Image Details

Dismembered and displayed, the victims of Shalmaneser III (858–824 B.C.) become grisly ornaments, as shown in this detail from a bronze relief that once decorated the wooden gates of a temple or palace at Balawat, near modern Mosul. Severed heads hang from the walls of Kulisi, at right, as flames (represented by parallel vertical lines) consume this ancient city near the source of the Tigris River. Beside the city we see a prisoner, bereft of hands and feet, impaled on a stake. At left, an Assyrian soldier grasps the hand of a captive whose other hand and feet have been cut off. Dismembered hands and feet litter the ground.