Hostname: page-component-7b7567c8c-wxvwp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-15T14:48:15.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Plate LIII from Til-Barsip: The left-handed Assyrian king1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Timothy J. Poisel
Get accessRights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Identification of different iconographic features has allowed modern scholars to argue cases for several possible candidates responsible for the commissioning and representation within Plate LIII. Due to minor characteristically different chariots and artistic techniques, scholars have made widely divergent claims about the origins of the wall paintings that were found at Til-Barsip. In this paper I contend that one vital iconographic factor has been overlooked by modern scholarship and that it is the key to proving that a specific Assyrian king was responsible for Plate LIII. It is concluded that the Assyrian king depicted in the Til-Barsip wall painting was left-handed and by a process of elimination can be none other than Esarhaddon.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 68 , 2006, pp. 121 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

1

Special thanks must go to Dr Noel Weeks and Dr Joseph Azize for their invaluable remarks and criticisms after reading this paper. Throughout this article the term “Plate LIII” refers to the Assyrian wall painting found in Room XXVII, illustrated in Thureau-Dangin and Dunand 1936, PI. LIII, and shown here as Fig. 6.

References

Albenda, P. 1974: “Lions on Assyrian wall reliefs”, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 6.Google Scholar
Albenda, P. 1986: The Palace of Sargon, King of Assyria, Paris (Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations).Google Scholar
Barnett, R. D. 1959: Assyrian Palace Reliefs and their Influence on the Sculptures of Babylon and Persia, London: British Museum.Google Scholar
Barnett, R. D. 1970: Assyrian Palace Reliefs in the British Museum, London: British Museum.Google Scholar
Barnett, R. D. and Falkner, M. 1962: The Sculptures of Aššur-nasir-apli II (883-859 B.C.), Tiglath-pileser III (745–727 B.C.) and Esarhaddon (681–669 B.C.) from the Central and South-West Palaces at Nimrud, London: Percy Lund, Humphries and Company.Google Scholar
Barnett, R. D., Bleibtreu, E. and Turner, G. 1998: Sculptures from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh, London: British Museum Press.Google Scholar
Collon, D. 2005: “Pfeil und Bogen”, Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 10 7/8, pp. 461–9.Google Scholar
Guralnick, E. 1976: “Composition of some narrative reliefs from Khorsabad”, Assur 1/5, pp. 1–23.Google Scholar
Hrouda, B. 1965: Die Kulturgeschichte des assyrischen Flachbildes, 2 vols., Bonn: R. Habelt.Google Scholar
Madhloom, T. 1970: The Chronology of Neo-Assyrian Art, London: Athlone Press.Google Scholar
Moortgat, A. 1967: The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia: The Classical Art of the Ancient Near East, New York: Phaidon.Google Scholar
Nunn, A. 1988: Die Wandmalerei und der glasierte Wandschmuck im alten Orient (Handbuch der Orientalistik 7/1/1/B6), Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Parrot, A. 1961: Nineveh and Babylon, trans. Gilbert, S. and Emmons, J., London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Porter, B. 2000: “‘For the astonishment of all enemies’: Assyrian propaganda and its audiences in the reigns of Ashurnasirpal II and Esarhaddon”, Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies 35, pp. 7–18.Google Scholar
Reade, J. 1979: “Narrative composition in Assyrian sculpture”, Baghdader Mitteilungen 10, pp. 76–8.Google Scholar
Reade, J. 1980: “Space, scale and significance in Assyrian art”, Baghdader Mitteilungen 11, pp. 71–4.Google Scholar
Strommenger, E. 1964: The Art of Mesopotamia, London: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar
Thureau-Dangin, F. and Dunand, M. 1936: Til-Barsib, Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner.Google Scholar
Tomabechi, Y. 1983–1984: “Wall paintings from Til Barsip”, Archiv für Orientforschung 29/30, pp. 63–74.Google Scholar
Ussishkin, D. 1982: The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib, Tel Aviv: The Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Winter, I. 1995: “The stele of Naram-Sin of Agade”, in Sasson, J. (ed.), Civilizations of the Ancient Near East 4, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp. 25–78.Google Scholar