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La réception des Assyriens sorte de chronique détaillée du déroulement des travaux au fur et à mesure des découvertes, comme un journal de fouilles avant l’heure. D’après la lettre du 31 octobre 1843, Botta ne savait alors pas encore si le site sur lequel il travaillait était un palais ou un tombeau. On remarque à cette occasion que Botta ne tentait jamais vraiment d’interprétations dans ses lettres, car il les jugeait peu fiables, faisant là preuve d’une grande intégrité scientifique face à ses découvertes et ses connaissances. Comme la numérotation retenue par Botta le rappelle jusqu’à aujourd’hui, il initia ses travaux archéologiques à l’angle nord-ouest du palais royal dans ce qu’il appela la salle 1 (figure 2) autour de laquelle il avança rapidement (figure 3). Il en établit des plans rigoureusement annotés de chiffres et de lettres pour situer salles, segments de murs, dalles sculptées et autres éléments dégagés sur place, le tout complété de dessins des décors retrouvés. Très vite, furent ainsi mis au jour des vestiges spectaculaires qui firent grand bruit en France et plus largement. Dès 1843, un premier relief fut envoyé en France par l’intermédiaire d’Edmond de Cadalvène du service des postes de Constantinople. Trouvé dans la salle 1, il s’agit de la tête d’un enfant20 au sein d’un cortège (figure 4). Mais Botta, qui se heurta soudain à une relative difficulté avec le gouverneur turc de la province de Mossul Mehmed Pacha et qui avait jusque-là financé lui-même ses recherches, décida d’interrompre ses travaux en octobre 1843 pour attendre l’arrivée d’un firman ottoman l’autorisant à poursuivre. Après sept longs mois d’attente, ce firman autorisant la reprise des fouilles – négocié par le baron de Bouqueney représentant de la France auprès de la Sublime Porte – lui fut apporté par Eugène Napoléon Flandin (1809-1889), dessinateur affecté à la mission de Khorsabad par le ministère de l’Intérieur en même temps que des subsides (3000 Francs) du gouvernement français. Ce dernier arriva auprès de Botta le 4 mai 1844. Il revenait d’un voyage en Perse21 où il avait fait ses preuves dans ce genre de travail et il fut ainsi chargé des relevés des reliefs et monuments trouvés, tandis que Botta copiait les inscriptions. Le travail reprit donc en mai 1844 jusqu’à la fin du mois d’octobre, soit six mois d’intense travail (malgré une température pouvant aller jusqu’à 40/50°C à l’ombre, l’insalubrité, le vent, les fièvres …). Pour mieux fouiller le tell archéologique sur lequel fut dégagée la citadelle royale, Botta paya les habitants afin de déplacer le village, un peu comme autrefois Sargon II avec les habitants du village de Maganuba. Comme le raconte Botta, ‘en vertu d’une convention spéciale, les habitants de Khorsabad furent autorisés à me vendre leurs maisons’22 pour s’installer au bas du monticule fouillé. Une cinquantaine de maisons situées sur le palais de Sargon et habitées par des Kurdes croisés de sang arabe fu ainsi déplacée pour installer le village en contrebas de la citadelle près du cours d’eau, où se trouve toujours le village moderne de Khorsabad. Alors qu’il n’avait fouillé que le secteur nord-ouest du palais (figure 5), il ferma le chantier en octobre 1844. Botta n’en avait pas moins pressenti qu’il n’avait dégagé qu’une infime partie de la résidence royale (en l’occurrence 14 salles et les façades de 4 cours I, III, VI et VIII). Il avait de fait détecté – quoique non fouillé – l’immensité d’une ville dont il devinait déjà le tracé (figure 6). Thomas 2016: 45, cat. 8. Flandin 1851-1852. 22 Botta et Flandin 1849-1850, vol. V: 9. 20 21

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Figure 5. Plan du palais royal de Khorsabad. Les fouilles de Botta apparaissent en surimposition marron, tandis que sont marqués en rouge les emplacements avérés et hypothétiques de briques émaillées (d’après Kertai 2015: pl. 10A et 11).

Début novembre 1844, Eugène Flandin qui ‘avait terminé ses dessins, ou du moins ceux qu’il était indispensable de terminer sur les lieux pour servir de modèle aux doubles qui se représentaient si souvent’23, repartit en France tandis que Botta restait sur place. Il lui restait à achever la copie des inscriptions, ‘travail commencé un an avant l’arrivée de cet artiste, continué pendant tout son séjour, et qui m’occupa encore plusieurs mois après son départ’ comme le rappelle Botta, qui resta aussi pour préparer le transport des antiquités. Botta releva avec rigueur ces inscriptions encore non déchiffrées quand bien même il était alors 23

Botta et Flandin 1849-1850, vol. V: 13.

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Figure 6. Plan topographique général de l’enceinte et du monticule de Khorsabad (d’après Botta et Flandin 1849-50, vol. 1: pl. 2).

incapable de les comprendre. Il rapporta ainsi à la fois des dessins, dont les premiers avaient été envoyés à Mohl avec ses lettres, et près de deux cent estampages, aujourd’hui conservés au département des Antiquités orientales du musée du Louvre. C’est à cette occasion que Botta passa au moins le Noël 1844 avec un certain Pierre-Victorien Lottin, dit Victor Lottin de Laval (Orbec 1810 - Menneval 1903) qui ne semble pas lui avoir fait la meilleure impression si l’on en croit ce qu’en écrivit Botta à Mohl le 27 décembre 2844: ‘J’ai ici depuis quelques jours un blagueur qui m’ennuie bien; un Mr. Lottin de Laval envoyé à ce qu’il paraît par le ministère de l’Intérieur, je ne sais pas pourquoi. (…) Comme on se laisse flouer chez nous par les bavards (…). Quelle curieuse idée cet homme-là donnera du pays qu’il a vu’.24 Lottin, qui avait élaboré un procédé spécial de moulage appelé ‘lottinoplastie’, réalisa plusieurs moulages d’inscriptions de son côté (figure 7). Si des voyageurs avaient traversé le territoire mésopotamien en s’intéressant plus ou moins aux vestiges encore visibles sur les sites depuis au moins le Moyen-Âge, et si Paul-Emile Botta reflète en partie son temps de curiosité scientifique universelle, propre à stimuler ce type de travaux, il n’en fut pas moins le premier à fouiller véritablement et méthodiquement un site, ne s’étant pas limité à une visite et un ramassage de surface sans documenter le contexte. Il fut par ailleurs le premier à s’intéresser au site de Khorsabad, auparavant seulement visité en 24

Bibl. Institut de France, Ms 2976, dos, Botta à Mohl, Mossul, 27 décembre 1844.

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Figure 7. Moulage de l’inscription du génie de Khorsabad aujourd’hui conservé au département des Antiquités orientales du musée du Louvre, inv. AO Mg 123 avec son original, inv. AO 19863.

Figure 8. Louis Merley, médaille commémorant la découverte des monuments de Ninive, 1853, bronze, CNAP, inv. PFH-2727(4).

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La réception des Assyriens 1840 par un certain F. Ainsworth (1807-1896), médecin et géologue anglais, qui accompagnait le capitaine Chesney25 dans une expédition visant l’ouverture d’une nouvelle route terrestre vers l’Inde. Le caractère pionnier de Botta et l’importance de ses découvertes rendues publiques sinon populaires, par ses lettres, les journaux puis ses publications, en fit presque une gloire nationale au milieu du XIXe siècle pour avoir levé le voile sur un monde ancien, éclairant d’un jour nouveau le texte biblique qui plus est (figure 8). L’Orient après Botta et la naissance de l’assyriologie en France La révélation des Assyriens à Khorsabad fut un évènement fondateur marquant les contemporains autant que les successeurs de la discipline qui venait ainsi de naître. Bien que Botta de son côté n’ait pas participé à cette aventure scientifique26 puisque ce sont d’autres qui exposèrent les monuments découverts par lui, d’autres qui déchiffrèrent les inscriptions qu’il avait relevées, d’autres enfin qui étudièrent et enseignèrent ces ‘nouvelles’ antiquités, c’est bien lui qui est en quelque sorte à l’origine de cette science que l’on appelle encore l’assyriologie en France. A tout le moins, le récit puis l’arrivée des découvertes de Khorsabad eut un impact considérable à la fois sur la discipline qu’elles ont tant contribué à faire naître, ainsi que sur la réception des Assyriens dans les milieux savants et plus largement27. Comme le dit si bien Félicien de Saulcy rapportant l’ouverture du tout premier musée assyrien au Louvre en mai 1847: ‘Il y a trois ans à peine, on ne connaissait de l’antique capitale du royaume d’Assyrie que (…) quelques récits bibliques, quelques assertions merveilleuses des historiens de l’antiquité (…). Sur l’emplacement même de la cité assyrienne, on n’avait rien trouvé que les traces d’une enceinte assez resserrée et quelques amas de briques, vestiges informes d’édifices indéfinissables. On avait donc renoncé à l’espérance de soulever le voile impénétrable depuis si longtemps étendu sur la civilisation de l’Assyrie, lorsqu’une de ces découvertes presque miraculeuses, dont notre siècle pourra s’enorgueillir à bon droit, est venue déchirer ce voile importun et nous reporter d’un bond au cœur de cette civilisation éteinte’.28 Une médaille, envoyée dans les mairies, musées, préfectures et sous-préfectures de France (figure 8), illustre littéralement cette révélation des anciens Assyriens par les découvertes archéologiques de Botta à Khorsabad. Ce fut aussi un pionnier par sa méthode rigoureuse de fouilles et de documentation des découvertes via des notes, des dessins et relevés soigneusement référencés par un système élaboré de lettres, chiffres romains et Ainsworth 1842: 1-2. Après la révolution de 1848, Botta fut envoyé en disgrâce à Tripoli de Syrie mais son ‘nom (...) resta attaché à la résurrection des Assyriens et de leur histoire par ses découvertes et à la très belle (et coûteuse) publication Monument de Ninive, parue en 1849-1850’. Après Mossoul, Botta fut en poste à Jérusalem où il fut nommé en 1848 et poursuivit donc sa carrière diplomatique sans plus le même éclat en matière archéologique – ce qui fit dire à Flaubert, prompt au bon mot critique, alors qu’il le rencontrait à Jérusalem – que Botta était un ‘homme en ruines, homme de ruines’ (Flaubert 1925: 150) Signalons tout de même qu’il avait eu l’intuition malheureusement avortée d’explorer les ports phéniciens de Saïda et à Sour, les anciennes Sidon et Tyr, avant la fameuse Mission en Phénicie d’Ernest Renan. Mais n’ayant pu fouiller ces sites et ayant échoué en 1854 à Constantinople à obtenir le transfert des Grecs orthodoxes aux Latins de la garde du Saint-Sépulcre, Botta fut affecté en juin 1855 à Tripoli de Barbarie, aujourd’hui en Libye. Comme le souligne notamment Place à propose de Botta, son ‘nom (...) restera désormais attaché à la résurrection de Ninive et à la recomposition de l’histoire d’Assyrie’ (Place 1867, I: 7). 27 Comme le souligne dès 1844 Charles Lenormant: ‘Les détails que M. Botta a donnés sur le résultat de ses travaux et les dessins qui accompagnaient ses lettres, ont excité dans le monde savant une vive curiosité. Si ces premières recherches, puissamment encouragées se continuent avec un succès semblable, il n’y a rien de hasardé à comparer la lumière jetée ainsi tout à coup sur le monde sémitique, à la transformation que subit l’archéologie égyptienne lors des travaux de la grande expédition française.’ (Lenormant 1844: 9, note 1). 28 Saulcy 1847: 447. 25 26

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Ariane Thomas arabes, et d’autres annotations. Pourtant, Botta avançait en terrain presque totalement inconnu, tout comme il ne pouvait comprendre les inscriptions qu’il relevait et estampait avec soin en espérant que ce travail permettrait à d’autres de les comprendre au plus vite – ce qui contribua en effet au déchiffrement de l’assyrien une dizaine d’années après seulement. Ainsi que le relevait somme toute assez justement Adrien de Longpérier en 1844, à la lecture des lettres de Botta déjà très populaires, ‘jamais ville n’a laissé moins de trace de sa splendeur’29. Cet état de ruine de lecture si difficile est révélateur des efforts fournis par Botta sur le terrain. Il motiva par ailleurs une controverse, aujourd’hui oubliée de la plupart, opposant les tenants de Khorsabad révélant une capitale assyrienne sinon la Ninive biblique30 comme ils le pensaient alors, à Ferdinand Hoefer, un historien et médecin qui contesta ouvertement l’authenticité des vestiges découverts. Ainsi que ce dernier l’écrivit notamment en 1850 dans l’un de ses nombreux échanges dans la presse à ce sujet (en particulier avec Félicien de Saulcy), ‘les partisans de l’authenticité des ruines de Ninive se trouveront toujours en contradiction flagrante avec les témoignages réunis de l’Ecriture, sainte et des auteurs profanes, qui tous établissent, tant directement qu’indirectement, une destruction radicale de l’antique capitale des rois assyriens’.31 Au-delà de cette controverse, c’est pourtant bien aussi l’intérêt pour le texte biblique et ce que pouvait apporter l’étude de ces vestiges archéologiques qui explique l’engouement savant et populaire pour les vestiges assyriens découverts par Botta et ses successeurs, interprétés comme autant de preuves potentielles de la véracité de la parole biblique. Ainsi dans son guide du musée du Louvre où l’on put admirer ces vestiges pour la première fois à compter de mai 1847, Théophile Gautier écrivait vers 1867: ‘De l’autre côté de la voûte, c’est le musée assyrien. On sort de Thèbes et de Memphis pour entrer à Ninive, on quitte Chéops, Rhamsès, Toutmès, Néchao pour aborder Phul-Belesis, Theglath-Phalasar, Assarhaddon, l’énormité pharaonique pour l’énormité biblique. (…) Ils vous regardent du fond des siècles de leur air tranquille’.32 C’est dans cet esprit qu’il faut comprendre que l’on ait pu juger le latin seul digne de ‘rendre mot pour mot’ les textes antiques de Khorsabad33. Plus largement, une idée sinon un préjugé laissait alors certains penser qu’il y aurait en Orient une forme de survivance de l’antique du fait d’une supposée permanence de l’Orient, exprimée par exemple par Félix Thomas depuis le chantier de fouilles de Khorsabad avec Victor Place en 1851: ‘Nous menons toujours le même sot métier fouillant des tas de poussière (…) Il n’y a rien à dessiner à Bagdad (…) Il n’y a qu’une belle chose ici et vraiment curieuse à étudier, c’est la population arabe, qui conserve encore la simplicité des temps bibliques’.34 Cette curiosité initiale ou biblique fut renforcée par l’admiration pour la qualité et la monumentalité des vestiges découverts ‘d’un grand mérite pour l’histoire de l’art (…)’35. De nombreux savants et curieux furent ainsi frappés en découvrant la beauté des reliefs assyriens, d’abord au travers des dessins de Botta puis Flandin avant que certains ne soient exposés à tous à Paris puis très vite à Londres – avant que d’autres ne soient photographiés pour la première fois grâce aux soins de Gabriel Tranchand sur place lors des fouilles de Place à Khorsabad. En ce XIXe siècle savant, classificateur et hiérarchisant tous les savoirs, il fallait Longpérier 1844: 213. Botta et le monde savant considérèrent d’ailleurs qu’avec Khorsabad ‘Ninive était retrouvée’ (Place 1867, I: 6). 31 Hoefer 1850: 31-2. 32 Gautier 1882: 189. 33 Saulcy 1849-1850. 34 Félix Thomas, lettre à sa mère, le 11 septembre 1851 (citée par Pillet 1922: 12). 35 Longpérier 1844: 230 à propos des bas-reliefs de Khorsabad. 29 30

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La réception des Assyriens trouver une place à cet art nouveau révélé par Botta et presque concomitamment Layard puis leurs successeurs. Venu d’Orient et non d’Occident, plus ancien que presque tout ce que l’on connaissait jusqu’alors de l’antiquité, cet art assyrien si remarquable et remarqué devait trouver sa place par rapport aux arts égyptien et grec dans la hiérarchie des arts d’alors. Si Botta ne prit pas parti à ce sujet – apparemment plus passionné par les inscriptions et ce qu’elles pourraient apprendre de cette histoire antique –, Layard écrivit en 1845 que les ‘sculptures assyriennes sont incommensurablement supérieures aux figures rigides et mal proportionnées des monuments pharaoniques … En fait le grand écart qui sépare l’art barbare de l’art civilisé a été franchi [en Assyrie]’.36 Cet avis n’était cependant pas partagé par Rawlinson qui écrivit à Layard l’année d’après qu’il ‘continue de penser que les marbres de Ninive ne sont pas valables en tant qu’œuvre d’art … Est-il possible à un simple admirateur du Beau de les voir avec plaisir? Certainement pas, et en cela ils sont dans la même catégorie que les peintures et sculptures de l’Égypte et de l’Inde … (…) J’espère que vous comprenez cette distinction et lorsque je critique le dessin et l’exécution, vous comprendrez que je le fais parce que votre Taureau ailé n’est pas l’Apollon du Belvédère’37. En France, un peu plus tard, beaucoup tendirent ainsi à ranger l’art assyrien légèrement au-dessus sinon à côté de l’art égyptien comme un prélude nécessaire au développement de l’art grec. En 1847 après l’ouverture du tout premier musée assyrien au Louvre, un journal assez largement diffusé comme L’Illustration publiait le texte suivant: ‘Mais quel est cet art assyrien, qui nous apparait tout à coup? (…) Cet art appartient donc à une (…) civilisation dont la maturité et la grandeur nous sont attestées par les monuments qui sont sous nos yeux (…) Cet art est presque aussi ancien que celui de l’Egypte, mais il est infiniment plus remarquable; il lui est bien supérieur pour le rendu, le fini du travail; (…) On pourrait presque dire qu’il y a, de la sculpture égyptienne à celle de Ninive, la distance qu’il y a de l’intention à une exécution habile (…) Après avoir mis l’art assyrien en regard de celui des Egyptiens, il ne sera point déplacé de le mettre en comparaison avec l’art des Etrusques ou des Grecs. En étudiant les détails, on leur trouvera en effet des rapports frappants, des analogies telles que l’on sera conduit à penser que, quels que soient leurs liens de parenté, ils ont une origine commune. – Et pourquoi non? (…) Donc (…) on sera conduit à penser que les Grecs et les Etrusques ont commencé par imiter, pour le perfectionner plus tard, l’art des Assyriens’.38 La même conclusion est exprimée l’année d’après par Adrien de Longpérier, l’artisan du musée assyrien du Louvre: ‘Les écoles d’artistes crétois et rhodiens ont fort bien pu emprunter des notions à ces habiles sculpteurs assyriens (…)’39. C’est dans cette idée que le même Longpérier, en tant que conservateur des Antiques du Musée Napoléon III, publia un Choix de monuments antiques pour servir à l’histoire de l’art en Orient et en Occident40, qui mélange des antiquités orientales avec des antiques étrusques et grecs, sans aucun monument égyptien. La monumentalité, la beauté et peut-être aussi la nouveauté de l’art assyrien suscita un engouement certain et pas seulement en France, que certains qualifient même d’assyriomanie’ pour souligner ce succès auprès des milieux artistiques et mondains, voire populaires41. Citons notamment l’œuvre du sculpteur Henri Cordier qui semble calquée sur les si merveilleux Layard, Athenaeum 1845 (1er février): 120-21 – voir Spruyt 2014: 70. Lettre de Rawlinson à Layard, 28 novembre 1845 (British Library, BL Add Ms 40637 fol. 8-9 – voir Spruyt 2014: 7). 38 ‘Musée de Ninive’, L’Illustration 220, 15 mai 1847: 468-9. 39 Longpérier 1847-1848: 501-7. 40 Longpérier 1867-1874. 41 Rappelons que le musée assyrien dut ouvrir tous les jours après l’inauguration de 1847 pour permettre aux très nombreux visiteurs de voir ces reliefs, largement relayés également dans la presse à grand tirage. 36 37

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Figure 9a. Gustave Moreau, Carnet d’études orientales: Lion assyrien, vers 1860-1870, Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. E Des 966 d’après le lion de Khorsabad exposé au musée du Louvre (figure 9b).

Figure 9b. Lion en bronze trouvé à Khorsabad par Botta et exposé au musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales inv. AO 20116.

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Figure 9c. Anonyme, ‘Musée de Ninive’ (d’après L’Illustration 220, 15 mai 1847: 168).

reliefs assyriens de chasse royale au lion42, les études par Gustave Moreau d’après les œuvres assyriennes du Louvre dont le fameux lion de Khorsabad en bronze (figures 9a et 9b) – également diffusé par la presse (figure 9c)43, les costumes à l’assyrienne pour le théâtre et l’opéra44, ou encore le goût de l’Assyrie chez le peintre Courbet45 avant des emprunts à l’art assyrien chez de nombreux autres peintres46. Evoquons également l’engouement mondain Henri Cordier, Lion blessé, entre 1853-1926, esquisse en cire sur socle en bois, musée d’Orsay, inv. RF 2254 (d’après un relief original exposé au British Museum), ou encore Lion accroupi, esquisse en cire, musée d’Orsay, inv. RF 2253. Gustave Moreau, Carnet d’études orientales: Lion assyrien (d’après le lion en bronze trouvé à Khorsabad par Botta et exposé au musée du Louvre, inv. AO 20116), vers 1860-1870, Paris, musée Gustave Moreau, inv. E Des.966 (ou encore d’autres dessins d’après des motifs assyriens vus au Louvre: Musée Gustave Moreau, inv. Des.5677, Des.8612, Des.1280713, Des.12807-22, Des.12807-27, Des.12807-36, Des.12807-37, Des.12807-38, Des.12807-39). 44 Voir par exemple: Alfred Albert, 12 maquettes de costumes pour Sémiramis de G. Rossini, 1860, Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Bibliothèque-musée de l’opéra, D216-19 (70-81). 45 Ainsi que le rappela notamment André Parrot: ‘Dans une intéressante étude Courbet and Assyrian Sculpture (The Art Bulletin XLVII, décembre 1963: 447-52), Robert L. Alexander semble avoir indiqué comment Courbet a pu s’inspirer pour plusieurs de ses peintures, des reliefs assyriens qui venaient d’être découverts par Botta à Khorsabad et que le Louvre offrait à l’admiration des visiteurs. Dans La Rencontre (= Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet), peint en 1854, il apparaît bien que l’artiste ait trouvé dans la scène classique de Sargon devant son vizir, le thème qu’il transposa aisément et où on le retrouve, sans hésitation, dans la posture même du monarque oriental, avec en main le même long bâton et surtout ‘avec le profil assyrien’ de (sa) tête (ce sont les termes employés par l’artiste). M. R.L. Alexander rapproche aussi L’enterrement à Ornans (1849-1850) d’un des nombreux défilés de Khorsabad où la muraille du palais assyrien, avec son découpage érodé et qui est représentée sur les dessins de Flandin, semble reproduite dans les falaises jurassiennes, à l’arrière-plan de la scène funèbre. Dans le Retour de la Foire (1850), on croit retrouver quelques similitudes avec des reliefs provenant de Ninive, où le bétail est mêlé aux captifs’. (Parrot 1968: 428-9). 46 Par exemple Horace Vernet comme il le souligne lui-même pour sa représentation du Bon samaritain dans L’illustration X, 1847: 572 ou encore le peintre George-Antoine Rochegrosse qui intègre des emprunts assyriens à nombre de ses peintures, que ce soit son décor monumental pour La Mort de Babylone, peinte en 1891 comme dans Masacarade 42

43

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Ariane Thomas

Figure 10. Edouard Denis Baldus, photographie de L’Art assyrien, sculpture de Jean Louis Nicolas Jaley décorant le palais du Louvre, entre 1855 et 1857, épreuve sur papier albuminé à partir d’un négatif verre, contrecollée sur planche, musée d’Orsay, inv. PHO 1998 2 4 2.

qui poussait à se costumer par exemple en Sémiramis ou s’entourer d’objets d’art décoratif assyrianisants47. Dans le décor du palais du Louvre rénové sous Napoléon III, il est donc logique de trouver une sculpture de Jean Louis Nicolas Jaley consacrée à ‘L’Art assyrien’ (figure 10)48, tout comme de lui faire une place de choix dans les expositions universelles, depuis celle de Londres en 1861 à celle de Paris en 1889 (figure 11) où l’on présentait l’art assyrien aux côtés des autres avec de moins en moins de hiérarchie49 – contre toutes les théories raciales développés au XIXe siècle50 – et entouré de ce que l’on appellera de plus en plus l’art de l’Orient antique, ayant désormais découvert également les arts phénicien, perse, sumérien … Il est à noter que l’art assyrien conserva longtemps – sinon jusqu’à aujourd’hui – une attraction particulièrement forte par rapport au reste des arts de l’Orient ancien, tant auprès des artistes que du grand public.

Cet engouement particulièrement vif entre le milieu du XIXe siècle et le début du XXe siècle pour les Assyriens, suite aux découvertes de Botta à Khorsabad et celles qui suivirent, se fit le long d’un double chemin tracé après cette révélation archéologique: celui d’une part de la connaissance avec la naissance et le développement d’une discipline scientifique nouvelle aux progrès fulgurants, appelée l’assyriologie, et d’autre part le sillon d’une méconnaissance relative mêlant attirance descendant les Champs-Élysées, 1884, Paris, École nationale des Beaux-Arts; voir aussi Eugène Grasset, Etude de costumes assyrien, juif et phénicien, musée d’Orsay, inv. ARO 1993 2 1 304 ou Max Ernst, Les moutons, gouache et gravures découpées et collées sur papier, 1921, Centre Pompidou, inv. AM 1973-10 par exemple inspiré du relief monumental du héros au lion de Khorsabad exposé au Louvre (inv. AO 19861 ou AO 19862). 47 Voir par exemple: Théodore Deck, Albert Anker, 1870, faïence à décor polychrome, Musée d’Orsay, inv. OAO 1383; Hary Ellis, Loïe Fuller assise dans un jardin, sur un siège en pierre à l’antique avec taureau assyrien, photographie, 1914, musée d’Orsay, inv. PHO 1984 18 9. 48 Qui doit cependant peu à l’art assyrien et presque plus au souvenir visuel de l’image de Sardanapale dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle. 49 Ou bien inversée pour mieux marquer l’admiration de l’art assyrien comme l’écrit Joséphin Péladan: ‘L’art assyrien est un grand art dans l’interprétation du fauve, c’est le plus grand. Les animaux grecs ou romains de la salle du Vatican ne sont que des bibelots et des presse-papiers auprès des panthères blessées et des lions vomissant leur sang de Ninive. De même, les guerriers romains font bien petite figure à côté du rude homme d’Assour, si râblé et si féroce. Le bas-relief assyrien a devancé les Florentins, il a un fond et du paysage, la mer et ses poissons, les arbres des montagnes, le marais et ses roseaux’. (Péladan 1908: 161). 50 Gobineau 1853-1855.

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La réception des Assyriens et clichés remontant aux textes antiques et notamment bibliques. A cet égard, comme un reflet de cette autre forme d’engouement, on pouvait écrire à la fin du XIXe siècle que ‘Babylone, Assur et Ninive sont devenues un lieu commun de philosophie oratoire pour des plumitifs à court de copie, ou pour des poètes peu modernes, dont le génie monumental se trouve trop à l’étroit dans notre Paris immense’51. Particulièrement sous le Second Empire, comme une critique au monde contemporain, on pouvait lire des retranscriptions de ces clichés déformant la réalité historique à travers le prisme biblique, notamment dans des manuels d’histoire destinés à l’éducation sinon à l’édification des jeunes. Il y était écrit que ‘(…) à Khorsabad le plan architectural est plus régulier et la cruauté des mœurs Figure 11. Frontispice de la brochure du ministère de est peut-être plus sensible à côté l’Instruction publique et des Beaux-arts rassemblant les de ce luxe et de ces raffinements récentes découvertes. En haut les fouilles de Suse avec la de la vie des rois, à côté de ces restauration de l’Apadana, exposition de 1889, missions archéologiques, ethnographiques, littéraires et scientifiques, imposants travaux et de cette ministère de l’Instruction publique et des Beaux-arts (Source immense profusion d’œuvres gallica.bnf.fr / BnF). d’art que pouvaient accumuler les monarques absolus de grands empires, où tout semblait destiné à l’unique objet de flatter l’orgueil et la mollesse du prince, en enrichissant la cour où il vivait, le palais que créait son fastueux caprice, l’immense capitale où il résidait’.52 L’abbé Combes – un des auteurs alors vivement recommandé pour l’éducation nationale – écrivit quant à lui – contre toute vérité historique – sur les supposées mollesse et mœurs dépravées de Ninive et de Babylone que, lorsqu’il n’y eut plus qu’à entretenir les digues qui retenaient les eaux de l’Euphrate, les canaux qui les portaient de toutes parts dans le pays, la vie rude et laborieuse des premiers temps fit place à des mœurs nouvelles. Les habitants de la Mésopotamie se laissèrent aller à la mollesse, à laquelle les invitait la tiédeur énervante de leur climat; ils se livrèrent à la débauche que la mollesse amène à sa suite, et ils 51 52

Goudeau 1896: 309. Robiou 1862: 196.

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Ariane Thomas devinrent alors tels qu’Hippocrate les a peints plus tard: ‘Paresseux au travail, peu capables de fatigues, esclaves du plaisir, n’ayant ni la vigueur du corps ni l’énergie du caractère’. Trop souvent les rois, les Sardanapale, les Balthasar, leur donnaient eux-mêmes l’exemple de cette vie honteusement efféminée. L’idolâtrie, au lieu de contrarier ces fâcheuses tendances, jetait le pays tout entier, rois et peuples, dans les débauches les plus effrénées, et le prophète Jérémie a pu appeler Babylone ‘une source de pestilence et de corruption pour l’univers’.53 Ces critiques résonnaient alors certainement comme une dénonciation du confort bourgeois développé notamment à Paris qui devenait comme une nouvelle Ninive, métamorphosée par les travaux colossaux du baron Haussmann54 à l’instar du gigantisme associé aux villes antiques assyriennes. Cependant, ces clichés étaient de plus en plus révisés par les progrès dans la connaissance directe des Assyriens et plus largement de l’Orient ancien. Alors qu’on ne les connaissait auparavant que par ces souvenirs indirects et déformés sources de clichés nécessairement moins fidèles à la réalité sinon mensongers, les données recueillies à Khorsabad puis sur d’autres sites assyriens constituèrent le noyau fondateur de la science assyriologique. L’étude des monuments et des inscriptions donna lieu à de nombreux travaux et publications, aussi bien dans des volumes savants moins diffusés que dans des petits ouvrages meilleurs marchés et pourtant plus populaires, ainsi que dans la presse. Entre 1845 et 1900 environ, parurent ainsi de très nombreuses publications. Comme le rappelait dès 1844 Adrien de Longpérier à propos de la date des vestiges, ‘après tout, les fouilles ne sont pas encore terminées et les découvertes ultérieures viendront peut-être nous secourir dans l’étude de ce problème difficile dont la solution doit vivement préoccuper le zèle des archéologues, car elle intéresse et l’histoire de l’art et celle d’une contrée considérée comme le berceau du monde’.55 Outre les lettres de M. Botta publiées par le conseiller de la première heure, Jules Mohl, à Paris avant d’être traduites en anglais comme nous l’avons dit précédemment56, ce fut d’abord Eugène Flandin, autre témoin direct de la découverte de Khorsabad, qui publia dans la presse un récit de cette aventure dès 1845, avant de le reprendre de manière développée en 186157 peu après la transformation du musée assyrien du Louvre suite à l’arrivée des découvertes de Victor Place à Khorsabad – ce second musée assyrien toujours conçu par Longpérier ayant été inauguré en 1857. Après ces publications dans les cinq années ayant suivi la fouille, Botta luimême publia à grands frais son ouvrage-somme, livrant ainsi l’ancêtre des rapports de fouilles détaillés58. A Paris comme à Londres, plusieurs ouvrages reprirent presque rapidement ces données pour les rendre plus accessibles dans des livres meilleur marché que les grands et coûteux in-folio retenus par Botta59. En parallèle, on progressait de manière remarquable vers le déchiffrement de ces inscriptions, tant au Royaume-Uni qu’en France, bien que revenant sur ce moment, Eugène Ledrain s’attarde sur la part française de cette avancée scientifique: ‘Jusque-là on n’avait vu ce nom que dans un passage d’Isaïe, xx. Après la lecture de M. de Longpérier et les beaux déchiffrements de M. Oppert, le vieux roi d’Aschour [à savoir Sargon II], si inconnu, eut tout à coup une longue histoire’.60 C’est à peu près au moment où l’on L’abbé Combes 1864: 26-7. Anonyme 1868. 55 Longpérier 1844: 213-34. 56 Mohl 1845; 1850; Botta 1850. 57 Flandin 1845 et 1861. 58 Botta et Flandin 1849-1850. 59 Voir notamment: Buckingham 1851; Bonomi 1852; Feer 1864. 60 Ledrain 1887: 5. 53 54

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Figure 12a. Viollet-le-Duc 1875: fig. 52: ‘Entrée de la salle du trône du palais assyrien’ (d’après Place – voir fig. 12b).

Figure 12b. Place 1867-70, vol. 3, pl. 21: ‘essai de restauration de la porte M du palais royal’ de Khorsabad.

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Ariane Thomas progressait vers le déchiffrement de l’assyrien – officiellement reconnu en 1857 – que le gouvernement français envoyait Victor Place au poste de consul de France à Mossoul, laissé vacant depuis le départ de Botta, pour reprendre les travaux de Botta à Khorsabad avec pour ambition d’explorer plus largement la région assyrienne en parallèle des Britanniques61 – ce qu’il fit concrètement entre les mois de janvier 1852 et 1854. Ses travaux permirent notamment de dégager l’ensemble de l’immense palais de Sargon II, ainsi que son secteur de temples, tout en reconnaissant mieux la vaste ville que cette citadelle dominait. Déplorant la perte tragique d’une grande partie des découvertes, noyées dans le Tigre après l’attaque de leur convoi, Victor Place ne poursuivit plus ensuite aucune activité archéologique mais eut à cœur de publier ses travaux62, après avoir documenté les découvertes par les dessins et aquarelles de Félix Thomas et – pour la toute première fois – les photographies de Gabriel Tranchand qui l’accompagnaient sur place. Son ouvrage en trois volumes fait la part belle à l’analyse et parfois à l’interprétation de l’architecture assyrienne qu’il a ainsi contribué à faire connaître et reconnaître comme une grande architecture, malgré que rien de visible sur place ne le laisse plus deviner. Publié à la fin du Second Empire, cet ouvrage marqua les esprits et l’on retrouve dès 1875 une planche reprenant plus ou moins les restitutions architecturales proposées par Place pour évoquer l’Assyrie dans une histoire de l’habitation humaine par le fameux Viollet-Le-Duc (figures 12a-b)63. Ces mêmes restitutions inspireront également Léon Heuzey, premier conservateur du département des Antiquités orientales du musée du Louvre, aussi bien dans le décor de la petite salle Sarzec du musée que pour l’exposition universelle de 1889 à Paris, où Charles Garnier reconstitua notamment une maison assyrienne. Plus tard, le décor du film Intolerance à Los Angeles garde encore la marque des restitutions initialement publiées par Victor Place à l’issue de ses travaux à Khorsabad, tout comme celui du musée national d’Irak à Bagdad. On mettait en avant l’ancienneté de ces vestiges, comme les plus anciens témoignages d’une civilisation dont l’Occident aurait été l’héritier. Ce fantasme des origines, mis en avant notamment par Léon Heuzey vers 1900,64 était apparu dès le milieu du XIXe siècle au moment des découvertes de Botta, sachant que l’on pouvait ainsi lire dans l’Illustration en 1846: ‘[à propos des] vastes contrées qu’arrosent le Tigre et l’Euphrate, ces deux grandes artères du vieux monde de la terre classique, berceau de notre civilisation, ces nations ont un lien avec nous, peuples modernes; les pages de notre histoire ne font, en quelque sorte, que continuer la leur; et si nos arts n’avaient emprunté à leurs arts, peut-être seraient-ils encore dans l’enfance; puisqu’on les voit pas à pas suivre la trace d’une civilisation antique, dont la révélation restée longtemps mystérieuse, se fait jour peu à peu (…) Ce grand peuple, placé entre l’Inde fabuleuse, l’Egypte et la Phénicie, ne peut-il pas être considéré en effet comme l’anneau le plus indispensable pour rattacher ensemble les deux tronçons de cette chaine de la civilisation qui ceint le monde, et qui, dans l’esprit humain, sont restés si longtemps disjoints? Les recherches qui avaient pour but de trouver ce lien important, de relier l’Occident à l’Orient, devaient donc être encouragées par les vœux des savants, aidées d’une manière efficace, et leurs résultats reçus avec empressement par tout le monde’.65 Rappelons toutefois que ce fantasme des origines fut tout de même débattu dès le départ comme par exemple par Thomas 2017: 63-8. Place 1867-1870. 63 Viollet-le-Duc 1875: fig. 52: ‘Entrée de la salle du trône du palais assyrien’. 64 Heuzey 1889. 65 Anonyme 1846. 61 62

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La réception des Assyriens M. de Mercey et Langlois défendant l’idée que ‘chaque grand peuple, qui paraît sur la terre a des arts, une langue, des monuments qui lui sont propres. On a représenté les bords du Tigre et de l’Euphrate comme le point central d’où, lors de la confusion de Babel, toutes les langues sont parties; on veut aussi que le berceau des arts ait été placé là, et qu’à l’instar des langues ils aient rayonné dans toutes les régions environnantes et se soient successivement répandus dans toutes les contrées du monde. Ce système satisfait plus complétement l’imagination que la raison. Pour les arts comme pour les langues, nous croyons plutôt à la simultanéité qu’à la communauté des origines›.66 La popularité des Assyriens et le goût assyrianisant expliquent également sans doute le développement de faux en cette seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, comme le démontra notamment Joachim Menant, auteur d’une sorte de manuel sur le sujet dans lequel il écrivit que ‘l’art de l’Assyrie et de la Chaldée s’était révélé d’une manière trop éclatante pour ne pas tenter la spéculation. Je me souviens d’avoir entendu parler, quelque temps après le retour de l’Expédition française en Mésopotamie, d’un plan de Babylone buriné sur une pierre provenant des carrières de Montmartre! Je ne sais ce que cette merveille est devenue?’67 De fait, le progrès des connaissances et la popularité des vestiges découverts et étudiés depuis l’invention de Botta avaient fait naître un domaine scientifique à part entière, faisant l’objet de nombreuses publications et finalement enseigné à partir de la IIIe République. Cet enseignement avait été comme préparé par des ouvrages généraux récapitulant les progrès parcourus dans la connaissance de cette antiquité orientale auparavant tout à fait oubliée.68 Une histoire de l’Orient ancien était en train de prendre forme lorsque fut inauguré en 1874 au Collège de France le premier enseignement de philologie et d’archéologie assyriennes par Jules Oppert, l’un des déchiffreurs de l’assyrien. Dès 1876, l’université de la Sorbonne accueillit à son tour un enseignement archéologique confié à Georges Perrot, tandis qu’en 1882 à l’école du Louvre tout juste créée, Eugène Ledrain donnait ses premières leçons d’archéologie assyrienne, remplacées dès 1883 par deux cours d’archéologie orientale69 et d’épigraphie assyrienne, bientôt complétés d’un cours d’épigraphie phénicienne et araméenne. En parallèle de ces enseignements, se développèrent des manuels généraux synthétisant cette histoire de plus en plus vertigineuse du fait des découvertes archéologiques et des progrès épigraphiques déjà accomplis en un court demi-siècle. Citons notamment dès 1869 le manuel de François Lenormant mais surtout le manuel de quelques 800 pages de Georges Perrot et Charles Chipiez en 188470 où l’on pouvait retrouver une formidable synthèse illustrée de ces remarquables et récentes, sinon presque contemporaines, avancées scientifiques.

Mercey 1855: 65. Menant 1888: 2-4. 68 Citons notamment les ouvrages de deux des artisans de cette redécouverte en Angleterre et en France: Rawlinson 1873; Mohl 1879. 69 A partir de 1886, le cours d’archéologie orientale prend le titre de cours d’archéologie orientale et céramique antique. A partir de 1925 le cours de céramique antique devient un cours distinct de celui d’archéologie orientale. En 1928 enfin, furent créés deux cours d’archéologie et art indiens d’une part, et d’Antiquités de Sumer et d’Akkad d’autre part. 70 Lenormant 1869 et 1874 (Chaldée, Assyrie, Phénicie); Menant 1874 et 1875; Perrot et Chipiez 1884. 66 67

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Ariane Thomas Conclusion: reconstruire en 3D grâce à Botta et ses successeurs ‘La nature de mes études m’a toujours porté vers les travaux historiques, et j’ai acquis dans mes voyages une certaine habitude du dessin, du daguerréotype et de la levée des plans. Aussi sans avoir aucunement la prétention d’être un antiquaire, je me borne à apporter à la science le concours que peut lui offrir un ouvrier de bonne volonté’.71 Cette citation de Victor Place pourrait sans doute valoir à peu près pour Paul-Emile Botta qui révéla les Assyriens par son travail archéologique pionnier à Khorsabad en laissant le soin à d’autres d’exposer, conserver, étudier et faire connaître ces vestiges antiques et leur histoire. Grâce à leur méthode archéologique, leur rigueur à relever précisément leurs découvertes, leur attention à documenter tout ce qu’ils pouvaient, on peut aujourd’hui encore étudier ce site et ses vestiges au travers de leurs archives et publications. A l’inverse de certains sites pourtant fouillés bien plus tard dans d’autres contrées, cette documentation pionnière des consuls de France-archéologues à Khorsabad – complétée de leur successeurs issus de l’Oriental Institute de Chicago entre 1929 et 1935, du service des Antiquités d’Irak en 1957 et bientôt nous l’espérons de la mission archéologique française de Khorsabad72 – permet de reconstruire virtuellement le site de Khorsabad suivant un projet mené au département des Antiquités orientales du musée du Louvre73 de visite virtuelle pour toujours mieux faire connaître ce site majeur pour l’histoire antique et moderne de l’Assyrie et de l’assyriologie, qui fut à la source de l’archéologie mésopotamienne et orientale en général. Bibliographie Anonyme 1846. Découvertes des antiquités de Ninive à Mossoul. L’Illustration, 174, 27 juin 1846: 267-69. Anonyme 1847. Musée de Ninive. L’Illustration, 220, 15 mai 1847: 167-70. Anonyme 1868. Paris désert, lamentations d’un Jérémie haussmannisé. Paris: Impr. de Towne. L’abbé Combes 1864. Petit cours d’histoire et de géographie à l’usage de l’enfance. Paris: éditions Dezobry. Ainsworth, W.F. 1842. Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armenia, 2 vol. London: Parker. Béranger M., Nebiolo F. et Ziegler N. 2021. Dieux, rois et capitales dans le Proche-Orient ancien. Compte rendu de la LXVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Paris, 8-12 juillet 2019). Louvain: Peteers. Bonomi J. 1852. Nineveh and its Palaces: the Discoveries of Botta and Layard, Applied to the Elucidation of Holy Writ. London: Ingram Cook & Co. Botta P.-E. 1831. Observations sur les habitants de l’île Sandwich et Observations diverses faites en mer. Nouvelles annales du voyage XXXII: 129-76. Botta P.-E. 1839. Extrait d’une exploration au mont Saber dans l’Arabie méridionale. Bulletin de la Société de géographie 1839: 369-81. Botta P.-E. 1841. Relation d’un voyage dans l’Yémen entrepris en 1837 pour le Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Paris. Paris: Hachette. Archives nationales, F17 3603 dos. Instructions de l’Académie pour les missions scientifiques. Place au Secrétaire perpétuel de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 18 juin 1851 (Fontan et Chevalier 1994: 94). 72 Béranger et al. 2021: chapitre sur Khorsabad suite à une session organisée par nos soins (pages à préciser pour ce volume à paraître à l’heure où nous écrivons). 73 Thomas 2020. 71

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La réception des Assyriens Botta P.-E. et Flandin E. 1849-1850. Monument de Ninive, découvert et décrit par M. P.-É. Botta, mesuré et dessiné par M. E. Flandin. Paris : Imprimerie nationale. Botta P.-E. 1850. Mr Botta’s Letters on the Discoveries at Nineveh, Translated from the French by C.T. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. Buckingham J.S. 1851. The Buried City of the East Nineveh: A Narrative of the Discoveries of Mr Layard and Mr Botta at Nimroud and Khorsabad. London: National Illustrated Library. Feer H.L. 1864. Les ruines de Ninive ou description des palais détruits des bords du Tigre, suivie d’une description du musée assyrien du Louvre. Paris: Société des Ecoles du Dimanche. Flandin E. 1845. Voyage Archéologique à Ninive. Revue des Deux Mondes 10: 1081-1106 et 11: 88-111. Flandin E. 1851-1852. Voyage en Perse de MM. Eugène Flandin et Pascal Coste pendant les années 1840 et 1841. Paris: Gide et J. Baudry. Flandin E. 1861. Voyage en Mésopotamie, 1840-1842. Le Tour du Monde 1861: 48-80. Flaubert G. 1849-1851. Voyages, tome 2, Voyage en Orient: Egypte, Palestine, Asie Mineure, Constantinople, Grèce, Italie (1849-1851), Constantine, Tunis et Carthage (1858). Pari: réed. Libraire de France. Fontan E. et Chevalier N. 1994. De Khorsabad à Paris: la découverte des Assyriens. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux. Gautier T. 1882. Guide de l’amateur au musée du Louvre, suivi de la vie et les œuvres de quelques peintres. Paris: G. Charpentier. Gobineau de A. 1853-1855. Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines. Paris: Firmin-Didot. Goudeau E. 1896. Voyages et découvertes du célèbre A’Kempis à travers les Etats-Unis de Paris. Paris: Jules Lévy. Heuzey L. 1889. Les origines orientales de l’art: recueil de mémoires archéologiques et de monuments figurés. Paris: E. Leroux. Hoefer F. 1850. Premier [-Second] mémoire sur les ruines de Ninive: adressé le 20 février [et le 24 mai] 1850 à l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres: 31-2. Kertai D. 2015. The Architecture of Late Assyrian Royal Palaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ledrain E. 1887. Les fouilles de Khorsabad. Leçon d’ouverture du cours d’épigraphie assyrienne à l’école du Louvre – 9 décembre 1886. L’artiste 1887: 1-9. Lenormant F. 1844. Archéologie. Revue archéologique 1/1: 1-17. Lenormant F. 1869. Manuel d’histoire ancienne de l’Orient, 3 vol. Paris: A. Lévy. Lenormant F. 1874. Les premières civilisations, études d’histoire et d’archéologie. Paris: Maisonneuve & cie. Longpérier de A. 1844. Ninive et Khorsabad. Revue Archéologique 1/1: 213-34. Longpérier de A. 1847-1848. Lettre à M. Isidore Löwenstern sur les inscriptions cunéiformes de l’Assyrie. Revue Archéologique 4/2: 501-7. Longpérier de A. 1867-1874. Choix de monuments antiques pour servir à l’histoire de l’art en Orient et en Occident. Paris: Guérin & cie. Menant J. 1874. Annales des rois d’Assyrie. Paris: Maisonneuve. Menant J. 1875. Babylone et Chaldée. Paris: Maisonneuve. Menant J. 1888. Les fausses antiquités. Paris: Petite Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie. Mercey de F.B. 1855. Etudes sur les Beaux-Arts depuis leur origine jusqu’à nos jours. Paris: Arthus Bertrand. Mohl J. 1845. Lettres de M. Botta sur ses découvertes à Khorsabad près de Ninive, publiées par M. Mohl. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. Mohl J. 1879. Vingt-sept ans d’histoire des études orientales (1840-1867), 2 vol. Paris: Reinwald & cie. 69

Ariane Thomas Parrot A. 1968. Les sources de Courbet. Nouvelles archéologiques. Syria 45/3-4: 428-9. Péladan J.1908. Les idées et les formes, Antiquité orientale. Paris: Mercure de France. Perrot G. et Chipiez C. 1884. Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité, tome II. Chaldée et Assyrie. Paris: Hachette. Pillet M. 1922. L’expédition scientifique et artistique de Mésopotamie et de Médie 1851-1855. Paris: Librairie ancienne Honoré Champion. Place V. 1867-1870. Ninive et l’Assyrie, 3 volumes. Paris: Imprimerie impériale. Rawlinson G. 1873. The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, 3 volumes. London: John Murray. Robiou F.M.L.J. de La Tréhonnais, Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient jusqu’au début des guerres médiques, mise au niveau des plus récentes découvertes à l’usage des établissements du secondaire. Paris: Charles Douniol. Saulcy de F. 1847. Le musée assyrien. Revue des deux mondes 1847: 447-67. Saulcy de F. 1849-1850. Note sur les inscriptions trouvées à Khorsabad et qui couvrent le seuil des portes du palais, lue le 8 février 1850 à l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Revue Archéologique 6/2: 765-72. Spruyt M. 2014. Impact culturel des fouilles archéologiques effectuées au Proche-Orient autour de 18401850 dans la société culturelle et artistique européenne de la fin du siècle, Master 1, Université de la Sorbonne-Paris IV. Thomas A. (ed.) 2016. L’Histoire commence en Mésopotamie, Lens, Musée du Louvre-Lens, Gand / Lens. Thomas A. 2017. French Research at Nineveh, in L.P. Petit et D. Morandi Bonacossi (eds), Nineveh, the Great City. Symbol of Beauty and Power: 63-8. Papers on Archaeology of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities 13. Leiden: Sidestone Press. Thomas A. 2020. Une visite virtuelle de Dûr-Sharrukin/Khorsabad, du site au musée et viceversa, in W. Sommerfeld (ed.), Dealing with Antiquity: Past, Present & Future. RAI Marburg: 41538. Alter Orient und Altes Testament 460. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Thomas A. et Potts T. (eds) 2020. Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins. Malibu CA: The Jean-Paul Getty Museum. Viollet-le-Duc E. 1875. Histoire de l’habitation humaine depuis les temps préhistoriques jusqu’à nos jours. Paris: J. Hetzel.

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs: On Cues and Settings of Architectural Decoration David Kertai Abstract This paper examines the ways in which the reliefs that decorated the most monumental rooms of the royal palaces of Assyria, as well as palace architecture more generally, provided cues about activity within these palaces. The framework for this exploration is provided by the work of Amos Rapoport and the ways he conceptualised the ways meaning could be encoded in, and decoded from, the environment through non-verbal communication. The in betweenness of reliefs, being neither temporary nor structural, highlights some of the issues with Rapoport’s analyses. The remainder of the article traces the different ways reliefs provided cues about activity within the royal palaces of Assyria. However, although such cues can sometimes be traced by modern scholars, it is unlikely that this was their primary intended purpose. Keywords Neo-Assyrian; Palace; Rapoport; Non-verbal communication; Modernism

Reliefs are the best-known features of the royal palaces of Assyria and have formed the focus of several pivotal books and articles by Paolo Matthiae, making it an especial pleasure to offer this article in celebration of his 80th birthday. The architectural contexts of the Assyrian reliefs first gained attention with the articles of Julian Reade and Irene Winter.1 This article builds on their work but is primarily interested in the ways reliefs, as well as palace architecture more generally, provided cues about activity within the palaces. This builds on Amos Rapoport’s work on the varied ways architecture can transfer meaning through nonverbal communication and John Russell’s application of these ideas to the study of Assyrian palaces.2 Based on Hall’s proxemics, Rapoport distinguishes three types of elements in the built environment: fixed, semi-fixed and non-fixed feature elements. It is Rapoport’s concept of fixed and semi-fixed features, and their separation from the human realm (i.e., the nonfixed features), that makes his ideas interesting for archaeologists who are interested in ancient cultures but analyse a world devoid of living beings. The fixed and semi-fixed features function as a bridge to the human realm and allow archaeologists to find meaning in the material remains. It is the idea that the material world provides cues about human interactions that is generally taken from Rapoport’s work. Unfortunately, rather than in the archaeologically preserved built environment, it is in the personalisation ‘through taking possession, completing it, changing it’ where meaning is most prominent.3 Reade 1980; Winter 1981; 1983. Russell 1998. 3 Rapoport 1982: 21. 1 2

Moving on from Ebla (Archaeopress 2022): 71–91

David Kertai Hall’s proxemics Rapoport derived the concepts of fixed and semi-fixed features from the work of Edward T. Hall who coined them in the context of his 1966 monograph The Hidden Dimension. This book focussed on proxemics, the study of ‘man’s use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture’.4 Hall uses this study into multi-sensorial modes of non-verbal communication to elucidate differences between cultures. He describes the correlation between culture and non-verbal communication as being akin to the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’ on the relation between culture and language. This hypothesis - a misnomer for what was never formulated by these two scholars as such - argues that language affects and reflects a speaker’s worldview. This hypothesis was based on the 19th century German scholarly tradition that understood languages as the expression of the spirit of a nation. What has become known as the SapirWhorf hypothesis is related to the assumption that all claims are dependent on the context in which they are made and that objective claims therefore do not exist. Language was seen as one such context which influences the claims that can be made as well as constraining and enabling the types of thoughts people can have. According to Hall, the relation between language and culture is deterministic as ‘man’s very perception of the world about him is programmed by the language he speaks’.5 This ‘strike[s] at the root of the doctrine of ‘free will’, because they indicate that all men are captives of the language they speak’.6 Hall expanded the context dependency underlying the relation between language (i.e., verbal communication) and culture by applying it to non-verbal communication. Hall’s book sets out to demonstrate the context dependency of such multisensorial communication. This means that ‘people from different cultures not only speak different languages but, what is possibly more important, inhabit different sensory worlds’.7 Hall’s views have a deterministic inclination in their description of cultures as discreet and assigning distinct worldviews to them. This sometimes leads to problematic deterministic ideas: … it is fairly obvious that the American Negroes and people of Spanish culture who are flocking to our cities are being very seriously stressed. Not only are they in a setting that does not fit them, but they have passed the limits of their own tolerance to stress.8 However, the notion that spatial experience is subjective and culturally contingent is an important one and influences the kind of inferences about the past we can hope to make. It also follows that non-verbal communication must be learned. Hall uses Gibson’s idea of kinesthesia, i.e., bodily knowledge, to describe how such knowledge is embodied.9 Hall refers to fixed-feature space rather than the fixed-features in space. This category mostly relates to the intended function of a space and the ways these are inscribed in the space. It includes invisible boundaries that are present as cultural knowledge but do not need to Hall 1966: 1. Hall 1966: 1-2. Hall 1966: 2. 7 Hall 1966: 2. 8 Hall 1966: 6. 9 Hall 1966: 68. Gibson 1950; cf. Hamilakis 2013. 4 5 6

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs have been physically marked.10 The semifixed-feature space is the cultural space created by moveable items such as furniture. The focus is on the proxemics (the ways people are spaced in relation to each other). Hall’s third category is informal space by which he means how space is experienced.11 Unfortunately, Hall does not provide precise definitions of fixed- and semifixed-feature space or what distinguishes both. In the caption to Plates 15 and 1612 he describes fixed-feature space as ‘the material objects and internalized design of rooms and buildings that govern human behaviour’. The caption accompanies a photo of a kitchen. It is the appliances and the built-in furniture that makes the space a kitchen. These fixtures are therefore part of the fixed-feature space. Although it is not made explicit, the difference between fixed and semifixed seems to be the ease with which a feature can be changed. According to Hall, kitchens make the ‘relationship of fixed-feature space to personality as well as to culture’ especially apparent.13 He uses it to critique architects (inevitably men) for taking their own bodies as templates and designing kitchens they have no practical knowledge about (kitchens being a female domain), leading to designs that do not suit the ‘stature and body’ of the women who used them (Hall uses his own wife to highlight these issues).14 Rapoport: are reliefs fixed? Rapoport’s work on nonverbal communication emphasises the spatial contexts in which such communication takes place. Rapoport’s stated goal is to trace ‘how (and, of course, whether) meanings can be encoded in things in such a way that they can be decoded by the intended users’.15 Adapting Hall’s terminology, Rapoport distinguishes three types of elements in the built environment: fixed, semi-fixed and non-fixed-feature elements (the latter being Rapoport’s term for Hall’s ‘informal space’). In Rapoport’s translation of Hall’s work subtle shifts are introduced. Firstly, features are no longer described as ‘spaces’ but have become ‘elements’, thus making the ‘fixed-feature space’ a ‘fixed-feature element’.16 Secondly, what distinguishes a fixed- from a semifixed-feature has changed in ways that are relevant when it comes to Assyrian palaces. Such shifts are hardly surprising giving the lack of elucidation in Hall’s work on the nature of this distinction. In Rapoport’s work the distinction is between elements ‘that are basically fixed, or those that change rarely and slowly’17 and those that ‘change fairly quickly and easily’.18 This is similar to Hall’s conceptualisation but in Rapoport’s work only the architectural structure still seems to count as fixed. Fixtures that were deemed part of Hall’s fixed-feature space, e.g., those belonging to a kitchen, have become part of Rapoport’s semifixed-feature elements. Hall 1966: 106. Hall 1966: 111-2. 12 Hall 1966: opposite p. 158. 13 Hall 1966: 105. 14 Hall 1966: 105. 15 Rapoport 1982: 19. 16 Due to the apparent tautology (feature/element), these terms are often shortened (including occasionally by Rapoport). His works also introduce minor difference in the spelling of these terms. This article will describe them as fixed-feature, semifixed-feature, and nonfixed-feature. 17 Rapoport 1982: 88. 18 Rapoport 1982: 89. 10 11

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David Kertai Rapoport’s three categories, while practical, have an inherent rigidity emanating from dividing things into categories. This issue comes to the fore in the separation between fixedand semifixed-features. The difference between both is defined as an ability to change and personalise features. Such changes are difficult in fixed-features but are relatively easy for semifixed-features.19 While this is an important characteristic, it represents a difference of degree rather than an ontological distinction. Rapoport’s work is, however, not focussed on fixtures. It is therefore not always clear how he would categorise them. The overlap between Rapoport’s fixed- and semifixed-features becomes apparent when trying to assign the reliefs that cover the walls of the most monumental spaces of the Assyrian palace to one of these categories. Russell20 categorises them as fixed-features whereas McCormick and Brown both categorise them as semifixed-features. McCormick’s categorisation is based on reliefs being a mode of decoration.21 Brown argues that reliefs were sometimes removed and should therefore be interpreted as semifixed-features.22 This, however, specifically refers to the removal of reliefs from the Northwest Palace in Kalkhu during the reign of Esarhaddon, which occurred during a period in which the palace no longer housed the royal court almost two centuries after the reliefs had been produced. The latter argument seems inconclusive as all fixed-features, including roofs and walls, are (re-)moveable, certainly on an archaeological timescale. The removal of reliefs was, however, a rare occurrence, almost as rare as the removal of other fixed-features. Despite its general silence on fixtures, it is clear from Rapoport’s work that all forms of ‘decorative facings’ and ‘decorative elements’ (which include wall plaster) are part of the semifixed-features.23 Rapoport is more explicit in another work, defining the semifixedfeatures as ‘‘furnishings’ in the broadest sense of the word at all scales’ whereas as fixedfeatures are formed by ‘(architectural) elements’.24 Ornament and crime Rapoport’s category of fixed-features is more limited than Hall’s original conception by placing decoration within the category of the semifixed-features. By understanding decoration as an embellishment that can be added to architecture Rapoport introduces a problematic Modernist sensitivity. Understanding decoration as something one adds to architecture can seem natural and therefore neutral to a Western reader accustomed to Modernist sensitivities, but it forms a historical aberration. The Modernist sensitivity is epitomised by Adolf Loos’ seminal lecture Ornament and Crime, which was first published in 1903 in French in Les Cahiers d’aujourd’hui and later, in 1929, published in the Frankfurter Zeitung in German as Ornament und Verbrechen. Loos’ arguments are mostly aimed at the ornaments used by the Secession movement (i.e. Art Nouveau) that was thriving around him in Vienna. Loos saw ornament as belonging to a degenerate state of being not befitting modern man. Despite the lecture’s status, it can be argued that ornaments only lost their status in the architecture of the Post-war era. Not only were many of the early Modernist architects still deeply versed in the Classical architectural Rapoport 1990: 13. Russell 1998: 673, 686. McCormick 2002: 19. 22 Brown 2010: 3, n. 2. 23 Rapoport 1982: 90. 24 Rapoport 1988: 323-4. 19 20 21

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Figure 1. Photograph of the Ford Company assembly line, Detroit, Michigan (1913; by an unknown photographer).

canon - Le Corbusier, arguably the most renowned Modernist, toured extensively to see Classical architecture25 - but one of their aims was to find a mode of ornamentation that was worthy and representative of the emerging industrial age as epitomised by such things as the steamship and the factories of the Ford Motor Company (Figures 1-2). This was combined with the notion that materials needed to be used ‘honestly’ by which was meant that both the material as well as its architectural function needed to be made visible. Thus, steel beams should not be encased in painted wooden panelling but left visible. That these aims were not always compatible is exemplified by the use of concrete, a material that in the early days of Modernism was still mostly made by manual labour before being whitewashed to make it appear smoother and more industrial and thus suggest it belonged to the Machine Age.26 Reacting to this ‘dishonesty’ would ultimately contribute to the modernist movement known as Brutalism (from the French béton brut ‘raw concrete’; although most people will nowadays associate the movement with the English word brutal). Although there is an implicit modernist conception inherent in Rapoport’s separation between architectural form and decoration, its purpose is different. Rather than relegating decoration to the level of the ornamental, i.e., the superfluous, Rapoport elevates it to the level of semifixed-features. As with most of Rapoport’s categorisations, the three levels into which features are divided are hierarchical in nature. In this case the hierarchy is about the amount 25 26

Le Corbusier 1966, cf. Le Corbusier 1923. Banham 1966: 16.

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Figure 2. Page 106 from Le Corbusier’s 1923 Vers une architecture on which he compares the Parthenon ‘a product of selection applied to an established standard’ with modern cars.

of meaning that can be encoded in and decoded from an element. Although furnishings were placed in the semifixed-feature category due to their ability to be changed, the more important implicit reason seems to be that they were better vehicles for meaning than ‘pure’ architectural form. Since Rapoport’s categories are about meaning, decoration needed to be separated from architectural form as it allowed for more meaning to be encoded. Although the separation between form and decoration remains a particular one, in the emphasis it places on decoration it is more in line with how decoration has commonly been perceived outside the Modernist sensitivities that we are accustomed to.

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs Where meaning resides Although Rapoport’s nonverbal communication is about the meaning that can be encoded in, and decoded from, things, its use of the term meaning is surprisingly, and impractically, undifferentiated. The term is both used in a general sense to refer to all the cues that can be decoded as well as more specifically only to what Rapoport considers the highest level of meaning. When used in its all-encompassing connotation, meaning forms the link between settings and activities.27 It is in such way that one can speak of different types of meaning: ‘use meaning’, ‘concrete meaning’ and ‘symbolic meaning’.28 In this way meaning simply becomes synonymous with all that can be evaluated.29 These forms of meaning are hierarchical and create an equivalence with objects that similarly range ‘from the concrete object through use object, value object to symbolic object’.30 In other places meaning is limited to the highest level of the hierarchy, i.e., the symbolic level. It is as such that meaning is described as communicating group identity and status.31 This hierarchy is evident in the four components into which Rapoport distinguishes activity: 1. 2. 3. 4.

the activity proper; the specific way of doing it; additional, adjacent, or associated activities that become part of the activity system; and the meaning of the activity.32

The use of meaning in the fourth category is somewhat paradoxical since meaning also clearly resides in all the other components, suggesting that the fourth category includes all others akin to the category ‘those included in this classification’ in Borges’ famous fictitious taxonomy of animals known as Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge33 with which Michel Foucault opens The Order of Things.34 That the fourth point refers to a more specific form of meaning comes to the fore in an earlier version of Rapoport’s list in which the fourth point is described as the ‘Symbolic aspects of the activity’ which is deemed by Rapoport to represent the highest level of interpretation.35 The undifferentiated use of the term meaning is related to another problem which complicates the use of the different setting types. This is the lack of discussion on how the three levels (fixed, semifixed and nonfixed) relate to the different levels of meaning. Although both are organised hierarchically, the exact correlations remain mostly unspecified. In Rapoport’s hierarchy of activity, the first level, described as ‘the activity proper’, refers to activities humans are capable of. These activities refer, it would seem, to those that are not yet Rapoport 1990: 11. Rapoport 1977: 316. 29 Rapoport 1977: 13 30 Rapoport 1977: 19. 31 Rapoport 1982: 30. 32 Rapoport 1982: 15; cf. Rapoport 1988: 318; 1990: 9. 33 Borges 1999 [1942]: 231. 34 Foucault 1994 [1966]: xvi. 35 Rapoport 1977: 19. 27 28

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Figure 3. Floorplan of the Northwest Palace, Kalkhu (by the author)

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs actualised. Performing an activity is placed on the second level described as ‘the specific way of doing it’36 or ‘how it is carried out’.37 It is on this level that the general concept of ‘eating’ becomes the actualised ‘eating in a room’. Since archaeology is a contextual discourse, our investigations will generally start on this level. The third level combines activities into a more holistic view in which eating becomes, in Assyrian palaces, a feature of the court society. The fourth level would then discuss the different ways these activities encode meaning. The last two levels would be the more interesting levels to explore but are beyond the scope of this paper. Here we will focus on a more limited question: how does the Assyrian palace architecture, with special focus on the use of reliefs, encode cues about the ways activities were (to be) performed. Cues about activity proper Reconstructing where activity took place within Assyria’s palaces has turned out to be frustratingly difficult. Although members of the Assyrian court will undoubtedly have slept, eaten, and met with each other and visitors alike in numerous settings, it is notably difficult to contextualise such activity and reconstruct where it took place (Figures 3-5).38 The preserved architecture of the palaces does, however, provide some cues, for instance, through the fixtures that have sometimes been preserved.39 Rooms used as bathrooms/ ablution rooms can be identified by the presence of a niche with a drain above which a stool could be placed, a stone slab for the placement of bathtubs, and their baked brick pavements insulated with bitumen. Bathrooms are therefore relatively easy to trace archaeologically, but the actual activity that took place in these rooms remains more difficult to reconstruct. In all likelihood they were used for physical cleanliness and as lavatories but also for cultic activity such as libations. Different bathrooms might have been intended for different activities, but except for differences in monumentality and their location within the palaces, their architecture does not seem to provide more precise cues about the activities for which they were intended.40 The most common room type that can be identified within the palaces of Assyria can be described as a reception room. These are associated with two specific stone fixtures: slabs in the centre of the room for the placement of portable braziers that would have provided heating in the winter and a slab set against a wall and intended either for placing vessels with liquids on and/or for making libations. These fixtures provide few cues about the activity which might have taken place in such rooms. Affordances for activities were more likely created by adding furniture stored in rooms nearby. But more importantly, most spaces were probably flexible and used for different activities at different times. This flexibility probably explains the absence of architectural cues about a room’s use. This makes it difficult to pin down the exact activities for which they were used in each case.

Rapoport 1988: 15. Rapoport 1990: 11. 38 Gross and Kertai 2019. 39 Kertai 2015a: 185-97. 40 Kertai 2015a: 190-7. 36 37

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Figure 4. Floorplan of the Royal Palace, Dur-Sharruken (by the author)

Palaces were divided into suites, with the most basic suite containing a reception room and a bathroom. Suites may have been used for residential purposes, but there was no clear distinction between residential and non-residential architecture. Suites appear to have been built with a focus on their daytime purpose, namely receiving guests. The elaborate suites that were located close to the monumental core of the palace, for instance the suites surrounding the royal courtyard AJ in the Northwest Palace of Kalkhu, were more likely to be residential, but will also have functioned as the offices and reception suites of the people living in these parts of the palace such as the queen and the royal offspring (as long as they had not moved out into their own residences).

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs

Figure 5. Floorplan of the Southwest Palace, Nineveh (by the author)

Reliefs can sometimes be correlated with the activity presumed to have taken place in a room. Such correlations could occur, for instance, through reliefs placed outside the room. In general, however, this type of correlation is rare. Most reliefs outside a room are better understood as decorating the walls of the courtyards they are part of: Courtyards were intermediate spaces not belonging to any suite in particular. The reliefs covering their walls made them coherent and autonomous spaces. The walls functioned as the internal façade of the courtyard rather than as the external façades

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David Kertai of the surrounding suites. Scenes tended to continue along the façades of multiple suites.41 Notable exceptions are formed by the throne-room façades of the Northwest Palace in Kalkhu and the royal palace in Dur-Sharruken. Both showed a file of people moving towards the king who stood next to the throne-room’s entrance welcoming them as if he, to paraphrase Matthiae,42 had come out of the door to receive those coming to meet him. These scenes provide us with an apparent correlation between what is shown on the reliefs and an activity that is likely to have taken place in the room.43 In the Northwest Palace, this correlation is only found with the throne-room which is the only room with narrative reliefs on its façade. In Dur-Sharruken, however, similar files of people are omnipresent, covering the walls of several façades and rooms.44 Whether such reliefs were intended to provide cues about activity remains uncertain. Almost all reception rooms would seem to provide settings where the king could be met regardless of whether the walls showed such meetings. The king is shown meeting different groups such as courtiers, prisoners, and tribute bearers. Most of these encounters are shown against a blank background which do not make clear where the activity was envisaged to have taken place. Several such encounters, however, seem to have been situated within the contexts of military campaigns and are thus not taking place in the palaces they decorate. It is also notable that the king is generally shown standing, for instance at the entrances of the throne-room, rather than seated on his throne as he is likely to have done at least in the throne-room.45 Reliefs that might reflect activity for which a room was intended are rare but more commonly decorate the room’s interior. A possible example is formed by the banquet scenes in the upper register of rooms 2 and 7 of the Dur-Sharruken palace. It is certainly feasible that banquets took place in these rooms, but there is little supportive evidence to locate banquets specifically in these rooms. Other notable examples include the long corridors leading out of/into the Southwest Palace (51n) and the North Palace (R/N) in Nineveh and perhaps Fort Shalmaneser in Kalkhu.46 Each shows files of people carrying produce or returning from a hunt and is likely to depict similar groups that would have walked these same corridors. A special case in which reliefs seem to provide cues about activity taking place - if not in the room itself than more generally in the suite the room belonged to - is found in the socalled Eastern Suite of the Northwest Palace. There have been multiple interpretations of the intended function of this suite.47 The humans depicted in the first room (the king and his attendants) signal that the suite was intended for libations (and cleansing of the items stored in the multiple storerooms within the suite). This seems supported by the architecture of the suite and the multitude of apotropaic creatures that provided protection.48

Kertai 2015: 197. Matthiae 2015: fn. 27. 43 Paley and Sobolewski 1992: 12-3; Porter 2003: 90; Novák 2012: 259. 44 Matthiae 2012: 489-92; 2014: 393-4; 2015. 45 Although see Kertai 2019 for contexts in which the king might have stood in the throneroom. 46 Kertai 2015a: 164; Mallowan 1966: 465; Nunn 1998: 127; Reade 1982: 111. 47 E.g., Brown 2010; Richardson 1999-2001. 48 Brandes 1970: 153-4; Kertai 2015: 38-40; Russell 1998: 671-97. 41 42

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs A different type of correlation can be found in the placement of apotropaic creatures in the doors of the two royal palaces of Nineveh where the entrances of bathrooms were indicated by the presence of the apotropaic pair consisting of the Ugallu and Lulal.49 The question whether reliefs could also function on the scale of an entire palace is raised by Ashurbanipal’s North Palace in Nineveh. The intended purpose of this palace remains unclear. The palace is unlikely to have been intended to replace the Southwest Palace which was not only substantially larger but also remained in use.50 Ashurbanipal’s inscriptions describe the palace as a bēt redȗti, which is commonly translated as the ‘Succession House’ and is also used as part of the crown prince’s title. There is, however, no indication that the palace was intended for the crown prince. In fact, no crown prince is known during this period.51 He is also notably missing from the reliefs in the palace.52 This is correlated with, and probably due to, the absence of scenes in which the crown prince had a role to play.53 A specific palace for the crown prince - created for Ashurbanipal when he held that status - existed in the city of Tarbisu.54 The term bēt redȗti might be better understood as the ‘House of Governance’,55 and might represent a status signalling the crown prince’s future role as king rather than a specific place. Ashurbanipal royal inscriptions’ description of the bēt redȗti, certainly, does not fit with what is known about the North Palace.56 The most remarkable aspect of the reliefs of the North Palace is the large number of hunting scenes. These might have created a proper setting for the ceremonies and celebrations related to hunts in the royal parks of Nineveh. However, most hunts seem specifically related to military victories in which case they do not show a general activity, but specific occasions. The reliefs seem better understood as rendering these festivities than showing the purpose of the palace let alone its individual rooms.57 Cues about proper activity and behaviour Rather than showing the nature of the activity a space was intended for, some reliefs might have been intended to encode the proper way to perform it. Reliefs that encode behaviour are foremost those reliefs that show people meeting with the king. Reliefs in general certainly showed other kinds of behaviour (such as wailing, dying, walking etc.) that could be taken as cues for how to perform such activity, but as these activities did not take place in the palace their elucidating qualities would arguably have been limited or at least less directly applicable. Reliefs showing people meeting the king represent the Assyrian court’s view on how such encounters should take place. They include different functionaries performing standardised roles from the personal attendees and guards of the king attending to and guarding him, the crown prince standing face-to-face with the king in his role of introducing people into Kertai 2015b. Kertai 2015a: 170. 51 Novotny and Singletary 2009. 52 Reade 2009: 261. 53 Kertai 2017: 123-5. 54 Leichty 2011: Nos 93-95. 55 Weissert 1998: 163; Seux 1980-1983: 158-9. 56 Kertai 2015a: 169. 57 Kertai 2015a: 183-4. 49 50

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David Kertai his presence,58 the mazzaz pani, i.e., those that were allowed to move around the palace relatively freely,59 and the different groups approaching the king. These scenes could have been intended to teach proper protocol and behaviour to such visitors or even to the Assyrian officials. Most Assyrian officials will, however, undoubtedly already have known the court etiquette. Whether prisoners were taught how to behave is open to question but most of these encounters seem situated in or on the battlefield rather than in the palace where the reliefs could have edified them. The only group for whom the reliefs can be envisaged to have acted as modes of edification are visitors. This is supported by the location of some of these scenes on the throne-room façade that these groups would walk along on their way into the throneroom.60 Two somewhat different types of cues on how to act in a palace can also be traced. One was provided by the direction in which apotropaic creatures, who stood in doors, faced. Assuming that one was intended to walk into a room facing these creatures, their direction can be taken to have signalled the proper direction of movement that was anticipated. However, due to the nature of Assyrian palace architecture very little choice existed in how one could move through rooms.61 In fact, one usually had to leave each room through the same door one had entered it. Large colossi in rooms with multiple parallel entrances, such as the throne-room, all faced outwards and thus focussed on those entering rather than those who were leaving the room. Additional apotropaic figures flanked these doors on the inside to engage with those leaving. Although most scholars assume visitors would normally enter the throne-room from the door farthest from the main throne and leave it through the door closest to it, the apotropaic creatures in these doors provide no cues on how movement was envisioned and rather focus on providing protection to, and against, anyone who might wish to enter. Cues are provided - to us at least - by the apotropaic creatures in the smaller doors connecting the suites around courtyard Y behind the throne-room of the Northwest Palace. These creatures are directed towards the throne-room and thus probably focus on the king moving from the throne-room into the rest of the palace. This is, however, more a cue about the privileged nature of this route than about the direction in which movement was anticipated as there is no reason to assume that the king would not have used the same route to walk towards the throne-room despite the apotropaic creatures looking the other way. Apotropaic reliefs’ role in changing people’s behaviour was, however, concentrated in the veracity of the creatures themselves and their ability to ward of danger and bad intentions and allowing only the good to enter. If the reliefs have cues about accessibility, they are probably less geared towards human individuals but rather aimed at the different malevolent beings roaming the world. It is these creatures that the apotropaic reliefs (including colossi) address. The apotropaic reliefs did exactly what Rapoport suggests is important for legibility: they made their meaning clear by introducing redundancy. No malevolent creature could have avoided understanding the intended meaning and their lack of welcome.

Kertai 2017. Gross and Kertai 2019. 60 Porter 2003. 61 Kertai 2015 58 59

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs Rapoport’s emphasis on the mnemonic nature of the environment helps to qualify the role of these reliefs, which are better understood as reminding people of proper behaviour rather than teaching it. Their placement is less about where people needed to be taught behaviour than about where people needed to be reminded of this behaviour. More importantly, the reliefs allowed the gestures, posture and activity of tribute bringing to be associated with the throne-room and consequently with the king. Cues for who? Most reliefs focus on the king, but did the palaces also create specific architectural settings for other people than the king? Unfortunately, there are methodological problems in answering this question. The most fundamental problem is that it remains unclear which spaces were intended for individuals other than the king. The king was certainly not the only one to reside or use the royal palace.62 Important palace officials such as the royal scribe, the palace overseer, the palace herald, and the overseer of the inner parts were active in the palace and can be expected to have had their own designated offices.63 Other members of the royal family, such as the queen, also resided in the palace and had their own households and functionaries with whom they would likely have met.64 Other individuals and officials were often made present on the reliefs but the reason for their depiction seems centred on creating appropriate settings for the king. The most noteworthy example of this phenomenon was the crown prince, who often appeared in his role of introducing people into the presence of the king. His presence on these reliefs is irrespective of the existence of a crown prince at the date that the relief was actually made or at the event being depicted (such as the battle at Lachish). It does not, nor is it intended to, reflect historical realities but, instead, represents an idealised court in which the crown prince fulfils this standardised role.65 Despite the relief ’s focus on the king, rooms are likely to have been used by others for instance when they welcomed visitors during the king’s absence. Such cases must have been frequent if only for the king’s prolonged absences while on military campaign. In one instance during the reign of Sargon II, the crown prince Sennacherib received, sealed, and deposited the tribute brought to Kalkhu by the Ashdodites.66 Unfortunately, the text does not specify where this encounter took place. Since reliefs were only used in the most monumental rooms, and those are the ones most likely to have been intended for the king’s use, the reliefs’ focus on the king might simply reflect the royal connotations of this form of decoration. However, other material carriers of images, such as seals and ivory, also centre on the king, suggesting that the focus on the king was not dependent on the king’s presence or ownership.

Russell 1991: 221-40. On their locations see Gross and Kertai 2019. 64 Kertai 2015a: 228. 65 Kertai 2017. 66 Parpola 1987: No. 29. 62 63

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David Kertai Images showing anybody other than the king holding court are almost non-existent. The notable exception is formed by the so-called Garden Scene in the North Palace of Nineveh where it is the queen who is shown holding court with the king in attendance.67 However, the scene is part of the celebrations of the defeat of the Elamite king Teumman and might not have been intended to create an architectural setting for the queen. Since the original architectural context of the relief - which was located in the unexplored western corner of the palace’s ground floor68 - is unknown, such correlations are impossible to verify. In the royal palaces, it is the absence of reliefs that might indicate that the intended user of a suite was someone other than the king. Since the decoration of these spaces is mostly unknown, it is impossible to verify whether these rooms would have provided cues about their intended occupant or the activity that would have taken place in them. Wall paintings have only been preserved in a few rooms. Room S5 of Fort Shalmaneser69 and room 43 of the Northwest Palace70 both showed a file of people. Unfortunately, the identity of the person they are walking towards has not been preserved. In the Southwest Palace in Nineveh, the use of reliefs seems to have expanded. Interesting in this regard is the suite centred on room 65 deep inside the palace. The room is exceptional for containing an inscription on the apotropaic statues guarding its doors. These describe the suite as having been intended for Sennacherib’s queen Tashmetu-sharrat:71 And for the queen Tašmetu-šarrat, my beloved wife, whose features (the goddess of creation) Belet-ili has made more beautiful than all other women, I had a palace of love, joy and pleasure built. … By the order of Aššur, father of the gods, and (heavenly) queen Ištar may we both live long in health and happiness in this palace and enjoy wellbeing to the full!72 Beside the inscription and its location there is nothing to suggest that the suite was intended for the queen. The architecture of the suite suggests that its main purpose was to provide a suitable (monumental) setting for the queen to welcome people.73 The known reliefs are military in nature and are similar to those present in the other monumental rooms of the palace and do not provide cues about the occupant of the suite. This inscription identifying the suite’s occupant remains unique and is unlikely to have been intended to provide such information to visitors. Deep inside the palace, where this suite is located, its occupant will probably have been well known. Concluding considerations Although one can trace reliefs that provide cues about activity within the palace, it seems unlikely that this was their primary purpose. These discussions, moreover, need to consider all known reliefs. Most rooms, including all known rooms in the royal palaces of Nineveh, were Kertai 2020. Kertai 2015a: 179-82. 69 Oates 1959: pls 28-29. 70 Hussein, Kertai and Altaweel 2013: 94; Layard 1849: 16-7. 71 Kertai 2013: 116-8. 72 Translation after Radner 2012: 692. 73 Kertai 2015a: 142-3. 67 68

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs decorated with scenes from military campaigns. These certainly had little if any correlation with the activity that took place in these rooms. It seems problematic to cherry-pick the few topics shown on reliefs that could take place in the palace and assume that that is what they intended to convey. The rows of people shown on the reliefs in front of throne-rooms might have signalled the activity happening inside, or where to enter, but visitors probably did not need the reliefs to identify the room nor is it likely that reliefs were needed to inform people on what activities were intended to take place inside the room. Whether reliefs conveyed messages about the proper way to perform activities can also be questioned. For such cues to be effective, people would have needed to notice the cues, interpret them correctly, and act accordingly. Any cues encoded on them will always be ambiguous. Seeing someone on a relief taking a specific bodily posture might help an actual visitor to know how to behave but additional information, for instance, on where the behaviour shown on the reliefs was appropriate - at the place it was shown or only at the encounter with the king? - will always have been necessary. The reliefs moreover show specific groups. Would visitors coming to petition the king, discuss their issues or bringing other kinds of things be expected to perform similarly as the court officials shown along the throne-room façade in Dur-Sharruken? Reliefs are therefore unlikely to have formed the primary mode through which behaviour was taught. For us such cues provide important pieces of information, for those visiting the palaces, the reliefs were more likely intended to help create the appropriate settings for activity. Some images of the king can be described as having guided movement towards him.74 These reliefs might have helped to ‘elicit appropriate emotions, interpretations, behaviours, and transactions [and set] up the appropriate situations and contexts’75 in which the king could be met. These settings are remarkable for their omnipresence. This redundancy is worth exploring. Rapoport argued that redundancy is helpful in contexts where meaning is unclear and assumed that this is more acute in contemporary societies.76 Complexity is, however, unlikely to explain these contexts in Assyria. Marking the king’s location in a room does not represent a very complicated message, at least not from a spatial point of view. Redundancy does, however, have other advantages. Perhaps the most important one was that it allowed the king to be present within each monumental room even when he was not physically present. His image suggested a presence even when he was absent. Walking through the monumental suites generated a sequence of encounters with the king. These settings also added flexibility to the palaces by creating numerous settings for the king which could be used when needed. They also probably created settings for others to take over the king’s role in his absence or to stage activities of their own in the same settings. Although groups approaching the king are relatively easily understood by visitors who might have been part of their own group, the same can probably not be said of the cues provided by apotropaic creatures. Cues provided by apotropaic creatures - other than the direction they faced - required specialised knowledge that eliminated any practical advantage that such cues Kertai forthcoming. Rapoport 1982: 84. 76 Rapoport 1982: 84. 74 75

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David Kertai might have offered to visitors. The Ugallu and Lulal, for instance, not only form an arbitrary pair but moreover one that had no known prior correlation with bathrooms. There would be no way for visitors to decode such information based on generally available knowledge outside the palace. More importantly, those who did not know where activity took place in the palace are unlikely to have been allowed to wander through the palace unescorted trying to find their way. People probably moved through the palace guided by courtiers and/or knew the way from experience. This brings us back to the question of how to qualify reliefs. Hall pointed out that what is deemed fixed is cultural as, for instance, walls in a traditional Japanese house are meant to be moved and are thus part of the semifixed-feature space in that context.77 Assyrian palaces invert the idea of what is fixed in a different way. Their architectural structure was built with sundried mudbricks topped with a mostly wooden roof. This structure degraded and disappeared much more quickly (on an archaeological timescale) than the stone reliefs that decorated them. Over time the walls collapsed and degraded to form a ruin hill where the former rooms came to be filled with the remains of the walls that once had surrounded them. It was only due to the endurance of the stone reliefs that the first archaeologists were able, in the 1840s (Layard, Botta, Rassam and others), to rediscover the rooms they had once decorated. It would take several decades before the architectural structure consisting of the former mudbrick walls could be traced on their own. This highlights the problem with distinguishing between fixed and semi-fixed features and points to the in betweenness of reliefs. Reliefs were certainly immovable in a practical sense and were almost never changed while a palace was still in active use. Once the exploits of the king who had commissioned the palace had been engraved on the reliefs, these became the backdrop for all succeeding kings until the royal court moved to a new royal palace, which happened only twice after the Northwest Palace was inaugurated. Interestingly, the reliefs did change from palace to palace, much more so than the architecture of the palaces themselves. Taking a longer timeframe reveals a divergence between fixed features such as walls and doors, and the reliefs. Within Assyria, architecture and decoration changed with different speeds. This raises the question about how architecture and decoration differed in the cues they provided. Bibliography Banham, R. 1966. The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? London: Architectural Press. Borges, J.L. 1999 [1942]. John Wilkins’ Analytical Language, in Selected Nonfictions, translated by E. Weinberger: 229-33. New York: Penguin Books. Brown, B.A. 2010. Kingship and Ancestral Cult in the Northwest Palace at Nimrud. Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 10/1: 1-53. Foucault, M. 1994 [1966]. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books. Gibson, J.J. 1950. The Perception of the Visual World. Oxford: Houghton Mifflin.

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Hall 1966: 111.

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs Groß, M., and D. Kertai, 2019. Becoming Empire: Neo-Assyrian palaces and the creation of courtly culture. Journal of Ancient History 7/1: 1-31. Hall, E.T. 1966. The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. Hamilakis, Y. 2013. Archaeology and the Senses: Human experience, memory, and affect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hussein, M.M., D. Kertai, and M. Altaweel. 2013. Nimrud and its Remains in Light of Iraqi Excavations from 1989-2002, in D. Kertai and P.A. Miglus (eds), New Research on Late Assyrian Palaces. Conference at Heidelberg January 22nd, 2011: 91-108 (Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient 15). Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag. Kertai, D. 2013. The Queens of the Late Assyrian Empire. Altorientalische Forschungen 40/1: 10824. Kertai, D. 2015a. The Architecture of Late Assyrian Royal Palaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kertai, D. 2015b. The Guardians at the Gate. Entering the Southwest Palace in Nineveh. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 74/2: 325-49. Kertai, D. 2017. The Iconography of the Late Assyrian Crown Prince, in D. Kertai and O. Nieuwenhuyse (eds), From the Four Corners of the Earth. Studies in the Iconography and Cultures of the Ancient Near East in Honour of F.A.M. Wiggermann: 111-33. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Kertai, D. 2019. The Thronerooms of Assyria, in M. Bietak, P. Matthiae and S. Prell (eds), Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Palaces. Volume II. Proceedings of a Workshop Held at the 10th ICAANE in Vienna, 25-26 April 2016: 41-56. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Kertai, D. 2020. Libbali-sharrat in the Garden: An Assyrian Queen Holding Court. Source: Notes in the History of Art 39/4: 209-18. Kertai, D. Forthcoming. The Architectural Presence of the Assyrian King in His Palaces, in A. David (ed.), Picturing Royal Charisma in the Near East (3rd Millennium BC to 1700 AD). Layard, A.H. 1849. Nineveh and its Remains: with an account of a visit to the Chaldaean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or devil-worshippers; and an inquiry into the manners and arts of the ancient Assyrians, vol. II. New York: G.P. Putnam. Le Corbusier 1923. Vers une architecture. Paris: Éditions Crès. Le Corbusier 1966. Le Voyage d’Orient. Paris: Éditions Forces Vives. Leichty, E. 2011. The Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680-669 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 4). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Loos, A. 1962 [1929]. Ornament und verbrechen, in Sämtliche Schriften in zwei Bänden, erster Band, 276-88. Wien: Herold. Matthiae, P. 2012. Subject Innovations in the Khorsabad Reliefs and Their Political Meaning, in G.B. Lanfranchi, D. Morandi Bonacossi, C. Pappi and S. Ponchia (eds), Leggo! Studies Presented to Frederick Mario Fales on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday: 477-97. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Matthiae, P. 2014. Image, Ideology, and Politics: A historical consideration of the message of Neo-Assyrian reliefs, in S. Gaspa, A. Greco, D. Morandi Bonacossi, S. Ponchia and R. Rollinger (eds), From Source to History. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern worlds and beyond dedicated to Giovanni Battista Lanfranchi on the occasion of his 65th birthday: 387-404. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. Matthiae, P. 2015. Les nobles dans l’art de Khorsabad: Images et conception politique de Sargon d’Assyrie. Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 159/2: 1047-74. McCormick, C.M. 2002. Palace and Temple: A Study of Architectural and Verbal Icons (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 313). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

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David Kertai Novák, M. 2012. Dūr-Šarru-ukīn - Die Festung Sargons, Schaltzentrale eines Weltreiches, in O. Dally, F. Fless, R. Haensch, F. Pirson and S. Sievers (eds), Politische Räume in vormodernen Gesellschaften; Gestaltung - Wahrnehmung - Funktion; Internationale Tagung des DAI und des DFGExzellenzclusters TOPOI vom 18. - 22. November 2009 in Berlin: 255-65. Rahden: Verlag Marie Leidorf. Novotny, J. and J. Singletary. 2009. Family Ties: Assurbanipal’s Family Revisited, in M. Luukko, S. Svärd and R. Mattila (eds), Of God(s), Trees, Kings, and Scholars: Neo-Assyrian and related studies in honour of Simo Parpola: 167-78. Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society. Nunn, A. 1998. Die Wandmalerei und der glasierte Wandschmuck im Alten Orient. Leiden: Brill. Oates, D. 1959. Fort Shalmaneser: An Interim Report. Iraq 21: 98-129. Paley, S.M. and R.P. Sobolewski. 1992. The Reconstruction of the Relief Representations and Their Positions in the Northwest Palace at Kalḫu (Nimrūd) III (The principal entrances and courtyards) (Baghdader Forschungen 14). Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Parpola, S. 1987. The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West (State Archives of Assyria 1). Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Porter, B.N. 2003. Intimidation and Friendly Persuasion, Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies (Hayim and Miriam Tadmor Volume, edited by I. Eph‘al, A. Ben-Tor and P. Machinist): 180-91. Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society. Radner, K. 2012. The Seal of Tašmetum-šarrat, Sennacherib’s Queen, and Its Impressions, in G.B. Lanfranchi, D. Morandi Bonacossi, C. Pappi and S. Ponchia (eds), Leggo! Studies Presented to Frederick Mario Fales on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday: 687-98. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Rapoport, A. 1977. Human Aspects of Urban Form. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Rapoport, A. 1982. The Meaning of the Built Environment: A nonverbal communication approach. Beverly Hills: Sage. Rapoport, A. 1988. Levels of Meaning in the Built Environment, in F. Poyatos (ed.), CrossCultural Perspectives in Nonverbal Communication: 317-36. Lewiston/New York: C.J. Hogrefe. Rapoport, A. 1990. Systems of Activities and Systems of Settings, in S. Kent (ed.), Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Study: 9-20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reade, J.E. 1980. The Architectural Context of Assyrian Sculpture. Baghdader Mitteilungen 11: 75-87. Reade, J.E. 1982. Nimrud, in J. Curtis (ed.), Fifty Years of Mesopotamian Discovery, the Work of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq 1932-1982: 99-112. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq. Reade, J.E. 2009. Fez, Diadem, Turban, Chaplet: Power-Dressing at the Assyrian Court, in M. Luukko, S. Svärd and R. Mattila (eds), Of God(s), Trees, Kings, and Scholars: Neo-Assyrian and related studies in honour of Simo Parpola: 239-64. Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society. Richardson, S. 1999. An Assyrian Garden of Ancestors: Room I, Northwest Palace, Kalḫu. State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 13: 145-216. Russell, J.M. 1991. Sennacherib’s Palace without Rival at Nineveh. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Russell, J.M. 1998. The Program of the Palace of Assurnasirpal II at Nimrud: Issues in the research and presentation of Assyrian Art. American Journal of Archaeology 102/4: 655-715. Seux, M.-J. 1980. Königtum. Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 6: 14073.

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The Architectural in Betweenness of Assyrian Reliefs Weissert, E. 1998. Aššūr-bāni-apli, in K. Radner (ed.), The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Volume 1, Part I: A: 159-63. Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Winter, I.J. 1981. Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs. Studies in Visual Communication 7/2: 2-38. Winter, I.J. 1983. The Program of the Throneroom of Ashurnasirpal II, in P.O. Harper and H. Pittman (eds), Essays in Near Eastern Art and Archaeology in Honor of Charles Kyrle Wilkinson: 15-31. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Assyria, Where Are You? A Striking Gap in the Reception of the Ancient Near East in Western Popular Culture Dominik Bonatz Abstract The occurrence of ancient Near Eastern motifs and characters in various popular culture genres like pulp fiction, movies, video games, and Black Metal music is an interesting phenomenon of modern and post-modern reception of the ancient Near East in the West. Yet, the reception mostly relies on Mesopotamian or Sumerian mythology and demonology, on Babylonia and few outstanding characters such as Gilgamesh, Ishtar, and Pazuzu. Despite the citation of certain Assyrian motifs in these contexts, Assyria as a mythological or historical point of reference is distinctly missing from the scene. The paper reflects on this fact, contrasts it with the completely different reception of Assyria in nineteenthcentury Europe, and asks for its reasons. Key Words Assyria, reception, popular culture, Black Metal music, Gilgamesh, Pazuzu

Paolo Matthiae is not only the maestro of Ebla and ancient Syria, but also and especially of Assyria and its art. This paper, devoted in deep gratitude to Paolo, addresses one of the rare aspects he has not touched when it comes to thinking about Assyria. The reception of the ancient Near East in Western popular culture increased during the 20th and early 21st centuries. Of course, aspects of ancient Near Eastern culture still are not as popular as the always fashionable and commercially exploitable Pharaonic culture of ancient Egypt or as the classical images and myths of ancient Greece and Rome – and they probably never will be. However, the ambiguous topic Babylon, the dialectical superhero Gilgamesh, the sexualized belligerent Ishtar, and other characters borrowed from Mesopotamian myths have made their way through contemporary popular literature, movies, music, computer games, comics, and mangas, and their names title cinemas, fast food restaurants, and bars. The eighteen essays in a recently published volume on the reception of the ancient Near East in popular culture reveal a sometimes surprising and curious variety of reception in different modern and contemporary popular cultural contexts.1 Yet, within this important new contribution to ‘reception studies’, there is one striking blank space: Assyria.2 This is not only by chance and due to the specific research interests of the authors collected in this volume but is a matter of fact. The absence of Assyria in modern and post-modern popular culture is a phenomenon that bothers me, which is why I would like to illuminate it and to ask for its reasons.

Garcia Ventura and Verderame (eds) 2020. The only exception, the article by Valeska Hartmann on the pantomime Sardanapal from 1908 (Hartmann 2020), marks exactly the turning point in the modern perception of Assyria and will be discussed later in this paper. 1 2

Moving on from Ebla (Archaeopress 2022): 92–104

Assyria, Where Are You One key genre for deciphering the consumption of certain ancient Near Eastern motifs and images in contemporary popular culture is Heavy Metal, or more specifically its subgenres Dark Metal, Black Metal, and Thrash Metal.3 These music styles are united by the idea of an anti-music that is extremely loud and aggressive, that thrashes on the instruments, and that corresponds with the social anti-habitus of their makers and many of their followers. Since the 1990s, new bands have appeared on the scene that devote themselves to a new subgenre of Dark/Black/Thrash Metal called Sumerian or Mesopotamian Metal. The web encyclopaedia Metallum (‘The Metal Archives’) actually lists under the entry Sumerian or Mesopotamian Metal fifty-eight bands whose lyrical themes are completely or partly related to Mesopotamian mythology.4 Some of these bands have significant names, such as: Enumal Elish (Argentina), Gates of Irkalla (international), Yamatu (USA), Agga (USA), Guilgamesh (Brazil), Inanna Unveiled (Germany), Pazuzu (Austria), É (France), Blood of Kingu (Ukraine), Erragal (Iraq), Sumeria (USA), Ur (Columbia), Anuuruk (Chile), The Ziggurat (USA), and Tiamat (Sweden).5 The countries from which these bands originate show that Mesopotamian/Sumerian Metal is an international phenomenon. Through worldwide concert tours, Metal Music festivals, the sale of the albums, and social media, the extreme reach of their music and lyrics is increasing. One band stands in the centre of this development and probably is its main stimulator: Melechesh. The band was founded by Melechesh Ashmedi (originally Murat Cenan) in 1993 in Jerusalem. Ashmedi and two of his earlier companions, the guitarist Moloch and the drummer Lord Curse, belong to the Assyrian and Armenian community in Jerusalem. An ethnically based music in which the Assyrian-Mesopotamian tradition of the band’s protagonists plays an essential role was from the beginning the declared objective of this band, which today is one of the most popular bands in the Black and Thrash Metal scene. In 2015, Melechesh released the much-celebrated album Enki. The German Internet journal Zephyr’s Odem commented on this event with the praising words (translated from German): ‘This band masterfully combines mysticism with terrific hardness and a pitch-black complexion. The band has thereby reached an unmatched status in the Metal scene, which of course is underlined by such outstanding albums as Epigenesis or Emissaries. Now, Ashmedi and his team have released the new album titled Enki, which thematically deals with the eponymous creator of the human race and which again guides the willing listener deep into pre-Christian history’.6 Melechesh’s enthusiastically noted ability to ‘guide the willing listener deep into pre-Christian history’ is based on the lyrics, which offer poetic abstracts of Mesopotamian myths turning on the creator god Enki, but also other figures like Enlil, Ninmakh, Gilgamesh, and Utnapishtim. Here and in the previous albums, the lyrical themes indeed circle Sumerian mythology and Mesopotamian motifs such as the ziggurat. Sumerian and Babylonian gods and heroes are omnipresent, but no typical Assyrian ones. The only exception is one of Melechesh’s earlier tracks, The Siege of Lachish (1996), in which the Assyrian king Sennacherib plays a prominent The great appeal of Mesopotamian mythology to Dark/Black/Thrash was recently discussed by Daniele F. Rosa with a focus on Norwegian Black Metal (Rosa 2020) and more generally by the present author (Bonatz, 2021). 4 https://www.metal-archives.com/search?searchString=sumerian&type=band_themes, last accessed 15 Jan. 2021. 5 The famous and controversial Black Metal band Marduk is not listed here, because there are no references to the Babylonian god or other motifs from Mesopotamia either in the music or in the lyrics of the songs. So, one can only speculate why the founder of Marduk, Morgan Steinmeyer Håkasson, choose this name. See Bonatz, 2021: 73-4. 6 https://zephyrs-odem.de/reviews/detail/melechesh-2015-377/, last accessed 21 Jan. 2021. 3

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Figure 1: Cover of Melechesh’s album Enki (© Nuclear Blast).

role. However, for Melechesh and all the other Sumerian/Mesopotamian Metal bands, historical figures of the ancient Near East are not of interest. It is obvious that they look for the mystical side of the ancient Near East, which they equate with their often self-produced image of being occultist, blasphemous, or satanic. Assyria is absent from this discourse. Yet, in the imagery of the album covers, Assyrian motifs can be very present. The cover of Melechesh’s album Enki, for example, shows a picture overloaded with apotropaic motifs and symbols of glory (Figure 1). From a tunnel that leads to the source of the light, as in the Gilgamesh epic, rises an oversized Fatima hand. Its apparition is flanked by two rows of guardian figures consisting of Persian soldiers and Assyrian bird-genii. The guardians stand in front of Persepolis columns with animal protome capitals topped by statues of the Assyrian Lamassu and Persian monsters. The name Enki flashes in golden letters between two Ishtar stars, while the name of the band, written in Gothic style, is held up by two, winged lion monsters, which are borrowed from the representation on reliefs in the Ninurta temple in Nimrud. These images of supernatural creatures taken from the monumental art of the Assyrian and Persian palaces are nowhere addressed in the lyrics of the songs. They have a 94

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Figure 2: The ‘Babylonian Court’ of the Hollywood & Highland complex in Los Angeles – Hollywood (© Shutterstock).

purely illustrative function for the self-defined image of the band. They are decontextualized and newly arranged in a fantastic composition that alludes to what is thought to be divine, magic, demonic, and mysterious. In this way, the image on the cover frames the poetic conception of the god Enki, who is honoured with this album, but it does not say anything about Assyria. Herein lies the crucial point of ignorance, which is symptomatic of other receptions, reaching back from today to beginning of the 20th century. Similar displaced Assyrian motifs appear in completely different contexts. In the centre of Hollywood stands the huge Hollywood & Highland Center (Figure 2), a shopping and entertainment mall, which also hosts the Dolby Theatre where the annual Oscar award ceremony takes place. The complex was opened in 2001 and is one of the main tourism attractions of Los Angeles’ glamourous movie city. Visitors to the venue at the intersection of Hollywood & Highland inevitably have to face the high gate connected with the massive threestory courtyard of the complex. The white inlaid decoration on its façade depicts a frontally posed Assyrian apkallu with human head to the left and a bird apkallu rendered in profile to the right. Both figures flank the Assyrian ‘sacred’ tree and stand below a pomegranate frieze. To the right of this curiously decorated gate is another eye-catching monument: a white and thick puffy column topped with the statue of a large squatting elephant. Everyone passing this court of the Hollywood & Highland complex can view these exotic elements, but it is hard to imagine that anyone would recognize their origin and meaning. The meaning of the 95

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Figure 3: Scene from the Babylonian Episode in D.W. Griffiths silent movie Intolerance (Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills Archive, New York).

Assyrian motifs and of the white elephant placed on a column in the context of a shopping and entertainment mall is hard to figure out at all. Only insiders of Hollywood’s cinematic history may know the source for this strange architectural and pictorial accoutrement. It is borrowed from David Wark Griffith’s monumental silent movie Intolerance, released in 1916. The story of Intolerance, which in its time was the most expensive movie production ever realized, includes the long so-called Babylonian Episode. The architectural setting of this episode was meant to be the palace of Babylon, for which an incredibly expensive movie set was built in Hollywood. The gate with the Assyrian decorations and the column with the white elephant in the Hollywood & Highland Center are copied one-to-one from this movie set (Figure 3), and so the court in the modern complex was named ‘Babylonian Court’ as a reference to this movie. In result, the ‘Babylonian Court’ of the Hollywood & Highland intersection is built on the imagery of a Babylonian palace in Griffith’s movie. That this imagery, however, was created from motifs and elements that are by no means authentic for a Babylonian palace was obviously neither important for the making of the movie nor for the construction of the ‘Babylonian Court’ in a shopping and entertainment complex. The Assyrian motifs used in this context, of course, do not stand for Assyria. They were just adopted to underpin an atmosphere or aura that apparently was perceived as oriental, including aspects of mysticism, resembling 96

Assyria, Where Are You the inspirations that lie behind the eclectic design of the cover of Melechesh’s Enki album. For the movie Intolerance, such decontextualizing adaptions are still meaningful, because they helped to reproduce the orientalising cliché of Babylon,7 but in the context of Hollywood & Highland, they are completely meaningless. It is understandable that the architects of the ‘Babylonian Court’, the team Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn, wanted to pay homage to a movie that is considered a milestone in Hollywood’s cinematic history.8 However, for contemporary consumers, this homage apparently lacks any historical or aesthetic fascination.9 At the time of the writing of this paper, the new owners of the Hollywood & Highland mall are making plans to demolish the ‘Babylonian Court’ and to replace its unattractive architectural elements with new ones in an Art Deco style.10 After the realization of this project, the Assyrian motifs will disappear from Hollywood, but in reality, they were never there, because they were never recognized as Assyrian. Speaking of movies, another milestone piece, The Exorcist, directed by William Friedkin in 1973, literally evoked the image of a Mesopotamian demon, which afterwards became an iconic figure in many other popular culture contexts.11 In the opening scene of this horror movie, the priest and archaeologist Lankester Merrin is called by Bedouins to an ancient ruin site in the Near East, where he first discovers the stone amulet of a Pazuzu head together with a silver medal of St. Joseph. Later, when he returns to the site, he is suddenly confronted with a large Pazuzu statue. The demon uncovered in the prologue of the movie later takes possession of a twelve-year-old child. The desperate mother calls Merrin and another priest for help. In their struggle to exorcise the demon, both priests perish. The name Pazuzu is not mentioned in the movie, but from its representations in the plot, it has become an emblematic name for this and the following adaptions of The Exorcist. Both the Pazuzu amulet and the statue shown in the opening scene are copies of originals kept in the Louvre and British Museums, among other locations. The models for the statue in the movie, of course, were much smaller statuettes made of bronze. Such objects were produced mainly in Assyria during the 9th-7th centuries BC, when they had a protective function to act against evil, especially against the child-murdering Lamashtu.12 The Pazuzu in its contemporary Assyrian context is an ambivalent demon, being protective on the one hand, but destructive on the other, because as the demon of the southwest wind, he brings drought and famine and causes plagues of locust. The Pazuzu of The Exorcist, however, is a one-sidedly evil manifestation.

Compare Heilmann 2004 and Seymour 2015. The inspiration came from the well-known writer Ray Bradbury, whom the planning group of the Hollywood & Highland complex consulted. In an interview, Bradbury explains his fascination with the Babylonian movie set in Griffith’s Intolerance, which was still visible to the public in Hollywood long after the release of the movie. https:// www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/29/the-pomegranate-architect/, last accessed 16 Jan. 2021. 9 Already in 2007, the Curbed L.A. online magazine named the Hollywood & Highland Center the ‘winner’ of their Ugliest Building in Los Angeles contest. 10 https://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2020/08/05/hollywood-highland-100-million-redesign-newname.html, last accessed 16 Jan. 2021. 11 Examples given in Verderame 2020: 161. The Exorcist is not the first movie featuring the demon Pazuzu or other Mesopotamian demons, but it is obvious that the representation in this movie was the most influential for any later receptions. On this and in general, see Verderame 2020. Also the ‘Pazuzu – Exorcist’ entry in Wikipedia has a long list of reception in popular culture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazuzu_(The_Exorcist), last access 20 Jan. 2021. 12 Heeßel 2002. 7 8

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Dominik Bonatz The excavation scenery at the beginning of the movie is the starting point to explain to viewers the pre-Christian and primordial origin of the demon.13 The actual setting of this scene, the ruins of the Parthian site Hatra in northern Iraq, however, distorts the fact that in William Peter Blatty’s bestselling novel, on which the film is based, ancient Nineveh is explicitly described as the location of the excavation that re-awaked Pazuzu. In the movie, there is only one parenthetical reference to Nineveh, when the cardinal speaking to the president of the university in Georgetown says about Merrin: ‘I think I read he was working on a dig around Nineveh.’ Although it is understandable that the producers of the movie found it more attractive to use the spectacular ruins of Hatra for the background of an excavation scene than the ruins on Tell Kuyunjik in Nineveh or in Nimrud, which are difficult for outsiders to interpret, the choice nevertheless underlines that Assyria was never in mind, despite the clear reference to an Assyrian-created Pazuzu image. Instead, the image stands for the idea of a pre-Christian demon that can parallel the Christian idea of Satan, who also has the power to possess people and therefore needs to be expelled by exorcism. That this type of evil demon originates somewhere in the dark history of the Near East or Mesopotamia is a typical Western East-West thinking. The dichotomy has contributed to the interest in ancient Mesopotamian demonology since the 19th century, which is being revived in the contemporary popular culture because for certain subcultures, like the aforementioned Dark and Black Metal scene, it can be very fashionable to be dark, occult, or anti-Christian. In such contexts, there is no interest and no need to distinguish places of origin. Assyria in particular seems to have absolutely no value as a point of reference. In the popular reception, demons like Pazuzu originate from Babylonian or Sumerian thinking or more generally from the ancient Mesopotamian world, which is not perceived as a historical, but as a mystical place. Perhaps, and this argument has to be reconsidered at the end of this paper, Assyria appears too historical, and this makes it unattractive for reception in popular culture. There is another genre in which Mesopotamian gods, monsters, and Gilgamesh are exploited with enthusiasm. In videogames such as Destiny, Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry, the Fate series, Megami Tensei, Mystic Quest: Legend, and the Tekken series, Ishtar, Marduk, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Pazuzu, and Lilith act in fantastic transformations together with figures from Egyptian, ancient Greek, and Nordic mythologies. Characters from Assyria are missing in this genre, which is not surprising, because it developed from the imaginings in post-World War I pulp literature. Here, the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the inventor of the Necronomicon, had the greatest impact on later reception in horror and fantasy subgenres.14 Lovecraft’s interests were in divine and demonic characters from ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the biblical Levant. For example, the Philistine legend of Dagon, the fish-god, inspired him to produce one of his pulp-fiction periodicals (since 1919). Later authors of the horror and science fiction genre added new characters from the mystical world of the ancient Near East, such as Pazuzu in The Exorcist and Gilgamesh, who especially fit the imagery of the Heroic Fantasy series launched by the pulp-fiction author Robert E. Howard since the late 1920s.15 Specific characters from Assyria never found their way into these rapidly developing popular culture genres or if they appear in theory, like Pazuzu and Ishtar, they are definitely not associated with Assyria. However, more striking than this easily explainable fact is the absence of Assyria in digital games that claim to have a didactic purpose. The series starts with the text-based strategy Verderame 2020: 166-8. McGeough 2015c: 373-86. 15 Turri 2020: 201. 13 14

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Assyria, Where Are You game Hamurabi (1968) and has continued recently with the browser games Trade Empires (2001), Sumerians (2020), Nebuchadnezzar (2020), and Mesopotamia (2020), in which the players interact with landscapes and architecture borrowed from Babylon and Uruk. In the strategy game Sumerian Blood: Gilgamesh against the God (2018), the opposing parties are Gilgamesh and his Sumerian soldiers on the one side and the Sumerian god Anu and his divine army on the other side. It is a significant phenomenon that in these increasingly popular history games, Assyria does not play a role, especially because its magnificent art and architecture, and the imaginings of so many different characters ranging from the king and his army to gods and monsters, would in theory provide ideal sources for 3D modelling in the world of computer games. I am not speaking here about educational systems, because they are not part of the popular culture, but in general, the conclusion would be the same: While something about Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Babylon might be imparted, there is nothing about Assyria. Yet, this observation would be less remarkable if the previous century in Europe had not produced quite a different and vivid reception of the Assyrian heritage, which might have been not as intense as the Egyptomania of this period, but still notable for its widespread diffusion in non-academic contexts.16 After the first steps in the archaeological rediscovery of ancient Mesopotamia in the second half of the 19th century, it was not Babylonia, but Assyria that stimulated a lot of curiosity and perceptions outside of the academic community. The monuments from the Assyrian palaces, which were transferred to the Louvre and the British Museum, immediately became an attraction and were controversially discussed on an academic museum level, as well as a lay public level.17 Apart from the colonial and national discourse, in which these monuments were used to underline European hegemony over the Near East and its past,18 independent artists and intellectuals welcomed them as a source of new aesthetic inspirations. In September 1853, the actor and director Charles Kean staged for the first time his version of Lord Byron’s lyrical tragedy Sardanapalus from 1821 at the Royal Princess Theatre in London. The stage design of this successful play was explicitly based on the archaeological finds; for Kean it was a ‘historically authentic journey into the past.’19 The theatre set was paralleled by the new Crystal Palace Exhibition in Sydenham, London, which included an ‘Assyrian Court’ based on the finds from Khorsabad and Nimrud.20 As a tourist attraction, the Crystal Palace Exhibition probably contributed even more to the popularity of Assyrian themes and motifs than the display of the original Assyrian monuments in Europe’s great museums. Postcards showing the ‘Assyrian Court’ were sent around the world and transmitted a vivid and colourful picture of Assyrian architecture (Figure 4). In the same vein, the success of Kean’s Sardanapalus production seems to have encouraged the maître Paolo Taglioni to compose his monumental ballet Sardanapal, which premiered in the Royal Opera Berlin in 1865, followed by 106 more productions in Berlin and nearly the same number of productions at the Court Theatre of the Vienna State Opera.21

McGeough 2015a; 2015b; 2015c. McGeough 2015b: 104-65. Bohrer 2003. 19 Hartmann 2020: 86. 20 McGeough 2015b: 325-36. 21 Iden 1997. 16 17 18

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Figure 4. Postcard showing a diorama of the ‘Assyrian Court’ in the Crystal Palace, London, 1851 (Courtesy of The Paul J. Getty Museum).

Public plays and installations were accompanied by artistic perceptions in the visual arts. The French painter Gustave Courbet was fascinated by the strict formal compositions of the Assyrian reliefs and remodelled their principles in a series of his most famous paintings.22 Courbet also portrayed himself with an ‘Assyrian beard’ and triggered a beard fashion, which was popular for a while among the Bohemian artists in Paris.23 The Pre-Raphaelites in England also became interested in Assyrian art and themes from Assyrian history. In 1850, Dante Gabriel Rossetti devoted a long poem, The Burden of Nineveh to the Lamassu sculptures, which he saw in the British Museum; and Ford Madox Brown painted The Dream of Sardanapalus in 1871. The lion hunt reliefs of Ashurbanipal inspired Frederick Arthur Bridgman and Briton Rivière to a series of historical paintings; and in the highly prized paintings by the genre and history painter Edwin Long, Assyrian elements borrowed from the sculptures displayed in the British Museum served as the background for historical scenes, which, however, were freely associated with different Mesopotamian settings, such as the famous Babylonian Marriage Market from 1875.24 Thus, in theory, the popularity of Assyrian motifs in England, France, and Germany at the end of the 19th century could have been the point of departure for continuous reception in the 20th century. However, development and interests obviously went in another direction. The monumental pantomime Sardanapal, staged in 1908 at the Royal Opera Berlin, was indeed the last popular event that tried to rely on an Assyrian theme. Yet, as is well known, the project, to which the German Emperor Wilhelm II paid so much attention, completely flopped. The public and international criticism, too, was very harsh; the play was condemned as absolutely Alexander 1965. In a letter to his friend Champfleury, Courbet describes his self-portrait L’Atelier du Peintre (1845/55) as representing ‘moi peignant avec le coté assyrien de ma tête’ (me painting with the Assyrian side of my head). (Huyghe, Bazin and Adhémar 1944: 23-4). 24 For the archaeologically inspired paintings of Ford Madox Brown, Edwin Long, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, and Briton Rivière see Bohrer 2003: 194-206 and McGeough 2015: 69-72. 22 23

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Assyria, Where Are You uninteresting, a ‘museum theatre of historicism’, and after only three performances, it was cancelled from the repertoire and never performed again since then.25 The fiasco of the pantomime Sardanapal reveals quite a lot about the shift in the popular perception of Assyria. Apart from the failing attempt to deprive Lord Byron’s tragedy of its speech by staging it as a silent ‘great historical pantomime’, the message of the story was by no means adequate to what the intellectual public was willing to take in by that time. The aim of Wilhelm II and his academic advisors, especially Friedrich Delitzsch, to rehabilitate the bad moral reputation of the allegedly last Assyrian king by referring to historical authenticity, stands against the background of the German emperor’s own admiration for Antiquity, from which he drew justification for the Hohenzollern monarchy.26 But an emancipated theatre and art scene had to radically refuse the visualization of a historical account that was weighed down with intellectualism and didacticism.27 After World War I, Assyria never re-entered popular arts and cultures. As stated above, the few citations of Assyrian motifs are only illustrative clichés of a mysterious oriental past without any reference to an actual Assyrian past. The contemporary artworks of Fred Parhad and Michael Rakowitz may to certain degree contradict this argument, but in the end, they are personal statements of community affiliations, i.e., Parhad’s modern Assyrian community in the USA, or political statements, i.e., Rakowitz’s critique of the destruction of the Assyrian and Babylonian heritage in Iraq.28 I would therefore maintain that Assyria is disregarded in popular modern and post-modern reception of the ancient Near East. And this is in contrast to Babylonia, which since the early 20th century has inspired perceptions in architecture, literature, theatres, movies, comics and mangas, computer games, and music, mainly in the aforementioned Dark/Black/Thrash Metal scene. This fact is surprising, because the history, culture, and religion of the Assyrian Empire could actually be an outstandingly rich source of popular culture reception. Assyrian monumental art is aesthetically and thematically extremely catchy. Its worldwide display in well-known museums attracts crowds of visitors, and in theory, picture books would have the potential to reach broader audiences beyond academic circles. Most recently, the 2019 exhibition ‘I am Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria’ in the British Museum brought this Assyrian king (who was one of the models for the legendary Sardanapalus) and his period to the attention of the public. Furthermore, the destruction of the Assyrian monuments in Nineveh by ISIS forces in 2016 was an event communicated worldwide in the public and social media. Yet, it is not foreseeable that these events will significantly change the awareness and perceptions of Assyria in popular culture. Is there any reason why? Cultural memories can depend strictly on authorships that, at a certain moment in history, gained the authority to write history and to create images that last forever. In the case of Analyzed in detail in Hartmann 2020. Wilhelm’s II legitimizing view of ancient oriental rulership is later clearly expressed in his book Das Königtum im alten Mesopotamien, published in 1939. 27 Hartmann 2020: 99-102. 28 For Rakowitz, see Chi and Azara 2015, including a selection of his earlier artworks. Recent works include the monumental sculpture of an Assyrian Lamassu titled The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, which was displayed in 2018 on Trafalgar Square in London. Fred Parhad is known for his realistic Assyrian sculptures, especially the statue of Ashurbanipal commissioned by the Assyrian community and erected as a present to the city of San Francisco in front of the Asian Art Museum in 1988. 25 26

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Dominik Bonatz Assyria, it is well known that the Babylonian interlude after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire obscured the memory of this outstanding state apparatus. The biblical account shaped by the Assyrian and Babylonian oppressions of Judah and Israel and the Jewish exile in Babylon, but even more than that, the writings of ancient Greek and Roman authors such as Herodotus, Ctesias, Diodorus, and Strabo shaped a negative image of the barbarian East, in which aspects of Assyria were confused with Babylonia. For example, the prototype of the wicked and despotic oriental king was created with the image of Sardanapalus, presented as the last Assyrian king. Despite the bad reputation of this king that survived the centuries, the Romantic movement of the early 19th century interestingly discovered quite a different aspect in this legendary personage. In Lord Byron’s lyric tragedy, he becomes an Epicurean king who, depressed by his duties to govern by force, war, and suppression, changed to devote himself to the arts and other pleasures.29 The climax of the plot with the suicide of Sardanapalus and his favourite concubine appears in Byron’s tale as the sensible reaction of an individual who escaped his overbearing fate of behaving like an oriental despot. Eugéne Delacroix’s famous painting The Death of Sardanapalus, which was first presented in the Parisian Salon in 1828, partly relied on Byron’s romantic interpretation of Sardanapalus, but also transferred it to a scene of veritable butchery.30 The image of the king absentmindedly lying on his bed is contrasted with the violent murder of the naked concubines and a white horse. An overarching erotic atmosphere suffuses the whole scene, which has encouraged a series of psychoanalytic, feminist, and postcolonial critiques. The rendering of Sardanapalus indeed provokes ambivalent readings: it is the voluptuous portrayal of a tragic figure, but also conveys the anti-absolutist message of a Romantic painter.31 In what followed, it is understandable that the tragic and ambivalent character of Sardanapalus was recycled in the theatre and ballet plays of Kean, Taglioni, and other 19th century plays32 and in the painting of Ford Madox Brown. From a contemporary perspective, this character anticipated the intellectual sentiments of the Fin de Siècle, the mood favouring escapism, decadence, and dandyism, until everything changed with the trauma of World War I. In this context, the Wilhelminic staging of Sardanapal and its historical ‘correctness’ were already out of date. In this play, Assyria was presented as monarchic, militaristic, and technocratic. This negative image survived in modern contexts after World War I and in the post-modern followup to World War II. It apparently represents nothing that attracts popular mainstream or antimainstream culture. Assyria and its cultural achievements need not be part of the Western popular culture, but it is symptomatic that Assyria has never been recognized as a cultural entity outside of the academic fields of Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology. If, at all, it falls in the category of ancient Oriental or Mesopotamian, or it is confused with Babylonian. Even though the Assyrian Empire was by long the greatest political, cultural, economic, and religious complex in the Ancient World, its popular image is reduced to the image of a violent militaristic state, or the ‘Assyrian Monster’, following Arnold Toynbee’s harsh judgment.33 Assyria is not recognized as an ancient cultural and mythological place like Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Sumer. The latter include aspects of pagan religion, mythology, demonology, astrology, and super-heroism (Gilgamesh) that are timeless and thus attract E.g., Oppel 1976 and Hartmann 2020: 84-9. Lambertson 2002: 67-8. 31 See especially Lambertson 2002. 32 McGeough 2015b: 112-25. 33 As such described In Toynbee’s Study of History, Volume I, from 1946. 29 30

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Assyria, Where Are You reception in popular culture. Assyria, in contrast, is perceived as imperialistic, bureaucratic, and propagandistic. In general, it appears to be more historical than fictional. Therefore, Assyria apparently has no sex appeal for subculture enthusiasts who may find sources of inspiration and valuable information in easily accessible editions, such as Stephanie Dalley’s Myths from Mesopotamia, but obviously not in books on Assyria’s history, religion, and art. Although there is no reason for ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and Assyriology to persuade practitioners of popular culture genres to adopt motifs and themes from ancient Assyria in their repertoire of fantasies of the ancient Near East, there should nevertheless be concern about its neglect in non-academic discourses. A ‘Choreography of Horror’ was the title of an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel published in March 2016 that unfolded a voyeuristic picture of a brutal nation.34 Evidently, Assyria has to offer a bit more than this image. But who knows that?35 Bibliography Alexander, R.L. 1965. Courbet and Assyrian Sculpture. The Art Bulletin 47/ 4: 446-52. Bohrer, F. 2003. Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bonatz, D. 2021. Marduk rockt Black Metal, Death Metal und die Vorstellung des Alten Orient in der Gegenwart, in M. Herles et al. (eds), Von Syrien bis Georgien – durch die Steppen Vorderasiens. Festschrift für Felix Blocher anlässlich seines 65. Geburtstages (marru 13): 719. Münster: Zaphon. Chi, J. and P. Azara (eds). 2015. From Ancient to Modern. Archaeology and Aesthetics. New York: Institute of the Study of the Ancient World, New York University and Princeton University Press. Garcia Ventura, A. and L. Verderame (eds). 2020. Receptions of the Ancient Near East in Popular Culture and Beyond. Atlanta, GA: Lockwood Press. Hartmann, V. 2020. When Imitation Became Reality: The Historical Pantomime Sardanapal (1908) at the Royal Opera of Berlin, in A. Garcia Ventura and L. Verderame (eds), Receptions of the Ancient Near East in Popular Culture and Beyond: 83-104. Atlanta, GA: Lockwood Press. Heeßel, N.P. 2002. Pazuzu. Archäologische und philologische Studien zu einem altorienta- lischen Dämon. Leiden, Boston and Cologne: Brill and Styx. Heilmann, R. 2004. Paradigma Babylon: Rezeption und Visualisierung des Alten Orients im Spielfilm: Ein Beitrag der Vorderasiatischen Archäologie zur Orientalismus-Forschung. Fachbereich 15: Philologie III. Mainz. https://openscience.ub.unimainz.de/bitstream/20.500.12030/3260/1/1881. pdf. Huyghe, R., G. Bazin and H.J. Adhémar. 1944. Courbet; l’Atelier du Peintre; allégorie réelle, 1855, Paris: Éditions des Musées Nationaux: Librairie Plon Paris. Iden, R. 1997. Taglioni: Sardanapal. Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters 6: 242-4. Lambertson, J.P. 2002. Delacroix’s ‘Sardanapalus’, Champmartin’s ‘Janissaries’ and Liberalism in the Late Restoration. Oxford Art Journal 25/2: 67-85.

https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelgeschichte/d-143772045.html, last accessed 22 Jan. 2021. Several issues brought up in this paper were discussed with students in a seminar held in the summer semester 2020 at the Freie Universität Berlin. I am most thankful for the student’s contributions, which gave me many inspirations to reflect on the reception of the ancient Near East in different genres of popular culture. The essays of the students are currently collected and will be published in a forthcoming volume. 34 35

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Dominik Bonatz McGeough, K. 2015a. The Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth Century: Appreciations and Appropriations; I. Claiming and Conquering (Hebrew Bible Monographs 67). Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. McGeough, K. 2015b. The Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth Century: Appreciations and Appropriations; II. Collecting, Constructing, and Curating (Hebrew Bible Monographs 68). Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. McGeough 2015c. The Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth Century: Appreciations and Appropriations; III. Fantasy and Alternative Histories (Hebrew Bible Monographs 69). Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Oppel, H. 1976. George Gordon Lord Byron: Sardanapalus, in H. Kosok (ed.), Das englische Drama im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert: Interpretationen: 170-83. Berlin: Schmidt. Rosa, D.F. 2020. Ye Go to Thy Abzu: How Norwegian Black Metal Used Mesopotamian References, Where It Took Them From, and How It Usually Got Them Wrong, in A. Garcia Ventura and L. Verderame (eds.), Receptions of the Ancient Near East in Popular Culture and Beyond: 105-16. Atlanta, GA: Lockwood Press. Seymour, M. 2015. The Babylon of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, in M.G. Morcillo, P. Hanesworth and Ó.L. Marchena (eds), Imagining Ancient Cities in Film. From Babylon to Cinecittà (Routledge Studies in Ancient History): 18-34. New York, Abingdon: Routledge. Turri, L. 2020. Gilgamesh, The (Super)Hero, in A. Garcia Ventura and L. Verderame (eds), Receptions of the Ancient Near East in Popular Culture and Beyond: 197-216. Atlanta, GA: Lockwood Press. Verderame, L. 2020. Evil from an Ancient Past and the Archaeology of the Beyond: An Analysis of the Movies The Exorcist (1973) and The Evil Dead (1981), in A. Garcia Ventura and L. Verderame (eds), Receptions of the Ancient Near East in Popular Culture and Beyond: 159-80. Atlanta, GA: Lockwood Press.

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‘I opened eight gates’: Revisiting the Identification of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s City Gates Jamie Novotny1 Abstract When the eighth-century-BC Assyrian king Sargon II (r. 721-705 BC) constructed his new administrative capital, Dūr-Šarrukīn (‘Fort Sargon’; modern Khorsabad), he modelled the city’s general plan on Babylon, which was rectangular in shape and had two gates on each stretch of wall. Seven of those entrances, as well as two entryways into the citadel, have been excavated. Because there is no one-to-one correlation between Sargon’s inscriptions and available archaeological evidence, scholars have forwarded several proposals about the identifications of the eight gates recorded in inscriptions with the excavated gates. This paper will examine and evaluate those suggestions. Keywords Assyria, Dūr-Šarrukīn, East, Khorsabad, Sargon II

Three Akkadian royal inscriptions recording the construction of the city Dūr-Šarrukīn (modern Khorsabad) state that Sargon II (r. 721-705 BC) had a 16,280-cubit-long wall, together with eight city gates, constructed.2 In a text inscribed on at least twenty-five pairs of humanheaded bull colossi flanking the monumental gateways of Sargon’s newly-constructed capital, the king boasts:3 I made the length of its wall 16,280 cubits and I made its foundation secure upon (blocks of) massive mountain (stone).4 In front and in back, on both sides, facing the The paper presented in this volume is thematically-similar to the orally-presented paper that I gave during the ‘Assyrian Day’ symposium on January 9th, 2020, in honor of Paolo Matthiae’s eightieth birthday. In lieu of a revised, moderately updated version of the discussion of the eighteen city gates of Sennacherib’ Nineveh, I thought that it might be more interesting/appropriate to address the issue of identifying the eight gates of Sargon II’s DūrŠarrukīn, especially since a new edition of that eighth-century-BC ruler’s inscriptions has just been published (Frame 2021). I thank the editors of this volume (Davide Nadali, Lorenzo Nigro and Frances Pinnock) for kindly allowing me to substitute papers at the eleventh hour. Support for my research on Assyrian (and Babylonian) inscriptions is provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (through the establishment of the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East in 2015) and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Historisches Seminar - Abteilung Alte Geschichte). I would like to thank Karen Radner for reading through and commenting on a draft of this manuscript. Her time and care are greatly appreciated. Any errors or omissions are solely my responsibility. Because this topic was recently addressed (Reade 2019: 85-6; Sollee 2020: 137-8), footnotes and bibliography are kept to a minimum. Interested readers should consult the two aforementioned works for further information. 2 Frame 2021: 159-60 Sargon II 8 lines 40b-49a, 170 Sargon II 9 lines 79b-92a, and 230 Sargon II 43 lines 65-71. Openaccess editions of the Sargon corpus are accessible at http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap2/corpus/. 3 Translation adapted from Frame 2021: 170 Sargon II 9 lines 79b-92a. 4 The length of the wall is recorded as 16,280 cubits: ŠÁR ŠÁR ŠÁR ŠÁR GÉŠ.U GÉŠ.U GÉŠ.U 1 UŠ 1½ NINDA 2 KÙŠ (Sargon 8-9) and ŠÁR ŠÁR ŠÁR ŠÁR GÉŠ.U GÉŠ.U GÉŠ.U 1 UŠ 3 qa-ni 2 KÙŠ (Sargon II 43-44). In the latter two inscriptions, the number is reported to have been ni-bit MU-ia (literally ‘the saying/pronunciation of my name’). As Grant Frame (2021) has recently pointed out ‘various proposals have been made by scholars over the years to explain how this would work, none has been convincing, although, as noted by Fuchs and other scholars, a connection between the sign ŠÁR and the first part of Sargon’s name (šarru) would seem likely’. For further details, see, for example, Fuchs 1994: 294-5 n. 88; De Odorico 1995: 140-1; Pearce 1996: 462; and Radner 2005: 130-1. Michael Roaf and 1

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Figure 1. Annotated CORONA satellite image (August 16, 1968) of Khorsabad showing the locations of the decorated and undecorated city gates and citadel gates (The plan of Dūr-Šarrukīn laid over the satellite image was adapted from Loud and Altman 1938: pl. 69).

four directions,5 I opened eight gates (in the city wall). Then, I named the gate(s) of the gods Šamaš and Adad that face the east ‘The God Šamaš Is the One Who Makes Me Triumph’ (Šamaš-mušakšid-ernittīya) (and) ‘The God Adad Is the One Who Establishes My Prosperity’ (Adad-mukīn-ḫegallīya) (respectively).6 I called the gate(s) of the god Enlil and the goddess Mullissu that face the north ‘The God Enlil Is the One Who Establishes the Foundation of My City’ (Enlil-mukīn-išdī-alīya) (and) ‘The Goddess Mullissu Is the One Who Restores Abundance’ (Mullissu-muddišat-ḫiṣbi) (respectively). I made the name(s) of the gate(s) of the god Anu and the goddess Ištar that face the west ‘The God Anu Is the One Who Makes My Undertakings Successful’ (Anu-mušallim-epšēt-qātīya) (and) ‘The Goddess Ištar Is the One Who Makes Its People Flourish’ (Ištar-mušammeḫat-nišīšu) (respectively). I pronounced the names of the gate(s) of the god Ea and the goddess Bēlet-ilī that face the south (to be) ‘The God Ea Is the One Who Keeps Its Spring(s) in Good Order’ (Ea-muštēšir-nagbīšu) (and) ‘The Goddess Bēlet-ilī Is the One Who Increases Martin Worthington are also preparing studies on this subject. 5 Sargon II 8 and 9 have mé-eḫ-ret 4 IM.MEŠ (‘facing the four directions’), while Sargon II 43 has mé-eḫ-ret 8 IM.MEŠ (‘facing the eight directions’). See below for further details. 6 The name of the Adad Gate in Sargon II 8 and 9 is Adad-mukīn-ḫegallīya (‘The God Adad Is the One Who Establishes My Prosperity’), but Adad-mukīn-ḫegallīšu (‘The God Adad Is the One Who Establishes His Prosperity’) in Sargon II 43.

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‘I opened eight gates’: Revisiting the Identification of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s City Gates Its (Animals’) Offspring’ (Bēlet-ilī-murappišat-talittīšu) (respectively). Its (city) wall was (called) ‘The God Aššur Is the One Who Prolongs the Reign of Its Royal Builder (and) Protects His Troops’ (Aššur-mušalbir-palê-šarri-ēpišīšu-nāṣir-ummānīšu).7 Its outer wall was (called) ‘The God Ninurta Is the One Who Establishes the Foundation of His City for (All) Days to Come’ (Ninurta-mukīn-temmēn-ālišu-ana-labār-ūmē-rūqūti).8 As recently noted by Alexander Sollee, the identification of the city gates at Khorsabad with the eight gates mentioned in Sargon’s descriptions of the construction of Dūr-Šarrukīn has not yet been satisfactorily resolved by scholars.9 This is in part due to the fact that only seven of the eight city gates have been discovered,10 which has had scholars proposing different solutions for the whereabouts of the eighth gate, as well as in part due to the fact that the directions of the four winds (east, north, west, south) do not correspond to the modern cardinal directions, but rather follow a ‘solar orientation’,11 that is, east (Akk. šadû) can be southeast and northeast, north (ištānu) can be northeast and northwest, west (Akk. amurru) can be northwest and southwest, and south (Akk. šūtu) can be southwest and southeast.12 Moreover, in addition to this two-fold problem, Sollee has raised the possibility that the sequence of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s city gates might not have been listed in topographical order (in a counterclockwise direction), suggesting that the gates with ideologically-connoted names those dedicated to Šamaš, Enlil, Anu, and Ea - and the portals with providing-for-the-people names - those named after Adad, Mullissu, Ištar, and Bēlet-ilī - should be identified respectively as Khorsabad’s decorated gates (Gates 1, 3, 6, Citadel Gate B) and undecorated gates (Gates 2, 4, 5, 7).13 Given the absence of a one-to-one correlation between Sargon’s inscriptions and the present archaeological evidence, none of the previous suggestions about the identifications of the city gates of Sargon’s new administrative capital can be fully supported and, thus, there might be at least one more possible alternative.14 This short paper will briefly explore another possible option for the proposed identifications of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s eight city gates. Before diving into the new suggested identifications, let me first present the proposals of Andreas Fuchs, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Julian Reade, and Alexander Sollee.15

In Sargon II 8 and 9, the name of the city wall (dūru) is Aššur-mušalbir-palê-šarri-ēpišīšu-nāṣir-ummānīšu (‘The God Aššur Is the One Who Prolongs the Reign of Its Royal Builder (and) Protects His Troops’). In Sargon II 43, it is given the Akkadian ceremonial name Aššur-mulabbir-palê-šarri-ēpišīšu-nāṣir-perʾīšu (‘The God Aššur Is the One Who Prolongs the Reign of Its Royal Builder (and) Protects His Offspring’). 8 The name of the outer/lower wall (šalḫû) is Ninurta-mukīn-temmēn-ālišu-ana-labār-ūmē-rūqūti (‘The God Ninurta Is the One Who Establishes the Foundation of His City for (All) Days to Come’) in Sargon II 8 and 9, and Ninurta-mukīntemmēn-adušši-ana-labār-ūmē-rūqūti (‘The God Ninurta Is the One Who Establishes the Foundation of the Wall for (All) Days to Come’) in Sargon II 43. 9 Sollee 2020: 137-8. 10 This issue was most recently addressed in Reade 2019: 85-6 and Sollee 2020: 137-8. 11 Tallqvist 1928: 129. See also Neumann 1977: 1051-3; Tallqvist 1928: 146 n. 2; and Wiggermann 2007: 127-8, 133-4. 12 See below for further information about the orientation of Akk. šadû, ištānu, amurru, and šūtu. 13 Sollee 2020: 138 (with fig. 130); see also Figure 3 below. See also Halama 2011: 279. 14 This non-traditional arrangement of the gates was already suggested by Laura Battini (1998). Unfortunately, her proposals about the identifications of the gates have not made their way into more recent scholarly discussions on the matter. 15 Fuchs 1994: 295 nn. 91, 94; Pongratz-Leisten 1994: 30 and 33 fig. 3; Reade 2019: 85-6; and Sollee 2020: 137-8. More recently, Yamada (2020: 94-8) has followed Fuchs’ proposed identifications and Frame (2021: 31, 34), in his discussion of Sargon’s building activities, has followed the proposed identifications of the gates suggested by Reade, who in turn follows the arrangement proposed by Fuchs. See also Novák 1999: 148. 7

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Figure 2. Annotated CORONA satellite image (August 16, 1968) of Khorsabad showing the proposed identifications of the city gates suggested by Fuchs, Pongratz-Leisten, and Reade.

Andreas Fuchs, like most scholars, has suggested that the eight gates mentioned by Sargon in his inscriptions are listed sequentially, in topographical order, in a counterclockwise direction, exactly as the king records.16 Based on the orientation of the ruins of the walls of Khorsabad, he interpreted šadû, ištānu, amurru, and šūtu respectively as northeast, northwest, southwest, and southeast,17 and, thus, regarded the Šamaš Gate as Gate 1, the Adad Gate as Gate 2, the Enlil Gate as a hitherto undiscovered gate on the western side of the citadel,18 the Mullissu Gate as Gate 7, the Anu Gate as Gate 6, the Ištar Gate as Gate 5, the Ea Gate as Gate 4, and the Bēlet-ilī Gate as Gate 3 (see Figure 2 above).19 According to Fuchs, the decorated gates would have been dedicated to Adad, Anu, and Bēlet-ilī and the undecorated gates would have been Fuchs 1994: 295 nn. 91, 94. Sollee (2020: 138) has recently suggested that the eight gates were not listed sequentially, in topographical order. See below for details. 17 Fuchs (1994: 295, 306, 311) translates šadû, ištānu, amurru, and šūtu respectively as ‘northeast’, ‘northwest’, ‘southwest’, and ‘southeast’, rather than as ‘east’, ‘north’, ‘west’, and ‘south’. This arrangement of the gates goes back at least to Unger 1936: 250. 18 Fuchs (1994: 295 n. 91) describes the location of the Enlil Gate as ‘Neben dem bekannten Tor Nr. 7, dem der Mulissu, vermute ich im Tor des Enlil einen Zugang zur Zitadelle selbst. Schließlich wich sich doch so ein schlauer alter Despot, wie Sargon einer gewesen ist, bestimmt für all Fälle ein Schupfloch nach draußen gesichert haben. In Falle Dūr-Šarruukīns was das schon deshalb ratsam, um bei einer Revolte der zusammengefangen Völkerschaften, die ja die Stadt besiedeln sollten, jederzeit von außen zusätzliche Truppen hereinzubekommen’. 19 Fuchs 1994: 295 n. 94. 16

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‘I opened eight gates’: Revisiting the Identification of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s City Gates named after Šamaš, Enlil, Mullissu, Ištar, and Ea. Julian Reade has recently argued for this same arrangement of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s eight city gates, suggesting that the hitherto missing gate was a postern gate on the southwest side of the citadel, a location that closely matches that of Fuchs.20 In 1994, Beate Pongratz-Leisten also regarded the list of gates recorded in Sargon’s inscriptions as a factual, sequential, counterclockwise enumeration of the city gates.21 Unlike Fuchs, Pongratz-Leisten, started the series of entrances along the southeast wall, rather than the northeast wall, since east (šadû) can also refer to the southeast, and not just to the northeast.22 Based on this ninety-degrees-clockwise shift, Pongratz-Leisten identified the Šamaš Gate as Gate 4, the Adad Gate as Gate 3, the Enlil Gate as Gate 2, the Mullissu Gate as Gate 1, the Anu and Ištar Gates as Gate 7, the Ea Gate as Gate 6, and the Bēlet-ilī Gate as Gate 5 (see Figure 2). Because only one city gate was known/excavated on the northwest wall, the Anu and Ištar Gates appear to have been regarded as being part of one and the same entrance, at least according to her annotated plan of the city. Accordingly, the decorated gates would have been dedicated to Adad, Mullissu, and Ea and the undecorated gates would have been named after Šamaš, Enlil, Anu, Ištar, and Bēlet-ilī. Most recently, in 2020, Alexander Sollee published a detailed re-evaluation of available archaeological and text evidence for the city gates constructed at Dūr-Šarrukīn and he proposed a very different scheme from earlier suggested identifications.23 Unlike Fuchs and PongratzLeisten, Sollee believed that the ordering of the gates recorded in Sargon’s inscriptions did not strictly adhere to the eight entryways’ actual, topographical arrangement, but rather followed a two-tier ideological hierarchy for Dūr-Šarrukīn’s four walls, each of which had two entrances. Gates that he regarded as having ideologically-connoted names, the first portal listed for each direction, he proposed should be identified as the decorated entrances (Gates 1, 3, 6, and Citadel Gate B). Gates that he regarded as bearing names with a topos of providing for the people, the second portal of each entryway pair, he suggested should be identified as the undecorated entrances (Gates 2, 4, 5, and 7). Like Pongratz-Leisten, Sollee believed that the sequence of gates listed by Sargon began on the southeast wall. According to this innovative proposal, he considered the Šamaš Gate as decorated Gate 3, the Adad Gate as undecorated Gate 4, the Enlil Gate as decorated Gate 1, the Mullissu Gate as undecorated Gate 2, the Anu Gate as decorated Citadel Gate B, the Ištar Gate as undecorated Gate 7, the Ea Gate as decorated Gate 6, and the Bēlet-ilī Gate as undecorated Gate 5. According to this proposal, the gates on the southeast and northeast walls do not follow the order presented in Sargon’s inscriptions, but those on the northwest and southwest wall, however, do. Because the northernmost gate on each wall was decorated and the southernmost Reade 2019: 85: ‘Sargon therefore records the existence of an additional gate on the north-west stretch. The line of this part of the wall was interrupted by the projecting platform on which the royal palace stood inside the citadel. Place did not record a gate through the city-wall in this area, but in fact there is ample space for unidentified features all around the eroded edge of the platform. The most likely position for a gate is probably on its south-western side’. Laura Battini (1998: 53, figs. 2-3) also positioned the missing eighth portal on the section of the citadel terrace that projected outside the main city wall, but along the northwest wall; see n. 33 for further details. Pongratz-Leisten (1994: 30) and Sollee (2020: 138 fig. 130) have raised the possibility that one of the northern portals could have been one of the citadel gates. Frame (2021: 31, 34) follows Reade’s proposal for the ‘missing’ eighth city gate. 21 Pongratz-Leisten 1994: 30 and 33 fig. 3. 22 For example, see Frahm 1997: 170 (reproduced below in n. 27). 23 Sollee 2020: 138 (with fig. 130). 20

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Figure 3. Annotated CORONA satellite image (August 16, 1968) of Khorsabad showing the proposed identifications of the city gates suggested by Sollee.

gate on each wall was undecorated, the order for the ideologically-connoted-named Šamaš and Enlil Gates and the providing-for-the-people-named Adad and Mullissu Gates on the east (southeast) and north (northeast) walls presented in Sargon’s inscriptions did not match topographical reality, that is, the sequence did not follow a counterclockwise arrangement. The historical sources order the two sets of entrances as Šamaš, Adad, Enlil, then Mullissu, but the on-the-ground sequence, according to Sollee, should be Adad, Šamaš, Mullissu, then Enlil. If this hypothesis is correct for the šadû-facing and ištānu-oriented entrances, then Sargon’s imagemakers seemingly preferred royal/religious ideology in the descriptions of the construction of Dūr-Šarrukīn to the actual, physical layout of the king’s new capital. This, however, would not be the case for the amurru-oriented and šūtu-facing gateways since the counterclockwise arrangement in Sargon’s inscriptions matched exactly royal/religious ideology and topographical reality. This is because the first gate (the ideologically-connotednamed gate) listed by Sargon’s scribes was the northernmost, decorated gate and the second entryway in each pair (the providing-for-the-people-named gate) was the southernmost, undecorated gate. Therefore, the sequence both in Sargon’s inscriptions and in the physical plan of the city was Anu, Ištar, Ea, Bēlet-ilī. Should Sollee’s proposal prove correct, then his suggested, two-tier gate naming scheme sometimes reflects topographical reality (in the case

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‘I opened eight gates’: Revisiting the Identification of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s City Gates of Gates V-VIII) and sometimes royal/religious ideology (in the case of Gates I-IV). Sollee’s new identifications is tantalizing, but it warrants further investigation. Although one can reasonably argue that the Akkadian ceremonial names of the Šamaš (Šamašmušakšid-ernittīya), Enlil (Enlil-mukīn-išdī-alīya), and Anu (Anu-mušallim-epšēt-qātīya) Gates fall into the ideologically-connoted category, it is a hard pitch to state that the name of the Ea Gate (Ea-muštēšir-nagbīšu) also belongs to the same group as the three aforementioned entryways since the name of that portal is closer to the providing-for-the-people-named gates, those dedicated to Adad (Adad-mukīn-ḫegallīya), Mullissu (Mullissu-muddišat-ḫiṣbi), Ištar (Ištar-mušammeḫat-nišīšu), and Bēlet-ilī (Belet-ilī-murappišat-talittīšu). According to Sollee’s new two-tier scheme, the goddesses (as well as the storm-god Adad, a more natural pairing for the sun-god Šamaš in this context than his consort Aya), therefore, are always listed second and, thus, always associated with the less glamorous, undecorated gates (Gates 2, 4, 5, 7), while the male deities (apart from Adad) are always associated with the grand, decorated gates (Gates 1, 3, 6, and Citadel Gate B). In the case of Šamaš and Enlil, one expects that these two deities would have had an impressive, ornamented gate. However, this does not necessarily need to have been the case with Anu and Ea, especially when Ištar, a very popular and extremely important goddess in Assyria, also had a portal dedicated to her. Would Sargon really have given both Anu and Ea grand entrances, while dedicating a less significant, plain gate to Ištar? Arguing from this point of view, it seems hard to believe that that might have actually been the case.24 Although one can defend the notation that Assyrian royal inscriptions blend royal (and religious) ideology and historical (and topographical) reality, it would seem a little strange that only the western gates - those dedicated to Anu (V), Ištar (VI), Ea (VII), and Bēlet-ilī (VIII) - in Sargon’s descriptions of the plan of Dūr-Šarrukīn would match exactly the on-theground, topographical reality of the physically-constructed city, while there is an ordering discrepancy between royal-religious ideology and the actual sequential arrangement for only the eastern gates - those named after Šamaš (I), Adad (II), Enlil (III), and Mullissu (IV). In the same manner of other first millennium sources listing city gates - for example, the inscriptions of Sargon’s successor, Sennacherib, recording the construction of Nineveh’s (14, 15, then 18) city gates25 and Tintir = Babylon Tablet V recording the eight city gates of Babylon26 - could one not consider that Sargon’s scribes sequentially enumerated the eight city gates in counterclockwise order, following the actual arrangement of the gates of DūrŠarrukīn? Apart from the seemingly two-tier naming structure proposed by Sollee, there is no real evidence to seriously doubt the sequence of Khorsabad’s portals as Sargon lists them in his inscriptions. The positions of grand, decorated gates appear, in my opinion, to be located exactly where one would expect them since the northernmost portals on the southeast, According to Fuchs (1994: 295 n. 94), Reade (2019: 85-6), Frame (2021: 31, 34), and Yamada (2020: 95-6), the decorated gates would have been named after Adad (Gate 1), Anu (Gate 6), and Bēlet-ilī (Gate 3). Following Pongratz-Leisten (1994: 33 fig. 3), those same entrances would have been dedicated to Adad (Gate 3), Mullissu (Gate 1), and Ea (Gate 6). 25 Grayson and Novotny 2012: 103 Sennacherib 15 vii 25-23´, 122 Sennacherib 16 vii 34-69, 143-4 Sennacherib 17 vii 70-viii 5, and 158-9 Sennacherib 18 vii 10´-40´. Open-access editions of these texts are accessible at http://oracc.org/ rinap/rinap3/corpus/. For details about Nineveh’s eighteen gates, see, for example, Grayson and Novotny 2012: 17-8; Reade 2016; and Sollee 2020: 111-21. 26 George 1992: 67 Tintir V, lines 49-56. An open-access edition of Tintir = Babylon Tablet V is available at http://oracc. org/btto/Q004801. Dūr-Šarrukīn, like Babylon, was rectangular in plan, with two gates on each stretch of wall; KārTukultī-Ninurta also had the same general plan. 24

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Jamie Novotny northeast, and southwest walls might have been used by the king when entering the city because those three entrances provide the shortest, most direct access to the palace. It is not impossible that royal roads might have led from Gates 3, 1, and 6 to Sargon’s royal residence Egalgabarinutukua (‘Palace That Has No Equal’) via Citadel Gate B. Especially as the names would likely have been chosen before the actual construction began, surely Sargon’s advisers and scribes would have been well aware of the alternating arrangement of ornamented and plain gates when composing the king’s inscriptions and would have known (well) in advance which grand and plain entrances were associated with each of the eight gods and goddesses and, therefore, drafted their texts accordingly. Surely, the most important deities had the decorated gates named after them, while the other deities had the unadorned portals dedicated to them. Since there is no one-to-one correlation between Sargon’s inscriptions and the physical gates, the problem of the identification still remains open and continues to be debated. Is there a solution that can perhaps better match the royalideological textual sources with the actual, physical topographical reality of the extant ruins of this short-lived Assyrian capital? Possibly. Before tackling the identifications of the gates themselves, it is important to address the orientation of east (Akk. šadû), north (Akk. ištānu), west (Akk. amurru), and south (Akk. šūtu) in Sargon’s inscriptions. Let us start with the most important question: Which direction does šadû face, northeast or southeast? As already pointed by several scholars, including Eckart Frahm in 1997,27 ‘east’ in Assyrian sources can refer both to the northeast (as Fuchs and Reade propose) and to the southeast (as Pongratz-Leisten and Sollee suggest). I propose that the key to the orientation of Sargon’s ‘east’ lies in Sennacherib’s usage of šadû, ištānu, amurru, and šūtu in an inscription recording the remodeling and rebuilding of Aššur’s temple Ešarra (‘House of the Universe’) at Ashur.28 As part of that construction work, Sennacherib had a new, multiroom complex, the so-called ‘Ostanbau’,29 added onto the existing structure and the gates included in that annex to the main temple might aid in the identification of the orientation of east in Sargon’s descriptions of the building of his new capital. The relevant passage of the so-called Aššur Temple Inscription (lines 13b–27a) reads:

Frahm 1997: 170: ‘Die Angabe, das bāb šarrūti weise nach šadû (Aššur-Tpl., z. 12, 16), scheint auf den ersten Blick nur schwer mit Sanheribs Ausführungen über die Lage der Stadttore von Ninive vereinbar zu sein (z. B. T 10/11, Baub., Z. 162-97), nach denen man šadû im Nordosten und nicht im Südosten zu lokalisieren hätte. Dagegen suggeriert Sanheribs Beschreibung der Lage des ninivitischen Südwestpalastes eine ähnliche Ausrichtung von šadû, wie sie sich aus der Aššur-Tpl.-Inschrift ergibt (s. z. B. T 10/11, Baub., Z. 63-72), nämlich eine südöstliche. Diese scheinbar widersprüchliche Evidenz deutet m. E. darauf hin, daß die von Sanherib angegebenen Himmels- bzw. Windrichtungen nur sehr grob die Orientierung eines Bauwerks beschreiben. Da die südöstlichen Tore des Aššur-Tempels um wenige Grade dem Osten näherlagen als dem Süden (s. F. H. Weißbach, OLZ 37 [1934], Sp. 230), galten sie Sanherib ebenso nach šadû orientiert wie die nordöstlichen Stadttore von Ninive, die dem Osten näherlagen als dem Norden. šadû bezeichnet also im Prinzip den Osten, aber, wie von P. V. Neugebauer und E. Weidner, AfO 7 (1931/32), S. 269-71 ausgeführt, so allgemein, daß auch die Richtung Ostnordost und Ostsüdost mit einbezogen sind. Die Auffassung von J. Neumann, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 58 (1977), S. 1050-5, wonach, entsprechend den Hauptwindrichtungen im Zweistromland (und auch in Aššur, s. die Winddiagramme bei Andrae, WEA2, S. 285), iltānu = NW, šadû = NO, šūtu = SO und amurru = SW ist, trifft also zumindest mit Blick auf die Sanherib-lnschriften nicht zu, auch wenn nicht bestritten werden soll, daß sich die Richtungsbezeichnungen ursprünglich auf die entsprechenden Hauptwinde bezogen haben dürften’. See also Neugebauer and Weidner 1931-32. 28 Grayson and Novotny 2014: 239-44 Sennacherib 166. 29 For recent discussions on the Aššur temple at Ashur, see, for example, Grayson and Novotny 2014: 20-2; Novotny 2014; and Gries 2017. 27

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Figure 4. Plan of the Aššur Temple showing Frahm’s proposed identifications of Sennacherib’s new gates in the Ostanbau. Adapted from Andrae, 1938: 53 fig. 35.

I found out the will of the gods Šamaš (and) Adad and they answered me with a firm ‘yes,’ and (then) the gods Šamaš and Adad commanded that tha[t] gate be opened towards the rising sun, facing east. At that time, I made several breaches in the wall, and (then) I opened a new gate towards (the god) Aššur, my lord, towards the east, and named it ‘The Royal Gate’ (bāb-šarrūti). I built anew the bīt-šuḫūru and widened its gate. ... I named that (lit. ‘those’) gate ‘The Gate of the Path of the Enlil-Stars’ (bāb-ḫarrān-šūtEnlil). I built anew its courtyard and named it ‘The Courtyard of the Row of Pedestals for the Igīgū gods’. I gave the gate that faces the rising sun, towards the river, the name ‘The Gate of the Firmament’ (bāb-burūmē). I gave its entrance gate to the courtyard the name ‘The Entrance of the Igīgū gods’ (bāb-nēreb-Igīgī). I gave the gate that faces south the name ‘The Kamsū-Igīgū Gate’ (bāb-kamsū-Igīgī). I gave its entrance gate to the courtyard the name ‘The Gate of the Abun[dance] of the Land’ (bāb-ḫiṣib-māti). I gave 113

Jamie Novotny its gate that faces north the name ‘The Gate of the Wagon Star’ (bāb-ereqqi). I gave its entrance gate to the courtyard the name ‘The Gate of the Dais of Destinies’ (bāb-parakšīmāte).30 A careful examination of the Aššur Temple Inscription with the physical remains of the Ostanbau indicates that in this text šadû, which is also referred to as the direction of the rising sun (ṣīt šamši), should be understood as southeast, šūtu should be interpreted as southwest, and north should be regarded as northeast. This is clear from the fact that the bāb-šarrūti (‘The Royal Gate’), the bāb-ḫarrān-šūt-Enlil (‘The Gate of the Path of the Enlil-Stars’), the bābburūmē (‘The Gate of the Firmament’), and the bāb-nēreb-Igīgī (‘The Entrance of the Igīgū gods’) all face the same direction: šadû. Based on the plan of the Aššur temple at Ashur in the reign of Sennacherib, with its newly constructed Ostanbau, šadû can only refer to the southeast, and not to the northeast, as already suggested by Jutta Börker-Klähn, Eckart Frahm, and the present author (see Figure 4).31 Thus, the directions provided for the orientations of the new gates of the Aššur temple, Assyria’s most important structure, given in this inscription of Sennacherib might confirm that šadû refers to the southeast in descriptions of Sargon’s work on Dūr-Šarrukīn. It is highly likely that there is continuity in the terminology used by the scribes composing inscriptions in the names of Sargon and his immediate successor Sennacherib and, thus, the term šadû in both corpora very probably meant one and the same thing. If this proves to be the case, then Pongratz-Leisten’s and Sollee’s orientation of the gates, starting with the southeast wall, rather than the northeast wall (as Fuchs and Reade suggest) would be correct. Thus, in Sargon’s inscriptions, the first gate mentioned by him, the Šamaš Gate (I), would have been situated on the southeast wall. Pongratz-Leisten and Sollee, however, disagree on which of the two gates on that wall, decorated Gate 3 or undecorated Gate 4, should be the ‘east-facing’ Šamaš (I) and Adad (II) Gates. Pongratz-Leisten proposed that the plain Gate 4 was the location of the Šamaš Gate and the grand Gate 3 was the position of the Adad Gate. Sollee, recognizing that Šamaš was the more important of the two gods and associating the decorated gates with entrances with ideologically-connoted names, regarded the impressive Gate 3 as the Šamaš Gate and the ordinary Gate 4 as the Adad Gate. Connecting Gate 3 with Šamaš makes good sense, however, the association of Gate 4 with Adad does not since is seems odd, at least to me, to enumerate these two portals clockwise, rather than counterclockwise. Because šadû could represent both southeast and northeast, is there any reason that the Adad Gate had to have been on the southeast wall and not on the southern part of the northwest wall? No, as Sargon does not specifically state that the Šamaš Gate and the Adad Gate were on the same stretch of wall, but only that they faced ‘east’ (šadû), which we know from comparing texts and archeology could be both southeast and northeast. If the city is divided into four according to ‘solar orientation’ (see Figure 5), both decorated Gate 3 on the southeastern wall and undecorated Gate 4 on the northeastern wall are located in the šadû quadrant, exactly as recorded in textual sources. According to this non-traditional interpretation, the counterclockwise order of the gates listed in Assyrian inscriptions is maintained, while at the same time assigning the grand portal to Šamaš and the plain entryway to Adad, as Sollee has already proposed, but in a slightly different manner.

30 31

Translation based on Grayson and Novotny 2014: 243-4 Sennacherib 166. Börker-Klähn 1980: 261-2 (with fig. 2); Frahm 1997: 171-3; and Grayson and Novotny 2014: 20-2.

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Figure 5. Annotated CORONA satellite image (August 16, 1968) of Khorsabad showing the ‘solar orientation’ of east, north, west, and south.

Assuming that the sequence of the city gates in Sargon’s inscriptions followed the physical topographical reality of Dūr-Šarrukīn and assuming that the paired gates did not have to be on the same stretch of wall, then one could tentative suggest that the Šamaš Gate was decorated Gate 3 (southeast), the Adad Gate was undecorated Gate 2 (northeast), the Enlil Gate was decorated Gate 1 (northeast), the Mullissu Gate might have been a hitherto-yet-undiscovered (postern) gate on the northwest (or southwest) side of the citadel (northwest),32 the Anu Gate was undecorated Gate 7 (northwest), the Ištar Gate was decorated Gate 6 (southwest), the Ea Gate was undecorated Gate 5 (southwest), and the Bēlet-ilī Gate was undecorated Gate 4 (southeast). Based on ‘solar orientation,’ the Šamaš (I) and Adad (II) Gates were in the east, the Enlil (III) and Mullissu (IV) Gates were in the north, the Anu (V) and Ištar (VI) Gates were in the west, and the Ea (VII) and Bēlet-ilī (VIII) Gates were in the south, just as Sargon claims.33 A hitherto-undiscovered (postern) gate has been suggested by several scholars, most recently, Reade (2019: 85-6). This arrangement of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s gates follows the proposal of Battini (1998: 44, 52-3). In her figs. 2-3 on p. 53, Battini clearly places the Mullissu Gate (IV; labelled ‘B’) on the northwest side of the citadel terrace, just east of the northwest corner. Her proposed placement is based on the fact that that location is 1380 m from Gate 6 (Ištar Gate [VI]), which is the same distance to Gate 3 (Šamaš Gate [I]) on the southeast wall, and 1665 m from Gate 2 (Adad Gate [II]), which is equidistant to Gate 5 (Ea Gate [VII]) on the southwest wall. If Battini’s proposals about the precise locations of the entrances of Dūr-Šarrukīn proves correct, then her placement of the hither-to unlocated eighth gate (probably a postern gate) might prove better than Reade’s tentative suggestion, which places that still-to-bediscovered entranceway on the southwest side of the citadel. 32 33

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Figure 6. Annotated CORONA satellite image (August 16, 1968) of Khorsabad showing the present author’s proposed identifications of the city gates (following Battini 1998).

Moreover, according to this arrangement, the three most important deities are connected with the grand, ornamented entrances: Šamaš, Enlil, and Ištar. Although these identifications cannot be proven with certainty, the justification for splitting the gate pairs between two stretches of walls might be tentatively confirmed from the so-called [Khorsabad] Cylinder Inscription, which states that he opened gates, ‘facing the eight winds’ (line 66).34 This statement is clearly intentional, and evidently not a mistake for ‘four winds’, since mé-eḫret 8 IM.MEŠ appears in eighteen copies of that text.35 If interpreted correctly, then the four directions comprised two winds each, for a total of eight. Thus, each of the eight winds had their own gate.36 At present, this interpretation of the identification of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s city gates, an idea already forwarded by Laura Battini in 1998,37 cannot be proven with absolute certainty. Given the available textual evidence, the most plausible starting point for the listing of the Frame 2021: 230. These are Sargon II 43 exs. 1-4, 8, 11, 16-19, 27, 38, 44-45, 47, and 57-59. A score transliteration of that inscription is accessible online at http://oracc.org/rinap/scores/index.html. 36 On the eight winds in this inscription, see the brief comments of Cavigneaux 2007: 172; see also Jiménez 2013: 262 n. 619. 37 See n. 33 for details. 34 35

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‘I opened eight gates’: Revisiting the Identification of Dūr-Šarrukīn’s City Gates eight gates is on the southeast wall, as Pongratz-Leitsen and Sollee have already suggested. Because one expects an ornate gate to be named after Šamaš, it is highly probable that Gate 3, which is located in the eastern quadrant of the city, was dedicated to the sun-god, an idea already forwarded by Sollee. Assuming that Sargon’s inscriptions accurately list the entrances according to topographical reality, in the (usual) counterclockwise fashion, then undecorated Gate 2 is very likely the location of the Adad Gate, although it is not on the same stretch of wall as the Šamaš Gate, but instead the two portals are on either side of the same corner. This suggestion breaks from previous scholarship, which generally places each pair of gates on the same wall. Although this idea is conjectural, its split placement of the four gate pairs (Šamaš-Adad, Enlil-Mullissu, Anu-Ištar, and Ea-Bēlet-ilī) might be supported by the fact that Sargon claims on one occasion to have ‘opened eight city gates facing the eight winds’. Accordingly, the šadû-facing gates would be oriented to the southeast and northeast (in the eastern quadrant of the city), the ištānu-facing entrances to the northeast and northwest (in the northern part of Dūr-Šarrukīn), the amurru-facing gates to the northwest and southwest (in the western section of Khorsabad), and the šūtu-facing entrances to the southwest and southeast (in the southern portion of Sargon’s capital). Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, this proposal forwards the notion that the three grand, decorated gates in the main city wall should be dedicated to the three most important deities of the group of eight gods and goddesses: Šamaš, Enlil, and Ištar. Bibliography Andrae, W. 1938. Das wiedererstandene Assur. Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs. Battini, L. 1998. Les portes urbaines de la capitale de Sargon II: Étude sur la propagande royale à travers les données archéologiques et textuelles, in J. Prosecký (ed.), Intellectual Life of the Ancient Near East: Papers Presented at the 43rd Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale: 41-55. Prague: Academy of Science of the Chech Republic. Börker-Klähn, J. 1980. Der bīt ḫilāni im bīt šaḫūri des Assur-Tempels. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 70: 258-73. Cavigneaux, A. 2007. Une crux sargonica et les quatre vents. Orientalia 76: 169-73. Frahm, E. 1997. Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften (Archiv für Orientforschung Beiheft 26). Vienna: Institut für Orientalistik der Universität Wien. Frame, G. 2021. The Royal Inscriptions of Sargon II, King of Assyria (721-705 BC) (Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 2). University Park: Eisenbrauns. Fuchs, A. 1994. Die Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad. Göttingen: Cuvillier. George, A.R. 1992. Babylonian Topographical Texts (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 40). Leuven: Peeters. Grayson, A.K. and J. Novotny, 2012. The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704-681 BC), Part 1 (Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3/1). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Grayson, A.K. and J. Novotny, 2014. The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704-681 BC), Part 2 (Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3/2). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Gries, H. 2017. Der Assur-Tempel in Assur: Das assyrische Hauptheiligtum im Wandel der Zeit (Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 149). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Halama, S. 2011. Wehrarchitektur im gesellschaftlichen Kontext: Das Beispiel der neuassyrischen Residenzstädte. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 143: 251-91.

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Jamie Novotny Jiménez, E. 2013. La imagen de los vientos en la literatura babilónica. Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid (dissertation). http://eprints.ucm.es/26391/. Loud, G. and C.B. Altman, 1938. Khorsabad, Part II: The Citadel and the Town (Oriental Institute Publications 40). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Neugebauer, P.V. and E.F. Weidner, 1931-32. Die Himmelruichtungen bei den Babyloniern. Archiv für Orientforschung 7: 269-71. Neumann, J. 1977. The Winds in the World of the Ancient Mesopotamian Civilizations. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 58: 1050-5. Novák, M. 1999. Herrschaftsform und Stadtbaukunst: Programmatik im Mesopotamischen Residenzstadtbau von Agade bis Surra man raʾā (Schriften zur Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 3). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Novotny, J. 2014. ‘I Did Not Alter the Site Where That Temple Stood’. Thoughts on Esarhaddon’s Rebuilding of the Aššur Temple. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 66: 91-112. De Odorico, M. 1995. The Use of Numbers and Quantifications in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions (State Archives of Assyria Studies 3). Helsinki: Vammalam Kirjapaino Oy. Pearce, L.E. 1996. The Number-Syllabary Texts. Journal of the American Oriental Society 116: 45374. Pongratz-Leisten, B. 1994. Ina Šulmi Īrub: Die Kulttopographische und ideologische Programmatik der akītu-Prozession in Babylonien und Assyrien im 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Baghdader Forschungen 16). Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. Radner, K. 2005. Die Macht des Namens: Altorientalische Strategien zur Selbsterhaltung (SANTAG 8). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Reade, J.E. 2016. The Gates of Nineveh. State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 22: 39-93. Reade, J.E. 2019. Assyrian Palaces Reconsidered: Practical Arrangements at Til-Barsib, and the Garden-Gate and Canal at Khorsabad. State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 25: 73-97. Sollee, A.E. 2020. ‘Bergesgleich baute ich hoch’: Untersuchungen zur Architektur, Funktion und Bedeutung neuassyrischer Befestigungsanlagen (Schriften zur Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 17). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Tallqvist, K. 1928. Himmelsgegenden und Winde: Eine semasiologische Studie. Studia Orientalia 2: 105-85. Unger, E. 1936. Dûr-Šarrukîn. Reallexikon der Assyriologie 2/4: 249-52. Wiggerman, F.A.M. 2007. The Four Winds and the Origins of Pazuzu, in C. Wilcke (ed.) Das geistige Erfassen der Welt im Alten Orient: Sprache, Religion, Kultur und Gesellschaft: 125-65. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Yamada, S. 2020. Names of Walls, Gates, and Palatial Structures of Assyrian Royal Cities: Contents, Styles, and Ideology. Orient 55: 87-104.

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire Omar N’Shea University of Malta

Abstract In this contribution, which I offer to Professor Paolo Matthiae on his 80th birthday, I will be analysing the hunting reliefs of the Neo-Assyrian period (911-612 BC) from the perspective of masculinity studies in an attempt to understand the extent to which gender formed part of the Assyrian construct and expression of imperialism. In order to do so, I will first analyse some of the Assyrian hunting texts in the royal inscriptions, and then turn to the hunting reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II and Ashurbanipal which foreground the Neo-Assyrian sovereign as a hunter. Finally, I will focus on the hunting scenes depicted on the lower register of Room 7 of the Palace of Khorsabad in order to revisit what Matthiae has referred to as a ‘subject innovation’ in the Neo-Assyrian visual repertoire. Matthiae is one of the few who have devoted attention to the understudied reliefs excavated from this part of Sargon II’s palace, and I shall take his work as cue for my contribution. Theoretically, I turn to hunter-gatherer studies to elaborate a framework that allows to cross-cut the reading of the royal hunt with the ideological demands on the Assyrian king’s performance in the hunting expeditions to legitimate his claim of hegemonic masculinity within a hierarchy of different configurations of being a man. Keywords Assyria, hunting, masculinity, gender

The Royal Hunt in Assyriological Literature That the Neo-Assyrian kings had an imperial interest in animals is well known in the Assyriological literature. In a comprehensive overview of the Neo-Assyrian sovereigns’ collection of exotic animals, Julian Reade argues that most of the material goods that the kings collected were by-products of their military campaigns, but the policy of animal collecting appears to have been practiced for its own sake.1 Lions, for example, may have been collected for royal prestige. It is still not certain what animal Shalmaneser I collected since he did not specify the species in his inscriptions.2 It is, however, certain that Ashurnasirpal II kept lions in cages in his palaces. Further, an unidentified eighth century Assyrian king is shown with a lion under his throne and we know that Ashurbanipal kept lions in his palace.3 In addition, the combative encounter of the Assyrian king and the lion was the theme of the royal seal at least since the reign of Shalmaneser III. The hunting of lions is also shown on an early monument known as the White Obelisk, and wall paintings probably dating to the reigns of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal were excavated in Nimrud and at Til-Barsip. Reade also argues that despite the lack of textual evidence from Sargon II’s period related to hunting, the reliefs show that

Reade 2004: 260; Winter 1981: 17 notes that although the Neo-Assyrian kings mentioned numerous species of animals in the hunting sequence of their royal inscriptions, they only chose to represent the lions and the bulls as their worthy opponents in their visual narrative. 2 Grayson 1996: 183-4. 3 Reade 2004: 260. 1

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Omar N’Shea Sargon II and Sennacherib did hunt small game like birds and gazelle. Ashurbanipal’s reliefs from the North Palace of Nineveh show him hunting of lions, gazelle, deer, wild asses.4 The image of the Assyrian king as hunter was actively propagated inside and outside of the palaces of the Assyrian kings, with occurrences in both textual and visual media throughout the imperial trajectory; indeed, it remains until today one of the central images of kingship for that period. As noted by Karlsson, rather than being the product of a bored and cruel Oriental despot, the primary sources make clear that for the Assyrian king the hunt was a religious duty which the king had to carry out.5 As an early theme in the royal textual and visual self-imaging of Mesopotamian kings, the hunt dates back to the early kings of prehistoric Uruk.6 The philosophical understanding of the royal hunt in the Mesopotamian context has been tied to the structured binary of order and chaos.7 Indeed, in embodying the structure of chaos and ‘mythological danger’, the lions have been read as a threat to the social order which was the king’s prerogative to maintain.8 Other interpretations of the evidence either situate the royal hunt in a broader discourse of imperialism, with the practice seen as an extension of the land for the benefit of economic progress in terms of husbandry and agriculture,9 or as an expression of divine power which prefigures military activity and warfare. In the latter analyses, the theme of the Assyrian royal hunt as a tribute to the divine is explained by focussing on the libation scene attested as a consequence of the hunt.10 This ritual of divine glorification for the gift of the successful hunt implies that this princely activity is carried out under the auspices of the gods who seek to extend the imperial territory into the open country (ersetu) and thereby taking over the lion’s top position in the hierarchy in its domain.11 Such arguments suggest that the hunt was indeed part of the religious remit of the king, and that it was buttressed by a divine command and fulfilled a theological ideology. Other approaches have looked at the Assyrian royal hunt in order to reveal the ‘attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion’. 12 Rather than taking the facile solution of the hunt as a practical solution to the elimination of animals regarded as natural enemies threatening humans and cattle, Watanabe prefers to read the Assyrian hunt as a cultic drama in which the nature of the surrogate victim (the beast) is embedded within Reade 2004: 260. Reade notes that Ashurbelkala brought home live elephants and wild cattle (cf. also Grayson 1991: 103-4), collected herds of deer and camels, and birds and displayed them to his people; Adad-nerari II collected animals at Assur, Ashurnasirpal II made a new collection at Kalah (cf. also Grayson 1991: 216, 226, 291-2, 344). Shalmaneser III was ‘a very keen hunter’ (cf. also Grayson 1996: 54, 84) but despite the abundance of texts, he only mentions collecting wild animals twice. Reade interprets this as either pointing to an existence of an inherited collection, or to a dwindling in the number of game available to hunt and collect due to deforestation and agricultural expansion (perhaps the reason why the wild pig becomes a collectable animal). 5 Karlsson 2016: 225. 6 Karlsson 2016: 133 and Reade 1983: 72; Winter 1981: 11 argues that the royal hunt was not a casual theme but rather one that portrayed the king as vigorous and victorious master-of-the-animals. See also Ziegler 2011: 68-9 and Herbort 1998-2001: 269 who argue that hunting was tied to kingship in the Neo-Assyrian period. 7 Maul 1995: 395-9. 8 Karlsson 2016: 133. 9 Russell 2008: 182; Karlsson 2016: 133. 10 Winter 1981: 14 also notes that the royal hunts of Ashurnasirpal II and Ashurbanipal are visually represented in a pair, with the action showing the hunting activities of the sovereign and the consequence showing the ritual libation following a successful hunt. 11 See Albenda 1972: 167-78, and Cassin 1981: 355-401. 12 See Watanabe 1998: 440. 4

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire ritual and emotional tension that the sovereign shares with the inhabitants of Nineveh. In addition, since the libation ritual over the dead animal frames the hunt, it makes its sacrificial element clear. Thus, the hunt restores the animal to its divine owner to appease the ‘anxiety of bloodshed’.13 Watanabe extends the argument to claim that the king was the owner of the lions - although not in a domestic sense. By emphasising the intersection between the royal hunt and the myths of Ninurta, Watanabe demonstrates cogently that lions were the beastly domain reserved for the sole privilege of the king.14 The prohibition on the act of killing lions points to the copula nature of the king and lion as well as the king as lion. Indeed, in the Assyrian imaginary, the king and the lion are a mirror image of each other.15 The king is the lion, and an attempt to kill a lion by anyone but the king would have been an attempt to displace the king from the position of hegemonic masculinity; indeed, the Neo-Assyrian royal epithets clearly state that the king is the sole possessor of that level of extraordinary vigour and virility. As Watanabe notes: ‘such association of the king with the lion or with the wild bull provides an insight into the perception that kingship belonged in the wild domain’ through the common hegemony over the domain of fierceness.16 She also suggests that there is a binary modality of order and chaos involved in the lion hunt, and the king would have been perceived as lord of both domains. She concludes that upon killing the lion, the Assyrian king releases the forces of chaos from the beast, establishes his supremacy, and finally restores the social order.17 It is thus clear that studies of the Assyrian royal hunt focus on the divine command behind the hunting expeditions of the king, the sacrificial nature of the victim which propitiates the anxiety of the blood shed through the rite of libation, and the establishment of the king’s supremacy through the ordering of the domains of order and chaos (therefore, the rule of law). At issue remains the question of how the royal hunt became a means through which royal masculinity was constructed, and why the king-as-hunter theme was chosen to help construct Assyrian imperial masculinity. Masculinity and The Hunt: A Theoretical Detour Notions of masculinity and hunting have been coupled since the dawn of Western literature. Indeed, as Catherine Bates states apropos boar hunting, it ‘represented the ultimate test of a man’s fighting ability; its encounter with a single, wild, male animal - that does not flee, that stands its ground, that is armed (literally) to the teeth, that is extraordinarily strong and many times the hunter’s body weight, that must be attacked at close range with a single spear - making it the closest thing to heroic human combat, at least as it was practiced in the ancient world’.18 That the heroic masculinity achieved through hunting prowess is more than just a show of strength may be seen, however, in the constituent attributes of master hunters in the ancient world. Bates notes that Odysseus is no ‘archaic human type inhabiting the wild, dressed in skins, Watanabe 1998: 441. Watanabe 1998: 443. Nadali 2020: 69-83. 16 Watanabe 1998: 446. 17 Watanabe 1998: 448. 18 Bates 2013: 1-3. On the same theme, see Cartmill 1996, especially 30. 13 14 15

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Omar N’Shea armed with a primitive club, famous for his archery, and slaughtering mythically impossible beasts’.19 Indeed, for Odysseus as well as for his Mesopotamian literary ancestors, achieving a culturally approved configuration of masculinity meant ‘staging a transition from the space designed as ‘outside’ back in again: from the forest back to plough-land, as it were’.20 Hunting, therefore, scripts the steppe as a discursive space of hostility, danger, and unpredictability which needs to be overcome. Once the power has been attributed to the hunter, however, it needs to be put to good use: in the case of Odysseus to serve the oikos, while in the case of the Assyrian king, as we shall see, to bolster the very core of the civilized world.21 That some forms of hunting were also seen as war training for youths to uphold the city’s governance is evidenced in Plato’s Laws (AD 822-824). Homer uses the topos of hunting to juxtapose the ideal of masculinity with the failure to perform the culturally accepted ideal by abusing of another topos - that of hospitality; indeed, Odysseus hunts not wild animals or foreign enemies, but those men who had ‘fallen foul of the ideal’.22 Nevertheless, the natural correlation between masculinity and the activity of chasing and killing or capturing large prey needs to be dissolved if we are to avoid the circular reasoning in finding every hunting activity to be inherently manly and heroic. In order to make sense of this correlation, we need to bear in mind that there is a strong classic back-formation in the understanding of the hunt as a heroic and manly act. Indeed, recent contributions by huntergatherer studies have shown that nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeologists and anthropologists, more often than not, found evidence of what they set out to look for in the first place, namely the self-evident heroism-in-the-hunt that the orthodoxy of their various disciplines was classically trained to uphold (that is, the hunter-gatherer configuration as site of the emergence of Homo Sapiens and the technologized subjectivity of Man-the-Hunter whose heroic manliness tamed the wild). Indeed, scholars within the framework of hunter-gatherer studies have shown the concerns of nineteenth- and twentieth-century post-bourgeois Western values of man as provider of a high-protein meat-based nutrition to the nuclear family. Linda Owen, for instance, has made clear that by reassessing the evidence from the European Upper Palaeolithic, the role of women in hunting has been grossly misrepresented in scholarship, and that biological explanations regarding the role of women as gatherers, child bearers, and minders is at loggerheads with the data available.23 In order to make sense of the evidence, anthropologists sought to understand the activity of hunting as a symbolic rather than utilitarian domain in men’s work.24 That is, rather than making sense of the hunt within the context of the provision of food, they sought to understand it in terms of a strategy which is object-oriented. In the context of a system of Bates 2013: 3. Bates 2013: 3. 21 Bates 2013: 3. 22 Bates 2013: 3. This is an indication that the object of the hunt is not always the Other; in fact, the hunt could be directed to same-gendered social equals. 23 See Owen 2005. Owen stresses the importance of activities carried out by females in supplying clothing, containers, and tools. In light of the evidence from the period in her study, she recommends we reassess our scholarly assumptions as it seems that, more often than not, the relegation of women to the private realm is more a reflection of our own biased accounts than that of the emic contexts we study. 24 They showed that hunting of large prey was less effective than the gathering of foodstuffs, and that understood in terms of calories expended in relation to calories gained, gathering is more high yield and less high risk. See Bates 2013: 6 for comment and relevant bibliography. 19 20

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire diversified subsistence and a differential economy operating between foraging (efficient, safe, and predominantly a female task) and hunting (dangerous, unsafe, and predominantly a male task), the yield of the latter will be more highly rated.25 It is argued that it is this very inefficiency, low-yield, and danger involved in the activity of large prey hunting that signals its continuity and its prestige (what hunter-gatherer scholars call its structuring principle). In turn, it is these structuring principles that get translated into the attributes of the agent carrying out the hunt, that is, courage, fearlessness, strength, and resourcefulness. As Bates notes, ‘hunting is about status, not subsistence’, that is, it constructs differences between individuals and, just like the battlefield, becomes an arena for male competition and competing masculinities.26 In so far as it is a reliable signal of male ability, therefore, hunting becomes a signal of masculinity, and a topos which is antagonistic to the essentialist discourses on sexual division as a result of innate attributes.27 The costly nature of the hunt is, in fact, a result of relational, differential economies and its heroism the result of that very cost rather than innate gendered behaviour.28 The masculinity-in-display in the context of the hunt is a nod to the high-risk low-yield nature of the activity. Hunting, is, therefore, a signifier of value; indeed, the more useless the activity of hunting, the more its prestige aggregates.29 Here, I analyse the hunt as a symbolic activity rather than a functional one. If the latter were merely the case, hunting would have very likely disappeared with the emergence of agropastoral societies, a period which marked the inefficiency of large-game hunting as a means of provisioning for a protein-based diet in terms of calories spent versus calories gained. Indeed, as hunter-gatherer theories show, wherever there is a differentiated economy, hunting is generally marked by a degree of inefficiency and physical peril for the actors involved, while foraging for foodstuffs like nuts proves to be much more efficient. In light of this, therefore, it would be more theoretically and methodologically sound to attempt to understand the hunt as a symbolic activity. It is only as such, in fact, that the continuity of the practice can be explained in agro-pastoralist cultures like that of ancient Assyria all the way down to modern times. In so far as the practice of large game hunting poses not only a marked peril to the actor but also a high degree of inefficacy, the despatch is said to carry a higher value that is other than the provision of meat. It therefore becomes an indicator of the qualities of the hunter, and a signal Owen 2005 argues that, with careful consideration, the need has come to undo the firm link between males and big game hunting. Although her study brings to bear on the way we understand big game and trophy hunting in prehistoric societies, we also need to bear in mind that so far we have no evidence from Neo-Assyrian sources of the activities of blood sport and big game hunting in connection with females, royal or otherwise. Interestingly, however, females do take part in the royal hunt at Nineveh during the reign of Ashurbanipal, but only as spectators from the hillside. 26 See Bates 2013: 6. See also Chapman 2004 on the battlefield as an area for male competition. 27 Indeed, it is argued that as a signal of maleness, hunting proffers to women the ability to make informed decisions about their mating partners. The meat becomes a bonanza by-product, as it were. 28 It has been argued that for Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal societies, 250,000-30,000 years ago, the absence of a differential economy meant zero cost-signalling for bodies that required huge amounts of protein sources; conversely, for Upper Palaeolithic Eurasian human populations (45,000-12,000 years ago) which yielded evidence of both gathering and hunting tools like bows and arrows, hunting increasingly served a symbolic function. See Bates 2013: 6 for comment and bibliography. 29 The uselessness of the hunt in the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions is evidenced in the fact that the animals hunted (lions and elephants among others) in this princely sport did not provide protein for the diet. See Grayson 1996: 681. 25

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Omar N’Shea to his heroic masculinity. It is this very inefficacy that gives hunting its structuring principle and as such, it becomes a representation of the abilities of the actor, that is, the fearlessness in the face of adversity as well as the ability to use tactics that allow the actor to catch the beast.30 As long as hunting marks difference of masculinity among men, it becomes an arena in which male competition is played out effectively. As a symbolic means of performing and negotiating masculinity through the display of physical and tactical prowess, hunting is said to constitute the first economy, and the resulting communal banquet after the hunt, as I shall discuss with regards to Sargon II’s elite hunts on the bas reliefs of Dur-Sharrukin’s Room 7, becomes an occasion to foster sociality and reciprocity.31 The Neo-Assyrian Hunting Texts Already in the time of Šulgi of Ur (2029-1982 BC), royal texts reveal that hunting was an integral part of royal identity and representation. In the praise poem known as Šulgi B (c.2.4.2.02), the lion becomes the embodiment of enmity and a clear link between sovereignty, animality, and martiality is established: I put an end to the heroic roaring in the plains of the different lions, the dragons of the plains. I do not go after them with a net, nor do I lie in wait for them in a hide; it comes to a confrontation of strength and weapons. I do not hurl a weapon; when I plunge a bitter-pointed lance in their throats, I do not flinch at their roar. I am not one to retreat to my hiding-place but, as when one warrior kills another warrior, I do everything swiftly on the open plain. In the desert where the paths peter out, I reduce the roar at the lair to silence. In the sheepfold and the cattle-pen, where heads are laid to rest (?), I put the shepherd tribesmen at ease. Let no one ever at any time say about me, ‘Could he really subdue them all on his own?’ The number of lions that I have dispatched with my weapons is limitless; their total is unknown. (hand to paw like Assyrian kings). The high point of my great deeds is the culling of lions before the lance as if they were garden weeds. Like that of his later Assyrian counterparts, Šulgi’s embodied subjectivity becomes technologized through a lapis-lazuli mace and a battle-axe, and a bodily transformation morphs him into a mythological dragon with long fingers that sharpen tin and a tongue that curls out in battle.32 There is no inscription from the Old Assyrian period that suggests that the leonine trope was an important one for the gendered identity of the elite men or the gender imaginary of rule. The first attestations in Assyrian culture come from the Middle Assyrian period, and in many of these we find an echo of the praise poem of Šulgi. I will here refer to the hunting narrative of Tiglath-pileser I (1114-1076 BC) in order to discuss the Assyrian aspects of the hunt in general since they establish the tradition of royal inscriptions for successive Neo-Assyrian

Bates 2013: 6. Bates 2013: 7. 32 On technologized subjectivities and necropolitics, see Mbembe 2003: 11-40, and Preciado 2013: 45. 30 31

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire kings.33 Indeed, this is the period which marked important cultural transformations in both the political domain as well as in scribal activity.34 In a royal narrative written on an octagonal prism found in Assur (A.0.87.1, known as the first real Assyrian annalistic narrative with a chronological account of military events and a clear division between the campaigns even if not dated) the scribes inserted the hunting theme between the sequences of military campaigns and the reconstruction of important edifices and the establishment of prosperity in the land. Thus, the placement of the motif in the royal inscriptions marks the importance of this theme to kingship and puts into a form of hierarchy the hunting activities of the king. In segment vi 55-vi 84 of the prism the motif is introduced with a juxtaposition of a gendered epithet that marks the king’s masculinity constructed here through the possession of courage, strength, and valiancy with the construction of a technologized hunting identity followed by a praise for his expertise in the hunt. 35 GIŠ.tukul-ti-IBLA-é-šár-ra et-lu qar-du ta-me-eh GIŠ-BAN la-a śá-na-an mu-gam-me-ru bu-‘u-ur se-ri (A.0.87.1 vi 55-57) m

Tiglath-pileser, valiant man, armed with the unrivalled bow, expert in the hunt36 The Assyrian hunting narrative unfolds in the following manner. First the king’s royal body is equipped with the accessories of the hunt, that is, the prosthetic attachments of the hunter’s identity which both extend the body and technologize it. The text mentions the gift of fierce weapons and a strong, exalted bow passed on from Ninurta and Nergal to the king. The prosthetic aesthetics of the hunter are further technologized with iron arrowheads and sharp arrows. In this contest of supreme and sovereign virility, the king then slays four virile wild bulls in the desert, in the land of Mittani, and in the city Araziqu (just outside Hatti). He flays them and takes their hides and horns to the city of Assur. The carrying of the hunting trophies back home is a spectacle that is staged and choreographed to display the royal masculinity of the victorious hunter. Equally important is the reference to the hunt taking place in the desert, and not in an arena set up especially for the king to display his hunting prowess. Nevertheless, the fact that the king returned with animal booty hints at a level of masculine pomp and circumstance upon re-entering the city, pointing to the performance required of the successful display of gender in general and masculinity in particular. The text then proceeds to mention the elephant hunts. Tiglath-pileser hunts fourteen elephants (ten killed, and four captured alive) in Harran and in the region of the River Habur. The live elephants, the hides, and husks of the dead ones are taken as hunting trophy. After that, the narrative turns to the lions. The hunting of lions is not carried out on a whim; it is not the display of a savage construct of masculinity performed by a despotic Assyrian king. Rather, it is carried out within the rule of divine law. The king’s ‘wildly outstanding assault’ Grayson 1996: 7. Grayson 1996: 5. 35 Grayson 1996: 25-7. 36 Grayson 1996: 25. 33 34

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Omar N’Shea (A.0.87.1; ina qitrub mitlūtiya vi 78 - perhaps more literally translated as ‘in close approach of manhood’) is commanded by Ninurta, and not a gratuitous act of vainglory. The hunt is carried out ina šēpīya (on foot; vi 79), implying that it is done in close and fierce bodily contact. This presents the fusion of the bodies of the sovereign and the beast, a static image which was so iconic of the king’s hypermasculinity that it was used as an index or metonym of kingship itself in the official bureau seal of the Assyrian palace. A further eight hundred lions are said to have been killed from his ‘light chariot’. The text then proceeds to emphasize the king’s ability at shooting arrows by claiming that he killed the livestock of the god Sumuqan as well as a variety of wild birds. The annals then move on to the description of the king’s reconstruction work and livestock management. At issue is the degree to which animals are placed in the domain of enmity in this inscription. A clue might reside in vi 85; ‘After I had gained complete dominion over the enemies of the god Aššur’ (ištu nakrūt Aššur pāt gimrišunu apēlu; A.0.87.1 vi 85). If the hunting narrative is an intermezzo in the annals, then the animals are not part of the ‘nakru’ domain; if, this is not an intermezzo, then the animals and the enemies are both classified as ‘nakru’. If the latter hypothesis holds, then the animals in the hunting narrative may be seen as ideologically antagonistic to Aššur and therefore the masculine relationality between the sovereign and the beast is one of ideological dominion. The beast then becomes a source of both identity and enmity. The royal inscriptions of the Middle Assyrian king Aššur-bel-kala (1073-1056 BC) establish the formulaic narrative move from the military expeditions to the royal hunt in the Assyrian royal inscriptions. This transition formula, further elaborated in the annals of Tiglath-pileser I, juxtaposes different configurations of royal identity, namely those of the priest and the hunter. In this juxtaposition, the apparent tension is resolved in the declaration that Ninurta and Nergal do not gratuitously give the beast for the king to hunt, but they do so only because the king has successfully performed his priestly duties. A.0.89.2 iii 29 reads: Ninurta u Nergal ša šangûti irammū bu’’ur sēra ušatlimūnima epēš bu’’uri iqbûnimma Ninurta and Nergal love my priesthood and grant me the hunt in the open country. There is less emphasis here on the prosthetics and technologies of the hunt but more emphasis on ina mēziz qardūtiya (verse iii 30), that is, the wrath and heroism (the heroic wrath) that is necessary to carry out the hunt successfully. Although bearing resemblance to earlier hunting texts, Aššur-bel-kala’s hunting text on the ‘Broken Obelisk’ (dating probably to the fifth or sixth regnal year and found at Nineveh but probably originally located in Assur) celebrates the king’s dominance over the body of the other and is the longest hunting narrative from the period.37 The gaps left by the author of the stele before the number of animals that were hunted are not trivial; it may be that the authors of the text may not have been able to reach consensus over the exact, ideal, or perhaps even ideological number.38 Again, the sequence of hunted animals follows the tradition of See Curtis, 2007: 53-7 for details of excavation and transportation; Ornan, 2007: 59-72 for an analysis of the topos of the king holding his prisoners of war by nose and mouth rings. For the entire text, see Grayson 1991: 99-105. 38 Grayson 1996: 99. Note that Rassam reports finding this stele (BM 118898 56-9-9, 59) measuring 65.4+ cm high and 37

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire Tiglath-pileser I: wild bulls, elephants, and then lions. The hostile landscape and the lions are both overcome in the same vigorous assault. The inscription also mentions the felling of the lions with a mace (ina pašhi iv 11), an image which is also evidenced in the hunting revival of Ashurbanipal.39 Further, in these hunting narratives, animals are put on display for the people (ušebri - to make see; iv 28). The textual evidence suggests that in the Middle Assyrian period there was a quantitative increase over time in the length of hunting passages, and a more intense interest in the king’s prosthetic and technologized subjectivity at the beginning of the narrative sequence. The texts all refer to hunting and to the prophylactic qualities of the animals as well as to their aesthetic and decorative function within architectural details. The construct set up in this period is that of masculine contest, control, dominance, and death of the animal - showing the king’s masculinity to be tied to a necropolitical identity that has a sovereign claim over the provision of death. Further, in this period the royal construction of masculine identity is never underscored by terms referring to animality. The royal inscriptions also establish that the hunt was not a gratuitous display of hunting prowess, but an activity that has theological and symbolic ramifications.40 That it required a masculine physique, prowess, and valour is a feature which is explicitly stated in the inscriptions, but one that required theological law for its legitimation. Already in the Middle Assyrian period the formulaic opening of the hunting narratives within the annals state this explicitly. They intersect the divine command with a theological law in which the king is placed as a worthy priest who performs his religious duty to the desire of the deities. The opening formula shows that for the Assyrian king, the law is not a gratuitous event of the sovereign, but a divine event which subordinates the sovereign. Thus, the king is not at once inside and outside the law, but always already within it. In the Neo-Assyrian imaginary, the king cannot be in the realm of order and chaos, because he is always already within the law. As we shall see, it is from the theologically subordinate position that the sovereign becomes the law, and the law becomes necropolitical. In order to support this idea, I will make reference to the formulaic openings of the hunting texts. The annals of Tiglath-pileser I place the hunting narrative between the military campaigns of the king, and his claim to the reconstruction and prosperity of the land. The hunting narrative, like the succeeding part of the annals, is a textual innovation which was taken up by later monarchs as well.41 The inclusion of the hunting texts in the royal annals suggests that the activity was deemed as important as the military and building affairs of the king, therefore a central activity and not merely one of princely sport or leisure. Considering the audience of the annals of the kings, the decision of the authors to include this hunting narrative in the text would have been one to display and impress the viewers and therefore to create differences between men. The same could be said about the bas-reliefs which show the king on his 40.6 cm square at Nineveh in a ditch about halfway between the palaces of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal together with the female torso A.0.89.10 of Aššur-bel-kala that speaks of arousing the troops. The different pronouns used in this texts points to the collation of different sources. 39 Note that, like Tiglath-pileser I, Aššur-bel-kala puts animals figure in doorways, possibly hinting at the protective and/or prophylactic ontology of animality. The text mentions 4 basalt lions in 07 v 17: nēšē ša adbari. 40 There is clearly a strong link between the priesthood of the king and his hunting prowess in the early period. Note the formulaic frame of the hunting text. 41 See Grayson 1996: 6 = A.0.87.1.

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Omar N’Shea hunting expeditions. It would be facile to argue that the hunting narrative is an intermezzo between the royal activities of military incursions and restoration works on temples.42 Indeed, the importance of the hunting narrative is established through the enumeration of the animal trophies and the attempt at establishing a level of veracity through the reference to land and landscape. The hunting narratives also reveal a concern with the construction of a technologized subjectivity through which masculinity is attained. Halberstam argues that masculinity emerges from the nexus of the body and its prosthetic extensions, a construction which I argue was achieved through the kulūlu turban,43 gadgets, weapons, tools, chariots, ships, accessories, and the hutpalû mace.44 This is useful to help make sense of the opening lines in the text at hand.45 The annals of Tiglath-pileser I present the king in the following manner: …et-lu qar-du Ta-me-eh GIŠ.BAN la-a-ša-na-an mu-gam-me-ru bu-‘u-ur-se-ri …etlu qardu tāmeh qašti lā šanān mugammeru bu’’ur sēri (Tiglath-pileser) the manly one, the valiant one He who grasps the unequalled bow He who is totally in control of the hunt in the open country. This opening segment of the hunting text weaves together the triangulated erotics of gender, technology, and landscape: the masculinity of the king, his hunting equipment and accessories, and his mastery over the land and its inhabitants (human and non-human). The first focus is emphasised in the expression etlu qardu (Tiglath-pileser I 01: vi 55), a gendered-epithet which accentuates the ‘king’s maleness and valiance’,46 carrying with it what Winter calls ‘a sense of associative potency’. The second focus is on the weapon as hunting technology. The third focus is on the dominance of the king over animals and landscape, a relation of dominance which Tim Ingold roots in the patriarchal paradigm of sociality in the Near East.47 The first focus has already been discussed in relation to the martial masculinity of the Assyrian king whose body was fashioned according to normative elite values of extreme hypermasculinity that embody notions of a war machine. It is the second focus which will be further developed here.

See Weissert 1997: 350 for an explanation of the identical treatment of enemies and lions in the evidence; he argues that the military and hunting expeditions and victories were organised, displayed, and celebrated in the same way. 43 For the tiara see Dick 2006: 250, fn. 41. 44 See Dick 2006: 249, fn. 34; in 25% of the hunting reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II and Ashurbanipal, the king wears the kulūlu tiara without the fez; this tiara was part of the Middle Assyrian coronation prop. Ashurbanipal wears this in Room S and S1. 45 See Halberstam 1998: 199. 46 See Winter 1996: 17. 47 Ingold 2015: 26-7. 42

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire The second focus is on the fashioning of the king as hunter. The masculinity presented here is primarily a ‘prosthetic’ one, an identity that for Halberstam ‘has little if anything to do with biological maleness and signifies more often as a technological special effect’.48 Prosthetics construct a technologized masculinity which in the context of the hunt relies on bows, chariots, iron arrowheads, sharp arrows, spears, and snares. This emphasis on what Halberstam calls ‘prosthetic extension’ creates an ‘unnatural form of masculine embodiment’ which risks undermining the very masculinity it attempts to construct.49 What keeps this prosthetic masculinity from entering into the space of the queer is the notion that the opponent is a worthy one; indeed, the lion and the sovereign morph into a singular identification in the royal epithets and their identities assimilate through metaphor. Indeed, the worthiness of the animals is noted in Ashurnasirpal II’s reminder to future kings, later people, vice-chancellors, nobles, and eunuchs: la tatappil ina pān Aššur napišti šī balāt (do not slander them for they live before Aššur).50 Early attestations of the hunt in the Assyrian phase of Mesopotamian history come from a number of sources other than the royal inscriptions. These include literary compositions and visual media.51 A Middle Assyrian text called The king as the hunter of enemies popularly known in Assyriological circles as The Hunter portrays the king, abetted by the gods Aššur, Adad, and Ninurta, hunting and clearing the steppe from a variety of animals. The hunt, in this text, is equated with the battle. The literary nature of the text allows the author to voice the concerns of the hunted, who claim their right to live in the mountains and wish for the wind to send the hunter’s nets flying. The animals curse the prowess of the hunter, wishing for him to shoot awry and failing in his manly prowess. The poem also throws light on the perception of manhood in the period, describing the ideal type as gifted in speech and in physical build, and born the way they are. The king, with his troops, then performs an extispicy and heads to the mountains to massacre the enemies. The hunt here is evidently a preamble to war, with the birds uttering the fears of the people about to be invaded.52 The rest of the textual attestations come from the royal inscriptions. The distribution of references to hunting expeditions in the royal inscriptions starting in the Middle Assyrian and ending with the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian period reveals that following a great concern with royal hunting in the inscriptions of Middle and Early Neo-Assyrian kings, a hiatus follows in the Sargonid period reflecting an absence of concern with the representation of royal hunting expeditions in the inscriptions and which is then revived, yet in idiosyncratic ways, in the reign of Ashurbanipal. The Neo-Assyrian Hunting Reliefs Like the hunting texts, the visual sources for the self-image of king as hunter have an early history in ancient Mesopotamia. Already in the Uruk period, the link between ruler and hunting is well-established in the visual domain. The famous lion-hunt stele from Uruk shows Halberstam 1998: 3. Halberstam 1998: 4. 50 Grayson 1996: 226. 51 Winter shows that the lion hunts were more central motifs in the throne room programme of Ashurnasirpal II than in the annals. See Winter 1981: 17. The hunts begin towards the end of the reign of Shalmaneser I (1274-1245 BC) when Assyria conquered Ḫanigalbat. By the time of Tiglath-pileser I, the hunt had become assimilated into ritual. 52 See, Foster 2003: 248-9. 48 49

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Figure 1. Drawing of the White Obelisk (after Reade 1975: fig. 1).

the ruler in (at least) two different moments in the hunt on the same visual plane in an early attempt at creating a form of continuous narration. The stele’s top ‘register’ shows the king slaying a lion in single combat with a spear, while the lower ‘register’ also shows the king in single combat with a pair of lions. In the lower part of the composition, however, he is shooting arrows at the lions from his bow while a third lion is attacking from behind.53 In this repeated image of the ruler, the king is wearing a net-like skirt, a belt (possibly to hold the dagger) and a trimmed cap. He appears to be bare chested. Even glyptic art displayed the topos of the royal hunt from the very early periods of the Mesopotamian cultural sequence. A Late Uruk cylinder seal now in the British Museum The art term ‘register’ is a tentative label for this composition and sometimes the term ‘free-form’ is preferred. For this, see Aruz 2003: 23. 53

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Figure 2. Seal impression from Assur (after Smith 1965: fig. 147a).

shows the ruler hunting four dexterously carved bulls in a state of dynamic representation with bow and arrow while an attendant (possibly a eunuch) carries his quiver and supplies. In this cylinder seal, the king also wears a net-skirt and a trimmed cap, and here too he is bare-chested. A small gatepost with a streamer between the king and his attendant may be an allusion to the underlying religious significance of the event since other attestations of this prop, such as on the Uruk vase among others, is often regarded as a symbol of Inanna.54 Further, the prosthetics of hunting are already clearly marked in the Halaf period. Indeed, the archery scene on the Halaf pot from Arapachiyah dating to the middle of the 5th millennium BC shows a hunter equipped with a bow, arrows, and a quiver, hunting a bull and a felid.55 The topos is thus a very old one. The earliest hunting scenes we have in the Assyrian period appear on the White Obelisk (Figure 1), possibly dating to the reign of Ashurnasirpal I (1047-1029 BC). The Assyrian king may be seen hunting on three of the four lowest registers of the obelisk. The king is seen hunting a bull, an ibex, and an onager. It may be that the fourth register, now badly damaged, was a scene depicting the king hunting a lion. In each of these instances, the king is seen facing right, with bow drawn and ready for the hunt while the king’s horses gallop over the prey.56 The nearest prototypes for the visual compositions seen in this period are a Kassite cylinder seal from Babylon and a brick-relief from Assur (Figure 2) (Ninurta-Tukulti-Aššur, 1133 BC). Both show the schematic image as attested in the late second millennium BC.57 The Self-Image of Ashurnasirpal II as Hunter The earliest representations of a Neo-Assyrian sovereign as hunter on the orthostats lining the palace walls (Figure 3) date to the reign of Ashurnasirpal II (884-859 BC). On the eastern See Aruz 2003: 23. Collon 1983: 54-5. 56 For a discussion of the hunting scenes on the White Obelisk see Albenda 1972: 169. 57 For these and another Kassite hunting seal, see Albenda 1972: 169 with notes on Moortgat. Note that the archer on the Assur relief may be a eunuch. 54 55

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Figure 3. Ashurnasirpal II’s lion hunt, Slab 19a=BM 124534 and Ashurnasirpal II’s ritual libation, Slab 19b=BM 124535 (after Collins 2008: 35).

side of the south wall of the Throne-room in the Northwest palace of Nimrud, slabs 19 and 20 - that is, those closest to the throne dais - portrayed Ashurnasirpal II hunting lions and bulls (the top registers = the slabs labelled A) as well as leading the ritual libation following the hunt (the bottom registers = the slabs labelled B). Two more hunting slabs depicted the sovereign during a hunting expedition, one possibly from the West Wing of the Northwest palace, Room WM, and the other, whose findspot is uncertain, now in Berlin. Furthermore, among the slabs removed by Esarhaddon from Ashurnasirpal II’s palace to decorate his parts of the Southwest palace in Nineveh were two hunting slabs that showed the early Neo-Assyrian sovereign also engaged in lion hunts.58 Finally, the eight pairs of double-register bronze bands on the gates of Balawat dating to the reign of Ashurnasirpal II also depict lion and bull hunts (Figures 4-7).59 Art historical analyses of the hunting reliefs in the Northwest palace of Ashurnasirpal II point to a generic composition as well as a historical narrative. In fact, Winter considers these compositions to be closer to the generic of ‘master-of-animals’ so conventionally depicted in 58 59

See Winter 1981: 32, fn. 1. See also Albenda 1972: 167-78. See Curtis and Tallis 2008. Shalmaneser III’s bronze bands, however, do not depict hunting scenes.

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Figure 4. Bull hunt on the Balawat bronze bands (after Curtis and Tallis 2008: pl. 14).

Figure 5. Lion hunt on the Balawat bronze bands (after Curtis and Tallis 2008: pl. 16).

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Figure 6. Bull hunt on the Balawat bronze bands (after Curtis and Tallis 2008: pl. 30).

Figure 7. Lion hunt on the Balawat bronze bands (after Curtis and Tallis 2008: pl. 32).

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire most of the Mesopotamian sequence since the hunting stele of Uruk.60 Yet, since the walls of the Throne-room are more conducive to narrative compositions than a stela, Winter is able to argue than the self-contained culminating scenes represented on one slab may be read as narrative also.61 Be that as it may, Ashurnasirpal II’s reliefs depicting his hunting exploits certainly show the action and consequence dyad of narration across registers; indeed, the top registers of slabs 19a and 20a show the king during the action of the hunt, while the bottom registers of slabs 19b and 20b show him enacting a ritual libation over the sacrificial carcasses of the beasts. Winter also argues that the landscape elements of the bas reliefs in the Throneroom of the Northwest palace point to historical realism among the intended purposes of the compositions. The royal hunting activities provide an iconographic parallel to the representation of the king-as-fierce-predator topos in the royal inscriptions.62 This is especially salient for the understanding of the construct of masculinity through cross-species symbiosis with the lion and the bull since the adjective ‘fierce’ (ekdu) used for the sovereign in the royal inscriptions is otherwise only used to refer to lions and bulls.63 The Self-Image of Ashurbanipal as Hunter No images related to the self-fashioning of the Assyrian king as hunter are attested until the reign of Ashurbanipal (669-631 BC). Elnathan Weissert notes that during Ashurbanipal’s reign, the artists and scribes broadened and ‘vigorously propagated’ the theme of the hunter king; indeed, they heightened the drama of the ‘relentless quarrel between man and beast … in the hunting reliefs of the North Palace of Nineveh’ and produced an account of the hunt whose literary qualities had been unprecedented.64 None of Ashurbanipal’s annals refer to the hunt save for the ‘hymnic and intermezzo-like passage’ in prism fragment 82-5-22,2.65 Weissert equates the king’s hunt in the plains with the gods Aššur and Ishtar taming the mythological creatures of chaos.66 The lions, according to this interpretation, are the incarnate hosts of chaos. Weissert notes the following: ‘… by confronting the lions a hair’s breadth away, not only was it possible for Ashurbanipal to exhibit his manifold skills in handling various weapons, but he could also - and this is of utmost importance - publicly realize the image of the brave hunter, which for more than two hundred years had been represented on the imperial seal (Figure 5)’.67 That the royal hunt reached unprecedented heights in the imaginary of the late Neo-Assyrian period is perhaps best evidenced in the dedication of an entire sector of the North Palace Winter 1981: 11. Winter 1981: 13. 62 Winter 1997: 361-2. 63 RIMA 2, ANP II in the Ninurta temple annalistic inscription A.0.101.1 line 126; RIMA 2, ANP II in the Ninurta temple stele A.0.101.17 lines 12-13; RIMA 2, ANP II in the standard inscription A.0.101.23 line 12. 64 Weissert 1997: 339. 65 Weissert 1997: 340. 66 Weissert 1997: 349. 67 Weissert 1997: 356. Also, the combat scene became the official seal in the reign of Shalmaneser III till the end. See Herbordt 1992: 123-45. There are 104 exemplars, each with different configurations of dress, hairstyle, royal head accessories, and leonine stance. Perhaps the seal portrays the pirig š zi-ga (lion with raised paw) or the pirig3 ka duhha (lion with open mouth) of the Šulgi hymns (Dick 2006: 246, fn. 15). Possibly Barnett Room S1 Plate LVII. 60 61

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Figure 8. Plan of the North Palace, Nineveh (after Reade 2001: fig. 2).

to the iconography of royal hunting in the arena of Nineveh and elsewhere. The whole of the southwest wing of the North Palace of Ashurbanipal, that is, the best-known part of this palace, is dedicated to the royal hunt.68 No Assyrian royal before Ashurbanipal gave the royal hunting activities the centrality that they were given in this sector of the palace; indeed, rooms A, C, E, passage R, S, and S1 are predominantly concerned with the encounter between the sovereign and the lion.69 It is not the objective of this paper to reconstruct a possible

See Barnett 1976: 12-4, 19, 37-9, 48-54. See, for a recent reconsideration of the North Palace, especially of the fallen slabs from the upper storeys, Kertai 2015: 180. 69 Barnett 1976: 12. Room B may also have had the lion hunt as its subject matter, but the state of the slabs was too deteriorated to allow any clear understanding. 68

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire narrative sequence from one room to the next but a tentative sequence for passages A and R will be attempted. Room R in Ashurbanipal’s North Palace (Figure 8), commonly referred to as ‘ascending passage R’, has the southwest and the northwest walls covered with orthostats which show the journey to the hunting arena. The southwest wall depicts the journey to the encounter of the king with the lion, and the northwest wall presents the return from the hunt.70 This passage led to a back gate leading out of the palace.71 The southwest wall bas-reliefs show the court eunuchs moving towards a postern gate, carrying hunting nets and stake-bundles to set up the hunting arena. The eunuch mastiffhandlers sport a different, shorter hairstyle than the ones carrying the stakes, with an end-row of shorter and simpler plaits rather than the more elaborate five-row curls of the net-and-stake carriers.72 The younger eunuch assistants leading the donkeys, just like the mastiff-handlers, are discalced. The older eunuchs either support the mule-loads or they are seen carrying the heavy hunting accessories. They are followed by eunuch leaders on horseback. The northwest wall bas reliefs show the return from the hunt, with mature court eunuchs carrying the trophy of the game leading the file, followed by eunuchs carrying small game or spears and shields. Room A is an ascending passage from which sixteen slabs were recovered. The northeast wall contained slabs 1-11, and the south wall carried slabs 12-16.73 The remaining orthostats, as well as the drawings of W. Boutcher and C. Hodder, show a single file of fourteen eunuchs, eight of which are archers preceding the king’s chariot returning from the hunting arena. Passage A may be a continuation of Passage R. Four eunuchs are shown carrying the chariot, and one follows the first two archers carrying an unidentified object in the left hand. All the eunuch archers wear a breastplate. The archers are shown carrying the bow in their left hand and quivers with arrows on their backs. The eighth archer, unlike the rest who are all shown looking ahead, has his head turned backwards to the four eunuchs carrying the chariot. If indeed the south wall continues the return of the Northwest wall in ascending passage R, then it might be that the North-East wall showed the march of the archers and the king’s chariot to the hunting arena. This would mean that the parade leading out of the royal palace was headed by the eunuchs carrying nets and stakes, followed by the archers, and the king’s chariot. On the return, the archers ushered the king’s chariot into the palace followed by the eunuchs carrying the slain lions and small game. The iconographic culmination of the hunting topos in the visual expression of the reign of Ashurbanipal was placed in Room C, which Matthiae calls the ‘ideological centre’ of the North Palace.74 Room C visualises the imperial hunting spectacle staged by the palace apparatus Barnett 1976: 48. Curtis and Reade 1995: 84. 72 Reade, in Curtis and Reade 1985: 84 notes that the same hairstyle is sported by the donkey-handlers in the same composition. He points to the possibility that the hairstyle signalled a lower social status that the net and stake carriers, presumably because of the simpler style. Contra Reade, the mastiff-handlers have the same hairstyle as the younger eunuchs assisting in the set-up of the hunting grounds. 73 Barnett 1976: 36. Slabs 1-11 are lost. Slab 13 is only known from a drawing by Boutcher, slabs 14-16 are in the Louvre, Paris (AO 19901). Rassam wrote that all but slabs 12-16 were destroyed. Slabs 12 and 13 are now lost. 74 Matthiae 1996: 201. 70 71

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Omar N’Shea in order to entertain the king himself as well as the Assyrian folk. As Weissert notes, the kī multa’uti (‘for my pleasure’) phrase used in Ashurbanipal’s hunting text differs from the Hunting Epigraph B’s ina mēlulti rubûtiya (‘while I was carrying out my princely sport’) in that the phrase kī multa’uti signals a detachment from the notion of personal pleasure, whereas the final temporal expression ina mēlulti rubûtiya carries with it a sense of enjoyment and recreation.75 Further, the use of the former phrase is restricted to the context of the king’s hunt in the plain to confront a possible problem, while the latter is exclusively used for the hunting games in the city. Logically, therefore, the iconographic topos of Room C, with its emphasis on the topography of Nineveh, is a recreational event staged for the sensorial pleasure of the king and the subjects of Assyria, who are seen rushing to the hills to establish a good view of the unfolding of the spectacle. Much scholarly emphasis has been placed on Ashurbanipal’s construct of imperial hegemon in the hunting reliefs of Room C, with Weissert arguing that the royal hunting spectacle, celebrated after the akītu festival, not only bolstered the self-image of the sovereign as a brave and impatient warrior, but also gave him the opportunity to show off his technical expertise learned at the House of Succession while still the heir prince of Assyria.76 Ashurbanipal’s prosthetic materiality in the lion hunts of Room C comprises a hunting gear which signals an oscillation between two opposing constructs of masculinity that could not have been unintended to the local audience. While the choreography of the event stages Ashurbanipal as an Assyrian sovereign fulfilling his political and theological prerogative of restoring real and symbolic order by killing the ultimate symbol of chaos (that is, the kingas-hunter), at the same time the reliefs also show that Ashurbanipal placed importance on a different construct of masculinity, that of king-as-scholar. In the rest of this section, I will argue that the reliefs from Room C as well as the lion hunt reliefs from Room S work together to promote a sovereign care-of-the-self through the materiality of dress. If dress is a prosthetic extension of the body, and a means by which identities are constituted,77 then the hunting gear of Ashurbanipal plays no small part in the masculinity of the sovereign and the state. In Room C and Room S, Ashurbanipal revives the courtly fashion of Ashurnasirpal II, with the pectoral section of his hunting garment showing geometric, floral, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic patterns reminiscent of the royal robe in Room G of the palace of Nimrud. Yet two features of the prosthetic of dress stand out even more saliently: the first is the rosette patterned fabric of the hunting gear, and the second is the writing stylus wedged into the fastening band (Figure 9).78 The former, with its symbolism of Ishtar, stands out in the otherwise minimalist fashion of the court of Ashurbanipal and points to the role of Ishtar in both the hunting events as well Weissert 1997: 342. The author notes that Prism fragment 82-5-22,2 (which he ascribes to Prism E, Ashurbanipal’s earliest prism dating to c. 666 BC) is part of the topos of the king-as-hunter-in-the-plain. Since the plain was construed as the natural habitat of the lion, the expedition was theologically charged, and this is evident with the use of the phrase kī multa’ûti. For Weissert, therefore, this framework parallels the construct of king-as-shepherd and restorer of order over chaos (see fn. 16). 76 Weissert 1997: 343. The akītu festival was celebrated to commemorate extraordinary military achievements as well as Ishtar’s re-entry and presentation of captives and booty with a cheering public watching. The processional itinerary went from Nineveh to Milqiya on to Arbela and then Assur. 77 Eicher and Roach Higgins 1992: 15-7. For material engagement as bodily extension, see also Malafouris 2008: 125. 78 N’Shea 2019: 175-84. 75

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Figure 9. Ashurbanipal during the lion hunt with writing stylus inserted in belt (after Collins 2008: 8).

as in the theological politics of the period. Crouch has cogently shown, in fact, that in the cosmological tradition of Ashurbanipal, allusions to the Babylonian epic of creation Enuma Elish were foregrounded in the king’s Cylinder B inscriptions as well as in the Ishtar Temple Inscription.79 However, in the Assyrian allusions, the Babylonian divine hero of creation Marduk is replaced by Ishtar, a politically subversive move given the unstable relations between north and south. The stylus, on the other hand, points to the scholarly masculinity emphasised by Ashurbanipal in, among others, his Prism F inscription: Furthermore, I, Ashurbanipal, learned inside it [the House of Succession] the wisdom of the god Nabû, all of the scribal arts. I investigated the precepts of every type of scholar there is, learned how to shoot with a bow, ride a horse [and] chariot, [and] take hold of their reins. Kings among the people [and] lions among the animals could not grow more powerful before my bow. I know how to wage war [and] battle; I am experienced forming a battle line [and] fighting. Heroic male, beloved of [the god] Aššur and the goddess Ishtar, descendant of kingship (Prism F. L. 24-33).

79

Crouch 2013: 132-40.

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Omar N’Shea Ursula Seidl has emphasised the correspondence between the stylus in the hunting reliefs and the king’s claim to scholarly knowledge;80 however, the presence of this prosthetic extension to the royal body and to the royal garment needs to be understood in terms of the king’s careof-the self. Given the inauspicious death of Sargon II, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon (all of Ashurbanipal’s predecessors), the king’s claim to knowledge needs to be re-evaluated in the framework of his own safety. Although this would require a longer study, suffice it to say here that his claim to scholarly masculinity is not a trivial matter, and is inexplicably tied to the masculine construct of the management and control of the scholarly circles on whose trust the king could no longer count. It has recently been argued that the North palace of Nineveh may not have been the central seat of royal power, but rather a palace dedicated to the hunt itself.81 Kertai argues against the explanation that the large number of hunting scenes merely reflects the large number of corridors.82 For Kertai, in fact, the choice of the topos for the corridors is not at all coincidental but may reflect the actual function of the North palace. Earlier, in fact, Dick had suggested that the hermeneutical key to the Neo-Assyrian royal hunt is in the arrangement of the reliefs in the palace.83 S1 is the most significant in that in displays two series: the lion hunt, and the Elamite wars with the famous garden banquet scene. This structuring, Dick argues, may point to the motif of the king as a shepherd protecting his flock from lions (K2867 + 1904-10-9, 11 [BM98982]).84 Lions may have been a consequence of the abundance of the land resulting from the water sent by Adad and Ea. They also feed on domesticated livestock and humans, and villagers and shepherds may have lamented for this reason, thus asking the king to resort order. The banquet scene may indeed be read as the ‘culmination of the lion hunt’.85 In the reign of Ashurbanipal, the hunt and its related motifs seem to undergo a revival from the earlier periods. Indeed, it is not only the themes of hunting and the royal canned hunt that reappear with unprecedented frequency of representation in the visual sources, but even early Assyrian motifs such as that of the sacred tree, which is now displaced from the centrality in the reliefs to a feature on the king’s hunting garment.86 Furthermore, Ashurbanipal wears the kulūlu tiara in the hunting scenes, pointing to his status as priest (šangu) of Aššur. The tiara is a prop of central importance to the coronation rite. Assyrian hunting fashion technology may also point to a fruitful area of investigation as every item of clothing and accessory is themeorientated to heighten the feeling of display and performance. From the lion-motifs on the body accessories and the hunting prosthetics (Figure 10) to the embroidery on the hunting gear that he wears, the concern with display and identity is paramount. Ashurbanipal’s royal hunt seems to have taken place in the ambassu which is likely to have led out of the low-elevation room S. Yet despite the seeming veracity of the locale, as well as the reminder that the temperament of the lions in the arena is not to be underestimated in the Seidl 2007: 119-24. See Kertai 2015: 184. 82 Kertai 2015: 184. 83 Dick 2006: 246-7. 84 Dick 2006: 246. 85 Dick 2006: 256. 86 Collins 2008: 119. 80 81

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Figure 10. Leonine motifs on hunting accessories from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal (after Collins 2008: 120).

epigraph notes, this composition exudes a high degree of royal pomp, with the king’s body perfectly protected from the allegedly threatening lions by an impenetrable security detail.87 Furthermore, the fact that the literary sources never resort to the use of metaphor to compare Ashurbanipal to an animal represents an important shift in the construction of ideal heroism in the late Assyrian phase - earlier metaphorical tropes which compare the king to a lion and a bull to note his physical strength are abandoned in the royal inscriptions of Ashurbanipal in favour of a construction of the self-image of the king as master huntsman. His achieved masculinity turns him not so much into a hero as a ‘culture hero’ who puts his masculine prowess to the use of more intellectual matters, as the stylus signifies in the lion hunt. The stylus is a good indicator of the king’s real concern - that power and prowess were there to maintain order in the civilized world.88 It seems, therefore, that the visual culture in the palace of king Ashurbanipal is one of dissent. What we see here, and what the audience may have perceived upon seeing Ashurbanipal’s palace reliefs, is an aesthetic of dissent from traditional norms and values. The lion hunts may perhaps point to this new code and culture. In light of the fact that Ashurbanipal was not at all an active agent in the line of battle, and to the extent that the royal hunt was a symbolic performance of war, by strategically placing clues in the visual field Ashurbanipal’s state artists may be expressing a newly forged ideology and aesthetic of violence in late Assyrian art. One such clue is the stylus in the place of the dagger, possibly pointing not only to the newly emerging aesthetic of masculinity (the soldierly and the scholarly) but also a martial ideology suggesting that violence and war were also affairs of the scholar, and not the soldier. For the epigraph see Dick 2006: 255-6. Despite being controlled in cages (gišnabārti) the lion is still UR.MAḪ ez-zu šà EDIN-šú (‘a raging wild lion of the wilderness’). 88 A similar trajectory takes place from the Iliadic heroes who are routinely compared to animal predators to Odysseus presented exclusively as master huntsman and nothing else. Bates 2013: 4. 87

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Omar N’Shea Finally, on the symbolic level of code, it might be worth pointing out that the image of the eunuchs returning from the royal hunt carrying the dead body of the slain lion away from the arena and into the royal palace could signal a moment of high gender drama. If the lion was the paragon of hypermasculinity, then the eunuchs carrying its carcass may indeed have appeared rather touching. Therefore, it seems to me that what we have in the period of Ashurbanipal is not too far from the rumours circulating about him in foreign courts. As Frahm writes: Ashurbanipal left a particularly copious body of royal inscriptions, which includes an ‘autobiographical’ sketch about his youth and long descriptions of how he tortured his enemies. He avoided going to war, had himself depicted, on a palace relief, slouching on a couch in a garden in the presence of his wife and several musicians, and hobnobbed with Elamite princes who stayed at the Nineveh court. Later sources, especially Ctesias, describe Ashurbanipal, now called Sardanapallus, as an effeminate character with bisexual inclinations, a characterization that may have been more than an orientalist fantasy.89 If the lion was culturally construed as an epitome and source of the sovereign’s masculinity, then it may have been poignant for the viewing audience to see the slain lion carried away from the arena by eunuchs, themselves stripped of their essential manhood through castration. The thematic parallel of the death of masculinity in the ascending passage might have even signalled the king’s control of the masculinity of the other: in the case of eunuchs, the management of the corporal masculinity through the crushing of the testicles, and in the case of the lion, the slaying of the ultimate masculine opponent in a circus-like display in town. Hunting and Hospitality at Khorsabad Yet, although the king-as-hunter reliefs appear only in the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II and Ashurbanipal, the reign of Sargon II evidences an interest in another variation on the theme of the royal hunt. To begin with, it is worth noting that hunting scenes are entirely absent from the palace of Sennacherib, even though the rooms that should, by analogy with other palaces, have had them were excavated by Layard.90 Although the Neo-Assyrian king-as-hunter theme on display in the royal throne room had already been in use during the reign of Ashurnasirpal II, the hunting scenes may have been omitted from the visual program of Sennacherib because traditional scenes did not lend themselves well to the new compositions and rich visual syntax which depicted the king’s elaborate achievements. It may also be tied to the personality of king Sennacherib rather than to the iconographic motives of the visual narrative in his throne-room. Indeed, Russell emphasises that Sennacherib’s building inscriptions give detailed accounts of his personal involvement in construction work, and it seems, therefore, that this activity meant more to him than hunting.91 Frahm 2014: 169. Russell 1991: 187. 91 Russell 1991: 188-9 for a tentative explanation for Sennacherib’s disinterest in hunting as a clue to his personality. 89 90

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Figure 11. Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad (after Kertai 2015: pl. 5.7).

A royal hunt, on the other hand, does feature in the reign of Sennacherib’s father, Sargon II, in his Palace at Khorsabad; this time, however, rather than wild beasts, Sargon’s Khorsabad reliefs show the recreational hunting of small game. In Khorsabad’s Room 7 (Figure 11), a variety of bearded men and eunuchs participate in Sargon’s hunt, which seems to take place among conifer trees in the ambassu with the bīt-ḫilāni portico in the distance (Figures 12-13). 92 Russell notes that the hunt in the park or estate takes place in three stages: the approach, the hunt, and the return to the palace.93 According to Matthiae, the palace of Khorsabad was a conscious move away from the ideology of the ninth-century sovereignty and a shift from the ideological construct of the martial and belligerent heroic sovereign to the general who does not situate himself in the line of fire but commands from the elevation of his royal chariot.94 Matthiae also reads the visual program of Sargon’s palace as an expression of an integration of the noble class within palace culture. Room 7, in fact, marks a conscious move away from the portrayal of the king in the highly symbolic arena of the hunt qua hunt, theological duty, and sovereign spectacle. Rather, Room 7 represents an idyllic scene of elite recreational hunting and commensality following a successful expedition.95 Indeed, the manly collegiality and homosociality that is class marked is clear; rather than in combat with wild prey, the king is seen in his chariot saluting noblemen Russell 1991: 187, and Albenda 1986: pls 84-90. These are extant reliefs BM 118831, Oriental Institute Museum A 11254, A 11255, A 11256, Iraqi Museum 60971/1, 60971/2, 6097/3. See Albenda 1986: 77-81. However, slabs 3, part of 4, 7 and 9 are not extant, nor at the time of Flandin’s drawings. The blocks were divided into top and bottom registers separated by a horizontal band of inscriptions. The visual narrative scenes depict different but interrelated events. Originally discovered by Botta but the room was re-cleared by the Oriental Institute expedition. The backs of the slabs have a long inscription inscribed on their surface. In the extant reliefs, the king is portrayed once re-entering the palace towards the bīt-ḫilāni with his elite corps. 93 See Russell 1991: 218-9. Albenda 1986: 80. For the most informative work on the reliefs in this room, see Matthiae 1996: 103-5. See also, Albenda 1986: Figures 76 (BM 11829), 77 (Archives Nationales, F21546, pl. 13, Calotype), 78 (Musée du Louvre AO 19886) showing small game hunting on black limestone. See most recently, Winter 2016: 35-52. 94 Matthiae 2012: 486-7. 95 Winter 2016: passim. 92

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Figure 12. Hunting scene from room 7, Khorsabad, slab 10 (after Albenda 1986: pl. 88).

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Figure 13. Hunting scene from room 7, Khorsabad, slab 10 (after Albenda 1986: pl. 88).

and elite males close to the palace apparatus. It is an altogether different hunt - in fact, it may be more accurate to describe the ongoing of these scenes as hunting rather than the hunt. The two-registered sequence of Khorsabad’s Room 7 is carved with a degree of naturalism that attempts to represent difference through placement and foregrounding.96 Indeed, the collegiality and homosociality is further highlighted in the narrative of the top register, where a number of men are grouped at table and seen banqueting. Rather than two separate themes, Room 7 reveals that the topos of small game hunting and banqueting cross-cut. This is a spectacle of non-martial homosociality in an Assyrian palace, one which reveals the flip side of the ideological representations of the Assyrian war of terror, and it is also one which points to the emphasis on hospitality as a marker of royal masculinity at Khorsabad. The invitation to hunt on the grounds of the royal park, and to participate in the consumption and commensality that follow the hunt, may have had political ramifications that were part of Sargon’s domestic policy of rule. In addition, the reliefs in Room 7 offer a glimpse into the domestic culture of Assyria, or what may be read as a view into the construct of public and homosocial that coded messages of not only internal political and class policy, but also of gender performance. These were the values of a class performing a culturally sanctioned script of masculinity.97 Matthiae 2012: 487. Ataç, 2010: 51 argues against the notion of perspective on the grounds that they are represented on the same ground line and not a different one, as was habitual in the art of Tiglath-pileser III. See especially Ataç 2010: 51. This figural piece is similar to the ones from Neo-Hittite Carchemish and Karatepe (Ataç 2010: 52) and earlier Ugarit from 96 97

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Omar N’Shea Room 7 of Sargon II’s Khorsabad points to the link between the elite homosociality of the hunt and the commensality following the hunt as extensions of the hospitality of the sovereign and the openness of the palace to certain configurations of men, in this case, elite men from the aristocratic class. In the context of the scene of commensality, the material display focusses on a drinking vessel, the lion-beaker (Figure 13), whose salience to the discussion at hand needs highlighting. Álvarez-Mon identified three male-types holding the lion drinking vessels in the reliefs from Khorsabad: eunuchs who fill the vessels and bring them to the bearded males (possibly dignitaries), the standing males wearing a knee-length garment and carrying swords and insignia, and males sitting in pairs wearing knee-length official garments at table.98 Álvarez-Mon adds that ‘it is thus possible, one is tempted to say, that a subtext of the reliefs - something that would have been well known to an Assyrian audience - was in part to advertise the members of Sargon’s male progeny, i.e. the singular strength of the royal blood line’.99 Consequently, for Álvarez-Mon, the use of the lion beakers in events that celebrated military and hunting activities represented the strength and indomitable force of the king. The vessel is therefore metonymic of the king himself. Further, Álvarez-Mon also points to the ritual element linking the banquet and drinking with the spilling of the blood of the enemy/prey, or what he terms a relation of ‘conspicuous symbolism.’100 He also adds that the beakers were manufactured to participate and perform in the context of wine drinking and its inherent intoxicating properties, and, by extension, a lapse from the formal outward behaviour of Assyrian elite males construed along the lines of self-control and dignified behaviour. In this sense, therefore, the lion-headed vessel as an emblem cross-cuts elements of masculine domains such as ritual, hunting, warfare, and formal behaviour. For Matthiae, there is no visual or ideological relation between the hunts of Ashurnasirpal II and Ashurbanipal with those of Sargon II: in the former, the king and lions or bulls are the protagonists; in the latter, the aristocratic male elites are the subjects and agents of the hunt, with the king passing by in a chariot procession under the parasol and in salutation towards the palace.101 Unlike Ashurnasirpal II’s hunting scenes, which are set in a zone that transcends the real, Sargon’s hunting scenes are set in the woodlands. This points to the idea that Ashurnasirpal II’s homosocial relations are with his troops and not the male elite of the city. Indeed, Ashurnasirpal II’s hunting scenes are no idyll. Rather, their representation bears a striking resemblance to the battle scenes in the same throne-room. Ashurnasirpal II’s emphasis is on the heroic masculinity of the king-as-hunter, and not on the homosociality of the hunt and its ensuing male relations. We may conclude, therefore, that Ashurnasirpal II’s hunting scenes establish a hierarchical vision of masculinity, with the king as the most virile warrior among the troops. Sargon II’s idyll, and the commensality that follows as represented in the upper register of Room 7 at Khorsabad, construct a new aesthetic of masculinity into the state arts which is more in line with the new policies of his state, namely the reintroduction of the local elite into the fold of the palace. the 2nd millennium BC. Matthiae 2012 is not entirely convinced by this. 98 Álvarez-Mon 2008: 139; Álvarez Mon suggests that there may be unequal rank between the males: the seating ones may be the king’s son, the standing ones may be emirs. 99 Álvarez-Mon 2008: 135-8. 100 Álvarez-Mon 2008: 140. 101 Matthiae 2012: 487.

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire Conclusion For the Assyrian sovereign, hunting is ultimately about gender status. It is in light of the costsignalling symbolic meaning of hunting that we can better understand the ideological decision of the scholars and artists of the Neo-Assyrian court to include the hunting activities of the king in all the state arts, from the royal inscriptions to the bas-reliefs, the frescos, and the glyptic art. The display of symbolic capital and the attributes of masculinity that are required to attain the signalling capital become the pageantry of political masculinity, expressed either in the self-image of the sovereign as master of the world of animals, or a master of the social arena through hospitality. Indeed, the ‘more antiquated, archaic, and unnecessary hunting became, the better able it was to signify prestige: to the point, arguably, were it developed into a ‘pure’ signifier’.102 It is this that we see in the hunting reliefs of Ashurbanipal - an expensive and spectacular staging of a hunting display in which the king represents himself displaying his dominion over animals, and, by extension, other men. That these were representations of a symbolic regime of power play and blood sport was evident in the staged and scripted theatricality of the self-conscious event: indeed, the bas-reliefs show a self-referential image to the stand-alone permanent monument of the king-as-hunter in the hills of Nineveh. Equally evident of the symbolic function is the customised toolkit used for the event. The arm bands and bracelets as well as the bow tips show miniature leonine motifs which heighten the theatricality and the scripted and staged dimension of this circus-in-town. We may argue, in fact, that Ashurbanipal staged these displays (there may have been more than one since a precedent event may have been recorded in the stand-alone monument on the hill), in order to validate his valour and prowess in light of the fact that he lived his reign in isolation from the battlefield (ideologically and theologically presented as a divine command of Ishtar to protect the body of the king from damage and death but ridiculed in successive kingdoms as an effeminate and cowardly gesture of a king who preferred the company of palace eunuchs to that of his troops).103 The hunting cycles are perhaps best seen as propagandistic adverts for Ashurbanipal’s worth and value as a man (and precisely the reason why his inscriptions do not employ the topos of symbiosis between sovereign and beast). It may be argued that the sovereign and beast relations operate on a level of symbiosis the axis of which is grounded in a construct of masculinity. For the king, as for the lion (and the bull), a construct of vigour, vitality, virility, potency, mercilessness, and impatience in military and heroic action as well as an embodiment of muscularity was necessary to fulfil the politicoaesthetics of Neo-Assyrian ideology. That the sovereign is at one and the same time a lion and a lion slayer may be read as a logical fallacy yet if we address the Western logic behind the construct of essentialist and determinist discourse and look directly at our primary sources concerning Near Eastern mythology, we see what Dick proposes as a solution: namely, the ancient Mesopotamian logic of symbiosis. Dick cites the evidence that Ninurta himself is both ontologically leonine, yet a slayer of the Anzû the leonine being.104 He further notes that the beastly victim is ‘never mutilated, but is treated with respect’.105 Indeed, Ninurta, Nabû, Nergal (Erra), and Ishtar are all leonine and lion slayers. Perhaps the solution to this problem Bates 2013: 9. See Frahm 2003: 37-48. 104 Dick 2006: 245. 105 Dick 2006: 245. 102 103

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Omar N’Shea could be further resolved through the claim of Erra in the Epic of Erra: In the heavens, I am a wild bull; in the open country, I am a lion; in the homeland, I am king.106 This ironic and paradoxical disjuncture is formidably expressed by Elena Cassin: it is a ‘dialectique du chasseur et du chassé que le rapport entre le roi et le lion nous apparaît sous un jour different’’107 Besides, hunting and fishing had their place in the nutritional life of ancient Assyria and notions of masculinity and hospitality intersect frequently in the extant remains. As Ashurnasirpal II’s Banquet Stele clearly shows, the serving of stag and gazelle was part of royal masculine hospitality.108 And this same royal hospitality is staged in Room 7 of Sargon’s palace to enunciate a construct of masculinity that allows a political strategy to unfold, namely that of reintroducing an entire class of elite men into the fold of the palace apparatus in the newly built city of Khorsabad. In conclusion, therefore, Sargon II’s excursion to the royal hunting grounds operated along the lines of a practice in which the hunting grounds became delineated and defined as a homosocial space with physical and symbolic boundaries in which men displayed their hunting prowess to each other and in which they enjoyed the camaraderie. The king delineates the homosocial hunting space in the reliefs. The staged hunts of Ashurbanipal, on the other hand, point to the theatricality of manhood making, and the audience may subject the protagonist to a gender shaming if the skills and prowess are not displayed as they are dictated by cultural norms, and the shot is awry. The gear is a stage prop that helps the actor construct the dramaturgy and aids the actor to display his masculinity. Acts of display work to fashion masculinity while at the same time threaten to undermine it. Bibliography Albenda, P. 1972. Ashurnasirpal II’s Lion Hunt Relief BM 124534. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 31: 167-78. Albenda, P. 1986. The Palace of Sargon, King of Assyria (Éditions Recherche sur le Civilisations 22). Paris: A.D.P.F. Allsen, T.T. 2006. The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Àlvarez-Mon, J. 2008. Give to Drink, O Cup-Bearer! The Arjan Beaker in the Context of Lion Headed Drinking Vessels in the Ancient Near East. Iranica Antiqua 43: 127-52. Aruz, J. and R. Wallenfels (eds) 2003. Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus. New Haven and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art; New York: Yale University Press. Ataç, M.-A. 2010. The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barnett, R.D. 1976. Sculptures from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (668-627 B.C.). London: British Museum Publications. Bates, C. 2013. Masculinity and the Hunt. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cartmill, M. 1996. A View to a Death in the Morning. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Cassin, E. 1981. Le roi et le lion. Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 198/4: 355-401. See Dick 2006: 244. Cassin 1981: 388. 108 Allsen 2006: 5. 106 107

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire Chapman, C.R. 2004. The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter (Harvard Semitic Monographs 62). Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Collins, P. 2008. Assyrian Palace Sculptures. London: British Museum Press. Collon, D. 1983. Hunting and Shooting. Anatolian Studies 33: 51-6. Crouch, C.L. 2013. Ištar and the Motif of the Cosmological Warrior: Assurbanipal’s Adaptation of Enuma Elish, in R.P. Gordon and H.M. Barstad (eds), Thus Speaks Ištar of Arbela: Prophecy in Israel, Assyria, and Egypt in the Neo-Assyrian Period: 129-41. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Curtis, J. 2007. The Broken Obelisk. Iraq 69: 53-7. Curtis, J.E. and J.E. Reade, 1995. Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Curtis, J.E. and N. Tallis (eds), 2008. The Balawat Gates of Ashurnasirpal II. London: The British Museum Press. Dick, M.B. 2006. The Neo-Assyrian Royal Lion Hunt and Yahweh’s Answer to Job. Journal of Biblical Literature 125/2: 243-70. Eicher, J.B. and M.E. Roach Higgins, 1992. Definition and Classification of Dress: Implications for Analysis of Gender Roles, in R. Barnes and J.B. Eicher (eds), Dress and Gender: Making and Meaning: 8-28. New York: Berg Publishers. Foster, B.R. 2005. Before the Muses. Bethesda, MA: CDL Press. Frahm, E. 2003. Images of Assurbanipal in Later Tradition. In Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies 27 (= Hayim and Miriam Tadmor Volume, edited by I. Eph’al, A. Ben-Tor and P. Machinist): 37-48. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Frahm, E. 2014. Family Matters: Psychohistorical Reflections on Sennacherib and His Times, in I. Kalimi and S. Richardson (eds), Sennacherib at the Gates of Jerusalem: Story, History and Historiography: 163-222. Leiden: Brill. Grayson, A.K. 1991. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium B.C.E. I (1114-859 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Periods 2). Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press. Grayson, A.K. 1996. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium B.C.E. I (858-745 BC) (The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Assyrian Periods 2). Toronto-Buffalo-London: University of Toronto Press. Halberstam, J. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press. Herbordt, S. 1992. Neuassyrische glyptik des 8.-7. Jh. v.Chr. unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Siegelungen auf Tafeln und Tonverschlüssen (State Archives of Assyria I). Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Herbordt, S. 2001. Neuassyrische Kunstperiode IV. Glyptik. Reallexikon Der Assyriologie Und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 9: 279-83. Ingold, T. 2015. From the Master’s Point of View: Hunting is Sacrifice. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 21/1: 24-7. Karlsson, M. 2016. Relations of Power in Early Neo-Assyrian State Ideology (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 10). Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter. Kertai, D. 2015. The Architecture of Late Assyrian Royal Palaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malafouris, L. 2008. Is it ‘me’ or is it ‘mine’? The Mycenaean Sword as Body Part, in D. Boric and J. Robb (eds), Past Bodies: 115-23. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Matthiae, P. 1996. L’arte degli Assiri: cultura e forma del rilievo storico. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Matthiae, P. 2012. Subject Innovations in the Khorsabad Reliefs and their Political Meaning, in G.B. Lanfranchi, D. Morandi Bonacossi, C. Pappi and S. Ponchia (eds), Leggo! Studies

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Masculinity and the Hunt in the State Arts of the Assyrian Empire Winter, I.J. 1997. Art in Empire: The Royal Image and the Visual Dimensions of Assyrian Ideology, in S. Parpola and R.M. Whiting (eds), Assyria 1995: Proceedings of the 10th Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7-11, 1995: 359-81. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press. Winter, I.J. 2016. The Court Banquets of Sargon II of Assyria: Commensality as a Positive Affirmation of the (Successful) Hunt and Battle, in G. Bartolini and M.G. Biga (eds), Not Only History: Proceedings of the Conference in Honor of Mario Liverani: 35-42. Winona Lake, IN: Einsenbrauns. Ziegler, N. 2011. Les rois chasseurs. Dossiers d’Archéologie 348: 68-9.

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‘Moving on from Ebla, I crossed the Euphrates’ collects six articles by leading international scholars on the culture of the Assyrian world as a homage to Paolo Matthiae on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Paolo Matthiae is known internationally for the discovery of the site of ancient Ebla in Syria, but he also wrote groundbreaking books and scientific contributions about the Assyrians, predominantly from an art historical perspective. The articles deal with different aspects of this culture, with innovative and sometimes unexpected points of view, including the reception of some elements of the Assyrian culture in the contemporary world.

Davide Nadali is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Sapienza University of Rome, co-director of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Tell Zurghul (Iraq) and vice-director of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Ebla (Syria). He is the author of numerous scientific publications about the history of art of the Ancient Near East. Lorenzo Nigro is Full Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the Sapienza University of Rome. He is the Director of the La Sapienza Expeditions to Motya, in Sicily, and to Palestine & Jordan, carrying out systematic excavations at Tell esSultan/ancient Jericho. Frances Pinnock was Associate Professor of Near Eastsern Archaeology at Sapienza University of Rome until her retirement in 2020. She is co-director of the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Ebla (Syria) and author of several scientific monographs and more than 150 articles on the archaeology and art history of the Ancient Near East.

Archaeopress Archaeology www.archaeopress.com