The King and Apkallu: Relief from the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud, Room G

Unidentified reign of Ashurnasirpal II maker, Assyrian, 883 - 859 BCE
Nimrud (ancient Kalhu)
Mesopotamia

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883-859 BCE

Gypsum wall panel carved in low relief

Overall: 93 × 85 in. (236.2 × 215.9 cm)

Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Gift of Sir Henry Rawlinson through Austin H. Wright, Class of 1830

S.856.3.2

Geography

Place Made: Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, West Asia, Asia

Period

1000 BCE-1 CE

Object Name

Building Component

Research Area

Near East

On view

Course History

ARTH 20, Art of Ancient Egypt and the Near East, Steven Kangas, Spring 2013

REL 4, JWST 4, Religion of Israel: The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), Peter Lanfer, Spring 2013

JWST 41, Cities of the Biblical World, Steven Kangas, Fall 2012

REL 81, Dickinson Distinguished Scholar Seminar: Orientalism and the Origins of Religion, Susannah Heschel, Fall 2012

ARTH 82, History of Museums and Collecting, Joy Kenseth, Spring 2012

ARTH 1, Steve Kangas, Ada Cohen, Bodies and Buildings: Introduction to the History of Art in the Ancient World and the Middle Ages, Fall 2013

ANTH 8, The Rise and Fall of Prehistoric Civilizations, Deborah Nichols, Fall 2013

ARAB 31, Advanced Arabic, El Mostafa Ouajjani, Fall 2013

JWST 7, Archaeologists, Artists, and Adventurers: The Rediscovery of the Holy Land, Steven Kangas, Winter 2014

WRIT 5, Imaging Power: The Development of a Western Vocabulary of Rulership, Jane Carroll, Winter 2014

ARTH 20, The Art of Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East, Steven Kangas, Winter 2014

ANTH 12.2, Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Daniel Potts, Spring 2014

THEA 15, Theater & Society I: Classical and Medieval Performance, Laura Edmondson, Fall 2014

ARTH 1, Bodies and Buildings, Steven Kangas, Nicola Camerlenghi, Fall 2014

REL 4, JWST 4, Religion of Israel: The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), Peter Lanfer, Fall 2014

ANTH 8, The Rise and Fall of Prehistoric Civilizations, Deborah Nichols, Fall 2014

ARTH 7.8, Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and their Modern Successors, Steven Kangas, Spring 2015

ARTH 20, The Art of Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East, Steven Kangas, Spring 2015

ARTH 1, Bodies and Buildings: Introduction to the History of Art in the Ancient World and the Middle Ages, Jane Carroll, Steven Kangas, Fall 2015

ANTH 12.2, The Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Jesse Casana, Fall 2015

JWST 7, Archaeologists, Artists, and Adventures: The Rediscovery of the Holy Land , Steven Kangas, Winter 2016

ANTH 12.2, The Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Jason Herrmann, Spring 2013

ARTH 01, Bodies and Buildings, Nicola Camerlenghi and Steven Kangas, Fall 2019

ANTH 18, Research Methods in Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2021

Philosophy 1.11, Art: True, Beautiful, Nasty, John Kulvicki, Summer 2023

Exhibition History

Carpenter Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1929-1985.

College Museum, Butterfield Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1896-1928.

Gene Y. Kim, Class of 1985, Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, November 15, 1985-present.

Global Cultures at the Hood: Ancient to Premodern, Gene Y. Kim Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26. 2019.

Picture Gallery, Reed Hall, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1857-1860s; stored in a small closet in Reed Hall, 1860s-1880s; on display again, 1880s-1895.

Publication History

Jane Benson Ackerman, The Hood Museum of Art: Ten Years of Making Art at Home in the Upper Valley, Upper Valley Magazine, November/December 1995, Volume 9, No. 6, Van Etten, Inc., 1995, pp. 22-29, ill. p. 25

Judith Lerner, Journey's End: The Assyrian Reliefs at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, September, 1985, p. 30-31, ill. p. 30.

Georgia Croft, Back on the Wall (where they belong), Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1985, p. 31-33.

Treasures of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, New York: Hudson Hill Press, 1985, p. 34.

Ada Cohen and Steven E. Kangas, Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II: A Cultural Biography, Hanover, New Hamphire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2010, p. 60-74, plates 3.1-3.13, ill. p. 149, figure 5.5

Ada Cohen and Steven E. Kangas, Inside an Ancient Assyrian Palace, Looking at Austen Henry Layard's Reconstruction, Hanover: Hood Museum of Art and University of New England Press, 2017, p. X; Figure 1; p. Xiii, Figurge 2 (detail); p. 25, Figure 20.

John R. Stomberg, The Hood Now: Art and Inquiry at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2019, p. 71, ill. plate no. 2.

Provenance

The reliefs were excavated by Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1895), at Nimrud, Iraq, about 1845-47; offered to Missionaries by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810-1895), a political agent of the British in Baghdad, about 1853; Professor Oliver Payson Hubbard, Class of 1873h (1809-1900), Chemistry Professor and College Librarian asked Reverend Austin Hazen Wright (1811-1865), Class of 1830 (Medical missionary stationed in Oroomiah, Persia) to acquire some reliefs for Dartmouth College, 1853; the Dartmouth reliefs were selected and packed by Reverend Henry Lobdell, M.D. (1827-1855) at Nimrud, about 1854-55; travelled from Nimrud to Mosul on mules; travelled on camels across the Syrian desert to the Mediterranean at Alexandretta (Iskenderun); transported to a sailing vessel to Beirut; travelled on the steamer "Daniel Webster" to Boston; travelled by rail to Hanover, New Hampshire; arrived on December 11, 1856.

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