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    Inside an Ancient Assyrian Palace: Looking at Austen Henry Layard's Reconstruction
    Inside an Ancient Assyrian Palace: Looking at Austen Henry Layard's Reconstruction
    Inside an Ancient Assyrian Palace: Looking at Austen Henry Layard's Reconstruction
    Ebook164 pages1 hour

    Inside an Ancient Assyrian Palace: Looking at Austen Henry Layard's Reconstruction

    By Ada Cohen and Steven E. Kangas

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    One of the best-known images of the ancient Near East is an intriguing nineteenth-century color lithograph reconstructing the throne room of an Assyrian palace. Executed shortly after the archaeological rediscovery of Assyria, a land theretofore known only from the Bible, it was published by the most famous among early excavators of Assyrian ruins, Austen Henry Layard. Over time and despite criticisms, the picture has shaped the understanding and reception of ancient Mesopotamian architecture and architectural decoration. Inside an Ancient Assyrian Palace studies this influential image in depth, both at the time of its creation in London in the eventful year 1848 and in terms of its afterlife. A hidden inscription reveals unsuspected contributions by the renowned architect-designer Owen Jones and his colleague the architect-Egyptologist Joseph Bonomi. Also unexpected is the involvement of an enigmatic German artist who later emigrated to America and whose previous career in Europe had been lost to scholarship. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of art history and the ancient Near East. It will also be of relevance to museum visitors and others interested in the ancient world in general, in the art of the nineteenth century, and in design and historical reconstruction.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity Press of New England
    Release dateOct 4, 2016
    ISBN9781611689983
    Inside an Ancient Assyrian Palace: Looking at Austen Henry Layard's Reconstruction

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      Book preview

      Inside an Ancient Assyrian Palace - Ada Cohen

      Inside an Ancient Assyrian Palace

      Looking at Austen Henry Layard’s Reconstruction

      ADA COHEN & STEVEN E. KANGAS

      HOOD MUSEUM OF ART, DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

      Hanover, New Hampshire

      UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND

      Hanover and London

      © 2017 by the Trustees of Dartmouth College

      All rights reserved

      Published by the

      HOOD MUSEUM OF ART

      Dartmouth College

      Hanover, NH 03755

      www.hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu

      &

      UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND

      www.upne.com

      For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com

      EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-61168-998-3

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      available upon request

      CONTENTS

      List of Illustrations

      Preface

      Acknowledgments

      1 Introduction

      2 Layard’s Victorian Palace?

      3 Floor with Puzzle

      4 Colored Drawing and Lithographic Plate

      5 Plate 2 and the History of Art

      Notes

      Bibliography

      Index

      ILLUSTRATIONS

      1 Ashurnasirpal II and genie, gypsum relief

      2 Ashurnasirpal II’s Standard Inscription, gypsum relief

      3 Sir Austen Henry Layard , by George Frederic Watts

      4 Map of western Asia

      5 Austen Henry Layard drawing at Kouyunjik

      6 Hall in Assyrian Palace Restored , chromolithograph

      7 Engraving after Layard’s drawing of a detail on Ashurnasirpal II’s garment

      8 Engraving after Layard’s drawing of a detail on Ashurnasirpal II’s garment

      9 Layard’s original drawing NW54

      10 Layard’s original drawing NW57

      11 Layard’s original drawing NW55

      12 Attendant to Ashurnasirpal II, gypsum relief

      13 Heritage Resource Preservation Playing Cards for Operation Iraqi Freedom

      14 The Palaces of Nimrud Restored , chromolithograph

      15 Austen Henry Layard’s plan of the Northwest Palace

      16 Interior of an Assyrian Palace, Restored (after Layard)

      17 Exterior of the Assyrian Palace , by Francis Bedford

      18 Owen Jones , by Henry Wyndham Phillips

      19 Joseph Bonomi the Younger , by Matilda Sharpe

      20 Foot of Ashurnasirpal II, gypsum relief

      21 Pair of human-headed winged lions positioned in the British Museum

      22 Pair of human-headed winged lions on display in the British Museum

      23 Battle scene, gypsum relief

      24 Ashurnasirpal II and his army besieging a city, gypsum relief

      25 Celebration after the hunt, gypsum relief

      26 Assyrian king and retinue, painted and glazed clay tile

      27 Assyrian king and retinue, chromolithograph

      28 Painted ornaments from Nimrud

      29 Frontispiece of Layard’s Monuments of Nineveh

      30 Inscribed alabaster doorsill

      31 Detail from Hall in Assyrian Palace Restored , chromolithograph

      32 Theodor Frick, Porkpacker , by Carl W. Hambuch

      33 Detail from Theodor Frick, Porkpacker

      34 Home of Josef Anton Schoch , by Carl W. Hambuch

      35 Detail from Home of Josef Anton Schoch

      36 John F. Davis , by Carl W. Hambuch

      37 Delight Davis , by Carl W. Hambuch

      38 Delight Davis on the Porch , by Carl W. Hambuch

      39 A Hall in an Assyrian Temple or Palace , attributed to Layard

      40 Detail from A Hall in an Assyrian Temple or Palace

      41 Detail from A Hall in an Assyrian Temple or Palace

      42 Detail from A Hall in an Assyrian Temple or Palace

      43 Design for scenery for Sardanapalus , by F. Lloyds

      44 Hall of Nimrod , scene from Sardanapalus

      45 Assyrian king hunting a lion, in Punch

      46 Visitors at the Crystal Palace, in Punch

      47 Detail of A Hall in an Assyrian Temple or Palace

      PREFACE

      This study originates in two sets of circumstances, one longstanding, the other circumscribed. The former has to do with our repeated use in the classroom of an iconic mid-nineteenth-century chromolithograph that seeks to reconstruct a room in an ancient Assyrian palace (see fig. 6). This lithograph is associated with the name of Austen Henry Layard (see fig. 3), the best known among the early excavators of ancient Assyria. As is typical in the teaching of ancient art at universities in the United States, we show this image to students, pairing it with the caveat that it is inaccurate and fanciful but, paradoxically, still useful for the study of ancient Mesopotamian art. On occasion we have wondered what we would say were a student to ask in what sense exactly this reconstruction is inaccurate and what is useful about it. The present study is the result of our attempt to explore these questions.

      Additional, more circumstantial, impetus was offered by our work on Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II: A Cultural Biography, a co-edited book published in 2010 by the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and the University Press of New England. That book marked the 150th anniversary of the college’s acquisition of a set of ninth-century BCE Assyrian stone reliefs whose origin was the Northwest Palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BCE) at the site of Nimrud (ancient Kalhu) in modern-day Iraq. It was while organizing the images for that book that we first noticed, among other things, the inscription on the chromolithograph that we explore here. The inscription proved more interesting than we had imagined and added new questions to the original ones about the lithograph’s reconstructive authenticity.

      In the present context we undertake a holistic study (to the extent possible) of the lithograph at the intersection of ancient Assyria and nineteenth-century England and argue that this work of visual culture is productive in previously unexpected ways, having to do with its status as a piece of microhistory as well as a fragment of biography of persons both well known (Austen Henry Layard, Owen Jones, Joseph Bonomi) and forgotten (Carl Hambuch). The biography of persons is of course the most conventional type of biography, one that has consistently retained its grip on the general public but one that has gone in and out of favor as a scholarly approach.

      FIGURE 1

      Ashurnasirpal II and Genie. Gypsum relief from the Northwest Palace, Room G, Nimrud, ca. 860 BCE. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College S.856.3.2. Gift of Sir Henry Rawlinson through Austin H. Wright, Class of 1830. Photo courtesy of The Hood Museum of Art

      The huge appeal that Layard’s voluminous writings had among the reading public in both England and America in the nineteenth century was partly dependent on their autobiographical tone, which contributed to Layard’s reception as a great man. The more skeptical assessments of Layard by scholars today are partly dependent on a still-evolving distrust toward the great man approach to history. Today this distrust manages to coexist with another trend: the contemporary interest in subjectivity and personal identity formation, among both the famous and the unknown. It seems that each generation of scholars must grapple anew with the difficult questions of how individuals, great or not, interact with groups to produce history, how certain individuals shape or at least instantiate group thinking and circumstances, and, in turn, how group thinking and circumstance shape individuals.

      It was fascinating to find out in the course of our research that, for a period of over forty years, Dartmouth College considered such questions significant enough to merit a separate (but not major-granting) academic department devoted to the systematic study of biography, the study of lives. The Department of Biography was founded in 1924 by Ambrose White Vernon, a former ordained minister, and was discontinued in 1967. Having founded the first such department in the United States, at Carleton College, Vernon was invited directly by then Dartmouth president Ernest M. Hopkins to come to Hanover and organize a second one. This initiative was meant as a humanistic antidote to the vogue of determinism that seemed to prevail among the history, sociology and economics departments of many colleges.¹ The focus on individuals had a political edge, understood more broadly as a stance against the totalitarian and dehumanizing tendencies of the twentieth century and as an effort to combat conformity.

      The departmental approach to the curriculum was unconventional. Despite appearances, the instructors did not fully subscribe philosophically to the great man theory of history, and historical horizons were implicated in the study of individuals. In fact the courses were largely organized around broadly defined historical periods, each course focusing on five or six individuals, typically male, each representative of a different field. All were examined in light of a specific set of questions, directed toward what an intelligent person would wish to know about any figure without regard to whether that figure were good or bad, whether doctor, politician or knave.² According to the course catalogue, it was an object of the discipline to develop critical perspective in reading biographies, and all courses emphasized primary sources. The comparative approach was utilized, and a lot of cultural and historical information was offered. Consideration of women and minorities was slowly introduced as relevant sources became available, often by being translated from other languages into English.

      The students in the Department of Biography were asked to familiarize themselves with the idea "that to get as deep as you can into the understanding of a person you have to

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