Hello I'm exhibition curator Gareth Brereton
and this week we'll be discussing this masterpiece of Assyrian art.
This is a curved wall panel carved from limestone
and this once decorated a room in the southwest palace at Niniveh
Ashurbanipal's first residence.
And it is an important document of a war
between the Assyrian army and the Elamites of Southwest Iran.
So first I'm going to give you a little bit of a backstory about how this battle happened
why war broke out between the two kingdoms.
So the Kingdom of Elam was located in southwest Iran
and that was at Assyria's southern border.
When the king of Elam died, his anti-Assyrian brother took the throne by force.
The true heir to the throne fled to Assyria to get Ashurbanipal's protection
he was a political refugee at Ashurbanipal's court in Nineveh.
The anti-Assyrian king
the usurper called Teumman
wanted his return
but Ashurbanipal denied him.
It was obviously useful for Ashurbanipal to have a pro-Assyrian royal family in his care in Nineveh
So Ashurbanipal sent his army to meet the Elamites on the bank of the river Ulai
and this is the depiction of the battle taking place.
So on the left-hand side the Assyrian army has broken through the Elamite battle lines.
The Elamites are in panic
they're fleeing down a hill
they're tugging at their beards
they're throwing their weapons in the air
it's a real chaotic scene
and the Assyrians who wear better armour; have better weapons
are pushing the Elamites towards the river.
And the river Ulai cuts across the scene
and the Elamites gradually get pushed and pushed and pushed
and they fall into the river and drown with their horses
and their carts
and their weapons.
So this is a real chaotic depiction of a pitched battle
between two armies at the time.
But there's also a really interesting subplot
a story within the chaos that we can pick out
about the capture and execution of the Elamite king.
It starts here the Elamite king and his son
Teumman and Tammaritu
fall from their chariot - which has collapsed.
Teumman loses his royal hat
It cuts to the next scene:
they both get up, Teumman's got his hat back
but he's been wounded by an arrow which has hit him in the back
and so they try and flee toward a forest
but to no avail
they're soon surrounded by Assyrian soldiers.
So the wounded Teumman is kneeling down and he's telling his son to pick up the bow and resist.
The son gets hit over the head with a mace
an Assyrian soldier cuts Teumman's head off.
The heads are carried back
- so that's King Teumman's head being carried back by an Assyrian soldier -
and they bring their heads back up to the Assyrian camp
where they're doing a headcount
and there's some pro-Assyrian Elamites in the tent inspecting the heads to identify the king and his son
and they're whisked off back to Assyria in a cart to Ashurbanipal.
As you may have noticed the scenes jump around and the figures are repeated in time and space.
So how can we tell what's going on?
Well the Assyrians luckily for us left these sort of captions
inscriptions - much like a cartoon strip
explaining the story as it unfolds.
So here we have an Elamite noble on the floor
wounded with arrows.
An Assyrian soldier stands over him
and there's an accompanying caption and he's basically saying:
"Come and make a good name for yourself.
Cut off my head and bring it to your lord."
The battle scene is very much a propaganda statement as well.
We don't see any Assyrian soldiers wounded or dying.
They are the victors.
The Elamites on the other hand are wounded
they're sprawled across the battlefield
some are beheaded
vultures and carrion birds pick at their remains.
Okay so what happened next?
Luckily, we have these reliefs that tell us the aftermath of the battle.
Here we have a scene that takes place in Elam
and then a separate scene at the top takes place back in Assyria.
So in the bottom scene victorious Assyrians lead the puppet ruler
that sought sanctuary in Assyria to the Elamites
to install him as king.
An Assyrian eunuch, who's shown without a beard
holds the puppet king by the wrists and leads him towards the Elamites
who come out of the city and bow down before him.
And if he notice the face the image of the puppet ruler has been hacked away
and when Nineveh finally fell and was sacked
the invading armies sought out images such as these
and defaced them to remove their power.
At the bottom of the scene we have the river Ulai
which continues from the earlier relief
with the dead Elamites soldiers floating downstream.
Back in Assyria a triumph takes place.
Ashurbanipal is shown in his chariot.
Again his image has been chipped away when the city was sacked
and he's got two visiting ambassadors from the nearby kingdom of Urartu
who come to greet him.
Ashurbanipal parades two Elamites holding writing tablets
and these contain rude messages from king Tuemman the Elamite usurper king to Ashurbanipal.
So he's showing them off to the Urartians as justification to why he attacked Elam.
Here again we see the same two ambassadors
and this time they're witnessing the humiliation of two captives.
These two figures supported the Elamite king.
And Ashurbanipal's army went and captured the ruler and his family
and brought them back to Assyria in chains.
Here we see the Assyrians placing the heads of Tuemman and another nobleman over their necks
and they're made to walk around the city
where they're humiliated slapped and spat upon.
The Ambassadors from Urartu appear a third time and this occasion
they're witnessing a grisly spectacle
where two more captives are having their tongues removed
before being staked to the floor and flayed alive.
And that was the punishment for treason
for opposing Ashurbanipal
and the ambassadors would have witnessed this spectacle as a statement of power from Ashurbanipal to say
"Look! This is what happens when you mess with me."
If you want to find out more about Ashurbanipal do come along to the exhibition
and if you click on the links you can find some more information all about Ashurbanipal