Syria - Mesopotamia :|: Document

Ferry for chariots and swimming soldiers in Nimrud

ref. : en.712.2013 |

7 April 2013 | by Francis Leveque
sculpture | Second quarter of IXe century BC
Nimrud (Kalhu), Mésopotamie ( Irak )

Gypsum wall panel relief (Panel 11) excavated from North West Palace, Room B, in Kalhu (Nimrud), Irak. Excavated by Sir Austen Henry Layard in 1846, despatched from the site in December 1846; sent from Basra to Bombay in the ’Clive’, thence to England on H.M.S. ’Meeanee’ in August 1849.

The panel shows Ashurnasirpal II’s chariot and another being placed in a boat for transportation across a river, probably the Euphrates. Upstream, Assyrian officials supervise as the army crosses river; some cross on inflated skins. There is an inscription written in cuneiform script.

Date : 865BC-860BC

Lengh : 213.36 cm
Hight : 95.25 cm

Bibliography :

E.A.W. Budge, Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum, Reign of Ashur-nasir-pal, 885-890 B.C, British Museum Press, London , 1914, pl. XXI.1

C.J. Gadd, The Stones of Assyria: the surviving remains of Assyrian sculpture, their recovery, and their original positions, Chatto and Windus, London , 1936, p.134

L. Basch, Le musée imaginaire de la marine antique (MIMA), Institut hellénique pour la préservation de la tradition nautique, Athènes , 1987, p.43, n° 63

A.K. Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC, I (1114-859 BC) (RIMA), University of Toronto Press, Toronto , 1991