I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
The Ashurnasirpal II Palace Reliefs
▶ Listen · narrated
The same figure appears again and again along the palace walls at Nimrud: a bearded man with wings, holding a bucket and a cone. The repetition was deliberate, and the gesture had a name.
At a glance
- Ruler
- Ashurnasirpal II, 883–859 BC
- Site
- Northwest Palace, Nimrud (ancient Kalhu)
- Material
- Gypsum alabaster
- Original context
- Lining palace corridors and throne rooms
Look closer
The cone is a date-palm spathe
The cone-shaped object has been identified as a male date-palm flower, the spathe used in pollination. Date palms are dioecious: male and female flowers grow on separate trees, and cultivators must transfer pollen by hand. The gesture of dipping the cone into the bucket and raising it toward the sacred tree carved between the figures appears to replicate this agricultural act, transformed into ritual purification. Whether the bucket held water, oil, or some other substance is not stated in the inscriptions.
They were brightly painted
Traces of pigment survive on some panels: red, blue, black, and white. The beards were black, the eyes outlined, the rosettes on the garments picked out in colour. The stone itself—a fine-grained gypsum alabaster—was chosen because it could be carved in detail and because it took paint well. What appears now as monochrome relief would have read, in the ninth century BC, as a polychrome procession. The paint has largely vanished, worn away or chemically degraded, but enough remains in protected crevices to confirm the original effect.
Cuneiform runs across their bodies
A single line of cuneiform inscription runs horizontally across the middle of most panels, cutting through the figures' torsos without regard for the carved image. The text is the same throughout: the king's titles, his genealogy, his conquests, and a statement of his building works. It is known as the Standard Inscription. The words were not meant to be read in sequence along a wall; they were a repeated assertion of royal identity, stamped across the surface like a seal. The figures and the text occupy the same stone but address different audiences—one visual, one textual.
The story
The reliefs lined the interior walls of the Northwest Palace at Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, which Ashurnasirpal II rebuilt as his royal seat after moving the Assyrian capital from Ashur. The palace covered roughly two hectares. Its public rooms—throne room, reception halls, long corridors—were faced with carved gypsum slabs, each about two metres tall, set edge to edge to form a continuous narrative and decorative surface.
The winged figure with the bucket and cone, often called an apkallu or "sage" in modern literature, appears more frequently than any other image in the palace. The term apkallu comes from later Mesopotamian tradition, where it refers to seven antediluvian sages who brought civilisation to humanity. Whether Ashurnasirpal's court used that term for these figures is uncertain. What is clear from their placement is that they served a protective function. They flank doorways, face toward sacred trees, and stand in rows along passageways, performing the same gesture repeatedly.
The gesture itself—dipping the cone into the bucket, then extending it toward a stylised tree—has been interpreted as ritual purification or blessing. The tree, usually called the sacred tree or tree of life, appears as a symmetrical, highly conventionalised plant form, often with palmettes and rosettes. Some scholars have suggested it represents the date palm, central to Mesopotamian agriculture and symbolism. Others see it as a composite symbol rather than a depiction of any real species. The figures do not interact with one another; each performs the gesture in isolation, as if the ritual existed outside narrative time.
The reliefs were not arranged to tell a story in the way that later Roman or medieval sculpture might. Instead, they created an environment. A visitor walking through the palace would have seen the same protective figure repeated, the same cuneiform inscription asserting the king's power, the same sacred trees receiving ritual attention. The repetition was the point. The palace interior became a space saturated with royal authority and divine protection, communicated not through variety but through insistent recurrence.
The slabs were discovered in the mid-nineteenth century by Austen Henry Layard, who excavated Nimrud beginning in 1845. Many panels were sawn into sections for transport and distributed to museums in Europe and North America. The British Museum holds the largest collection. Others are in New York, Paris, Berlin, and several smaller institutions. The original arrangement can be partially reconstructed from Layard's drawings, but the palace as a unified decorative programme no longer exists anywhere except on paper.
Why it mattered then
Ashurnasirpal II inherited an empire that his father had begun to consolidate, and he expanded it through annual military campaigns. The palace at Nimrud was both residence and instrument of rule. Its scale, its decoration, and the labour required to build it announced the king's power to his own officials, to foreign envoys, and to the gods. The reliefs were not private art. They lined rooms where the king received tribute, gave audience, and performed state rituals. The repetition of protective figures and the omnipresence of the Standard Inscription created an atmosphere of controlled, divinely sanctioned order. The palace was a stage set for kingship, and the reliefs were part of the performance. The choice to carve the walls rather than paint them or leave them plain was a statement of resources. Gypsum alabaster was available locally, but carving at this scale required a workshop of trained sculptors working for years. The decision to cover the interior walls rather than reserve relief for a few key locations suggests that Ashurnasirpal wanted the entire palace to function as a single, immersive declaration. The building was a text, and the text said: this king commands labour, controls resources, and enjoys divine protection.
Why it matters now
The reliefs are among the most widely distributed objects from ancient Assyria. They appear in museums across Europe and North America, often installed in reconstructed room settings that attempt to evoke the palace interior. This dispersal makes them accessible, but it also fragments the original programme. Seeing one panel in isolation is not the same as walking through a corridor lined with repeated figures. The image of the winged genie with the bucket and cone has become, for better or worse, a visual shorthand for ancient Mesopotamia. It appears on book covers, in documentaries, and in museum branding. This familiarity can be useful—it gives people a recognisable entry point into a remote culture—but it also risks flattening the object into a logo. The figure was not designed to be iconic in the modern sense. It was designed to be repeated, to be one element in a larger decorative and ritual system. The palace at Nimrud was partially destroyed by ISIS in 2015. Bulldozers and explosives damaged the site, and some reliefs still in situ were smashed. The destruction was filmed and broadcast, turning the palace into a symbol twice over: first of Assyrian royal power, then of cultural heritage under threat. The reliefs in museums, once criticised as the spoils of colonial archaeology, are now also the survivors of a more recent violence. Their meaning has shifted again, and the question of where they belong has become more urgent and more complicated.
The surprising detail
The figures are usually described as male, but some scholars have questioned that identification. The faces are bearded, which in Assyrian art typically signals masculinity, but the bodies are often read as ambiguous. The long fringed garments, the elaborate jewellery, and the careful grooming could belong to either gender in elite Assyrian contexts. A few figures in the palace reliefs are clearly female, with different hairstyles and without beards, but the winged figures with buckets do not fit neatly into that category either. The assumption of maleness may say more about modern expectations than about Assyrian visual conventions. The reliefs do not label the figures by gender, and the ritual role they perform may have been understood as transcending or combining gender categories. The evidence is not conclusive, and the question remains open.
How it got here
The reliefs were excavated by Austen Henry Layard between 1845 and 1851 and removed from Iraq under permits granted by the Ottoman authorities, who then controlled the region. Many panels were transported to Britain and entered the British Museum's collection. Others were distributed to institutions in Europe and North America. The removal occurred during a period when archaeological finds were routinely divided between the excavating mission and the local government, a practice later replaced by laws requiring finds to remain in the country of origin. Iraq has since called for the return of some Assyrian material, and discussions between the Iraqi government and museums holding Nimrud reliefs are ongoing. The destruction of the Nimrud site by ISIS in 2015 has intensified debates about where these objects are safest and to whom they belong.
Remember this
Repetition was not redundancy. The palace was designed to immerse the visitor in an atmosphere of protection and power, and the repeated figure was the means.
Test yourself
Why would Ashurnasirpal have chosen to carve the same figure repeatedly along the palace walls, rather than varying the imagery to create a narrative sequence?
Because the function was protective and environmental, not narrative. The reliefs were not telling a story that unfolded as you walked; they were creating a ritually charged space. Repetition reinforced the presence of divine protection at every point along the wall. A visitor moving through the palace would experience the gesture again and again, the sacred tree receiving ritual attention in an endless, undifferentiated present. Variation would have suggested sequence and change; repetition suggested permanence and omnipresence. The palace interior was not a text to be read from beginning to end, but an atmosphere to be inhabited. The choice of repetition over narrative reflects a different understanding of how images work on a viewer.
Go deeper
Image: Ángel M. Felicísimo from Mérida, España, CC BY 2.0. Licence: CC BY 2.0. Source.