Monday, 18th January 2010
Dr. Nigel Tallis (British Museum)
A CREAKING DOOR LASTS LONGEST: THE BALAWAT GATES OF ASHURNASIRPAL
It is to be expected that archaeological narratives will feature discovery, but that of the gates from Balawat is far more than this. This is a story of discovery, loss, recovery and, ultimately, despite everything, of survival. Three remarkable elaborately decorated and inscribed gates have been found at the site of Balawat in Northern Iraq (the ancient site of Imgur-Enlil). Two of these gates were set up by the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) and one gate by his son Shalmaneser III (858-824 BC). They consist of long bands of sheet bronze once mounted on wooden doors. These bronze bands have finely embossed and chased decoration showing scenes of warfare, files of prisoners, the presentation of tribute, and hunting. Crucially, the bands also have descriptive epigraphs for the scenes (something the contemporary stone reliefs lack) together with longer royal inscriptions on the edging of the doors.
The large Shalmaneser gate is well known. It was excavated in 1878 by Hormuzd Rassam in the palace at Balawat, and was brought back to the British Museum for display. It has been published in full in 1902 and in 1915. What is less well known is that Rassam actually found two sets of gates in the palace: the second was a less well preserved gate of Ashurnasirpal II, of which only two bands were published while the remainder lay forgotten in a storeroom until rediscovery by R.D. Barnett in 1956.
The second set of Ashurnasirpal II gates, that from the Mamu Temple at Balawat, was found by Sir Max Mallowan during the excavations of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (also in 1956). R.D. Barnett was instrumental in gaining permission to include this new discovery in his planned publication on the British Museum gates, and the Mamu Temple gates were sent to the British Museum for conservation and detailed study. On return they were placed on permanent display in Mosul Museum, but sadly these gates were looted, seriously damaged and largely lost in 2003.
In 2008, R.D. Barnett's aim for the final publication of the gates was realised. For the first time it has been possible to reconstruct the original arrangement of the decoration of the gates, to understand how the gates were made, and to place them in their historical context - specifically Ashurnasirpal's first major engagements with the west.
Nigel Tallis is Curator of later Mesopotamia in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum and is a specialist in the history of transport and warfare.
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