120 i Flora Unveiled
She is, after all, a sacred tree, and sacred trees require offerings and libations!
Her statement that even as she sheds her flowers, “Those of next year are already in me,”
suggests the idea of parthenogenesis. The plant is represented as a self- fertile female, produc-
ing flowers and fruits within herself.
The Rise of Neo- Assyria and the Palace of Ashurnasirpal IIThe ancient city of Ashur, located north of Babylon on the Tigris river, was the capital of
the small Bronze Age kingdom of Assyria, a region in northern Iraq whose people spoke an
Akkadian dialect similar to that of the Babylonians. For much of its early history (from ca.
2000– 1400 bce), Assyria was overshadowed by its more powerful neighbors to the south,
but, beginning around 1400 bce, a series of ambitious rulers began converting the old city
of Ashur— a trading post and cult center devoted to the god Ashur— into the urbanized
political center of a powerful city- state encompassing all of northern Iraq.
From 900 to 600 bce, Neo- Assyria, as historians refer to the Iron Age state, had devel-
oped a formidable war machine and had seized control of a vast empire stretching from
Iran to Egypt. During this period, the Levant came under Neo- Assyrian control, and,
as a consequence, rulers such as Sargon (721– 705 bce), Sennacherib (704– 681 bce), and
Ashurbanipal (668– 627 bce) figure prominently in the Hebrew Bible.
Images of Sacred Trees were widespread among the palace relief sculptures of the Neo-
Assyrian Period, especially during the reign of King Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled Assyria
from 884 to 859 bce. Ashurnasirpal II built his new capital (referred to as Calah in the
Hebrew Bible) on the ruins of the old city of Nimrud. There, in the 1840s, British archae-
ologist A. H. Layard uncovered the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II and found colos-
sal alabaster relief sculptures of the king engaged in rituals involving sacred trees and their
winged protective deities, some with hawk- like heads, on the facades and inner walls of the
palace compound (Figure 5.14). The sacred tree is depicted as an elongated trunk topped by
a large palmette, surrounded by a sheath of interconnected smaller palmettes. Most scholar
man as opposed to “woman”woman as opposed to “man”Figure 5.13 Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols for “woman” versus “man.”
From Schumann- Antelme, R., and S. Rossini (2001), Sacred Sexuality in Ancient Egypt the Erotic Secrets of
the Forbidden Papyrus: A Look at the Unique Role of Hathor, the Goddess of Love, Inner Traditions.