Art in the ancient Near East was never a matter of simple representation, as most images are for us today. Instead, the creation of images was a magically meaningful act, and, once created, images partook of the divine or royal individuals they represented. The best example is that of the cult statue, which was not so much an image as an embodiment of the deity represented. Cult statues were common to religious practice across the ancient Near East. Some divine statuettes have also been found far to the west, and in this sense it was more than simply the images of the gods that traveled across the Mediterranean with Phoenician sailors and merchants.
Bronze statuette of Astarte. El Carambolo (?), Camas, Seville. Phoenician, 8th–7th century B.C. Museo Arqueológico de Sevilla
The greatest cult statues were those of the venerable Mesopotamian temples. These large and ancient institutions housed gods and goddesses whose cults included huge offerings and major festivals. In the best known of these, the New Year festival at Babylon, the gods of other cities visited Babylon's chief deity, Marduk, in the form of their statues, and then processed together out of the city to the New Year temple, where the king of Babylon would be required to "take the hand" of Marduk as part of his renewal of humanity's compact with the gods. The cult statues of major Mesopotamian temples were objects of the highest possible importance in their own time, however restricted access to them might have been. Sadly, none has been discovered by archaeologists, and it is possible that none survives to be found. Many larger statues would probably have had a wooden core, which would eventually decay, and would have been covered in valuable metals and semiprecious stones, all of which could be stripped away and reused. Only a few small fragments survive to hint at these most important of vanished images. One other form in which they may survive is as images in other media, notably the designs on seals, where the format of a presentation scene—a pious human figure before the altar or statue of a deity—is quite common.
Chalcedony cylinder seal: Ishtar image and a worshiper below a canopy flanked by winged genies. Neo-Assyrian, ca. 8th–7th century B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Martin and Sarah Cherkasky, 1989 (1989.361.1)
However, perhaps the most poignant vanished images of the ancient Near East are depictions of humans. They come in many forms, and two powerful examples are shown in the exhibition. One comes from Babylon, where the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal conducted major building work on temples, partly in continuing atonement for the destruction of the city in 689 B.C. by his grandfather Sennacherib. The king is shown as a builder, after the fashion of a far earlier age.
Marble stele of Ashurbanipal. Babylon, Esagil Temple. 668–655 B.C. The Trustees of the British Museum, London
In this stele's inscription, Ashurbanipal describes his building work, and praises his brother, Shamash-shuma-ukin, the king of Babylon. To avoid Babylonian rebellions, which had occurred frequently, Ashurbanipal's father Esarhaddon had divided the kingship, placing Shamash-shuma-ukin in a subordinate role, but nonetheless restoring kingship to Babylon. The arrangement seems to have been successful, at least initially. Another stele of Ashurbanipal has been found, along with one of Shamash-shuma-ukin, showing that they both contributed to temple building at Borsippa, near Babylon. However, at a later date the stele of Shamash-shuma-ukin was deliberately defaced, and its image erased. After sixteen years, he had rebelled against his brother, leading to a devastating war from which Ashurbanipal emerged victorious. Clearly the defacing of the Shamash-shuma-ukin stele followed these events.
Ashurbanipal was a hugely successful military leader, and under him the Assyrian empire reached its greatest extent. In time, however, his own image would suffer the same fate as that of his brother. The most famous depiction of the king, on view in the exhibition, shows him celebrating victory in another war, this time against the state of Elam in southwestern Iran. The king reclines on a long couch, apparently adorned with ivory plaques of the kind that survive from the period.
Gypsum alabaster banquet relief of Ashurbanipal. Nineveh, North Palace. Neo-Assyrian, ca. 645–635 B.C. The Trustees of the British Museum, London
However, the king's face and that of his queen have been erased. They were probably damaged, along with other images of Assyrian kings, including Sennacherib, when the Assyrian capital Nineveh fell to Median and Babylonian forces in 612 B.C. These acts were not wanton vandalism, but the specific and targeted destruction of an identity. The faces have been carefully, laboriously chiseled away, as has the bowl from which the king drank.
Gypsum alabaster banquet relief of Ashurbanipal (detail). The Trustees of the British Museum, London
Just as the image was more than a simple representation, its destruction also had a greater significance. The erasure of the images was probably ordered specifically (as is known from texts in the later case of Cyrus of Persia and Nabonidus of Babylon). In another case, one of the spectacular lion-hunt reliefs from Nineveh, Ashurbanipal has been separated from a lion he was holding by the tail.
Gypsum alabaster relief showing a lion hunt (detail). Nineveh, North Palace. Neo-Assyrian, ca. 645–640 B.C. The Trustees of the British Museum, London
The tail of the lion has been chipped away, a gesture probably intended to break both the image of the Assyrian king's control and its magical potency. A final, poignant example, also from Nineveh, can be seen in the Museum's permanent Ancient Near Eastern Art galleries.
Gypsum alabaster relief. Nineveh, Southwest Palace. Neo-Assyrian, ca. 704–681 B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1932 (32.143.13)
The large image, excavated in the mid-nineteenth century from a passage in the Southwest Palace leading to the Ishtar Temple at Nineveh, shows a male figure with one hand resting on the elaborate hilt of his sword, modeled to incorporate the figures of lions. His beard and headgear suggest that he is not the king but another high-ranking member of the Assyrian royal family; further details of costume and the few available parallels suggest that he should probably be identified as the crown prince under Sennacherib. If so, he may have been murdered in the battle of succession that followed Sennacherib's death. His face has been erased, again possibly in or shortly after the sack of Nineveh. The identity of this figure, in his own lifetime one of the most powerful individuals in the world and heir to its largest empire, is now lost.