NYC: Brooklyn Museum - Reliefs of King Ashur-nasir-pal II - Winged Genie with a Horned Helmet — wallyg

<i>Winged Genie with a Horned Helmet</i> The Reliefs of King Ashur-nasir-pal II From the palace of Ashur-nasir-pal II, Kalhu (modern Nimurd, Iraq), Room L of the Northwest Palace Reign of Ashur-nasir-pal II (circa 883–859 B.C.) Purchased with funds given by Hagop Kevorkian and the Kevorkian Foundation, 55.157 The twelve massive carved alabaster panels, on view together for the first time, that line the walls of the Hagop Kevorkian Gallery are but a sample of hundreds of such reliefs, all originally brightly painted, that once adorned the vast palace of King Ashur-nasir-pal II (883–859 B.C.), one of the greatest rulers of ancient Assyria. Completed in 879 B.C. at the site of Kalhu (modern Nimrud, slightly north of what is now Baghdad, Iraq), the palace was the heart of a vast empire. The reliefs served a propagandistic purpose, proclaiming the king's legitimacy. Because most people in the Near East understood the administration of the state as a collaborative effort between the king and gods, many reliefs show the ruler and his supernatural attendants celebrating religious rituals. The most depict the ruler and his winged protectors (genies) tending a sacred tree. Nearly all of the reliefs contain the same inscription. The script is cuneiform. The language is Akkadian. The text, known as the Standard Inscription, begins by tracing Ashur-nasir-pal II's lineage back three generations. It recounts his military victories, defines the boundaries of his empire, and tells how he founded Kalhu and built the palace. Because most people in the ancient Near East could not read, artists developed symbols to help individuals identify the figures on palace and temple walls. As a sign of their supernatural essence, the human-headed genies in the reliefs from Ashur-nasir-pal II's palace all wear horned helmets. This association between horns and divine (or semi-divine) presence had a long history in the ancient Near East. Beginning in the Akkadian Period (circa 2371-2230 BC) artists used bovine horns as symbols of divinity, and biblical and archaeological evidence indicates that horned altars were common in Israelite religion. In 1840, a young English diplomat named Austen Henry Layard noticed an unusually large mound while rafting down the Tigris River. He returned in 1845 to unearth the remains of the palace, sending his discoveries to the British Museum in London. He sent so many monumental sculptures and relief-decorated slabs that the museum sold some of them, including these twelve reliefs. In 1855, the expatriate American Henry Stevens purchased the reliefs and shipped them to Boston. Unable to raise funds for the reliefs there, he sold them to James Lenox for the New-York Historical Society. In 1937, the Society lent them to the Brooklyn Museum and in 1955, Hagop Kevorkian, the New York collector and dealer, donated the funds to purchase and install the reliefs in the renamed Hagop Kevorkian Gallery of Ancient Middle Eastern Art at the Brooklyn Museum. * The <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/sets/72157604522405746/">Brooklyn Museum</a>, sitting at the border of Prospect Heights and Crown Heights near <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/sets/72157594185702272/">Prospect Park</a>, is the second largest art museum in New York City. Opened in 1897 under the leadership of Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences president John B. Woodward, the 560,000-square foot, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/479431531/in/set-72157604522405746/">Beaux-Arts building</a> houses a permanent collection including more than one-and-a-half million objects, from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art. The Brooklyn Museum was designated a landmark by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1966. National Historic Register #770009