The Assyrians kept a very good record of their monarchs, encoded in the famous King Lists, which enable us to reconstruct much of the rulership of the Assyrian Empire from the time of ‘the Kings who lived in tents’, before the first historically attested ruler Ititi (c. 2279 BC – 2270 BC) until the reign of Ashuruballit II, whose disastrous defeat to the Babylonians in 609 BC spelled the end of glorious Assyrian Empire. These King Lists are useful not only for their historical documentary value, but also in establishing a fairly secure chronology of the Assyrian Empire based on the lengths of reigns, and, supplemented by other monumental inscriptions, give us something of an idea of the character of individual monarchs. According to these lists, Ashurnasirpal II was the third monarch of what archaeologists know as the Neo-Assyrian Empire, a period of renewed vigour for the Assyrians which saw their land-based empire reach its greatest extent. Ashurnasirpal was instrumental in this newfound expansionist success: his campaigns pushed forwards to Asia Minor, where he extracted tribute from the Phrygians, into Syria, where he subjected the Aramaeans and the Neo-Hittites to his will. He reformed the governance of the Empire, installing Assyrian governors in place of the native rulers who had previously been allowed to maintain their status in exchange for regular tribute. His campaigns came, however, at great human cost. In a graphic description of his own cruelty towards the people of Tela, a city which revolted against him, Ashurnasirpal describes the heads of his enemies being stacked in towers outside the city walls, of children being burned alive, and of brutal mutilations.

Ashurnasirpal’s reign of terror was, in the context of the times in which he lived, perhaps expected. The Ninth Century BC was a harsh time, and rebellions against Assyrian rule were frequent among the disjointed city-states of the Levant. But the brutal conditions of the time also presented an opportunity for him: the increase in slave labour enabled him to embark on a significant building programme, the highlight of which was a magnificent new palace at Kalhu, known today as Nimrud. Completed around 864 BC, the so-called Northwest Palace was a vast and sprawling complex of buildings, some in stone and others in mudbrick. The palace was covered in both imagery and Cuneiform writings, extolling the virtues of Ashurnasirpal II, and of his successors. The most famous of these, the enormous stone reliefs from the central palace hall, are recognised masterpieces of Assyrian art. But even the smallest and most mundane fragments of the palace told a story. The Assyrians made a habit of inscribing even the mudbricks which went into building anonymous walls, so that future generations would recognise the efforts of the ruler in constructing or reconstructing significant buildings. The humble mudbrick itself was far from a mere building material. The mud or clay, taken from the riverbank, was imbued with the magic and identity of the goddesses which animated the river, and by inscribing the name of the King, it became imbued with his energy also. For the Assyrians, memorialising the reigns of their monarchs was a spiritual, as well as a practical, exercise. Mudbricks were living witnesses to this.

This brick is square in profile, as were most Assyrian bricks, as opposed to the more familiar rectangular shape of modern bricks. They are usually of a roughly standard size, between 30 cm and 50 cm across. They are often standardised to buildings or to building phases, such that the Assyrians measured the size of buildings not by height, width, or depth, but by the number of mudbricks used in its construction. With accurate data about the sizes of the bricks in other parts of the Northwestern Palace, we would be able to contribute a guess as to which phase of the building it contributed to. However, this proves unnecessary thanks to the inscription, which firmly locates this brick to the wall opposite the well in the palace’s central courtyard. One clear implication of this brick’s inscription is that the makers of particular mudbricks had specific locations in mind when they were created. In other words, the architects must have calculated in advance exactly how many bricks were needed, in order to create this building almost like a flat-pack project, a giant and elaborate Lego set, with each brick’s role pre-determined in the overall construction. This attests to the remarkable mathematical intelligence of the architects of important Assyrian buildings. The rest of the inscription lists the titles of the King himself, along with his father and grandfather. He was, like all Assyrian monarchs, not merely a king, but the King of Kings (shar-sharrani), a title introduced by Tukulti-Ninurta I around 1200 BC. Since the Assyrians had imposed themselves as overlords to a web of existing city-states, this title – a kind of pre-Roman attempt at imagining an ‘emperor’ – reflected a kind of dominance and superiority over the petty rulers of the Near East, and asserted the Assyrian claim to be the legitimate rulers of the whole world.

Translation: Palace of Ashurnasirpal, great king, mighty king, king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Tukulti-Ninurta, great king, mighty king, king of the world, king of Assyria, descendant of Assur-Nirari, king of the world, king of Assyria. Brick facing the well of the palace courtyard.

References: a similar brick from the ziggurat at Nimrud, manufactured under Ashurnasirpal’s son Shalmaneser III, can be found in London (British Museum 90224).

Translation by the late Prof Wilfred G. Lambert FBA
Professor Emeritus of Assyriology, University of Birmingham