page_title: Assyrian sculpture
section_title: Other narrative reliefs
hierarchical_section_title: Assyrian sculpture / Other narrative reliefs
caption_attribution_description: English: During the Assyrian period (900-609 BC), royal artists frequently depicted major military conquests. These two bronze fragments originally belonged to a 21 foot high wooden gate of a temple at Balawat, just northeast of the capital, Nimrud. Together with nearly 265 feet of narrative strips from the same gate now in the British Museum, they illustrate in intricate detail the numerous military campaigns of King Shalmaneser III. In one fragment, Assyrian soldiers carry logs as they march through a hilly, forested landscape. A separate scene to the right depicts three Assyrian officials, clasping their hands in respect. In the other, Syrian porters in long robes and conical hats carry tribute to the Assyrian camp. They bring items for which Syria was famous: wine in skin bags; trays, possibly bearing ivory tusks; and heavy rolls of wool, probably dyed purple. The inscription at the top labels these as gifts from the coastal Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon.
context_page_description: Assyrian sculpture is the sculpture of the ancient Assyrian states, especially the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911 to 612 BC, which ruled modern Iraq, Syria, and much of Iran. It forms a phase of the art of Mesopotamia, differing in particular because of its much greater use of stone and gypsum alabaster for large sculpture.
  Much the best-known works are the huge lamassu guarding entrance ways, and Assyrian palace reliefs on thin slabs of alabaster, which were originally painted, at least in part, and fixed on the wall all round the main rooms of palaces. Most of these are in museums in Europe or America, following a hectic period of excavations from 1842 to 1855, which took Assyrian art from being almost completely unknown to being the subject of several best-selling books, and imitated in political cartoons.
  The palace reliefs contain scenes in low relief which glorify the king, showing him at war, hunting, and fulfilling other kingly roles. Many works left in situ, or in museums local to their findspots, have been deliberately destroyed in the recent occupation of the area by ISIS, the pace of destruction reportedly increasing in late 2016, with the Mosul offensive.
context_section_description: Apart from the alabaster wall reliefs, all found in palaces, other objects carrying relatively large reliefs are bronze strips used to reinforce and decorate large gates. Parts of three sets have survived, all from the 9th century and the relatively minor city of Imgur-Enlil, modern Balawat. The Balawat Gates were all double gates about 20 foot high, with both the front and back sides decorated with eight bronze repoussé strips, each carrying two registers of narrative reliefs some five inches high.  There were presumably equivalents at other Assyrian sites, but at the collapse of the empire the buildings at Balawat caught fire "before they had been efficiently looted" by the enemy, and remained hidden in the ashes and rubble; gypsum slabs were not worth the trouble of looting, unlike bronze.  The subjects were similar to the wall reliefs, but on a smaller scale; a typical band is 27 centimetres high, 1.8 metres wide, and only a millimetre thick.
  In stone there are reliefs of a similar size on some stelae, most notably two in rectangular obelisk form, both with stepped tops like ziggurats.  These are the early 11th-century White Obelisk of Ashurnasirpal I and the 9th century Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, both in the British Museum, who also have the fragmentary "Broken" or "Rassam Obelisk".  Both have reliefs on all four sides in eight and five registers respectively, and long inscriptions describing the events. The Black and Rassam Obelisks were both set up in what seems to have been the central square in the citadel of Nimrud, presumably a very public space, and the White in Nineveh.  All record much the same types of scenes as the narrative sections of wall-relief, and the gates.  The Black Obelisk concentrates on scenes of the bringing of tribute from conquered kingdoms, including Israel, while the White also has scenes of war, hunting, and religious figures.  The White Obelisk, from 1049–1031, and the "Broken Obelisk" from 1074–1056, predate the earliest known wall-reliefs by 160 years or more, but are respectively in worn and fragmentary condition.
  The Black Obelisk is of special interest as the lengthy inscriptions, with names of places and rulers that could be related to other sources, were of importance in the decipherment of cuneiform script.  The Obelisk contains the earliest writing mentioning both the Persian and Jewish peoples, and confirmed some of the events described in the Bible, which in the 19th century was regarded as timely support for texts whose historical accuracy was under increasing attack.  Other, much smaller pieces with helpful inscriptions were a set of sixteen weight measures in the form of lions.
caption: Fragment from the Balawat Gates, Baltimore
exif: {}