This is a typical siege scene in the Assyrian palaces. Recurrently, war scenes were placed in the walls of throne rooms (besides some symbolic and protective images).
As part of a narrative sequence of scenes in other stone slabs, and even with its damaged upper border, in the centre of this image we see city walls being attacked by siege ladders, soldiers at both sides of the site, and people making (a small) resistance on the top of the walls. Weapons (round and curved shields, bows, spears, and swords) and strategies are employed, such as flanking simultaneously different corners, disposing infantry plus archers, and destructing wall bases. Some bodies fall… Upper and lower bands are connected by a ramp, in which a procession row is formed by prisoners, deportees, and soldiers, some of them carrying heads. The bottom margin is a river, which enhances a feature of the place where the combat occurred.
This kind of scene in a throne room is intriguing due to the ambiguity of the relation between space and image: on one hand, the throne room is the most public area, in which the king shows himself and could receive other dignitaries for state affairs. The scene represents the power of the king’s political and military actions and could affect his minimal audience. On the other hand, throne rooms are generally a huge space (a rectangular room which can reach c. 500 m²), and the sculpted narrative scenes could be small, which would require a visual effort and/or a proximity of the observer to the wall to see them in detail.
Therefore, the big issue is: war scenes for whom?
Besides the role of these images for maintaining an internal message to the palace community (and perhaps to a small external audience), war scenes and other motives in the Assyrian palace reliefs make part of a complex and luxurious celebrative programme.1 In order to register present events, to preserve them to future rulers, and to serve as a message to gods, the production of images and texts is a compulsory duty to the kings, which shows the accomplishment of the Assyrian mission. Broadly, these images function as a calotype, a set of impressions, and testimonies, all them produced to be (until a certain point) visually consumed by the palace community and the foreign dignitaries. Besides the “seat of the kingship”, in the Assyrian words, the palaces are more than the administration centre of the empire: they are households, places for the memory, places to remember and celebrate… We can thoughtfully make a contemporary analogy: the reliefs resemble the photographs usually framed and disposed at modern homes, in walls or furniture. This contemporary parallel lead us to pose still unsolved questions on the ways through which the reliefs could be perceived, or how they could foster some behaviours according to each designated function of the rooms in which they were displayed.
Reference
- Liverani, M., 2017: Assiria. La preistoria dell’imperialismo, Bari.
