Art made to be seen by visitors
Assyrian sculpture is best known from the carved stone slabs that lined the walls of royal palaces in the ninth to seventh centuries BCE. These were not decoration in the modern sense. The palaces were places where governors, foreign envoys and tribute-bearers were received, and the walls told them what the king had done and what happened to those who opposed him. Scholars generally describe the programme as royal propaganda, meaning a deliberately shaped image of kingship, not an objective record.
The reliefs were carved on slabs of gypsum alabaster, a soft stone that could be worked in fine detail, and they were originally painted in places, though little colour survives. Many were also covered with cuneiform text. At Nimrud the so-called Standard Inscription of Ashurnasirpal II was repeated across slabs, listing the king’s titles and achievements.
Nimrud: the Northwest Palace
Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled in the ninth century BCE, built a new palace at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu). Its reliefs show the king in battle, receiving tribute, hunting and taking part in ritual, along with winged protective figures who bless a stylised sacred tree. The images are relatively formal and symmetrical, with the king usually the largest or most central figure.
Some of the best-known figures at the palace are the large guardian creatures at doorways: human-headed winged bulls and lions often called lamassu, an Akkadian word for a protective spirit. They combine a human head for intelligence, wings for reach and a bull or lion body for strength. They were meant to protect the king’s threshold, and a visitor passing between them entered a space under the king’s guard.
A well-known detail is that many of these figures have five legs. Seen from the front, the creature appears to stand still with two forelegs together, and seen from the side it appears to stride, with the extra leg making both views work. This is an example of sculptors solving a practical viewing problem.
Khorsabad and Nineveh
Sargon II built a new city, Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad), and decorated it in a similar way, and Sennacherib did the same at Nineveh in his Southwest Palace. The Nineveh reliefs include a long sequence on the siege of Lachish, a fortified city in Judah, taken in 701 BCE. These slabs, now largely in the British Museum, show the Assyrian assault ramp, the use of siege engines, archers and slingers, the defenders on the walls and groups of captives being led away. They are a rare case where an Assyrian image can be compared with excavation of the besieged city itself, since archaeologists have found a siege ramp at Lachish.
The reliefs make careful distinctions. Assyrian soldiers are shown in orderly ranks, while enemies appear in disorder. Deportees leave their cities with their possessions on carts, and executions and impalements are also shown. The images are not shy about violence, and they should be read as a message about the cost of resistance.
The lion hunt of Ashurbanipal
The most admired Assyrian reliefs come from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, made in the seventh century BCE. They show the king hunting lions from a chariot, on foot and in the arena. The animals are drawn with unusual sensitivity, and the figure of a wounded lioness dragging her paralysed hindquarters, often called the dying lioness, is perhaps the most famous.
The hunt was not simply sport. In Mesopotamian tradition the king was the protector of his people, and killing lions, which threatened herds and farmers, was one proof of fitness to rule. Surviving texts and the images suggest that at least some hunts were staged, with lions released from cages before the king. The scenes can be read as a ritual performance of order triumphing over wild nature, in the same way that military scenes show order triumphing over foreign enemies.
How to read the imagery
A few conventions help. The king is shown in a distinctive tall hat and richly decorated robe, is frequently placed higher or larger than other people, and is often accompanied by a parasol bearer or attendants. Winged discs and divine symbols indicate the god Ashur’s support. Scenes are often arranged in horizontal bands, and some read like continuous narrative, with the same event shown in sequence.
Enemy figures are identified by their dress, and so the reliefs have become a useful source for the appearance of peoples like Elamites, Arabs and Egyptians. Even so, details of clothing and arms should be treated with caution, since the artists followed conventions and not necessarily careful observation.
Place in Mesopotamian art
Assyrian work builds on a long line of Mesopotamian art, from the early cylinder seals and the Stele of the Vultures of the Sumerian cities to later Babylonian glazed brick such as the Ishtar Gate, but its scale and its focus on a single ruler are distinctive. The Assyrian court also drew on Syrian craftsmen and on the skills of the Phoenician city-states, and carved ivories from Nimrud show a mix of Egyptian, Syrian and Assyrian motifs. Scholars often see echoes of the Assyrian processional style in the Apadana staircase reliefs of the later Persian kings, though the two traditions differ in tone.
Today many reliefs are in museums in Europe, North America and Iraq, and some palace sites have suffered damage in modern conflicts, which has made earlier photographs and drawings valuable records. The reliefs remain central to how historians reconstruct Assyrian warfare, ritual and ideology, always with the awareness that they show the Assyrian king as he wanted to be seen.