Monday, 23rd April 2007
Dr Paul Collins (British Museum)
HUMAN AND DIVINE ATTENDANTS AT THE ROYAL COURTS OF ASSYRIA AND THE NEAR EAST
Beginning in the ninth century BC, the small kingdom of Assyria in northern Iraq began to reassert its authority across the steppe lands of Syria and gradually, over two centuries, a series of able kings created an empire stretching from Egypt to Iran. The palaces of these rulers, built at successive royal centres of Nimrud, Khorsabad and Nineveh, were elaborately decorated with images of kingship. The most spectacular form of decoration was the huge slabs of carved alabaster that adorned the walls of important rooms and courtyards. Among the images frequently found carved in relief at Nimrud are various depictions of the king attended by both beardless officials and protective spirits.
This talk will investigate the meaning of such imagery, found not only in the reliefs but also in Assyrian wall paintings and, on a smaller scale, in cylinder seals, metalwork, terracottas and carved ivories. We will explore its relationship with similar imagery known from Syria and the Levant, especially in Phoenician art and descriptions in the Old Testament of cherubim. By the height of the Assyrian empire such imagery became less important, perhaps reflecting a growing interest in representing a more naturalistic world as well as the need for images of kingship which were meaningful to all the people encompassed by the empire. Nonetheless, the courtiers of the king, whether human or divine, remained important symbols of power under the greatest of the Near Eastern empires, that of the Achaemenid Persians whose power stretched from Libya to India.
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