Day 150 - Wall reliefs from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II

May 7, 2019

Gallery 401 is a large skylit space lined with alabaster gypsum wall reliefs from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, an Assyrian king who ruled from 883 - 859 B.C.E. at his capital of Kalhu (now Nimrud) in northern Iraq. The reliefs have been arranged to provide an idea of what a reception room in the palace would have looked like. 

Picking up on the notion that asymmetry makes things interesting, I note that the reliefs are not perfectly symmetrical. Then I read that they were assembled from different parts of the palace, so who knows whether the figures in their original locations were symmetrical? As it is, at one entrance to the gallery are two massive guardian figures, both with the faces of bearded men (their beards  elaborate masses of intricately carved spirals and wavy lines), but one with the body of a horse and the other that of a lion. The placard explains that the two figures came from different doorways; in their original settings, two lions or two horses, not a mixed pair, would have stood guard.

I have seen similar reliefs in other places -- the Pergamon Museum, the British Museum, and the Yale Art Gallery. But this is the first time I've noticed the lengthy cuneiform inscriptions that are part of many of the reliefs. Unsurprisingly, they speak of the king-- his ancestry, accomplishments, and titles.

Today's work is a set of reliefs, perhaps 7 feet long and 10 feet high, that show magic, protective beings facing what the caption describes as a stylized "sacred tree." The relief has three registers. In the top register,  kneeling human figures with wings are shown in profile on either side of the tree; in the bottom panel, the adorants that frame the tree are standing figures with the heads of eagles and the bodies of humans. Between these panels is a middle panel with perhaps 15 lines of cuneiform writing. Again, the two winged men and the two eagle men are very similar to each other, but they differ in subtle details: the designs of the bracelets they wear, for instance, or how their forearm muscles are portrayed.  (I'm reminded of "Can you spot the differences?" cartoons in magazines for kids.) 

The upper figures are empty-handed and appear to be touching the tree's leaves, perhaps in blessing? The bottom figures are holding objects in both hands. I have no idea what the honeycomb-like objects they hold in their upper hands are or signify; perhaps the objects they hold in their bottom hands are small pails for watering the tree or for gathering its fruit?    And indeed, the placard says that the meaning of the "sacred tree" itself is unknown. It's easy to imagine, though, that in an arid climate, any vegetation would have been seen as precious and life-giving. Perhaps the reliefs  appeal to the ecologist in me.

These reliefs were excavated by a team of Brits in the mid-19th century, as were, I suppose, the reliefs I've seen in other museums.  It's a reminder that Europeans and American have despoiled many countries of their artistic heritages. That the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece strikes me as a reasonable proposition, inasmuch as Greece is a stable country that, despite its recent economic woes, has the will and the resources to conserve its cultural patrimony. On the other hand, given the political instability of Iraq over the past two decades (much  of that instability admittedly caused by us) and the rise of Islamic fundamentalists who have shaown themselves able and willing to destroy relics of pre-Islamic civilizations, I can only be bappy that these wall panels are at the Met rather than lying in fragments on a rubble-strewn plain.

I never seriously contemplated becoming an art historian. But for the first time since I began my Met visits, the thought comes to me: If I were to start all over again, maybe I would become an Assyriologist. I am not sure why these images speak to me so much at this point, but they do.