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Some Miniature Painted Glass Plaques from Fort Shalmaneser, Nimrud: Part I: Description and a Restoration1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

J. J. Orchard
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Extract

The story of how Sir Max Mallowan, accompanied by Professor Jørgen Laessøe, discovered the site of Fort Shalmaneser, and how soon after he decided to begin excavations there is one that is well known to readers of this journal. Also well known is that as work progressed from 1957 to 1963 several rooms were encountered within the fortress which were filled, sometimes to the incredible depth of several feet, with broken and mutilated ivory-work. What is not so well known, or if well known is not so well appreciated, is that these “Ivory Rooms”, as we of the Expedition used to call them, frequently contained many other categories of object as well, which, though subsequently overshadowed by the ivories, were nevertheless more deserving of attention than their present state of publication would suggest. One such category is the series of miniature painted glass plaques which is our subject here, for not only are they attractive and interesting in themselves, but they must be counted amongst the earliest examples of painted glass that have survived from antiquity. It is with the aim, therefore, of more fully acquainting both archaeologists and historians of glass with the details of these plaques that Dr. Robert H. Brill and I have prepared our present studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , Spring 1978 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1978

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Footnotes

1

I should like to express my sincere appreciation to Sir Max Mallowan for his interest in this study and for his kind permission to publish those plaques which have not already been treated in print. My warmest thanks are also due to Dr. Isa Salman, lately D.G. of Antiquities, Iraq; Dr. Fawzi Rashid, Director of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad; Dr. R. D. Barnett, lately Keeper of the Dept. of Western Asiatic Antiquities, The British Museum, and to Dr. V. E. Crawford, Curator of the Dept. of Ancient Near Eastern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for many kindnesses in facilitating the study of this rare glass material.

References

2 To date, the miniature painted glass plaques from Fort Shalmaneser have received but brief notices only. Of these, none covers the series as a whole, and several contain unfortunate errors. The relevant references are: Oates, D., Iraq 21 (1959), 106Google Scholar; Mallowan, M. E. L., Nimrud and Its Remains II (London, 1966; hereafter, N & R), 415Google Scholar, Fig. 344; Harden, D. B.et al., Masterpieces of Glass (The British Museum, London, 1968; hereafter, Masterpieces), 29 (31)Google Scholar; A. von Saldern, Glass, Appendix III to Mallowan, , N & R II, 632Google Scholar (Section II, A: Painted Plaques); Recent Excavations at Nimrud, Iraq in VIIth International Congress on Glass. Comptes Rendus II (Charleroi, Belgium, 1966Google Scholar; hereafter, VIIth Int. Glass Congress. Comptes Rendus), Paper 241 (p. 4); Other Mesopotamian Glass Vessels (1500–600 B.C.), in Oppenheim, A. L.et al., Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient Mesopotamia (The Corning Museum of Glass Monographs III, Corning, 1970Google Scholar; hereafter, Glass and Glassmaking), 211, 223 (35 a–d), Figs. 33–35.

3 Before Roman Imperial times examples of painting on glass are exceedingly rare, the earliest being a painted glass juglet from Egypt (British Museum, Egyptian Dept. no. 47620), which bears the prenomen of the pharaoh Tuthmosis III (c. 1504–1450 B.c.); see Harden, D. B., in Singer, C., Holmyard, E. J., Hall, A. R. & Williams, T. I. (eds.), A History of Technology II (Oxford, 1956), 341Google Scholar (for a description of the juglet and a bibliography, see Harden, , Masterpieces, 17 [1])Google Scholar. Belonging, as they must, to the middle of the millennium and a half which separates the Tuthmosis III juglet from the painted glasswares of the Roman Empire, our Nimrud plaques are thus not only amongst the earliest items of painted glass yet found, but are in our belief the earliest to come from Western Asia.

4 Dr. R. H. Brill's report entitled Laboratory Studies, which forms Part II of this article, is hereafter cited as Brill, Part II.

5 Brill, in correspondence with writer.

6 Harden, , Masterpieces, 29 (31)Google Scholar.

7 Saldern, Von, Mallowan, apud, N & R II, 632Google Scholar; and also in VIIth Int. Glass Congress. Comptes Rendus II, Paper 241, p. 4; and Oppenheim, et al., Glass and Glassmaking, 211, 223Google Scholar.

8 Brill, , Part II, p. 27Google ScholarPubMed.

9 Brill, , Part II, p. 26Google ScholarPubMed.

10 Saldern, Von, Mallowan, apud, N & R II, 624–632Google Scholar; and also in VIIth. Int. Glass Congress. Comptes Rendus II, Paper 241, pp. 1–5; and Oppenheim, et al., Glass and Glassmaking, 210–211, 218–223 (19–34)Google Scholar.

11 Harden, , Masterpieces, 29Google Scholar (31).

12 Brill, , Part II, p. 25Google Scholar. This alternative is favoured by Saldern, von in Oppenheim, et al., Glass and Glassmaking, 223 (35)Google Scholar.

13 Oates, D., Iraq 21 (1959), 106Google Scholar; Mallowan, , N & R II, 415Google Scholar.

14 Saldern, Von, Mallowan, apud, M & R II, 632Google Scholar (Section II A, 1–3); and in Oppenheim, et al., Glass and Glassmaking, 223Google Scholar (35 a–c), Figs. 33–35. For the explanation of von Saldern's error here, see our Remarks under item ND. 7,631 in the Catalogue section of this article, p. 18.

15 Oates, D., Iraq 21 (1959), 106Google Scholar; Mallowan, , N & R II, 415Google Scholar; Saldern, von, Mallowan, apud, N & R II, 632Google Scholar; and in Oppenheim, et al., Glass and Glassmaking, 223Google Scholar.

16 For this view of Phoenician Egyptianizing art long propounded by R. D. Barnett, see his articles in Iraq 2 (1933), 198 ff.Google Scholar; PEQ 1939, 16Google Scholar, and JHS 68 (1948), 3Google Scholar; also his Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories in the British Museum (London, 1957Google Scholar; hereafter, CNI), 62, 137 ff.

17 While it is not within the scope of this article to determine the meaning of the painted representations on the glass plaques from Fort Shalmaneser, those interested in so doing may discover useful contemporary parallels for our four-winged anthropomorphic figure amongst the corpus of published Western Asiatic (or presumed Western Asiatic) scaraboid seals. For examples of such seals, some of which carry a Phoenician/Aramaic (?) inscription, see Dela-porte, L., Catalogue des Cylindres I (Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1920), 26Google Scholar, Pl. 6 (I b); idem II (Paris, 1923), 207, Pl. 104 (35); Eisen, G. A., Ancient Oriental Cylinders and Other Seals, with a description of the Collection of Mrs. William H. Moore (O.I.P. XLVII; Chicago, 1940), 33, 57Google Scholar, Pl. XIII (121); and Mallowan, , N & R I, 259Google Scholar, Fig. 238. Likewise closely relevant is a remarkable instance of the four-winged figure impressed as a recurring motif around the rim of a broken pottery vessel unearthed by H. Rassam in the Temple of Ištar of Kidmuri on the Acropolis Mound, Nimrud, see Barnett, R. D., JHS 68 (1948), 14Google Scholar, n. 78, Pl. VIII g (for an earlier mention by the same author, but without illustration, see Iraq 2 (1933), 206, n. 2)Google Scholar. Oddly, perhaps, two-winged rather than four-winged human-headed anthropomorphic figures are the general rule among the Phoenician ivories found at Nimrud. However, a N. Syrian version of our beardless four-winged male figure may conceivably be represented on two panels of one of the ivory-veneered chair-backs from FS. Room S.W.7, see Max Mallowan and Herrmann, Georgina, Furniture from S.W.7 Fort Shalmaneser (Ivories from Nimrud (1949–1963), Fasc. III; Aberdeen, 1974), 72Google Scholar, Pl. XII.

18 See e.g. Mallowan, , N & R IIGoogle Scholar, Fig. 430.

19 For this same divine crown in inlaid Phoenician ivorywork, see that worn by a four-winged, falcon-headed, anthropomorphic figure found immediately to the West of Room S.W.7 in Fort Shalmaneser: Mallowan, , N & R IIGoogle Scholar, Fig. 434.

20 Brill, , Part II, p. 34 ffGoogle ScholarPubMed.

21 Brill, , Part II, p. 28Google ScholarPubMed.

22 Brill, , Part II, pp. 28, 36–37Google ScholarPubMed.

23 Brill, , Part II, p. 28Google ScholarPubMed.

24 Barnett, , CNI, 156–7Google Scholar.

25 Mallowan, , N & R II, 546Google Scholar, Fig. 477.

26 Brill, , Part II, p. 28Google ScholarPubMed.

27 For specimen examples, see Crowfoot, J. W. and Crowfoot, G. M., Samaria-Sebaste 2. Early Ivories from Samaria (London, 1938; hereafter, Samaria-Sebaste 2)Google Scholar, Pl. II: 1 (p. 14); Pl. III: 1 (p. 16); Pl. XV: 2 (p. 32).

28 For specimen examples, see Barnett, , CNI, 190Google Scholar (O.1) and frontispiece (in colour); Mallowan, , N & R II, 536Google Scholar, Fig. 455 (same in colour, Pl. IV); 544, Figs. 474–6; 554, Fig. 493 (same in colour, Pl. VIII); Orchard, J. J., Equestrian Bridle-harness Ornaments (Ivories from Nimrud (1949–1963), Fasc. 1: 2; Aberdeen, 1967), 37–38 (183)Google Scholar, Pl. XXXVIII.

29 Unfortunately, few good photographs illustrative of this very fine gold leaf-work have yet been published, but as one example, see Mallowan, , N & R IGoogle Scholar, Pl. I (in colour).

30 Unpublished.

31 J. W., and Crowfoot, G. M., Samaria-Sebaste 2, 45Google Scholar, Pl. XXIV, 1. It must be noted that in addition to the two specifically quoted inlays where glass and gold leaf were found still in contact, more than ten similar glass inlays and at least six loose gold leaf overlays from them were recovered at the same time.

32 For this explanation of the disappearance of gold leaf from the Nimrud ivories, see Oates, D., Iraq 23 (1961), 5Google Scholar; Mallowan, M. E. L., Iraq 21 (1959), 95Google Scholar; N & R II, 413, 417, 576Google Scholar.

33 Brill, , Part II, p. 24Google ScholarPubMed.

34 Brill, , Part II, pp. 24–27Google ScholarPubMed.

35 In the view of Saldern, von, Mallowan, apud, N & R II, 632Google Scholar, this item was originally rectangular like the other Room S.W.37 plaques. The same is repeated by him, perhaps a little more tentatively, in Oppenheim, et al., Glass and Glassmaking, 223 (35 d)Google Scholar.

36 Brill, , Part II, p. 25Google ScholarPubMed.

37 Brill, , Part II, p. 34Google ScholarPubMed.

38 This representation of antithetical flowering stems, either springing from, or descending to the base of the Sacred Tree is a commonplace of Phoenician art. For examples in ivory-work, see Mallowan, , N & R IIGoogle Scholar, Figs, 425, 467, 477, 508 and 527.

39 Mallowan, , N & R IIGoogle Scholar, Fig. 495.

40 Mallowan, , N & R IIGoogle Scholar, Fig. 482.

41 Saldern, Von, Mallowan, apud, N & R II, 632Google Scholar; and also in Oppenheim, et al., Glass and Glassmaking, 223 (35 d)Google Scholar.