over the lower part of the body of the king. Therefore, we can say that the object
itself is something of a hybrid between a written text and a sculpted monument.
One might make an argument here for the primacy of the position of the text. The
image appears to be inserted into a monument that was conceived of as a written
memorial, yet the image is actually integral to the logic of the monument.
The image of the king bearing a basket of bricks is a trace of an ancient ritual of
building. The ruler is decreed as the builder of the temple by the gods. He also
describes himself as the conservator and preserver of the structures of earlier times.
The building process begins with a ritual that inaugurates the construction by the
act of the king making the first brick from the ritual mould, and laying the first
foundation brick. As is standard in ritual procedures, this act itself is performative
(Bahrani 2001 , 2002 ). In other words, by going through the process of the act itself,
the temple’s sacred quality is achieved. The structure is no longer a brick wall, but
a sacred edifice made of bricks moulded in the mould of boxwood, maple and ivory;
placed upon foundations laid into wine and honey libations, no doubt accompanied
by prayers and incantations. In the third millennium, the Sumerians had practised
such a ritual. Representation was pivotal to the process of ritual performances. The
ritual was made tangible and permanent by the insertion of foundation deposits into
the earth (Ellis 1968 ). The deposits consistently included an image of a minor deity
and, later in the second millennium, a figurine of the king, together with a written
tablet. The tablet used in such a building deposit was a monumentalised text, translated
from clay to more enduring materials.
Foundation deposits including figurines and inscribed tablets had to be placed at
specific points in the structure, according to another set of ritual procedures. In the
case of the Ashurbanipal stele we can say, therefore, that the visual image was a
functional part of the monument’s efficacy. As a text alone, deposited into the
foundation of the temple precinct it would not suffice. The monument required both
the historical text, recording the process of the building and the preservation of
ancient structures, as well as the image of the king that the text describes as the
‘image of kingship’.
Ashurbanipal begins his inscription by describing himself as ‘the great king, the
mighty king, king of the universe, king of Assyria, king of the four regions of the
world, king of kings... who adorns Esagila, the temple of the god... who repaired
the damage to the sanctuaries’, and then goes on to describe how the wall of Ezida
had become old and the foundations had become weak, and he had them restored
and made the foundations firm. He calls upon the god Nabu to ‘make my royal throne
firm’ as a reciprocal act for Ashurbanipal’s preservation of the temples. The text ends
with a call for future rulers of the land to restore and preserve the ruins of the sacred
precinct and to protect this stele and the image of Ashurbanipal upon it (Luckenbill
1927 : 376 ).
Ashurbanipal’s stele is a Babylonian object. It is not only the fact of its find-spot
in the Esagila that makes the stele Babylonian, nor simply its function as a deposit
in a Babylonian temple. It is the formulation of the image itself that is Babylonian,
despite the fact that it is commissioned by an Assyrian king. According to the
inscription, Shamash-shumu-ukin was still the ruler of Babylon at the time that the
stele was carved. What, then, is the Babylonian visual image, as opposed to an Assyrian
visual image? In what follows, I will discuss a number of distinctive works of art as
— The Babylonian visual image —