On the Arrangement of Reliefs Revealing Tiglath-Pileser III's Arab Campaign. Problems and Hypotheses

Authors:

Pages: 265-287
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54664/WNUP6952

Abstract:

Aim of the present paper is to review some problems of the arrangement of nine monuments – seven reliefs and two drawings, proposed in two previous studies on the issue. Most of the monuments were found by Layard in 1845 within remains of the Central Palace in Kalah (Nimrud), but not on their original position because the artifacts were dismantled in the Antiquity. The circumstances of the finding are described with contradictions in the primary documentation and later works of Layard, giving opportunity to different reconstructions of the whole composition with the Arab campaign. As result two hypotheses were proposed for resolving of the problem, the first one by Barnett and Falkner in 1962, and the second by Reade in 1968 and 1979. Both hypotheses are examined critically in relation to their main schemes and arguments used in favor of the positions expressed. The physical form and the scenes of the monuments allow a sure reconstruction for only a part of composition and the exact place of five artifacts (three reliefs and the both drawings) remains uncertain. Some general and particular observations on the problems and hypotheses on relief’s order are added in the conclusion. The discrepancies in the archaeological documentation, our insuffi-cient knowledge on the principles of arrangement of Assyrian historical relief, and the missing monuments put every hypothesis on the order of the artifacts under doubt. For the present, the best way supposed for ordering the reliefs remains the direct relation between their scenes and the written narrative of the royal inscriptions.

Keywords:

Tiglath-Pileser III, scheme, argument, palace, monument, campaign, Layard.

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