HIST 14
Game of Thrones ca. 850 BCE: Empire, Religion, and Palace Intrigue in the Neo-Assyrian Reliefs at WC Winter 2024

A pair of stone reliefs, now housed at WCMA, once decorated the most imposing palace in the ancient world- Ashurnasirpal II’s palace at ancient Kalhu (modern Nimrud, Iraq) the heart of the world’s first empire. One modern scholar remarked on Ashurnasirpal’s “calculated frightfulness,” yet religion, scholarship, fashion, epic poetry, love, and court intrigue also surrounded the reliefs in their original setting. This multidisciplinary course explores the reliefs, their iconography, and the so-called “Standard Inscription” that accompanies them, in their ancient, 19th-century, and modern contexts. From WCMA’s collection we examine inscribed bricks from Ashurnasirpal’s son Shalmaneser III, economic texts from the 3rd millennium BCE, and clay “cones” from Gudea of Lagash-the first king to claim expertise as an architect! We explore the era of the reliefs’ (re)discovery amidst competing drives to collect, discard, or destroy them: Williams alum D. W. Marsh (class of 1842), who donated the reliefs; Marsh’s life on campus, including the Williams missionary movement; Marsh’s years in Mosul, and friendship with the British archaeologist A.H. Layard, who excavated the palace. The course emphasizes first-hand experience: dramatic readings of the Epic of Gilgamesh (for literary and cultural clues); Ashurnasirpal’s “Banquet Stele” ( for a description of the ancient world’s most lavish party); learning to write cuneiform; a Mesopotamian feast. The course closes with an overnight field trip for a private tour of Yale’s Babylonian Collection, the Yale University Art Gallery-and New Haven pizza. An optional, 3-part “Flash Akkadian” course, open to the community, teaches students to decipher, render into Akkadian, and translate a Shalmaneser III brick at WCMA. Meets afternoons 2x/week