Browse Items (11 total)

This is part of a series of sculptures which decorated a private gate chamber in the palace of King Ashurbanipal (reigned 669-630 BC).

The scenes are arranged in three registers, and are similar to those on other relief panels fallen from an upper…

Terracotta cone-shaped foundation nail with a cuneiform inscription, written in Sumerian, in the upper half of the object, just below the nail head. The inscription is written in two columns around the shaft of the nail; the first column is the one…

Harps are known from the earliest period of written history, but the fringed robe and close-fitting cap of this harpist are typical for the early second millennium B.C. in Mesopotamia. Clay plaques from this period depict musicians playing a variety…

Link to collection: https://oi.uchicago.edu/collections/highlights/highlights-collection-mesopotamia

The Hall of 100 Columns, constructed for the Persian king Xerxes (r. 486–465 BCE), has multiple doorways that show a royal hero fighting mythical beasts and the king elevated by his troops and the empire’s subject peoples. Above the king hovers a…

This colorful striding lion, its mouth opened in a threatening roar, once decorated a side of the 'Processional Way' in ancient Babylon (the Biblical city of Babel). The 'Processional Way' led out of the city through a massive gate named for the…

This seal was created in honor of the goddess Ninishkun, who is shown in the seal with the goddess Ishtar. Ishtar is restraining a lion with a leash, and she is holding a scimitar in her left hand.

Illicit diggers found these four-faced statuettes, which may represent a god of the four winds and a goddess of rainstorms. The god wears a low cap with a pair of horns meeting above each face. He carries a scimitar in his right hand and places his…