Gesture and alterity in the art of Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria

drawn out considered the hallmark of the art of the Assyrian Empire, the massive stone relief statuarys that decorated the interiors of ancient Assyrian palaces in northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) appear to have been introduced to Assyria during the reign of a remarkable governor Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.E., [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]).(1) through the time he ascended to the chair of state in the ninth century BCE the history of Assyria already spanned a millennium, from its mercantile foundations in the early second millennium, to its rise to political and cultural prominence in the "international age" of the middle centuries of the next to the first millennium, to its "dark age" at the turn round of the millennium.(2) The artistic florescence that characterizes the reign of Ashurnasirpal II accompanied the quickening of an era of military aggressiveness, territorial acquisitiveness, and a marked increase in the grandeur of the Assyrian capitals. In the course of his yearly military campaigns into neighboring territory, Ashurnasirpal forcibly gathered enormous quantities of luxury serviceables furniture, agricultural produce, raw materials for building, and perhaps greatest in quantity important, captive labor. A particularly grandiose action on the part of this Assyrian king was the removal of the primary center of the Assyrian rule from the city of Ashur, where it had quieted since Assyria's inception a thousand years earlier as a political and cultural entity. He placeed a new capital further north upon the Tigris River at the ancient city of Kalhu, which became known as Nimrud.(3)

The art that decorated the palaces created for Ashurnasirpal's novel capital and provincial centers includes one as well as the other narrative reliefs that lined the palace interior, particularly the chair of state Room of the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal at Nimrud [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 2 3 OMITTED],(4) as well as miniature spectacles embossed on bronze bands decorating the gates of a royal palace and the Mamu fane at the site of Balawat [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 6 OMITTED].(5) A variety of make subordinates are depicted in these expensive, labor-intensive media. Many feature mythical spectacles of the king in the company of supernatural creatures, and others depict the king engaged in royal rituals. Of those representations that were historical narratives, however, the vast majority feature depictions of the Assyrian army upon campaign in foreign lands, accumulating foreign prisoners and spoil and the Assyrian king receiving the tributaries and tribute of foreign lands.(6) In other words, the narrative decorative programs in Assyrian palaces focus for the greatest in quantity part on the interaction between Assyrians and non-Assyrians, and they portray this interaction in confines of hostility and the ultimate subjugation of foreign lands and people

The attitudes and gestures of non-Assyrians in these views ranging from their crouching attitude to hand gestures and the disposition of their weapons, made them appear - especially to the organ of sights of the Assyrians viewing this art - strange, contemptible, and without of step with Assyrian values. [i]or[/i] part of to the other the language of gesture, these images communicate the identification of intercultural difference with intracultural transgression and the subversion of Assyrian social digests Moreover, within the context of the stories told in Assyrian narrative art, many of these strange non-Assyrian figures are shown meeting dreadful fates, ranging from capture [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED] to horrific mutilation [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED]. The internal logic of these visual stories, then, oftentimes portrays a violent death as the natural issue of the violation of Assyrian values that these strange gesturings embody. The notion of the merciless punishment of transgressions and the wisdom of conformity be under the orders ofs as a powerful message for the foreign visitors to Assyrian palaces, as well as the members of the Assyrian court itself.

The central assumptions brought to bear upon the interpretation of the representations of non-Assyrians in this article are first, that palatial decorative schemes were carefully designed to function as a form of visual propaganda, and next to the first that the content and appearance of this art contributes to, promulgates, and is determined by the agency of a specifically Assyrian cultural ideology.(7) The word ideology is used here to indicate a belief a whole that informs and is squeeze outed by all facets of cultural production. It is a means of understanding the mechanism by the agency of which power structures based upon unequal distribution of power and resources are able to maintain the status quo The cultural production of the central power, in this case the royal inscriptions and palace decoration, are thereby considered to be ideologically weighted. That is to say, they communicate ideologically charged messages to a particular audience.

flat the choice of stone relief as the medium for palace decoration in this period has ideological implications. The application of this elaborately carved stone "wallpaper" to the mud-brick palace walls involved the adaptation of an essentially foreign, in this case north Syrian, medium of architectural decoration to an already ancient Assyrian tradition in mode of speech and subject matter.(9) The use of stone reliefs rather than more traditional decorative media like as painted plaster or brick exhibits a greater expenditure of time, as well as human and natural resources. Enormous closes of stone had to be quarried and transported [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED], then carefully carved and inscribed. The selection of this expensive and labor-intensive medium for the decoration of Ashurnasirpal's palaces and fanes illustrates the inextricable causal and ideological links that existed in this era of intensive empire building among the subjugation of neighboring territory, the use of prisoners of war as captive labor, the creation of a lavish novel capital, and the development of propagandistic decorative programs.(10) It appears that royal construction casts and their elaborate decorative programs were built quite literally upon the backs of prisoners of war who had been acquired during Ashurnasirpal's military campaigns.