Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Assyrian sculpture and reliefs
A colossal guardian lion, smothered in inscriptions, signals the beginning of the BM's
remarkable collection of
Assyrian sculptures and reliefs
(room 6). Close by stands a
small black obelisk carved with images of foreign rulers paying tribute to Shalmaneser
III (858-824 BC), interspersed with
cuneiform inscriptions
, the world's oldest written
language. Ahead lies the Egyptian sculpture gallery (room 4), but to continue with
Assyria, turn left and pass between the two awesome five-legged, human-headed
winged lions that once flanked the doorway of the throne room in the palace in
Nimrud (now in northern Iraq), built by Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC). Beyond is
a full-scale reconstruction of the colossal wooden
Balawat Gates
from the palace of
Shalmaneser III, bound together with bronze strips decorated with low-relief friezes,
depicting the defeat and execution of Shalmaneser's enemies.
6
Nimrud and Nineveh reliefs
The vast corridor of
Nimrud reliefs
, in room 7, were originally brightly coloured,
appearing rather like stone tapestries, and adorned the interior of Ashurnasirpal II's
palace. There are some great snapshots of Assyrian life - a review of prisoners, a bull
hunt and so on - but the most memorable scene, located towards the middle of the
room, is of the soldiers swimming across the sea on inflated animal bladders. The
Nineveh reliefs
in room 9 record the stupendous effort involved in transporting some
gargantuan winged bulls from their quarry to the palace of Sennacherib (704-681 BC).
The Assyrians moved these carved beasts in one piece; not so the British, who cut the
two largest winged bulls into four pieces before transporting them - the joins are still
visible on the pair, which now stand at the northern entrance to room 10.
Room 10 itself is lined with even more splendid Assyrian friezes from Sennacherib's
palace in Nineveh. On one side (10b) the reliefs portray the chaos and carnage during
the capture of Lachish (a city in modern-day Israel); the friezes were damaged, and
Sennacherib's face smashed in, by Babylonian soldiers when the Assyrian capital later
fell to its southern neighbours in 612 BC. On the other side (10a) are the
royal lion
hunts
of Ashurbanipal (668-631 BC), which involved rounding up the beasts before
letting them loose, one at a time, in an enclosed arena for the king's sport, a practice
that effectively eradicated the species in Assyria; the succession of graphic death scenes
features one in which the king slaughters the cats with his bare hands.
Mesopotamia
Upstairs, in room 59, are the Neolithic
Ain Ghazal statues
, the oldest large-scale
representations of humans in the world, dating from the eighth millennium BC.
Further on, in room 56, are some more of the BM's oldest artefacts, dating from
Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. The most extraordinary treasures hail
from Ur, the first great city on earth, (now in Iraq): the enigmatic
Ram in the Thicket
(cabinet 17), a deep-blue lapis lazuli and white shell statuette of a goat on its hind legs,
peering through gold-leaf branches; beside it, the equally mysterious
Standard of Ur
, a
small hollow box showing scenes of battle on one side, with peace and banqueting on
the other, all fashioned in shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli, set in bitumen; and the
Royal Game of Ur
(cabinet 16), one of the earliest known board games.
In room 55, a selection of tablets scratched with infinitesimal cuneiform script
includes lists, receipts, spells and prescriptions, the
Flood Tablet
(cabinet 8), a fragment
of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest story, and, in room 52, the
Cyrus Cylinder
(cabinet 4), recounting the Persian leader's capture of Babylon in 539 BC. Also in
room 52, there's the
Oxus Treasure
(cabinet 3), the most important surviving hoard of
Persian goldwork from the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC), discovered in Tajikistan
in 1877 and eventually picked up from the bazaar in Rawalpindi. The most celebrated
pieces are the miniature four-horse chariot and the pair of armlets sprouting fantastical
horned gri
ns.
