Transcendental Thought in Ancient Assyria

Transcendental thought in Assyria? The conventional view is that there is no transcendental or rational thought worthy of the name before the rise of Greek philosophy. That is the settled view of western scholars. A new anthology of transcendentalist thought *1, compiled by David LaRocca, published in February 2017, begins only with the writings of the Greeks, and without a trace of embarrassment about having nothing to say about earlier times.   

This view, which is dependent on the notion of intellectual and cultural progress, has been growing ever firmer since the European Enlightenment. The philosopher Karl Jaspers saw the Greeks in terms of a transition from one way of thinking, mostly alien to us, to another, which is the root of the way we understand our reality now. He termed the middle of the 1st millennium B.C.E. as 'the axial age'. His 'axial age' marks the transition from what is essentially irrational thinking, to rational thought. 

So now this period has a name. And because it has a name, it serves a function. That function is, in practice, to close off detailed consideration of what went before it, since it is not worth looking at as part of the history of of rational thought. Before the axial age, there was no rational thought. People lived and died in a miasma of irrational ideas, in a world peopled with gods and demons, and who had strange ideas concerning causality and meaning.

In practice ancient Assyria (and the whole Mesopotamian oikumene) is largely studied in terms of the things we think we know and understand, such as power, propaganda, and ideology. These things we assume to be universals in history, applicable to ancient societies, as much as to our own. We treat power, propaganda and ideology as the only intelligible rational drivers in the culture of Assyria. Assyria therefore is held prisoner within the presumptions of a historical and sociological school of scholarship which is a little more than a century and a half old. Very little effort is made to enter into the intellectual world of ancient Assyria, and  that intellectual world is treated (more or less) as an irrelevance to our understanding. 

The new exhibition, 'I am Ashurbanipal: king of the world, king of Assyria', it appears, does not challenge the scholarly approach to ancient Assyria which was developed during the twentieth century, and which persists today. That is not what the exhibition is for. It celebrates the British Museum and its extensive Assyrian collections, put together since the beginning of the excavations in the near East, halfway through the nineteenth century. It is also a way of cementing the established view of ancient Assyria in the public imagination. It is, to a significant extent, an exercise in propaganda.The British Museum is guarding the status quo. 

To look at Assyria in any other way is essentially an act of cultural subversion. Nevertheless, the established view is untenable. It has been untenable for years. 

Sometimes academic disciplines get stuck in a particular place, or become trapped in a set of approaches which once seemed to make sense, but no longer serve to advance the discipline. Assyriology is unfortunately in that position today. This is despite the work of a small number of scholars who have published on the transcendentalism which can be detected in the religion, art and literature of ancient Assyria. 

Assyriology is a discipline which is very dependent on a number of other subjects (Classics, Anthropology, Sociology, and Philosophy in particular). It does not stand on its own. An Assyriologist does not need to ask a classicist or a philosopher whether the Greeks pioneered philosophy and abstract thought in the middle of the 1st Millennium B.C.E., since he already knows their answer, and defers to it. As a result, a serious challenge to the validity of the concept of an 'axial age' is unlikely to start in Assyriological circles.

For a period of a hundred and fifty years, the Assyrian Empire is the best documented ancient civilization available for study, as the Ashurbanipal exhibition shows. If we are ever going to gain a real insight into the nature and sophistication of ancient thought in the Near East, that insight will emerge from the close study of all aspects of ancient Assyria, and not just those aspects of their culture which can be used to support modern theories about how the human story unfolded. 

Here is a selection of fourteen articles (mostly book chapters and chapter extracts) which explore an alternative Assyria to the the one promoted by the Assyriological profession, and by the current exhibition. A few of these articles draw on Babylonian records, which also illuminate Assyria thought and culture. Those who have studied Mesopotamia in any depth know that Assyria and Babylonia belonged to a Mesopotamian cultural oikumene.There were many significant differences, but also many similarities, right down to their respective gods, and languages (mutually intelligible dialects of Akkadian, as well as common use of Sumerian).  

1. 'Greece and the cultural Impact of the Assyrian Empire' (full article) 

Keywords: Assyria, Greece, Cyrus, Pythagoras, Sennacherib, Babylon

It has been argued for some considerable time that there was a significant Assyrian impact on the culture of Greece, and the development of philosophy.*2 Simo Parpola published a paper in 2004 *3 (buried in a Festschrift), which argued that Assyria influenced Ionia, on the western coast of what is now Turkey, through its interactions with the kingdom of Lydia. This argument was made on the basis of Assyrian administrative documents. At about the same time, with no knowledge of Parpola's paper, I compiled the following document, largely on the basis of Greek accounts, mostly buried and unregarded in the writings of Eusebius. Our papers arrived at broadly the same conclusion, but the Greek references to Assyria are the more startling in their implications for the cultural history of Greece and the beginnings of western philosophy.*4

2. 'The Threshold in Ancient Assyria' (full article) 

Keywords: Assyria, Threshold, Border, Liminal, Carpets, Cones, Garlands, Sacred Tree 

Pauline Albenda studied (in detail) the threshold designs in Assyrian places from a phenomenological point of view, and published her important account in 1978 in the Journal of the Ancient Near East.*5 I reviewed her work in the following article, but from the point of view of the ritual and cultic significance of the threshold and the associated designs in Assyria. The designs are associated with the Assyrian sacred tree, which is itself associated with the idea of an ultimate limit. *6

3. 'The Idea of Being in Israel' (full article)

Keywords: Bible, Philosophy, Religion, Theology, Israel, Assyria 

Close examination of passages in the Old Testament show an intimate understanding of Mesopotamian ideas of divinity, and a great deal of borrowing of these ideas. Divinity was associated with the concept of the limit. The passages also show that these descriptions of divinity have a philosophical aspect. In the book of Malachi for example, God is made to say 'I do not change', which is an explicitly philosophical conception of what the divine is. YHWH also declares his identity with Being: ‘I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.' This article draws heavily on a discussion published by Michael Dick and Christopher Walker.  *7

4. 'The Making and Renewal of the Gods in Ancient Assyria' (full article)

Keywords: Making Gods, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Divine Images, Sumer, Shamash, Esarhaddon, Ashurbanipal, Plato, Astronomy 

There are some extraordinary documents present in the library of Ashurbanipal, which give us great detail about the ideas lying behind the creation of gods, and their refurbishment. To do their work, the craftsmen are allotted a temporary divinity themselves, which was removed once the work is done. How and why was this conceived to be possible? Temporary divinity was possible only if ritual action was conceived to establish connection with transcendent divinity itself *8. . 

5. 'Installing the Gods in Heaven: the Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual' 
(extract from article) 

Keywords: Babylon, Divinity, Installation,  Mis Pi, Palm, Quay, Ritual, Rivers, Statues, 
Tamarisk 

And we have the ritual. The ritual for the installation of the Gods in Heaven survives in more than one copy. One of the best is Babylonian, but it reflects Assyrian thought and practice also. The idea of men being able to create gods runs counter to what we think we understand about ancient cult. But it is quite clear that they had reasons for thinking that they had the power to create gods.*9 

6. 'Who Will Appear Before the City? (Divination in Sargonid Assyria)' 

Keywords: Assyria, Divination, SunGod, Haruspicy 

The sages of the kings of Assyria conceived that it was possible to divine the mind of the gods, and therefore to know about the future. They thought this because they conceived of reality (that is, a reality which transcends physical reality) as something which already contained all things which were possible, though not already revealed to the mind of man. The information could be accessed if a commonality was established between the inquirer and the god (in this case Shamash, the Sun god). That commonality could be established by completing the life of a sacrificial animal, and examining its entrails, which were understood to reflect divine knowledge at the point of the completion of its life. This is a compilation of twenty such enquiries about the future, presented here without commentary. The texts are taken from The State Archives of Assyria, vol. 4..*10

7. 'Standing in the Place of Ea: The Adapa Discipline and Kingship in the Neo-Assyrian Empire' (full article)

Keywords: Ashurbanipal, Assyria, Adapa, Mesopotamia, Mythology, Enki, Abzu, Kingship, Neo-Assyrian Empire, Sargonids

An overview of the role of the king in the Assyrian Court and State, and an analysis of the Adapa myth in Ashurbanipal's education. The King is responsible for upholding not just the state, but the universe itself.*11

8. 'Shar Kishati' and The Cult of Eternity' (full article) 

 Keywords: Mesopotamia, Philosophy, Abstraction, Cult  

What is the intellectual core idea which energised the Assyrian state? It is the idea of eternity, of reality itself, which stands behind physical reality. The king's role is to connect both worlds, through his excellence in this world. It is essentially the same concept which allowed the divine (coterminous with reality itself) to be questioned about the future in 'Who Will Appear Before the City?' *12

9. 'Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree' (extract from article) 

Keywords: Assyria, Kabbalah, Perfection, Sacred Tree, Abstraction, Mesopotamia 

The Jewish Kabbalah has been understood by historians to be a body of ideas and practices which were developed from the early middle Ages onwards, and which perhaps owe something to the influence of Gnosticism. There is the concept of an absolute without limit in Kabbalism (the 'En Sof'), which is not a problem if Kabbalism was developed in the middle Ages. However, there is a striking resemblance to the Assyrian Sacred Tree, if the Mesopotamian God numbers are inserted into the structure. If this identification is accurate, then the 'En Sof' may have been a living concept as far back as the middle of the 2nd Millennium B.C.E. *13

10. 'The Fifty Names of Marduk' (extract from article)  

Keywords: An, Babylon, Enuma Elish, Marduk, Mesopotamia, New Year,Festival

The idea of an axial age in the middle of the 1st millennium B.C.E. divides historical, cultural and archaeological time into two epochs: the first is (for us) an epoch which is deeply irrational in nature. Rationality only emerges after the rise of philosophy among the Greeks. This is a deeply problematic notion, because the Assyrians and Babylonians defined themselves as rational beings. The idea is quite clearly expressed in the section of the Babylonian New Year festival, where the supreme god (Marduk in Babylon) is described as the totality of the characteristics of the other gods, who provide for good order in the world. These gods came into existence at Marduk's call, and replaced the disorder of the first and irrational creation.*14 

11. 'The Concept of the Plenum in Babylon' (full article) 

Keywords: Babylon, Ancient History, Plenum, Creation

The concept of a transcendent and unlimited reality containing all possibility, standing behind the creation, and all generation and manifestation in the physical world, was an absolutely key idea to both the Assyrians and the Babylonians. The following article discusses the two creations which form part of the New Year Festival liturgy, and how the double nature of the creation points to to the presence of such a conception (an undifferentiated 'plenum' containing all possible things as potencies).*15
   

12 'Being and Representation in Greece and Assyria' (full article)  

Keywords: Forms, Idolatry, Philosophy

Several of the foregoing articles are chapters in the book The Sacred History of Being (2015), which discusses a shared (or borrowed) substratum of ideas, both in Greece, and in Assyria. This article reviews some of the major parallels, and the implications of such a shared cultural substrate.*16 


13.'Oannes and the Instruction of Mankind' (full article) 

Keywords: Berossus, Telos, Origins, Civilization, Apkallu

The nature of the Mesopotamian understanding of reality is reinforced by the story of the first sage, who instructed mankind in knowledge of cultivation, and knowledge of seeds and plants. We have the account from the Babylonian writer Berossus, who describes an amphibious creature (capable of living in two worlds) with the head of a fish, which emerged from the sea and imparted his knowledge in the daytime, before returning to the deep at night. The symbolism of this is clear: water is one of a number of images which can symbolise the plenum, in that it is formless, without colour, and which exists in abundance. Living in the sea, Oannes has access to the knowledge which the plenum holds. *17

14. 'Ocean and the Limit of Existence' (full article) 

Keywords: Generation, Abundance, Myth, Creation

The symbolism of water and ocean is a feature of poetry and literature around the Mediterranean and the Near East. It is widely associated with ideas of creation, generation, and abundance.*18

Notes:

*1 The Bloomsbury Anthology of Transcendental Thought, edited by David LaRocca, Bloomsbury, 2017.
*2 Parpola, S., 1993c “The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy”: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52, 161-208. See also: Parpola, S., 2000a “Monotheism in Ancient Assyria,” in Barbara Nevling Porter, ed., One God or Many? Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient World (Transactions of the Casco Bay Assyriological Institute 1, Casco Bay), 165-209. 
*3 Parpola, S., 2003b “Assyria’s Expansion in the 8th and 7th Centuries BCE and Its Long-Term Repercussions in the West,” in W. G. Dever and S. Gitin, eds., Symbiosis, Symbolism and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel and their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palestine. Proceedings of the Centennial Symposium, W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the American Schools of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, May 29-May 31, 2000 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns), 99-111.
*4 Yaeger, T., 'Greece and the Cultural Impact of the Assyrian Empire', in The Origins of Transcendentalist Thought in Ancient Religion, Anshar Press, 2019.  
*5 Albenda, P., ‘Assyrian Carpets in Stone’, in JANES [the Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University], vol 10, 1978
*6 Yaeger, T. 'The Threshold in Ancient Assyria' in The Origins of Transcendentalist Thought in Ancient Religion, Anshar Press, 2019.
*7 Yaeger, T., 'The Idea of Being in Israel' in The Sacred History of Being, Anshar Press, 2015. The rituals for the installation of gods are discussed in two books: 
Dick, M, Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East,  Eisenbrauns, (Winona Lake, Indiana), 1999, and 
Walker, C, and Dick, M., The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia: The Mesopotamian Mis Pi Ritual, State Archives of Assyria Literary Texts vol. 1, The Neo Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2001. 
*8 Yaeger, T., 'The Making and Renewal of the Gods in Ancient Assyria' in The Sacred History of Being, Anshar Press, 2015
*9 Yaeger, T.,'The Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual' in The Sacred History of Being, Anshar Press, 2015
* 10 Starr, Ivan, Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria, SAA (State Archives of Assyria) vol 4, Helsinki University Press, 1990. Ritual life reveals a great deal about the minds of the royal court, and many of the rituals survive and are collected together in Parpola's Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts, SAA vol 20, The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2017
*11 Yaeger, T., 'Standing in the Place of Ea: The Adapa Discipline and Kingship in the Neo-Assyrian Empire', in Understanding Ancient Thought, Anshar Press, 2017,
*12 Yaeger, T., ''Shar Kishati' and The Cult of Eternity', in Understanding Ancient Thought, Anshar Press, 2017,
*13 Yaeger, T., 'Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree', in The Sacred History of Being, Anshar Press, 2015
*14 Yaeger, T.,  'The Fifty Names of Marduk', in The Sacred History of Being, Anshar Press, 2015
*15 Yaeger, T., 'The Concept of the Plenum in Babylon' in Understanding Ancient Thought, Anshar Press, 2017, 
*16 Yaeger, T., 'Being and Representation in Greece and Assyria', in The Sacred History of Being, Anshar Press, 2015
*17 Yaeger, T., 'Oannes and the Instruction of Mankind', in The Sacred History of Being, Anshar Press, 2015
*18 Yaeger, T.,'Ocean and the Limit of Existence', in The Sacred History of Being, Anshar Press, 2015

Thomas Yaeger, November 11, 2018

The Threshold in Ancient Assyria

In 1978  the scholar Pauline Albenda published ‘Assyrian Carpets in Stone’, in JANES [the
Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University], vol10,  which reviews the surviving representations of carpet designs in stone reliefs. Not much attention has been paid to these slabs, but they offer the possibility of insight into the significance of the use of similar motifs in other contexts, most notably of the sacred tree.

We know that ‘decorated threshold slabs are not known to have existed in Assyria before the second half of the 8th century BCE, and then only sporadically. Previous to this period important entrances in the royal residences, as well as temples were often covered with plain limestone or alabaster slabs’. *1 

Stone pavements and portal thresholds in the 9th and 8th centuries were commonly inscribed with royal inscriptions, such as those in the palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BCE) and the Ninurta temple at Nimrud*2 and ‘in various chambers at Fort Shalmaneser’*3 and the palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad *4. 

Albenda expands on the significance of the threshold, saying that ‘where entranceways containing threshold inscriptions are also flanked by door guardians and decorated further with wall reliefs, the resultant effect is to instill divine protection whose meaning
is expanded in specific terms *5. ‘Thus, the substitution of carved decorated thresholds for the inscriptions at important entranceways…. makes it certain that the floor decorations served a significant role, similar to that performed by the door guardians and wall reliefs’*6. Upon which I shall expand later.

She suggests that ‘the sudden interest in displaying stone versions of rugs and carpets at important entrances after the middle of the 8th century was spurred by the development of pile carpets. This is, as she says, ‘speculation’, but it is supported by a similar judgement by R.S. Young for ‘the apparent invention of the art of floor mosaic-making in Phrygia, which occurred at about the same time .*7 However it does suggest that there was some factor at work which prompted the architects of the time to incorporate representations of carpet designs in stone in important buildings. ‘The origin of this innovative technique of carpet production is unknown, although pictorial evidence suggests that one area of manufacture is to be sought in some region west of Assyria, whence the method was transmitted east to the royal workshops’. As evidence for this, Albenda refers to three graphical representations which are dated to the reign of Shalmaneser III (858-824 BCE) and which ‘illustrate among processions of tribute-bearers carpets of substantial size and weight, rolled and hung over poles carried by two attendants. In each instance the fabrics are presented by the inhabitants of some locality to the west of Assyria’*8.

Albenda points out that woven floor coverings do appear in several second millennium BCE representations, but in general these are rare. One of these is on an orthostat from Alac Hϋyϋk in Anatolia, dated approximately to the 14 cent BCE, ‘which depicts a rectangular fabric, one end possessing fringes grouped into three curved clusters, placed on the ground beneath the throne of the deity.’ Another is from a Egyptian wall painting dating to the time of Akhenaten, where ‘a large red carpet with rows of yellow and blue diamonds in its field is spread under the feet of the pharaoh... and his family’. She notes that ‘the carpet is fringed with a lotus and bud garland, which here seems to be an attachment. This painting may provide the clue to the origin of the border garland designs that formed part of the rugs in later Assyrian periods.’ 

Indeed it may, but not in the sense of the borrowing of a design, as we shall see.

The elaborate tassels could initially, she suggests, be attached after the rug was woven ‘in order to enrich the appearance of the fabric’. However, ‘by the Late Assyrian period ornamental attachments were no longer utilized and in their stead similar motifs were incorporated into the carpet pattern, as suggested by the Assyrian carved threshold pavements’. Albenda expands on this, and says that, on the basis of the designs on the stone threshold slabs,

Assyrian carpet designs differed from those used to embellish contemporary garment textiles which generally combined figural and floral elements, and occasionally emblems that can be readily identified with specific deities. This group of textile decoration was favored particularly in the 9th century BCE., while a second group, limited to floral decoration and geometric patterns, was applied less frequently.*9 In the course of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, however, as a survey of the Assyrian wall reliefs demonstrates, the second group of textile designs took precedence. The grid pattern showing concentric squares was popular during the reign of Tiglath Pileser III (745-727 BCE), and this was gradually superseded in the reign of Sargon II (721-705 BCE.) by the use of an overall pattern of rosettes and concentric circles. Still later, during the period of Ashurbanipal (668-627 BCE.), a rich array of emblematic, floral and geometric elements was selected to decorate garment textiles.

However, as she points out, ‘on the thresholds the motifs are limited to geometric and floral patterns arranged in predetermined compositions. The persistence of a select number of design elements on the threshold slabs makes it likely that such floor displays were the prerogative of the royal family . As she points out earlier in her article, ‘textual evidence indicates that thrones were set upon a carpet’.*10 ‘While the carpet compositions remain decorative in appearance, an analytical study may reveal that symbolic significance underlies one or more of the motifs’*11

This is almost certainly the case, but Albenda is thinking in terms of symbolism of particular gods of the Assyrian religion, and suggests that:

…the six-rayed star pattern may actually be a variant of the Ishtar emblem and the floral quatrefoil, if reduced to its simplest form, can be likened to the Maltese cross with central boss and oblique ray lines, generally associated with the god Shamash.

From the second half of the 8th century onwards,

 the positioning of stone blocks for important doorways became standardised and consisted of two main sections: the portal threshold, a single stone which covered the entrance area and which projected slightly beyond the side walls, and the inner threshold, consisting of three slabs together belonging functionally to the threshold*12. As a unit, the inner threshold extends beyond the width of the portal, a distance sufficient to include pivot stones which support the door leaves. The two end slabs therefore have cuts through which the pivots extend. The circular cuts are oftentimes edged with a double or triple raised band. The central block contains a rectangular slot centered near the edge adjacent to the portal threshold, into which the bolt was dropped when the doors were closed and locked.*13 

Apparently the three slab inner threshold design ‘underwent some modification during
Ashurbanipal’s reign in the 7th century BCE., when a single block was used
occasionally for smaller entrances’. Albenda illustrates these in plates 19 & 20.

There is an illustration in the article of a threshold slab from Nimrud which dates to the reign of Tiglath Pileser III, *14 which seems to be the earliest example of carved decoration applied to pavement blocks. This drawing shows the left slab of an inner threshold in the Central Palace; but ‘unfortunately its exact findspot was not recorded. The drawing shows that the entire surface was decorated with floral motifs arranged in horizontal rows and, based upon later examples, the design must have extended to the other two slabs which formed originally part of the inner threshold’.

Other finds were made by Layard in the North-West Palace at Nimrud, *15 in the Burnt Palace at Nimrud a carved threshold slab was discovered ‘in a level which the excavators have assigned to the reign of Sargon II’*16. Albenda notes that the grid-pattern on the slab has parallels with those found in one of the residences at Khorsabad.’*17; two separate groups of carved, patterned pavement slabs were discovered also in Khorsabad, ‘in
what may have been residences reserved for members of the royal family’, which she suggests may be ‘a further indication that this novel form of applied decoration was used more frequently during Sargon’s reign’, although no examples were found in the king’s palace at Khorsabad. 

Portal pavements were found in Residence K at Khorsabad, where three portals connected ‘one side of the great hall to a long chamber. The portal pavements were decorated with the same motifs: the center field was filled with quatrefoils and rosettes, surrounded on all sides by a lotus-and cone garland band’*18; Residence L (also Khorsabad) ‘had three portals … aligned to form a connecting link between the central court and two chambers, each succeeding the other. The pavement blocks set in the entrances were carved with an overall pattern of small squares, each inscribed with a rosette*19. Near the center of the stone was a seven line inscription which identified the owner of the residence as Sinahuser, Sargon’s full brother and vizier’*20

By the time we get to the reign of Sennacherib (704-681 BCE), ‘elaborate carved pavements were used extensively for important entrances of the South-West Palace at Nineveh’*21. 

This concern  for providing elegant approaches continued into the period of Ashurbanipal, for not only were the grand portals leading into rooms I and M of the North Palace embellished with carved pavements (pls 23, 25), but also other doorways leading out of these and other chambers (pls. 17, 18, 20). From the archaeological evidence available, one must conclude that the desire to enhance important entrances grew in importance in the course of the late 8th and early centuries.*22

It can be argued that this embellishment of entrances is a design issue, or simply a matter of taste, as Albenda appears to be suggesting, though she has referenced what would have been understood as a more practical function by the Assyrians, earlier in her article, when she suggested that  the 'substitution of carved decorated thresholds for the inscriptions at important entranceways…. makes it certain that the floor decorations served a significant role, similar to that performed by the door guardians and wall reliefs’

There are three types of garland borders which are found on Assyrian carved threshold slabs: lotus and bud, lotus and cone, and palmette. The contention of this chapter is that boundaries had an especial philosophical/theological and symbolic significance to the Assyrians in particular, as well as to wider Mesopotamia and Asia, and that the details of
the border decorations are tied into this symbolism. The garland borders are associated in terms of design with the sacred tree, discussed in Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree (in The Sacred History of Being). And philosophically the concept of the boundary is one with the concept which the sacred tree enshrines – an object which represents transformation, transcendence, a point of departure, of coming forth and also of passing away. The boundary of anything is the point at which these transformations can occur, and something of the properties of the boundary – particularly the fact that it must be described essentially in negative terms – seems to have been understood as facilitating transformation. Therefore boundaries would be understood of themselves as of great importance.

In consideration of the significance of details of the design of the garland border, Albenda argues, on grounds of practical design, that ‘when planning for the rhythmical aspect of the garland around two or more sides, the corners must have been of prime importance since in every instance each corner contains a large open lotus or a palmette, depending upon the garland type. Additionally, the corner garland stems are compressed to form double straight lines.’ Looking at the question of this detail from a different point of view, in which the garland is a graphical way – a formal way - of reinforcing, of redoubling, of multiplying the power of the threshold, it is likely that the border design represents, as already suggested, an unfurled sacred tree, alternating bud and blossom, and where the borders meet at right angles, so that two boundaries meet, with the corollary that the quality of limit which that meeting represents is doubled, the formal marking at that point is similarly enhanced. The sacred tree design is often found in corners, for the same
philosophical reason, rather than, as most Assyriologists would have it, functioning as a mere‘filler’ motif.

The chronology of the garland types begins with the lotus and bud [Albenda, p6]. ‘It appears on the inner threshold found in the Central Palace at Nimrud, where the motif is repeated twice among horizontal rows of rosettes separated by plain stripes [illustr pl 1]. The flowers are connected by scalloped-shaped stems supported by a base ring. A plain triple arch defines the calyx of the closed and open lotuses. The open flower displays nine petals, while the petals of the closed bud are indicated by a double line drawn down its center. 

This lotus and bud design appears again in the reign of Sennacherib (illustr. pl 15), but the design is subtly modified in its details. Similar garlands appear in thresholds dating to Ashurbanipal’s reign, again having undergone subtle modifications.* 23 During the 8th
century BCE, the cone garland was replaced by the lotus and cone. The lotus and cone garlands are found at Khorsabad [Residence K – illustr. Pl 3 Albenda] –

 the plants are supported by a triple base ring, over which the terminals of the scalloped shaped stems project. The cone appears small and has a narrow body. Its scales are rendered by linear cross-hatchings. This garland type recurs in the next period, at which time the cone seems to be broader, particularly at the base (pls8-9). The base ring may be either plain or banded. The stem terminals emerge over the base ring and curve either down or out. 

The lotus and cone design is found frequently on threshold slabs dating to the reign of Sennacherib [illustr pls. 11-13], but, curiously, never found on the thresholds used in the time of Ashurbanipal. As for the palmette garland motif, it ‘appears for the first time on the portal thresholds from Ashurbanipal’s reign, where it is applied third in a series of decorated bands, following the lotus-and-bud and rosettes (pls 22-23). In the one example of its use on an inner threshold, it occupies the side of the slab that was originally adjacent to the entrance (pls. 17-18). The palmette consists of nine petals of graduating size that radiate from an arched center. Rising over the base ring which supports the flower, the stem terminals divide into four: an outer pair that terminate in upward-curled volutes, below which is an inner pair with downward-curled volutes.’ * 24

As for the centre field designs, Albenda points out that the centre field of the thresholds featured motifs restricted to floral and geometric elements. She also notes that these designs were properly though out ‘according to a basic formula which provided for the orderly division of the parts to the total design.’*25


Notes


1 p4 JANES 10.
2 see A. H. Layard’s Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, London 1853, 359-60.
3 n22 Albenda: Mallowan, ‘Nimrud’, I, 42, pl.9; ibid., II 393, pl 319.
4 n23 Albenda: G. Loud, ‘Khorsabad’, Part I. Excavations in the Palace and at a City Gate, OIP 38 (1936), 122-25
5 n24 Albenda is referring to: Paley, King of the World, 120-121
6 Albenda: JANES 10 p4.
7 Albenda, JANES 10, p1; the suggestion by Young appears in ‘Early Mosaics at Gordion’
Expedition 7 (1965), 12-13.
8 The three examples are: The Black Obelisk, the bronze door bands from Balawat, and those carved on the throne dais excavated at Nimrud. On the Black Obelisk, ‘the carpets which form part of the tribute sent by Marduk-apal-usur of Suhi (a district on the middle Euphrates) possess carefully delineated fringes’; those on the bronze bands from Balawat showing tribute from the cities of Tyre and Sidon show less attention to this detail; ‘and those transported by attendants from the land of Unqi (the Amuq plain in North Syria). The inscriptions on the Black Obelisk and on the throne base describe the carpets as ‘bright-colored (woolen) garments and (linen) garments’. They are not described as carpets.
9 n15 – J.V. Canby, “Decorated Garments in Ashurnasirpal’s sculptures,” Iraq 33 (1971), 31-3. For examples of the second group, see S. M. Paley, King of the World: Ashur-nasir-pal II of Assyria 883-859 B.C. (New York, 1976), pls. 22a, 23c, 25a.
10 n12 – Barrelet, R Asyr 71 (1977), 85. Of related interest, the upper surface of the throne base of Shalmaneser III was decorated with an intricate honeycomb and rosette pattern, which may represent a rug. See A. Moortgat, The Art of Ancient Mesopotamia, (New York, 1969), pl. 269.
11 p3 JANES 10.
12  this arrangement is illustrated in Fig 2
13 a feature also illustrated by Frankfort in The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient – pl 223, p196, ‘The Late Assyrian Period’, where the rectangular slot in a door-sill from Khorsabad can be clearly seen, cut into the rosette border which marks the inner limit of the outer design of lotus blossoms, alternating between open and closed forms.’
14 illustrated in Albenda, plate 1. The slab is no longer in existence.
15 ‘a large pavement “ornamented with flowers and scroll-work”’. Max Mallowan found that
the part of the palace where this pavement was found was the domestic wing during Sargon’s renovation of the building‘ [Mallowan, ‘Nimrud’, I, 112-13]
16 illustrated in plate 7, Albenda, JANES 10
17 Albenda: p5
18 illustrated in plate 3, Albenda, JANES 10
19 illustr. Albenda, pl. 4, JANES 10
20 fn 28 Loud and Altman, ‘Khorsabad, The Citadel and the Town’, OIP 40 1938, 48-49
21 illustrated Albenda JANES 10, pls. 13, 14.15.
22 Albenda, JANES 10, p5.
23 Albenda, p9 states that the garland motif first appears in Assyria “as part of a wall painting decoration in Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, dated to the 13th century BCE.’ (n 40., Moortgat, Ancient Mesopotamia, 118, fig 89). Later on, in the 9th century BCE, it appears ‘as a textile pattern reproduced in stone’. On the basis of the evidence of the wall reliefs, says Albenda, ‘it was of minor importance in the decorative arts’. But she notes that ‘two main types are known at this time, a cone garland and a floral garland combined from the so-called lily, palmette, and cone. The first type consisted of a series of cones, each decorated with cross-hatching and surmounting a ring base, connected by scalloped stems. [n41 - A. H. Layard, The Monuments of Nineveh. From Drawings Made on the Spot (London, 1849), 11, pl 47.
24 Albenda, p7
25 Albenda, p7