The White Obelisk and the problem of historical narrative in the art of Assyria

The limestone slabs carved with reliefs that lined the walls of the Assyrian royal palaces are among the greatest in quantity admired works of ancient Near Eastern art. These many times beautifully preserved sculptures, bearing sights of royal conquest, accomplishment, ritual, and hunting, have been renowned since the mid-nineteenth hundred when they were first lay opened and displayed before a European public hungry-for exotica. The reliefs immediately fascinated scholars and laity alike because they confirmed - from one side words and pictures - stories from the foundational myths of Judeo-Christian culture

Not until almost a hundred after their discovery did these reliefs begin to be integrated into an art-historical discourse.(1) Numerous studies have shown that the two-hundred-and-fifty year disentanglement of pictorial narrative preserved in the reliefs grasps a pivotal place in the research of Assyrian art.(2) Despite serious gaps, a skeletal succession exists for the visual programs of the Neo-Assyrian kings from Assurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) until Assurbanipal (668-627 BC) just before the fall of the Assyrian empire at the extreme point of the seventh century.(3) Illustrations of narrative themes embedded in iconic series of apotropaic genii, sacred tree and hieratic representations of the king confronting the numinous are typical of palace decoration in the ninth hundred By the eighth-century reign of Sargon II (721-705 BC) the narrative constituent of the architectural program received greater emphasis. At the height of the Assyrian imperial reach, during the reigns of Sennacherib (704-681 BC) and Assurbanipal, entire latitudes were lined, often in single compositions, with at any time more lively, complex narrative representations of an increasing range of make subordinates glorifying the king and the empire.(4)

The beginning of this drawn out tradition of wall reliefs is problematic owing to the lack of evidence. The earliest carved stone orthostats in Assyria date to the reign of Assurnasirpal II, who used them perhaps at Nineveh and certainly in his palace at Nimrud. Because the program at Nimrud is iconographically and compositionally compound however, it is unlikely that this was the first attempt by means of court artists working under the Assyrian masters to construct such a program. At issue in understanding the unravelling of visual historical narrative in ancient Assyria is whether the earlier stages were native to Assyria as an integral part of the formative stages of the imperial strategy or whether the Assyrians appropriated it from foreign models

Within the larger adjoining matter of the relationship between visual and verbal expression in Assyrian art, this application of mind examines specific examples of visual evidence for the early disentanglement of historical narrative. In particular, I not away here a new interpretation of a single, abundant debated monument, the White Obelisk [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], which has stood in the Assyrian galleries of the British Museum since shortly after its discovery in the middle of the last hundred I believe that the White Obelisk carries upon its sides a reduced transcript of a narrative program that originally lined the walls of a lengthy narrow room, arguably the chair of state room of a palace in the Assyrian capital at Nineveh. Although the date of the Obelisk still cannot be exactly determined, there is no question that the original architectural program that it generates was earlier, probably dating from between the reigns of Tukulti-Ninurta II (890-884 BC) and Assur-bel-kala (1074-1057 BC) or Tiglath-pileser I (1115-1077 BC) Accordingly, the White Obelisk becomes a critical piece of evidence for the reconstruction of the early stages of Assyrian historical narrative. Furthermore, I argue that the mingled compositional and narrative form of Assurnasirpal II's program, evident in his Nimrud chair of state Room, must have drawn directly on lost Assyrian predecessors, one of which is indirectly preserv in the White Obelisk.

The White Obelisk

The White Obelisk was lay the foundation of in 1853 in the hillocked ruins of ancient Nineveh, the oldest and individual of the most important of the great center at the heart of the Assyrian empire [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]. The details of its archaeological connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts are vague; the excavator, Hormuzd Rassam, reports that when digging in the exterior court of the palace of Sennacherib and the Ishtar fane "after we had penetrated about fifteen feet downwards, we discovered, lying flat in the cut a perfect Obelisk made of white calcarious stone."(5) Its original position is unknown. Although certainly worn through the ravages of time, the White Obelisk is perfect having never suffered deliberate damage, the fate of many other victory testimonials of ancient Near Eastern monarchs once their domination was overthrown from without or within.(6)

The Obelisk, an imposing at the same time essentially human-scale monument typical of early Neo-Assyrian statuary [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3-6 OMITTED], a tapering rectangular pillar a certain quantity of 9 feet 6 inches (29 m) in height carved from white limestone.(7) The stepp top, inscribed with a cuneiform body evokes the shape of a ziggurat, the staged fane tower that from the mid-third millennium was the primary religious form of Mesopotamia. The shaft is carved with displays in low relief in eight horizontal registers [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 7 8 OMITTED]. The bottom 12 inches (30 cm) undecorated and roughly finished, was originally mountained in a socle or pedestal.