The Citadel at Nimrud/Kalhu
Assyria (Iraq)

This section focuses on two of the areas

Project Demo

Click to watch the demo

Low-res version of an animation for the Williams College Museum of Art ancient gallery to explain the context and iconography of their two palace reliefs (the first such reliefs ever to come to this country);
© 2011 Learning Sites, Inc.

Northwest Palace

Setting
The Northwest Palace, built primarily by Ashur-nasir-pal II (883-859 BCE), is the largest and most extensively excavated of the palaces on the Nimrud citadel. Excavations were conducted by the British sporadically between 1854 and 1882, and then more seriously beginning in 1949. Under the British School of Archaeology in Iraq and the British Museum, additional areas of the Northwest Palace were traced and mapped, doubling the previously known extent of the building. Mud brick walls and arched doorways were reconstructed, and bas-relief fragments were restored in situ. In the 1970s, a Polish team documented the whole citadel site in photographs, including all of the sculpture, and surveyed the site and recorded it in plan and elevation. Since the 1970s, Iraqi teams have continued work on the palace, including the discovery of tombs of women of the Assyrian royal family below the floors.

The Northwest Palace has about 100 rooms, more than 20 of which were lined with slabs of stone covered with bas-relief sculpture. Many of the reliefs depict large standing or striding figures, mostly of kings, attendants, tribute bearers, and winged geniuses. Other slabs depict battle and hunting scenes that advertise the accomplishments of the king. Inscriptions extolling the king’s ancestry and deeds are carved across and between the figures and scenes. Major entryways were flanked by pairs of lamassu. Some of these sculptural elements remain at the site, on the walls or in the site museum, but most was dispersed in the 19th century to museums and private collections around the globe – 320 documented reliefs or fragments in 80 different collections.

The bas-reliefs and the lamassu from the Northwest Palace are among the most familiar images from ancient Mesopotamian art. Not only do these images give us some of the most accomplished artistic expression of the ancient world, but also, in combination with the inscriptions, they give us deep insight into the practices of the Assyrian court and culture. Indeed the Northwest Palace, with its arrangement of spaces and its impressive sculptural decoration inspiring awe of, and service to, the ruler, can be seen as the model for subsequent Assyrian palace design.

Project
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In the 1990s, archaeologist the late Samuel M. Paley (formerly of Professor of Classics, University at Buffalo, SUNY) and architect Alison B. Snyder (Professor Architecture, University of Oregon) were working on drawings that reconstructed the architecture of the Northwest Palace of Ashur-nasir-pal II at Nimrud and the placement of the bas-relief images that had originally lined its walls. Most of the sculptures had been dispersed in the 19th century to museums and private collections around the world, and a visualization that would clarify the spatial relations between the relief sculptures and the architecture, and among the reliefs themselves, was sorely needed. In 1996 Paley and Snyder approached Learning Sites, Inc., to discuss whether digital reconstruction might be more efficient than the tedious process they had been pursuing on paper.

Paley realized that a digital visualization of the palace could be not only a tool for testing his own ideas, but also a resource to be made available to scholars, educators, and students so that they might better appreciate the architectural design and the grand sculptural program of this important ancient monument. In addition, he saw the potential for shedding new light on, and raising new questions about, circulation in the building, lighting, and the functions of rooms and spaces. At the same time, such a resource could provide a synthesis of the diverse data, research, and interpretations accumulated in the 150 years since the site’s discovery by explorer Sir Austen Henry Layard.

Solution
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The Learning Sites team decided to use virtual reality technology to create a visualization of the Northwest Palace at Nimrud that went far beyond any online digital publication yet done for an archaeological site. Beginning with the Throne Room and the adjacent Great Northern Courtyard, they designed a VRML model for the Web that included links from sculptural and architectural details to an online database of text, photographs, drawings, and scholarly interpretations of the building complex. Links to unpublished analyses and images (including from recent Iraqi excavations) could also bring in source material not otherwise available. At the same time, the archive of images would be helpful in tracking illicit antiquities – an ongoing thorny problem of great concern to all those involved with cultural heritage.

The Throne Room suite of the Northwest Palace was reconstructed based on already published plans, drawings, and black-and-white photographs. It was known that the bas-relief images on the walls had been colorfully painted and that colorful decorative borders had circled the room above the reliefs. Getting accurate color in the reconstruction required special tactics, including checking the British Museum’s archive of Layard’s notes from the 1840s, obtaining new color photographs of the remains at Nimrud and the pieces in museums around the world, and analyzing minute pigment samples from some of the sculptures.

click on the images to enlarge
View across the Great Northern Courtyard; rendering from the Learning Sites virtual reality model of the palace complex; © 2011 Learning Sites, Inc.

View across the Great Northern Courtyard; rendering from the Learning Sites virtual reality model of the palace complex; © 2011 Learning Sites, Inc.

Cross-section through the Throne Room and Great Northern Courtyard (looking west) to show relative heights; rendering from the Learning Sites virtual reality model of the palace complex; © 2011 Learning Sites, Inc.

Cross-section through the Throne Room and Great Northern Courtyard (looking west) to show relative heights; rendering from the Learning Sites virtual reality model of the palace complex; © 2011 Learning Sites, Inc.
Rendering looking east down the length of the Throne Room showing what the room would have been like from a visitor's viewpoint; from the Learning Sites virtual reality model of the palace complex; © 2011 Learning Sites, Inc.

Rendering looking east down the length of the Throne Room showing what the room would have been like from a visitor's viewpoint; from the Learning Sites virtual reality model of the palace complex; © 2011 Learning Sites, Inc.

As the project progressed, it became clear that, as hoped, the reconstruction of the building and the reuniting of the images using the new real-time interactive technologies were meeting and exceeding expectations in terms of usefulness and versatility. They allowed scholars to gain insights into the iconography of the bas-relief and the probable functions of spaces, as well as to revisit questions concerning established views about the building’s construction and decorative details.  The model also is serving its purpose as a teaching tool by being used in classrooms directly off the Web; in addition, part of project’s results was extracted and adapted to QTVR technology to be used in the elementary school classroom. At the college level, the model is being used to experiment with CAVE and Immersadesk™ technologies. Learning Sites continues to work with the University at Buffalo (SUNY) to expand the capabilities of the model on these high-end platforms.

The digital reconstruction and virtual reality model of the Northwest Palace at Nimrud are well on their way to becoming the basis for a complete digital publication of the all the remains from this building complex. The larger plan for this project includes expansion to include other decorated spaces in the Palace and exploration of the relationship of the Northwest Palace to other buildings on the Nimrud citadel, such as

  • the Northern Temples and Ziggurat
  • the citadel wall
  • the unpublished area in the vicinity of the remains of the Central Palace.
As part of Learning Sites’ continuing engagement with ancient Nimrud, there is a separate project underway to create a digital publication of the unpublished Polish excavations in the Central Palace area (results as completed are posted at www.learningsites.com).

Central Palace
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Setting
In the 1970s, an Iraqi excavation team continued excavation of the Northwest Palace, and a Polish team, headed by Janusz Meuszynski, documented the whole site in photographs, including every sculptural relief that remained in situ, as well as the fallen pieces. This was to be his dissertation, only part of which was completed. (The doctorate was awarded post mortem.) The architect of the Polish team, Richard P. Sobolewski, surveyed the site and recorded it in plan and elevation.

click on the images to enlarge
Rendering from the Learning Sites 3D model of the as-excavated remains of the so-called Ashur-nasir-pal building of the Central Palace area, reconstructed from excavation photographs and drawings and to be used as the basis for a 3D reconstruction of the structure; © 2005 Learning Sites, Inc.

Rendering from the Learning Sites 3D model of the as-excavated remains of the so-called Ashur-nasir-pal building of the Central Palace area, reconstructed from excavation photographs and drawings and to be used as the basis for a 3D reconstruction of the structure; © 2005 Learning Sites, Inc.
Rendering and matching photograph showing progress in building the Learning Sites 3D model of the as-excavated remains of the so-called Ashur-nasir-pal building of the Central Palace area, to be used as the basis for a 3D reconstruction of the structure; © 2005 Learning Sites, Inc.

Rendering and matching photograph showing progress in building the Learning Sites 3D model of the as-excavated remains of the so-called Ashur-nasir-pal building of the Central Palace area, to be used as the basis for a 3D reconstruction of the structure; © 2005 Learning Sites, Inc.

In 1974, the Polish Center of Archaeology returned to re-excavate the site of the Central Palace of Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BCE), located just south of the Northwest Palace. The purpose of the Polish mission, headed once again by Meuszynski, had been to re-excavate the center area of the citadel, rediscover Tiglath-pileser’s palace and several other buildings in that area that had been located by Layard and his team. After the death of Meuszynski in 1976, the Polish work at Nimrud ceased. Sobolewski began a collaboration with the late Samuel M. Paley (formerly Professor of Classics, University at Buffalo, SUNY) to research and write up the bas-relief sculptures not covered in Meuszynski’s publications.

Project
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The Central Palace area had also been chosen for re-excavation, because the Palace there was the least known and least understood of the buildings on Nimrud's citadel. It was hoped that new excavations would elucidate this poorly preserved building (or set of buildings) using more up-to-date field techniques that could result in new finds. The excavation was supposed to make the Central Palace a source for the study of the life and times of Tiglath-pileser III. Indeed, many fragments of Assyrian bas-relief, not only of this important ancient Assyrian king, were discovered, some re-discovered in the trenches of the previous excavator, Austen Henry Layard. But, only two years after work began, the field director, Janusz Meuszynski, died and the final reports were never completed.

There are too few examples of Tiglath-pileser’s bas-reliefs in the total corpus of Assyrian sculpture to allow the results of the Polish project to remain unpublished. The Polish finds are an extremely valuable resource. What we now know of Tiglath-pileser’s Palace is that many of the themes of earlier and later sculpture are to be found on its bas-relief decoration. And, there are new motifs and the syntax of the sculpture, the way scenes were portrayed, and the placement of the vignettes of individual parts of scenes on the faces of the slabs, and details of the garment decorations have their own character and style.

An additional and disturbing fact is that individual bas-reliefs (some with inscriptions) have been appearing on the antiquities market, looted from the site museum storerooms at Nimrud. Some of the bas-reliefs have been broken up into pieces to obscure their origin and in order to obtain more money from several rather than from the one original fragment. Many of the better examples of bas-relief from this excavation are now on the international art market as a result of illicit activities (theft) at Nimrud subsequent to the first Gulf War of 1991.

Learning Sites was called in to create a comprehensive online digital publication of the Polish excavations so that all of the finds could be displayed for global research and to definitively document which sculptures did originate from Nimrud in order to slow their illicit purchase.

click on the images to enlarge
One of the 100s of bas-relief slabs (#NA-12-1975) once from Tiglath-pileser's palace found during the Polish excavations depicting the king's Babylonian Campaign; © 1975 Polish Center of Archaeology.

One of the 100s of bas-relief slabs (#NA-12-1975) once from Tiglath-pileser's palace found during the Polish excavations depicting the king's Babylonian Campaign; © 1975 Polish Center of Archaeology.
Rendering from the virtual reality model of one of the Shalmaneser lamassu found in the Central Palace area excavations; © 2005 Learning Sites, Inc.

Rendering from the virtual reality model of one of the Shalmaneser lamassu found in the Central Palace area excavations; © 2005 Learning Sites, Inc
Depiction of a procession scene (NA-16-1975) from the Anatolian Campaign reliefs of Tiglath-pileser found during the Polish excavations depicting the king's Babylonian Campaign; © 1975 Polish Center of Archaeology.

Depiction of a procession scene (NA-16-1975) from the Anatolian Campaign reliefs of Tiglath-pileser found during the Polish excavations depicting the king's Babylonian Campaign; © 1975 Polish Center of Archaeology.

Solution
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Under the direction of Richard Sobolewski and (the late) Samuel Paley Learning Sites will publish the results of the excavation in online and include plans, photographs and comparative material from museums and Layard’s archives. The digital format will allow the reader to access all the relevant data through appropriate links from interactive 3D computer models of the Palace remains and in reconstructed panels of the wall decorations. Fragments of bas-relief and inscriptions from the periods of Ashur-nasir-pal II and Shalmaneser III discovered during the course of the excavation will also be incorporated into this publication, as well as the scant remains of the post-Assyrian buildings built on the Central Palace site. The corpus of photographs of the Polish Center's excavation will be available permanently on this Website.

Preliminary Webpages have already been created to display the computer visualizations of the remains, photographs, drawings, descriptions, and analyses prior to their full and final publication.

Reference
Page Created: January 16, 2012
Page Updated: January 25, 2012
URL:
Page Author: The Institute for the Visualization of History