The Arizona State Museum, devoted to the archaeology and ethnology of the American Southwest and northern Mexico, seems a very unlikely home for a fragment of a Neo-Assyrian relief panel from King Ashurbanipal’s 7th century B.C.E. North Palace at Nineveh in ancient Mesopotamia.
Intrigued? Delve in with Dr. Irene Bald Romano, curator of Mediterranean archaeology, professor of art history and anthropology, and affiliated faculty in the department of religious studies and classics – and ASM conservation laboratory manager Gina Watkinson in this presentation, co-sponsored by the UAMA.
ASHURBANIPAL, P.T. BARNUM, ROYAL EUNUCHS, AND FAT-TAILED SHEEP
The Surprising Journey of the Fragmentary Sculpture
from Ancient Mesopotamia to the Arizona State Museum
The presenters will unravel the fragment’s complex and fascinating story, which entails fat-tailed sheep, royal eunuchs, 19th-century explorers in the Ottoman-controlled region of today’s northern Iraq, missionaries in the Middle East, Universalism, The British Museum, and Tufts College – to name a few.
