Relief panel

This gypsum alabaster relief panel dates to approximately 883–859 BC and originates from Mesopotamia, placing it firmly within the reign of the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II, whose palace at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu, biblical Calah) was extensively decorated with such sculptural programs. The panel was gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1932. Neo-Assyrian palatial reliefs of this period typically depict royal hunts, military campaigns, ritual processions, or supernatural protective figures such as the winged apkallu (human-headed or eagle-headed genie figures), all serving to project royal authority and divine favor. Gypsum alabaster was the preferred medium for these large-scale interior wall decorations, quarried locally and carved in low to medium relief with considerable detail. The biblical text identifies Calah (Nimrud) by name in Genesis 10:11–12 as a city built by Nimrod in the land of Shinar, a passage that situates the city within the Table of Nations. Ashurnasirpal II's Nimrud is also directly relevant to the Assyrian empire that later exerted devastating pressure on Israel and Judah, documented in texts such as 2 Kings 15–17. The reliefs thus provide direct material evidence for the visual culture, royal ideology, and administrative power of the very imperial institution that the Hebrew Bible records as a geopolitical force shaping Israelite history. The Met's holding represents one of many such panels dispersed from Nimrud excavations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sources: Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc. collection online); A. H. Layard, Monuments of Nineveh (1849); J. E. Curtis & J. E. Reade, eds., Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum (1995); Iraq journal (British School of Archaeology in Iraq).