Designed to Impress and Overwhelm' | A 3,000-year-old Assyrian Relief

This incredible Assyrian relief comes from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II. The palace was one of the largest known in antiquity. These huge slabs of gypsum sculpted in relief were placed along the walls. If you visit the Metropolitan Museum you get a sense of what going to the palace must have been All the reliefs in the palace were designed to impress and overwhelm. Every aspect is related to the strength and power of the king. This relief was adorned with these winged figures who are called Akalu or genius. They basically have the portrait-like quality of the king, Ashurnasirpal II, but here he's a god and he's anointing this sacred tree with a pine cone shaped object. And there would have been a similar Akalu figure on the other side, both anointing the tree, and it's all about fertility and protection for the king. A number of the reliefs that survive show traces of original pigment. We know that these reliefs were originally brightly painted. So the addition of the pigments were designed to give these reliefs more of a natural effect. For me, the part that you just don't see until you get up close is all of these little incised seams. So here you see the king again in combat with a winged bull. Here's a bull, you have a rosette, a palmette. Each of the reliefs bears a cuneiform inscription. It's called the standard inscription, which is cut right across the center of it. It tells of Ashurnasirpal's family lineage, the creation of the palace itself, the extent of the empire and the peoples that he conquered. He was the king of kings. If you're studying ancient art from the books, you don't get a sense of the monumental scale of these things until you're standing in front of them. When you look at this relief and you imagine the size of the room that it was once part of and the size of the relief itself, it must have just been absolutely overwhelming.