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MORE THOUGHTS ON THE BALAWAT GATES OF SHALMANESER III: THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE BANDS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2016

John Curtis  and
Nigel Tallis
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Abstract

This article seeks to demonstrate that the correct arrangement of the bronze bands on the Shalmaneser III gates from Balawat can be established by comparing the position of the nail holes on the ends of the bands with those on the edging strips that were fixed to the edges of the doors and partly overlap the ends of the bands. This new approach confirms the order previously proposed by Curtis and Tallis for the bands on the left-hand gate, but a new arrangement is suggested for the four lower bands on the right-hand gate.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 77 , December 2015 , pp. 59 - 74
Copyright
© The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2015 

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Footnotes

**

JEC wishes to record his deep gratitude to Dominique for the constant help and support that she gave him from 1989 when he was appointed Keeper of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities in the British Museum until her retirement in 2005. During this time, apart from joining the British Museum excavations in the Eski Mosul Dam Salvage Project in 1983 (Curtis and Collon 1989) and participating in the British Museum mission to Iraq in 2003, she wrote on request a British Museum handbook on Ancient Near Eastern art (Collon 1995) and selflessly edited a major catalogue of the sculptures of Sennacherib (Barnett et al. 1998).

*

This study is dedicated to Dominique Collon who is well known as the doyenne of Mesopotamian seal studies, in which field she has published widely and made contributions of unparalleled significance. Less well known, perhaps, are her interests in Mesopotamian art history and her forays into archaeology. Amongst the latter, in 1989 she was Deputy Director of a British Museum expedition that excavated at Nimrud and Balawat (Curtis et al. 1993), so it is hoped that this short article on Balawat will be of interest to her.

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