A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  The ceilings of several rooms in Sargon’s palace were painted with geometric patterns, and brick fragments decorated with inscriptions and non‐narrative subjects were found at unspecified locations (Loud, Frankfort, and Jacobsen 1936: 67–71, fig. 82, pls. II–III; Reade 1995; Albenda 2005: 21–5). Painted on the wall opposite the main entrance to the great hall of Residence K were friezes of animal, floral, protective, and geometric motifs, above which was a single panel preserved to a height of nearly 10 meters showing Sargon and a courtier facing a deity on a dais (Loud and Altman 1938: pls. 88–91). The curved part of the arches of several of the city gates was faced with a band of bricks decorated with winged genies and rosettes (Place and Thomas 1867–70: I, 174–5; III, pls. 10–11, 14–17).

  The entrances to the three major palace temples of Šamaš, Sîn, and Ningal, as well as the entrances to the central court and principal shrine in the Nabû temple, were flanked by glazed brick dados decorated with symbolic animals and objects. Place also found fragments of embossed bronze bands, probably from door leaves, in the Adad temple and bronze sheets embossed with a scale pattern covering poles at each side of the entrance to the Sîn temple. The Chicago expedition found similar examples in the nearby Šamaš temple and in the Nabû temple. Nearly all of these were decorated with groups of mythological figures (Place and Thomas 1867–70: I, 125–7, 135, III, pls. 24–31, 72–3; Loud, Frankfort, and Jacobsen 1936: 92–8, 102–7, 109–13; Loud and Altman 1938: 41–4, 58–9, 61, pls. 17, 21, 49–50, 83; Wilson 1995: fig. 9).

  In addition, eight pairs of virtually identical alabaster statues of bearded male deities stood by eight major doorways in these temples. The figures, which are so similar that they must have been produced as a series, are slightly under life size (ca. 160 cm tall) and wear a long plain garment, belted at the waist and fringed at the bottom, and a horned cylindrical crown that broadens at the top to form a shallow square basin. In front of the waist they hold a flowing vase. Four pairs of these figures stood in the palace temple complex: three pairs before the principal shrines of Šamaš, Sîn, and Ningal, and the fourth in front of Room 191, a small room of unknown function (Baghdad, Iraq Museum 25963, IM 25964; Strommenger 1970: 23–4, Taf. 11–14; Place and Thomas 1867–70: I, 122–7, 135; III, pls. 6, 24, 31bis; Loud, Frankfort, and Jacobsen 1936: 98, 107, 113, figs. 98, 107, 108, 111, 112, 115, 116, 118; Loud and Altman 1938: pl. 48.7). Major entrances in the nearby Nabû temple were flanked by four more pairs, three of which marked the succession of doorways one must pass through to get from the outside to the Nabû sanctuary, and the fourth at the entrance to a secondary shrine whose god has not been identified (Chicago, Oriental Institute 11808, 11809; Loud and Altman 1938: 45, 58–9, 61, 95, pls. 16E, 17C, 17 F, 45, 47, 79). To summarize, the entrances to Sargon’s major temples were flanked by a pair of dadoes decorated in glazed brick with symbolic figures, a pair of standards covered with copper sheathing embossed with mythical figures, and a pair of statues of deities holding the flowing vase (Place and Thomas 1867–70: III, pl. 24).

  Two well preserved relief steles of Sargon II are known: One is from Najafehabad in western Iran (Tehran, Archaeological Museum; Levine 1972). The other does not come from controlled excavations, but it is documented in several contemporary sources as having been found in 1844 at Kition, within the area of modern Larnaca, and its inscription confirms that it was erected in Cyprus (Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum VA 968; Yon and Malbran‐Labat 1995). On both steles the king stands in the usual pose – facing left at Najafehabad and right at Kition – with divine symbols in front of his face.

  Sennacherib (704–681 BCE)

  The most extensive known group of Neo‐Assyrian sculptures was in Sennacherib’s Southwest Palace at Nineveh, excavated by Layard between 1847 and 1851. All told, Layard estimated he uncovered 9880 feet (3011 meters) of wall reliefs in the palace. A few of these date to the reign of Assurbanipal and perhaps one of his successors, but most are Sennacherib’s. As in the palaces of Aššurnaṣirpal II and Sargon II, only rooms in or around major reception suites were decorated with wall reliefs, but the number of such rooms in Sennacherib’s palace was considerably larger – nearly seventy. The palace had been thoroughly burned at the fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE, and most of the slabs were badly cracked and scarred by the heat. In the mid‐1960s, the throne‐room suite was re‐excavated by the Iraq State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage and roofed over as a site museum where some 100 reliefs were displayed in their original position until this part of the palace was destroyed by ISIS in April–May 2016 (Layard 1849a, 1853a; Madhloom and Mahdi 1976; Russell 1995, 1998a). The fullest general studies of the palace are Russell (1991) and Barnett, Bleibtreu, and Turner (1998), which should be consulted for illustrations of the reliefs discussed here.

  The arrangement of reliefs on the throne‐room facade (H) of Sennacherib’s palace was the same as that of Sargon II: a pair of human‐headed bull colossi in each of the three exterior doors and addorsed pairs of bull colossi – between which were lion‐clutching humans – on the two buttresses between the doors. An interesting innovation is that these colossi have only four legs, which gives them a more naturalistic appearance than that of their five‐legged predecessors. A similar arrangement of colossal figures was reported for the poorly‐recorded west facade of the palace and bull colossi also occurred in a number of other major palace doorways. A well‐preserved example was found in the Nergal Gate on the north stretch of the city wall, and was on display in the restored gate until it was destroyed by ISIS in May–June 2016. The jambs of smaller doorways were carved with a variety of apotropaic figures. Some of these had not occurred in the relief decoration of previous palaces, although clay figurines of the same types had been buried under the floor of Sargon’s palace. Threshold slabs in the doorways were carved with floral patterns, occasionally augmented with a brief inscription (Albenda 1978: pls. 8–15; Russell 1991: 179–87, figs. 10, 26, 48; 1995; 1999a: 128–33).

  Only two of Sargon’s narrative subjects reappear in Sennacherib’s palace: military campaigns, which were the subject in all but three of the thirty‐eight rooms for which the subject is known, and procurement of palace building materials: the quarrying and transportation overland of human‐headed bull gateway colossi on two walls in Court VI (with military scenes on the other two walls) and the transportation by water of a very large piece of wood or stone in Room XLIX. Processions of attendants and horses going in and out of the palace were depicted on the walls of Room LI, a corridor that probably led to a postern gate, and deportation of captives was apparently the subject of Room XLIII.

  Sennacherib began construction on his palace early in his reign and at the time his wall reliefs were carved his artists had only the first few campaigns to choose from as subjects. In consequence, most of his military reliefs can apparently be associated with his first three campaigns – to Babylonia, to the Zagros mountains, and to the Levant. The fifth campaign to Mount Nipur in the north was probably the subject on the west wall of the throne room (Room I), and this as well as the fourth campaign to Babylonia could be the subjects of some of the unlabeled reliefs in other rooms (Frahm 1997: 124–5). With only three known exceptions (Room I, Courts VI and LXIV), each room was decorated with only a single campaign or subject.

  The format of Sennacherib’s wall reliefs is different from that of his predecessors. Sennacherib omitted the band of inscription that divided the previous kings’ slabs into two narrow registers and carved his relief images over the entire surface. On this expanded pictorial area, Sennacherib’s artists adopted the spatial conventions of Sargon’s timber transport reliefs: a high implied viewpoint with relatively small‐scale figures more‐or‐less freely disposed across the slab. The sense of depth is most effective for subjects depicted against a patterned background – mountains or water. When the subject does not permit such a setting, for example in reliefs that show the Babylonian plain, the slab is divided into registers by multiple ground lines or
by narrow uninscribed margins. The only texts that intrude on any of Sennacherib’s reliefs are brief captions inscribed next to the king or the cities he encounters (Russell 1999a: 283–92).

  Renovation work in the area of the Nebi Yunus mosque in the 1970s exposed a series of wall slabs carved with a procession of grooms leading horses. These slabs are very similar to examples in Sennacherib’s palace in a descending passageway that apparently led to the outside (Layard 1853b: pl. 7; Smith 1938: pls. 66–7). The presence of some inscribed Sennacherib horse troughs nearby suggests that the Nebi Yunus reliefs may have lined a similar passageway, and may represent one of Sennacherib’s contributions to the arsenal (Scott and MacGinnis 1990: 70, 72, pl. 13b). Painted bricks from the seventh century BCE have been found in the area of the west facade of Sennacherib’s palace (Russell 1999b) and in the Nineveh arsenal (unpublished). At Ashur, a unique large square cult basin of Sennacherib from the Assur temple is decorated with images of gods with flowing vases in high relief at the corners and in the center of the sides, each flanked by a pair of fish‐men in lower relief (Andrae 1977: Abb. 16).

  In addition to the reliefs in his palace, Sennacherib was also responsible for rock reliefs at Bavian (actually nearby Khinnis), and probably also those at Faida and Maltai (Bachmann 1927; Jacobsen and Lloyd 1935; Boehmer 1975; Reade 1978, 1987–90; Börker‐Klähn 1982: Nr. 186–201, 207–10). All of these reliefs are located in the hills north of Nineveh. The examples at Bavian and Faida were definitely associated with aqueducts, and Reade has suggested the ones at Maltai may have been as well. At Bavian, at the point where water was diverted into the canal, was a large stone block (now broken), sculpted on the lower part of its wider face with a pair of human‐headed bull colossi flanking a human figure holding a lion and on the upper part with a profile image of the king flanked by two deities standing on sacred animals. On the narrow face was a god flanked by two images of the king, all shown frontally. On the rock face just south of the canal head is a large relief that showed two gods flanked by two images of the king. Some 30 meters southwest of this is the “Rider relief,” which apparently originally showed two images of the king framing a group of gods standing on animals, but was later recarved with a horseman (probably Sasanian). The rock reliefs at Maltai, and apparently those at Faida, also show images of the king facing a group of gods standing on animals, and a fragmentary stele probably from Ashur shows Sennacherib standing before a pair of gods (Istanbul, Asariatika Müzeleri; Donbaz and Galter 1985).

  Sennacherib is shown alone, standing in the usual pose with symbols of deities before his face, on six rock reliefs in the Judi Dagh region north of Cizre in Turkey, on 11 of the rock reliefs at Bavian, and on one probably to be attributed to Sennacherib in the Wadi Bahandawaya near al‐Kosh in northern Iraq (King 1913; Börker‐Klähn 1982: Nr. 180–5, 202), as well as on three limestone slab steles from Nineveh that apparently marked the course of a royal road (London, British Museum 124800; Istanbul, Asariatika Müzeleri; Paterson 1912–13: pls. 3–4; Mosul Museum; Al‐Mutewely 1999–2000; Brusasco 2016: 217–20, fig. 10).

  Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE)

  Layard’s excavations at Esarhaddon’s Southwest Palace at Kalḫu revealed wall slabs that had been removed from the Northwest and Central palaces and placed against the walls of the Southwest Palace in preparation for reuse, but the project was abandoned before any of the slabs had been recarved. The only recorded Esarhaddon reliefs from the palace were human‐headed bull and lion colossi in Doors a, b, c, and f. The head of one of these colossi from Door c was taken to London (British Museum 118893). Layard described them as being four‐legged and carved in coarse limestone, instead of the alabaster of their predecessors. Also unlike earlier colossi, the empty spaces between the head and wing at the top, and behind the tail at the back, were carved with at least six small apotropaic figures. Layard described these figures and drew the examples from one bull in Door b. It appears that most of the figures are Sennacherib types, with the exception of a unique “dragon with the head of an eagle and the claws of a bird” (Layard 1849a: I, 348–9; Barnett and Falkner 1962: 20–30, pls. 108, 112–13; Reade 1979a: 40, Taf. 6; Russell 1999a: 147–51, 293–4; Leichty 2011: 166–8).

  Wall paintings from the Kalḫu arsenal that show processions, and bricks painted with battle scenes from the southeast corner of the Kalḫu citadel date to the time of a later Assyrian king, perhaps Esarhaddon (Mallowan 1966: II, 379–80, figs. 307–8; Layard 1853b: pls. 53–4). Geometric wall paintings of uncertain date were also found in the Governor’s Palace, the Burnt Palace, and the “1950 building” (Mallowan 1950: 164–9, 174, 182, pl. XXX; 1954: 81; 1966: I, 40–1, 207).

  On the mound of Nebi Yunus at Nineveh, excavations by the Iraq State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage in a large courtyard of the arsenal revealed a monumental facade decorated with a pair of addorsed bull colossi with a lion‐clutching human in between and several doorways lined with bull colossi. Uniquely, some of these colossi are composed of relatively small blocks of stone tightly fitted together prior to being carved. The bulls have four instead of five legs and so must date to Sennacherib or later. Some are unfinished. In the spaces between the bulls were winged deities, some of which carry an Esarhaddon text on the backs of the slabs, and the bulls may date to his reign as well (Musa 1987–88; Black 1987; Scott and MacGinnis 1990: 71, pl. XIIIa; Russell 1999a: 144–6).

  At least one of the six Assyrian rock reliefs by the Nahr el‐Kalb, 12 kilometers north of Beirut, belongs to Esarhaddon, who is depicted in the usual manner but with the addition of some object held to the nose by the left hand. The attribution of the other reliefs here is uncertain (Börker‐Klähn 1982: Nr. 211–16). Two slab steles of basalt from Til‐Barsip (Aleppo, National Museum 31, 47) and another of dolerite from Zincirli (Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum VA 2708) all show a new variant of the traditional type: Esarhaddon stands in the usual pose with images of gods before his face, but in addition to the mace, his left hand holds ropes attached to rings in the lips of a pair of small kneeling captives. Esarhaddon’s sons are carved on the narrow sides of all three steles – Assurbanipal on the right side and Šamaš‐šumu‐ukin on the left (Thureau‐Dangin and Dunand 1936: II, pls. 12–13; Pritchard 1969: no. 447–9; Börker‐Klähn 1982: Nr. 217–19).

  Assurbanipal (668–631 BCE)

  The wall slabs of Room XXXIII in the Southwest Palace at Nineveh were of an attractive fossiliferous limestone imported by Sennacherib from the mountains to the north of Assyria, and he may have purposefully left them uncarved, as were the slabs of the same stone in two neighboring rooms. Assurbanipal carved (or recarved) the slabs in this room with scenes of his own successes in battle. According to the captions inscribed on these sculptures, the slabs to the west of the entrance record Assurbanipal’s victory at Til‐Tuba in Elam, while those to the east show a procession before the king at the city of Arbela on the upper half, and a scene of homage outside the moated city of Madaktu in Elam on the lower half. The compositions are generally organized by ground lines into registers, but at the right end of the Til‐Tuba episode, as the battle degenerates into a rout, this rigid system of organization is replaced by dead and dying enemy soldiers scattered chaotically across the relief surface. On the basis of the cities labeled by the captions, these reliefs should be dated earlier than Assurbanipal’s reliefs in the North Palace (London, British Museum 124801, 124802; Barnett, Bleibtreu, and Turner 1998: 94–100, pls. 286–320; Russell 1999a: 166–81).

  The largest group of Assurbanipal reliefs was in the crown prince’s palace – commonly called the North Palace – at Nineveh. Excavations by Rassam (1853–54) and Loftus (1854–55) exposed the central part of the structure: the throne‐room suite with parts of its inner and outer courtyards, a few additional rooms around the inner court, and a system of hallways that communicated with the outside, all of which were lined with wall reliefs. The excavation history and surviving sculptures from the palace have been thoroughly published by
Barnett (1976), which should be consulted for illustrations of the sculptures referred to here.

  Human‐headed bull colossi were not used anywhere in the known part of the North Palace. Instead, the throne‐room facade was decorated with plain stone slabs and the jambs of its center door were carved with apotropaic figures. The threshold slab was carved with a floral pattern. Apotropaic jamb figures, mostly types already seen in Sennacherib’s palace, and floral thresholds also decorated other doorways throughout the palace (Albenda 1978: pls. 16–26). The reliefs in the throne room (M) displayed a selection of Assurbanipal’s military campaigns to several different regions. The rooms behind the throne room were also decorated with military subjects, but the subject in each of these rooms was apparently only a single campaign. A group of passageways that led from the throne‐room area to the palace exterior was lined with reliefs that feature hunt‐related subjects: processions to and from a lion hunt, tame lions, and the king hunting lions, gazelles, and wild horses. A number of reliefs that had fallen into some of these passages from an upper story show lion hunts, military campaigns, and Assurbanipal and his queen dining in a garden (Figure 24.9).