CHRONICLES OF GREAT DEEDS For their palace walls the Assyrian kings commissioned extensive series of narrative
reliefs exalting royal power and piety. The sculptures record not only battlefield victories but also the slaying of wild
animals. (The Assyrians, like many other societies before and after, regarded prowess in hunting as a manly virtue on a
par with success in warfare.) These narrative reliefs have precedents in Egypt, but in a very different format. The
degree of documentary detail in the Assyrian reliefs is without parallel in the ancient Near East, even in such narratives
as those on the Stele of the Vultures and the Standard of Ur. Archaeologists have found nothing else comparable made
before the Roman Empire.
One of the most extensive – and earliest – examples of a cycle of historical narrative reliefs comes from the
Palace of Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883-859 BCE) at Kalhu. (The Assyrian kings frequently incorporated Ashur’s name into their
own.) Throughout the palace, painted gypsum reliefs sheathed the lower parts of the mud-brick walls below brightly
colored plaster. Rich textiles on the floors contributed to the luxurious ambience. Every relief celebrated the king and
bore an inscription naming Ashurnasirpal and describing his accomplishments.
The example – Assyrian Archers Pursuing Their Enemies – probably depicts an episode that occurred in 878 BCE
when Ashurnasirpal drove his enemy’s forces into the Euphrates River. In the relief, two Assyrian archers shoot arrows
at the fleeing foe. Three enemy soldiers are in the water. One swims with an arrow in his back. The other two attempt
to float to safety by inflating animal skins. Their destination is a fort where their compatriots await them. The artist
showed the fort as if it were in the middle of the river, but it must, of course, have been on land, perhaps at some
distance from where the escapees entered the water. The artist’s purpose was to tell the story clearly and economically.
In art, distances can be compressed and the human actors enlarged so that they stand out from their environment.
(Literally interpreted, the defenders of the fort are too tall to walk through its archway.) The sculptor also combined
different viewpoints in the same frame, just as the figures are composites of frontal and profile views. Viewers see the
river from above while observing the men, trees, and fort from the side. The artist also made other adjustments for
clarity. So as not to hide the archers’ faces, the sculptor depicted their bowstrings in front of their bodies but behind
their heads. The men will snare their own heads in their bows when they launch their arrows! All these liberties with
optical reality result, however, in a vivid and easily legible retelling of a decisive moment in the king’s victorious
campaign. This was the artist’s primary goal.
Assyrian archers pursuing enemies, relief from the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Kalhu (modern Nimrud), Iraq, ca. 875-860
BCE. Gypsum, 2’10” high. British Museum, London.