figure

Please enable JavaScript in your web browser to get the best experience.

Object Type
Museum number: 91678
Description: Limestone lion's head; carved; the recessed eye-sockets, wrinkled nose and whiskers were originally inlaid but no trace of these survive; incised with a cuneiform inscription.
Cultures/periods
Production date: 882BC (circa)
Excavator/field collector
Findspot: Excavated/Findspot: Shamash Temple
Materials
Technique: carved; incised; inlaid (originally)
Dimensions: Height: 9.40 centimetres; Length: 10.60 centimetres
$Inscriptions
Curator's comments: Attached to 1882,0918.14356. Originally part of the decoration of the temple of Shamash (known as the Ebabbar or 'Shining Temple') at Sippar in southern Iraq. This was one of the most important traditional and prestigious religious centres in Mesopotamia. Rulers sent offerings to Shamash and there are records of numerous kings restoring and rebuilding the temple. This head, which was originally inlaid, bears a worn inscription naming the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680-669 BC) and his father Sennacherib. It is not clear whether this is a Babylonian or an Assyrian piece. Esarhaddon was responsible for restoring the capital city of Babylon following its destruction by Sennacherib in 689 BC.
Bibliographic references: Guide 1922 / Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum (p.188); Hall H R 1928a / Babylonian and Assyrian Sculpture in the British Museum (pl. lix); Barnett & Wiseman 1960a / Fifty masterpieces of Ancient Near Eastern Art (pp.56-57, no. 26); Leichty E 1986a / Catalogue of the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum: Volume VI: Tablets from Sippar, I (p.299); Searight, Reade & Finkel 2008a / Assyrian Stone Vessels and related material in the British Museum (650, p.104)
Location: On display (G55/dc13)
Exhibition history: Exhibited: 2018-2019 8 Nov-24 Feb, London, BM, I am Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria
Condition: nose damaged
Subjects
Associated names: Named in inscription: Sennacherib; Named in inscription: Esarhaddon
Acquisition date: 1882
Department: Middle East
BM/Big number: 91678
Registration number: 1882,0714.4464
Conservation

Free entry

Opening hours