page_title: Balawat
section_title: Material culture
hierarchical_section_title: Balawat / Material culture
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: Balawat is an archaeological site of the ancient Assyrian city of Imgur-Enlil, and modern village in Nineveh Province. It lies 25 kilometres southeast from the city of Mosul and 4 kilometres to the south of the modern Assyrian town of Bakhdida.
context_section_description: Aside from temples and palace buildings, the most important artifacts discovered there were the so-called Balawat Gates. The gates measured about 20 feet in height and belonged to the temple of Mamu, the god of dreams. These were made up of bronze bands attached through nails to two wooden gates of the palace. The bronze bands depict a sacrifice and war scenes from the campaigns of the Neo-Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (859-824 BC), and were the first depictions of landscape elements (such as trees and mountains) in Assyrian art.
caption: The Walters Art Museum fragments of the Balawat Gates. (Top) Syrian porters in long robes and conical hats carry tribute to the Assyrian camp. (Bottom) Assyrian soldiers carry logs as they march through a hilly, forested landscape
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