The Assyrian statue (

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

number 124963) was originally set up near the temple of

Ishtar Inanna is the List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian goddess of war, love, and fertility. She is also associated with political power, divine law, sensuality, and procreation. Originally worshipped in Sumer, she was known by the Akk ...

Nineveh Nineveh ( ; , ''URUNI.NU.A, Ninua''; , ''Nīnəwē''; , ''Nīnawā''; , ''Nīnwē''), was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul (itself built out of the Assyrian town of Mepsila) in northern ...

(near the modern city of

Mosul Mosul ( ; , , ; ; ; ) is a major city in northern Iraq, serving as the capital of Nineveh Governorate. It is the second largest city in Iraq overall after the capital Baghdad. Situated on the banks of Tigris, the city encloses the ruins of the ...

in northern Iraq). The statue remains the only known Assyrian statue of a naked woman.BM page The inscription shows it was intended "for titillation" or "to be alluring", and may represent an attendant of Ishtar, or Ishtar herself in her role as the goddess of love. The statue was first dated by

E. A. Wallis Budge Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (27 July 185723 November 1934) was an English Egyptology, Egyptologist, Orientalism, Orientalist, and Philology, philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient ...

as being 1080 BCE.

Description

This is a limestone carved statue of a woman. The statue is just smaller than life-size at high and wide at the shoulders and narrows to wide at the waist. There is a cuneiform inscription on the back of the statue which states that king

Ashur-bel-kala Aššūr-bēl-kala, inscribed m''aš-šur-''EN''-ka-la'' (meaning " Aššur is lord of all"), was the king of Assyria in 1074/3–1056 BC, the 89th to appear on the ''Assyrian Kinglist''. He was the son of Tiglath-Pileser I, succeeded his brother ...

erected it for the people. Most of the surface detail has been lost, but the details of the pubic hair remain visible and carefully carved. When exhibited in a British Museum exhibition in 2018/19, the curators described it as deliberately unattractive in terms of Assyrian ideas of female beauty, and perhaps designed to insult some specific female figure . However, the museum website entry does not adopt this interpretation. The statue was discovered and excavated by

Hormuzd Rassam Hormuzd Rassam (; ; 182616 September 1910) was an Assyriologist and author. He is known for making a number of important archaeological discoveries from 1877 to 1882, including the clay tablets that contained the ''Epic of Gilgamesh,'' the world ...

in 1853. It was found close to the Broken Obelisk () and "in the same ditch". The statue is on permanent exhibition in the British Museum gallery 55, the Assyrian room, where it is simply labelled as "Limestone statue of a woman" and is dated as within the reign of

Inscription

Budge's 1902 English translation was: #The palace of Ashur-bel- ala, the king of hosts, the mighty king, the king of Asyria, #the son of Tiglath-pileser, the king f hosts the mighty ing, the king of Assyria #the son of Ashur-resh-ishi, the king of hosts, he mighty king, the king ofAssyria. #These ... mong the rulersof cities #and ... upon ... ave I ... #Whosoever shall alter my inscription or my name (which is written therein), may the god Za .and the gods #of the land of Martu smite him with ... smiting! A more complete translation by Albert Kirk Grayson in 1991 reads: :(Property of) the palace of Assur-bel- ala, king of the universe, strong king, king of Asyria, son of Tiglath-pile- ser (I), king of he universe strong ing, king of Assyria son of Assur-resa-isi (I) (who was) also king of the universe, trong king, king ofAssyria: I made these sculptures in the provinces, cities and garrisons for titillation. As for the one who removes my inscriptions and my name: the divine Sibitti, the gods of the west, will afflict him with snake-bite.

Notes

References

*"BM page"
British Museum. Online Collection page
{{commons category, Assyrian statue BM 124963 11th-century BC inscriptions 1853 archaeological discoveries Assyrian art and architecture Mesopotamian literature Middle Eastern sculptures in the British Museum Sculpture of the ancient Near East Sculptures of women Nineveh Inanna Archaeological discoveries in Iraq