The remarkable Assyrian monument known as the “White Obelisk” was found by Rassam in July, 1853 at Kuyunjik and immediately attributed to Aššurnaṣirpal II (883–859) whose name (admittedly without titles or patronymy) appears in the inscription. In 1883, Pinches gave a detailed description of the Obelisk with a tentative interpretation of its inscription, but it was only some 80 years after the discovery that the first, and only, full edition of the monument appeared. In it, Unger rather forcefully argued for a much earlier date, namely the reign of Aššurnaṣirpal I (1050–1032). This dating, widely accepted, was later challenged by Landsberger who showed that the textual evidence certainly favoured the original attribution to Aššurnaṣirpal II.
Since then, philologists have generally been following Landsberger while archaeologists, with the notable exception of Frankfort, held for Unger's thesis. Recently, however, a more cautious attitude has begun to prevail among archaeologists. Thus, although in his Die Kunst des Alten Mesopotamien (1967), 126–128, Moortgat demonstrates that the White Obelisk cannot be ascribed to Aššurnaṣirpal II, he nevertheless adds a question mark after “Assurnasirpal I” in the caption to the illustration in the same volume (Pl. 251). Similarly, Hrouda, while upholding his earlier attribution to Aššurnaṣirpal I in his most recent work, adds in a footnote: “Zuweisung unsicher.” Finally, the scholar to whom we pay homage in this issife of Iraq, and who is one of the latest to have discussed the White Obelisk, has come down in favour of Landsbefger's dating to Aššurnaṣirpal II, explaining the stylistic oddities of the monument as due to the Ninevite craftsmen who carved it very early in the king's reign, and who may have been less skilled than their colleagues at Calah.