Fragment of a relief from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh

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Artwork is in the public domain. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Museum of Art at Hamilton…
Fragment of a relief from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh
Artwork is in the public domain. Image courtesy of the Ruth and Elmer Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Photo by John Bentham. For educational purposes only.
Datec. 700-692 BCE
MediumGypsum alabaster
DimensionsOverall: 11 1/4 × 15 7/8 × 3/4 in. (28.6 × 40.3 × 1.9 cm)
Credit LineHamilton College Collection
Object numberINV.629
On view
DescriptionDr. Paul Collins, Jaleh Hearn Curator of Ancient Near East, believes this fragment to come from Room XXXII of the so-called Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh: "Henry Layard who excavated the room describes the scenes on the reliefs in Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (London, 1853), p. 462, as a "campaign against a nation dwelling amidst a wooded and mountainous country, and in strongly fortified cities, which the Assyrians took by assault, using battering rams to make breaches in the walls and scaling ladders to mount to the assault." Drawings of the reliefs lining the room were made by Layard and his accompanying artist C.D. Hodder. These are now in the British Museum... The gypsum reliefs at Nineveh had been badly damaged by the fires that destroyed the palace in 612 BC as well as by subsequent exposure to the elements. As a result they were very badly cracked and fragmentary. Only a small number of pieces were recovered from this particular room at Nineveh, two of which are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA 32.143.15 and MMA 54.136.1). The known reliefs from Nineveh scattered across the globe were brought together in the publication: Barnett, R.D., E. Bleibtreu and G. Turner (1998) Sculptures from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh (British Museum)." (SOURCE: email correspondence, May 2018)
Collections

Additional Details

Markings Not marks noted.
Signature Not signed.
Inscribed No inscriptions noted.
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