The Life and Flight of Assyrian Winged Daemons
Brie Walker
Advisor: Dr. Nassos Papalexandrou
Abstract
Roughly 20 miles south of Mosul, lays a pile of rubble, the collapsed structure of a once beautiful home. Five years ago, an explosion broke the walls into pieces and scattered them across the earth. Today, the rust-colored bricks lay open and exposed to nature, and blades of grass grow slowly in between the divided stones. However, thousands of years ago, this home was the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, the King of Assyria.
This King decorated his Palace with reliefs, depicting not only gruesome battle scenes and war triumphs, but also religious scenes, filled with gods and mysterious symbols. When Austen Henry Layard discovered Nimrud in 1854, he began a series of excavations that sparked a trend of removing some of these scenes from the walls. He and other early archeologists shipped these stones to different institutions and various people across the globe. As a result of these actions and Nimrud’s more recent destruction, much of what remains of Ashurnasirpal II’s Reliefs exists within museums. Like the broken pieces scatted across the ground of Nimrud, these reliefs are scattered across the world. The focus of my presentation is two revetment slabs depicting winged daemons at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
I argue that these reliefs at the Kimbell have much to say about politics and faiths, both past and present, and have one of the most unique stories in the museum’s collection. They are more than meets the eye, and present questions about the boundaries between art and life. Their study in context, both ancient and modern, as well as their fascinating biography provide insights into how Assyrians believed the world functioned and their place within it. They highlight ontological differences and similarities between the Ancient Near East and the Modern Western World.
