Drawing Distinctions: Assyrians and Others in the Art of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Between the ninth and seventh centuries BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire became the largest the world had yet seen. In the process of imperial conquest, the Assyrian state incorporated previously foreign territories and people into their world. Landscapes, materials, and the labor of conquered bodies became a part of the Assyrian royal palaces of northern Iraq, both as elements of their construction and as themes emphasized within the extensive visual programs of the palace reliefs. Within and through visual depiction of enemy bodies and foreign landscapes, in the process of being (often violently) reshaped by Assyrian hands, Neo-Assyrian kings brought the farthest reaches of their world into the center of imperial power. This article considers how specific strategies of representation in palace art allowed the Assyrian palace to serve as a microcosm of the empire and a map of its borders. Palace art emphasized the remade, reworked, or recreated, defining “Assyrianness” as that which remakes and has been remade. As a central act of remaking, I examine representations of captive or submissive foreigners, whose presence in the reliefs commemorates their humiliation while compounding and enhancing it in the very ways that these figures are depicted: cringing, deficient, and physiologically incorrect. I pay particular attention to examples from the late King Ashurbanipal’s reign, in which foreign leaders are singled out through representation with distinctive facial features. I argue that this act of (literally) drawing distinctions was an inherently imperial process, one that both expressed and enabled an ideology of expansion and control.

SWORD CARRY IN THE ART OF ASHURNASIRPAL II: DISPLAYS OF DIVINE AUTHORITY

This paper explores the meaning behind the two methods of sword carry depicted in the iconography of Ashurnasirpal II. While the sword is regarded as a prestigious weapon tied to the owner's identity, the implications of how such an understanding of the sword in the Neo-Assyrian Empire might further delineate the underlying messages of the palace reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II remain unaddressed in secondary literature. As a result, through a combination of a cognitive analysis in regards to the significance of the sword's appearance in Neo-Assyrian texts and iconography as well as an analysis of visual formulas in the palace reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II as identified by Mehmet-Ali Ataç, this paper argues that the visual representation of the sword is intended to communicate not only the wielder's power and wealth but also the wielder's exercise or restraint of divine authority based on the carry method displayed.

The Bronze Age of Kazakhstan in the context of Asian cultural relations

It seems that there are some events in the history of Ancient Near Eastern civilizations directly related to the Bronze Age of Kazakhstan. Those events have taken place in the first half of the second millennium BC and were associated with the invasion of mobile groups chariot warriors who brought with themselves a cult of a horse, a war chariot, advanced weapons, and some new ideologies to the Ancient Near East. Those chariotry men became the military aristocracy in many new founded states in Ancient Near East They propagated a heroized image of a warrior- king ride in a chariot, which was widely used in the palace reliefs of the countries of the Ancient Near East. During the last fifty years the archeologists discovered many Bronze Age monuments in Kazakhstan, with cultural indicators which coincided with the characteristics of the historical tribes that invaded early agricultural civilizations of Near East at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC and created new dynasties of rulers. The names of those incomers are preserved in the writing sources of the Near Ancient East states. They are mentioned as: Hyksos, Kassites, Amorites, Mariannu. It is known that some part of them were Indo-Aryans by language. For many decades, linguists, historians and archaeologists have been searching for their ancestral home. The purpose of the article is to characterize the main cultural factors of the Bronze Age cultures of Ural-Kazakhstan steppes and to investigate the possibility of the steppe origin of the chariot warriors income to the Near East in the first half of second millennium BC and thus show the contribution of the ancient population of the Kazakhstan steppes to the world historical process.

A STUDY OF IVORY AND BONE PLAQUES FROM ZIWIYE IN THE SANANDAJ MUSEUM

This article introduces a small group of ivories held in the Sanandaj Museum, which were discovered in 1997 during the seventh season of Nasratolah Motamedi's excavations at Ziwiye, northwest Iran. An investigation of the decorative, figurative, and stylistic characteristics of these pieces reveals a strong Neo-Assyrian influence, with close similarities to the palace reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, as well as the influence of Assyrianizing Urartian art. These extensive cultural influences on Mannaean art can be seen in terms of political and economic relations with the two regions.

DARSTELLUNGEN DER SUḪÄER UND WEITERER NACHBARN DER ASSYRER IM 9. JH. 1. TEIL

Representations of foreigners in their strange attire have a long tradition in the Ancient Near East. While the Assyrian Empire was expanding during the early first millennium BC, the Assyrian kings ‒ with the help of skilled and even inspired craftsmen – attached a growing importance to the differentiation of their near neighbours and people further away. The palace reliefs of Assurnaṣirpal were of excellent craftsmanship, the garments, the hair-styles, the beards and the surrounding landscape were carefully rendered, quite often in every minute detail. Through these details the meaning of the ‘images’ became fully understandable to the well informed Assyrian viewer. Foreign people were not merely enemies, they were people in their own right.

The Horizontal Forearm Harp: Assyria's National Instrument

A horizontal harp, strung with seven to nine strings and usually decorated with a finial in the shape of a human forearm, is likely to have been a symbol of the Neo-Assyrian state. Various features distinguish this musical instrument from contemporary Elamite harps, and from other harps in Mesopotamian history. The horizontal forearm harp was the most frequently depicted musical instrument on Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs and bronze doors; pairs of male Assyrians play the harp for the king in official duties of state or cult. The decorative forearm sometimes wears the rosette bracelet associated with royalty. Consideration of the iconographic significance of the forearm suggests possible Neo-Assyrian attitudes toward music.

Fifth-campaign Reliefs in Sennacherib's “Palace without Rival” at Nineveh

Scholars had once assumed that all of the relief programmes in Sennacherib's “Palace Without Rival” at Nineveh depicted events solely from his first three military campaigns. In 1994, however, E. Frahm successfully reconstructed a heavily damaged epigraph from the throne room specifically identifying the city of Ukku as the topic of the relief programme on Slabs 1–4 of this room's western wall. We know from Sennacherib's annals that Ukku was a target of the king's fifth campaign, aimed at enemies to the north of the Assyrian heartland in the Zagros mountain range. I have therefore re-examined the palace reliefs in order to identify other fifth-campaign programmes that have previously been overlooked. In this article, I argue that Rooms XXXVIII and XLVIII, in addition to the images on the western wall of the throne room, contain representations of Sennacherib's fifth campaign. With this identification substantiated, I then explore the typological aspects of these fifth-campaign programmes to classify their visual features.