Intertextual linkages between Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions and mythological narratives have significantly contributed to our understanding of royal self-presentation and historicization. Less explored, however, are how such linkages may be interpreted and visualized within royal art. In this paper, I propose an intervisual connection between Ninurta mythologies and Assyrian royal lion hunts by unpacking modes of display and interaction embedded between image, text, and lived experience in the palace art of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. Intervisuality was arguably deployed as an innovative strategy to craft a sophisticated connection between royal and divine kingship. I explore how Anzû, a mythological adversary of Ninurta that embodies chaos and disorder, was conceptualized and manifested across media, including cylinder seals and in relief art. Consequently, the paper displaces the typical focus given to the Assyrian king by instead investigating the roles of animals and monsters in upholding royal narratives. I argue that the form and actions of Anzû as embodied and performed in objects act as powerful symbolic referents that anchor its transformed image in royal hunt narratives. In conclusion, I consider why Ashurbanipal may have employed visual references to Anzû in his palace art.

This paper investigates how Assyrian kings protected their material legacies for posterity and why in some prominent instances such protections failed, with a particular focus on the palaces of Kalḫu and Nineveh during the Sargonid Period. I approach this question through the lens of intergenerational reciprocity; Assyrian worldviews provided various channels through which past, present, and future kings could engage with one another in reciprocal and coercive relationships across time. Unlike curses and blessings, which were relatively easy for Assyrian kings to disregard, these reciprocal relationships provided more compelling incentives for rulers to honour and preserve their predecessors’ material legacies. However, practical or ideological concerns would sometimes result in the need to alter buildings in ways that damaged the material legacy of a past ruler. In some of these instances, steps were taken to symbolically compensate the past ruler in question for this damage. In this fashion, rulers were able to negotiate the ideological tension between tradition and innovation to preserve historical memory while adapting living cultural heritage to meet current needs.

This article presents editions and hand-copies of the cuneiform tablet BM 46590 and the tablet fragments K.13919 and 82-3-23, 108. These new pieces either duplicate or expand the ritual for undoing the effects of unpropitious lunar omens known from K.6018+//, providing new information on Akkadian incantation-prayers to the moon god. Most importantly, the prayer “Sîn 5”, previously known only from a couple of fragmentary lines, can now be read almost in full.