Neo-Assyrian wall panel
- Gallery: Room 8
- Culture: Neo-Assyrian
- Date: 728BC
- Object type: wall panel, relief
- Materials: gypsum
- Museum number: 118882
- 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
Before you is a Neo-Assyrian wall panel that depicts a captured city and its defeated people. This relief, carved from gypsum, shows the aftermath of a siege. The city has double walls with turrets and battlements, and three grand gateways. Inside, a date palm marks the setting as Babylonia.
Outside the walls, Assyrian forces have built a platform for their attack. Two battering rams stand nearby, though the action has already passed. In front of them, families are being driven away in bullock-drawn carts, their lives clearly upended. Detailed figures emerge in the scene—women with veils, a boy wearing a curious cap, and young children. A scribe records the scene for a commander, capturing the moment of deportation. This relief once adorned the Central Palace and offers a powerful, visual record of ancient warfare and displacement.
See it in person
Neo-Assyrian wall panel is on display in Room 8 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.
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