Neo-Assyrian wall panel
- Gallery: Room 9
- Culture: Neo-Assyrian
- Date: 640BC-620BC
- Object type: wall panel, relief
- Materials: gypsum
- Museum number: 124782
- Museum: The British Museum
- Collection record: British Museum website
- Image © The Trustees of the British Museum, shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.
Listen to the free audio guide
About this object
This is a Neo-Assyrian wall panel dating to 640 to 620 BCE, made from carved gypsum. The scene depicts a military campaign in southern Iraq, showing Assyrian soldiers presenting severed heads, prisoners, and captured women to two scribes. The scribes are shown recording the spoils on a tablet and possibly a parchment, using writing tools held with precise finger positions.
Among the details are rows of weapons—daggers, bows, and spears—laid out on a small couch before the scribes. The prisoners wear typical Babylonian clothing, and the setting includes palm trees, hinting at a Chaldean origin. A river, possibly the Tigris, flows across the scene. The panel's fine detail and preservation make it a striking example of Assyrian relief sculpture.
See it in person
Neo-Assyrian wall panel is on display in Room 9 at the British Museum on Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London — free to enter. Choose British Museum on audioguide.london and take a photo of it to hear this free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
New, in beta. British Museum support has just launched and is still improving: over 1,000 objects so far, with more added all the time.
