Archaeology of images. Context and intericonicity in Neo-Assyrian art

The mutual dialogue(s) between Archaeology and Bildwissenschaften has often been avoided as an issue in the discussion of Ancient Mesopotamian Art. In particular, pictures have too often been analysed out of their original context with biased results and judgments on the aesthetic, meaning and exploitation of images within the ancient societies. This paper brings to the fore such dialogue by using some case studies from Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs of first millennium BCE according to a twofold topic. Archaeology in Bildwissenschaften: this topic uses the architectural tradition of the royal palace throne room as a case study for illustrating some principles of the way reliefs were arranged along the walls of the room. The analysis will disclose that the arrangement of each image can only be fully understood in its architectural context and specifically in the light of a ‘bipolarity’ of the throne room, namely reliefs sparking negative emotions were confined at some distance from the royal throne while those evoking positive emotions were set close to the throne as well as the doubling of the body of the king. Bildwissenschaften in Archaeology: in dealing with hunt rituals ‒ specifically the scene of the king pouring libations over dead lion or bull ‒ this topic focuses on its emergence as a strong Assyrian tradition in the times of Assurnasirpal II (883–859 BCE) and Assurbanipal (668–631 BCE). Since there are no hunt rituals recorded on palace wall panels between the reigns of these two kings, it seems that Assurbanipal, as a known antiquarian, consciously adopted an antique iconographic motif. This phenomenon, which can be interpreted as an imitation, quotation, allusion, and perhaps homage, will be evaluated according to the modern notion of linguistic intertextuality applied to the realm of visual arts, namely intericonicity (or Interbildlichkeit)