CHAPTER TEN
THE BABYLONIAN
VISUAL IMAGE
Zainab Bahrani
THE BABYLONIAN IMAGEW
hen Ashurbanipal had a stele made for the sacred precinct of Esagila in Babylon
he chose an archaising formula, derived from what was by then, already,
antiquity. On the obverse of the flat slab of sandstone the king stands, centrally and
frontally positioned. His wrapped and fringed garments and his polosshaped headdress
are clearly those of an Assyrian king, as is his hairstyle and his rectangular blunt-cut
beard composed of neatly arranged rows of curls. The king stands with his arms
upraised, his large hands keep a reed basket in place, balanced on his head. The
depicted act is an ancient one; it is the act of the king as builder. The king carries
on his head the basket of earth for the ritual moulding of the first brick, an act that
he performs himself as a central part of the building ritual. The first brick initiates
a series of bricks for the sacred construction, each of which are moulded in a matrix
of ivory, or of special wood, such as maple, boxwood or mulberry, which had writing
fixed against the sides. Oil, honey and wine were poured upon the foundations, under
the first course of brickwork. Similar images of rulers had existed since the relief of
the Sumerian ruler Urnanshe of the mid-third millennium BC, approximately two
thousand years before the reign of Ashurbanipal. Ashurbanipal’s stele, however, is
deliberately archaising, and perhaps also deliberately Babylonianising. It is an image
of kingship that is both local and ancient.
Why does Ashurbanipal, a formidable Assyrian monarch, choose to, or agree to,
have himself depicted in this manner? Babylon was under the control of Assyria. At
the time of the making of the stele, his brother, Shamash-shumu-ukin, had been
placed as ruler of Babylon, but it was Ashurbanipal who was, in fact, in political
control. It is true that at a later date, sometime after the making and the deposit of
the stele in the temple precinct, Babylon rebelled, but was the political uncertainty
of the king of Assyria over Babylon the reason for the creation of a truly Babylonian
image as a form of legitimacy?
The stele was discovered in the nineteenth century in an area of the temple of
Marduk in Babylon. It bears an inscription that covers both sides (Luckenbill 1927 :
375 – 376 ; Frame 1995 : 199 – 202 ). On the obverse, the inscription is carved straight