Nimrud und seine Funde: Der Weg der Reliefs in die Museen und Sammlungen.

• Author: Guralnick, Eleanor
• Position: Book review

Nimrud und seine Funde: Der Weg der Reliefs in die Museen und Sammlungen. By KLAUDIA ENGLUND. Orient-Archaologie, vol. 12. Rahden/Westf.: VERLAG MARIE LEIDORF, 2003. Pp. 201, plates.

More than 150 years have passed since the discovery of the palace of King Assurnasirpal II at Nimrud. At last three hundred sculptured slabs and pieces of sculptured slabs from the palace are known to be in nearly seventy museums and private collections in Europe, North America, and Asia. One of Englund's purposes is to identify, reconstruct, and propose the specific location and room of the original display of each slab insofar as it is possible. Work to determine the original slab locations was begun by the end of the nineteenth century. Englund's work is based on earlier work by S. Merrill, J. B. Stearns, J. Meuszynski, C. J. Gadd, J. Reade, E. F. Weidner, S. Paley, and R. P. Soholewski. Unfortunately, many reliefs are now completely lost, and whereabouts of others in private collections remain unknown. Therefore, more reliefs and fragments of reliefs may come to light in auction and sales catalogues, or in publications.

There is a brief overview of the palace at Nimrud, followed by a review of the tradition locating biblical Nineveh in northern Mesopotamia. Next, the complex history of the Nimrud excavations is traced. This focuses first on the early official excavations and excavators. Thus, Layard's early visits and excavation seasons (1845-51) are reviewed along with discussion regarding the shipment of reliefs to Sir Stratford Canning, and to the British Museum. The further excavations by Hormuzd Rassam under Rawlinson's supervision (1851-55), and the later excavations under W. K. Loftus (1854-55), George Smith (1873), H. Rassam again (1878-79), and Layard once again in 1879 complete the list of all the official nineteenth-century excavations that were responsible for the discovery of most of the known reliefs. The excavations of a number of private individuals, mainly American missionaries, who received permission from Rawlinson to dig up reliefs for private purposes are also discussed in some detail.

A fresh review of the disastrous loss of Assyrian reliefs in the Tigris in 1855 focuses on the lost Nimrud reliefs destined for the British Museum, Louvre, and Vorderasiatische Museum. Englund was unable to identify a list of the lost reliefs. However, she does identify one of the slabs in the Louvre (D-2) as being a survivor. In the Archiv Nationale de...