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Plate LIII from Til-Barsip: The left-handed Assyrian king1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

Timothy J. Poisel
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Abstract

Identification of different iconographic features has allowed modern scholars to argue cases for several possible candidates responsible for the commissioning and representation within Plate LIII. Due to minor characteristically different chariots and artistic techniques, scholars have made widely divergent claims about the origins of the wall paintings that were found at Til-Barsip. In this paper I contend that one vital iconographic factor has been overlooked by modern scholarship and that it is the key to proving that a specific Assyrian king was responsible for Plate LIII. It is concluded that the Assyrian king depicted in the Til-Barsip wall painting was left-handed and by a process of elimination can be none other than Esarhaddon.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 68 , 2006 , pp. 121 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 2006

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Footnotes

1

Special thanks must go to Dr Noel Weeks and Dr Joseph Azize for their invaluable remarks and criticisms after reading this paper. Throughout this article the term “Plate LIII” refers to the Assyrian wall painting found in Room XXVII, illustrated in Thureau-Dangin and Dunand 1936, PI. LIII, and shown here as Fig. 6.

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