Sculptured relief in the British Museum of the Assyrian king Tiglath Pilesar who established the Second Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BC – the king can be seen flanked by two attendants, firing arrows in a landscape of palm trees. Ancient Assyria occupied a region of present-day Iraq. Tiglath Pilesar is generally regarded as one of the greatest military commanders of all time. Using Assyria as his base he conquered “all of the world” (present day Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Israel). He was astonishingly cruel, even by the standards of the ancient world, destroying cities, murdering opponents, and in the occupation of northern Israel impaling or deporting most of the inhabitants. His royal palace at Nimrud was discovered by Henry Layard in one of the most famous archaeological excavations of all time, written up in his (wonderful) book Discoveries at Nineveh.
The Assyrian Empire was relatively short-lived and after its fall its cities and monuments were covered by debris and forgotten. This decline of a once-great empire into total obscurity was referred to by Rudyard Kipling in his 1897 poem Recessional warning that Britain must eventually decline as a world power (“All our pomp of yesterday is one with Nineveh and Tyre”). The Assyrian Empire demonstrated that only vicious and overwhelming force could (temporarily) subdue the peoples of the region we currently know as Iraq.
On the Today Programme there was an item that William Patey, the outgoing British ambassador in Baghdad, had sent a confidential report to London (leaked to the BBC) saying that civil war and the break-up of the Iraq was extremely likely. What is the strategic interest Britain is pursuing in helping to occupy Iraq? Perhaps a division of the country along Wilsonian principles of self-determination might be the sensible option in the long run (but what do I know?).
4 comments:
One of my family goes to London next week and I have asked her to buy me some book about it in the British Museum. Obviously the store of that museum has to be astonishingly big so sure there are books about Mesopotamia and catalogue reviews about pieces [not sure if in English this word is correct] they have in the museum. She is saying me every day what I want of London and this is an idea occurred me while reading your post.
That relief is so beautiful. I would want to watch particularly one of the Nabopolassar relieves and the cylinder seals, and a lot of things more; I would take all to my home. The British Museum is a paradise –the king of the plunder, but a paradise-. The other one was the National Museum of Iraq, unfortunately plundered too -80% of 170.000 pieces disappeared or destroyed-. Who knows, maybe a good pack of those pieces will appear in the British Museum in a couple of years.
Laia, I used to "work" (a sort of internship) at the Getty Museum in Malibu and they would be offered objects that had obviously been obtained illegally and although they always turned them down, there was a debate that these objects ought to be in a museum, and if they were just sold commerically they could disappear forever.
I used to go to the British Museum every week (I had a job nearby) and look at a different room each week.
Note: I deleted the previous version of this comment as there were so many spelling mistakes!
There will be always a debate about the plunders. Some plunders have been positive to preserve the art of the wars and the pillage and others have been negative, as the Iraq plunders I was talking about. The objects were not exported because the plunderers loved the art, and a lot of those objects were destroyed or mutilated to keep only the inserted gold, for example. For me it was like to watch books burning.
About the British Museum plunders and others in general, it’s something pretty normal having a past as Empire. All of them do the same, but maybe because I live in a very plundered city it annoys me a bit since always. If I want to know the history of the altarpieces of my city I have to go to the west coast of United States! It's so... ludicrous.
About your spelling; thanks to bother and correcting it. I’m trying to improve with the English but it’s more difficult and takes more time trying to speak it fluently and perfect it than all the previous process of learning.
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