Pièce Bonomi MSS 32.5 - Iraq. Nineveh. South-West Palace of Sennacherib. Court VI (I). Panels 66-67. Relief depicting four male captives removing stones in baskets, c. 700-692 BC; sketch in grid from gypsum slab now in London, British Museum, BM 124821 = 1851,0902.5

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Relief depicting four male captives removing stones in baskets, c. 700-692 BC; sketch in grid from gypsum slab (panels 66-67) from Court VI (I) in the South-West Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh in Iraq, now in London, British Museum, BM 124821 = 1851,0902.5:

• pencil sketch on paper
• loose
• 44.5 x 56.7 cm
• [on sketch] 'The younger men are chained {two} together / Some have fetters on their legs' (pencil note)
• [on sketch] '"Thou didst show them no mercy / whom the ancient hast thou very / heavily laid thy yoke" Isaiah 47.6 / This is said of the Babylonians but is equally / applicable as we see to the Ninevites who were in / fact under the same rule / "Woe to him that buildeth a town / with blood (underlined) and stablisheth a city / by iniquity!" Habak 2 12 / Woe to the bloody city Nahum 3 1' (pencil note)
• [on sketch] 'This is a remarkable expression / of age and fatigue in the attitude / and countenance of their figures / which no doubt was the intention / of the assyrian artist to convey / It represents a number of jewish? / captives carrying stones up a steep / mound so steep as to require holes / or foot steps to enable the me / to go up to its top / It may be they are conveying stones / to make an inclined / plain over which to / drag a colossal bull / to the top of one of the / artificial mounds {or hills} on / which the palaces of / the kings of Nineveh / were built.' (pencil note)
• [on sketch] 'The word translated blood (underlined) / in the quotation from Habakak / is [...] in the plural / perhaps to signify (partially rubbed out) the {repeated} cruel / waste of life occasioned by / own fatigue / So in the quotation from / Nahum the word bloods is [...] / which might be rendered city of bloods / {that is} city built at the cost of so many lives / a succession of captives, of deportations of the inhabitants / from neighbouring countries' (pencil note)

Copyright Griffith Institute, University of Oxford

• See https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=248525001&objectId=366778&partId=1