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A Glazed-Brick Panel from Nimrud

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

J. E. Reade
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Extract

Over three hundred glazed bricks were last year discovered in Courtyard T of Fort Shalmaneser. They were lying between the buttresses that flanked the entrance to T 3 and must originally have formed a panel set into the wall above. Though most of them had been broken into several separate fragments, few had fallen clear and the most important of these was in fact discovered from the fill of a nineteenth-century trench on top of the mound. The bricks were taken to Baghdad where it eventually proved possible to reconstruct their entire design.

An inscription dates the bricks to the reign of Shalmaneser III; they were found resting on a confused mass of mud-brick and charcoal, and had clearly collapsed during one of the sacks of Calah, when the wooden fittings of the door below were set on fire and its east jamb demolished. The bricks, whose total weight must have exceeded three tons, fell immediately, but since only mud mortar can have bound them to the wall behind, brought down at the same time very little mud-brick. When the main body of the wall did fall shortly afterwards, it sealed them in what was still an extremely loose heap. This process of destruction, while serving its purpose at the time, saved the bricks from the dangers of exposure, and even the fire only damaged those which came to rest face down on the smouldering wood. Two of them, however, which carried a representation of the god Aššur, were split into an unusually large number of fragments and must have been cracked before the panel fell.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Spring 1963 , pp. 38 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1963

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References

1 I am extremely grateful to Mr. David Oates, Director of the Nimrud Expedition, who both invited me to publish this panel and found time himself to help in numerous ways. Other members of the expedition, particularly Mrs. Olwen Brogan, and Mr. Peter Hulin, who dealt with the inscription, were of great assistance. I must also thank Sayyid Akram Shukri and Sayyid Ali Nakshabandi for their unfailing patience and courtesy throughout the time I was working on the panel in Baghdad.

2 Oates, D., Iraq XXIV, Pt. 1, p. 4 and Pl. IIGoogle Scholar.

3 Loud, G., Khorsabad I, pp. 92 f.Google Scholar, Loud, and Altman, , Khorsabad II, p. 14Google Scholar; and Koldewey, R., The Excavations at Babylon, pp. 40 and 104 ff.Google Scholar

4 Layard, A. H., Nineveh and its Remains II, p. 13Google Scholar. Markings on bricks from Assur have also been compared with those from Babylon (W.D.O.G. 67, p. 57Google Scholar); so should those illustrated by Loftus, W. K., Travels in Susiana, p. 398Google Scholar. Khorsabad is only a partial exception, as Place certainly found some system of numbering used on the panels he dismantled (Ninive et l'Assyrie II, p. 253Google Scholar).

5 Plate IX is reproduced from the original pencil drawing of the panel, since it has not been possible to produce the final version before this volume goes to press. It is hoped to publish both a final black and white copy and a coloured reproduction in due course.

6 E.g. A. H. Layard, Monuments of Nineveh I, pl. XLIII and I.L.N. 15 August 1953, p. 254, fig. 4; 28 July 1951, p. 136, fig. 11.

7 Andrae, A., Coloured Ceramics from Aššur, pp. 66–76, figs. 39–48Google Scholar.

8 Layard, A. H., Monuments of Nineveh I, pl. LXXXIV, nos. 6, 7, 10, 13Google Scholar.

9 Botta, P.-É., Monument de Ninive II, pl. CLV, figs. 4, 6, 8Google Scholar. Almost all the bricks shown on pls. CLV and CLVI of this book could have belonged to a panel or panels very like the one from Fort Shalmaneser. Thus pl. CLV, figs, 1, 3 represent parts of a winged disc, fig. 2 the head of a king, and fig. 7 the feet of another, while the small palmettes on pl. CLVI, fig. 15 must come from a sacred tree. Genies, arcaded buds and palmettes, and goats would have occupied the decorative registers; rosettes also are numerous. Pl. CLVI, figs. 1, 2, 3 present the only difficulty, as they seem to belong to a processional scene such as Place found stored in room 82 (Ninive et l'Assyrie I, p. 89Google Scholar). All Botta's bricks, like some found in Palace F (Loud, G., Khorsabad II, p. 77Google Scholar), came from that part of the building equivalent to area T of Fort Shalmaneser.

10 Andrae's Shalmaneser plaque (W. V.D.O.G. 23, pl. LXXXII) is the one good parallel: cf. perhaps AfO. XVI, p. 243, fig. 31Google Scholar, and Iraq XVI Pt. 1, p. 160Google Scholar.

11 R. D. Barnett, A Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories in the British Museum, pls. CXIII and CXIV.

12 Layard, A. H., Monuments of Nineveh p. 84, no. 8Google Scholar.

13 A. Parrot, Nineveh, fig. 114.

14 H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, pl. XXXIII, f.

15 W. Andrac, Coloured Ceramics, pl. I.

16 E.g. Layard, A. H., Monuments of Niniveh I, pl. XXVGoogle Scholar.

17 Layard, , Monuments I, pl. XXVGoogle Scholar. This is in the British Museum. A duplicate, from the centre of the south wall, is still at Nimrud.

18 H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, pl. XXXIII, a.

19 L. W. King, Assyrian Sculptures in the British Museum from Shalmaneser to Sennacherib, pl. 1.

20 Place, V., Ninive et l'Assyrie III, pl. XXVIIGoogle Scholar.

21 A. Parrot, Nineveh, fig. 109. These paintings may have been done for Shalmaneser V.

22 Place, V., Ninive et l'Assyrie, III, pl. XXXGoogle Scholar.

23 E.g. H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, pls. XXXI, l and XXXII, c.

24 Altman, , Khorsabad II, p. 82 and pl. LXXXIXGoogle Scholar.

25 Layard, , Nineveh and its Remains II, p. 13Google Scholar; they are mentioned in Aššurnasirpal's inaugural stela (Iraq XIV, p. 30, 1. 32Google Scholar); “I caused bricks to be baked with blue-(glaze) and set (them) above the doors.” Presumably the zaginduru of the line before, translated as ‘glaze(d work)’ by Wiseman, refers to the powdered blue-frit used as a ground for wall-paintings inside the pakce.

26 A few glazed tiles are known from the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta II (W. Andrae, Coloured Ceramics from Ashur, pls. VII–IX), but these were probably used indoois, like those frcm the old palace at Nineveh (AAA XVIII, p. 82 f.Google Scholar) and elsewhere. Glazed bricks may occasionally have decorated the exterior of Assyrian buildings before the ninth century, as Weidner's interpretation of a Tiglath-Pileser I text suggests (AjO XIX, p. 141 f.Google Scholar), but not on a scale to compare with Aššarnaṣirpal's work. There must be some connection with the glazed and moulded bricks of Elam and the Kassite empire, just as there is between the Assur wall-plaques and those found in large numbers at Choga Zambil (Arts Asiatiques I. p. 83 ff.Google Scholar and II, p. 163 ff.).

Tiglath-Pileser I was once thought responsible for the glazed bricks, representing battles and processions, that decorated the lower facade of the Aššur temple at Ashur; the final publication (W. V.D.O.G. 67, p. 56Google Scholar) repeats this mistake. The one panel illustrated (Andrae, op. cit., pl. VI) must have been made towards the end of the eighth century, and Weidner was no doubt right in attributing it, on epigraphic grounds, to Sargon (A.f.O. III, pp. 1–6Google Scholar). There is no reason to suppose that the other panels were not made at approximately the same time.