Copyright by Breton Adam Langendorfer 2012 The Thesis Committee for Breton Adam Langendorfer Certifies that this is the approved version of the following thesis: Who Builds Assyria: Nurture and Control in Sennacherib’s Great Relief at Khinnis APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Nassos Papalexandrou Penelope Davies Who Builds Assyria: Nurture and Control in Sennacherib’s Great Relief at Khinnis by Breton Adam Langendorfer, B.A. Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2012 “…how are we here, when the vessel in which we rode plunged down so long a tunnel?” He shrugged my question aside. “Why should gravity serve Urth when it can serve Typhon?” –Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun Acknowledgements It is a privilege and a pleasure to thank the many people without whom this thesis could not have been written. First and foremost I wish to thank my advisor, Nassos Papalexandrou. His generosity, unflagging encouragement, and boundless intellectual curiosity have been a source of inspiration to me, and have enriched my future immeasurably. Penelope Davies has my deep thanks for her expert and invaluable reading of this work. I also wish to thank professors John R. Clarke, Stephennnie Mulder, Rabun Taylor, and especially Glenn Peers, who gave me the confidence to first enter the City of Ideas. Jessamine Batario, Taylor Bradley, Alex Grimley, Claire Howard, Jeannie McKetta, Jared Richardson and Margaret Wardlaw have all given me their warm friendship, humor, and support, and I am glad to have the opportunity to thank them for it. This work is dedicated to my parents, Keith and Bonnie Langendorfer, for reasons that could never be adequately listed here. v Abstract Who Builds Assyria: Nurture and Control in Sennacherib’s Great Relief at Khinnis Breton Adam Langendorfer, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisor: Nassos Papalexandrou Located in an isolated gorge in Iraqi Kurdistan, the Neo-Assyrian rock reliefs at Khinnis are unusual for their size, shape, and subject matter. The most striking of these is the enormous Great Relief, the largest single Assyrian sculpture in existence, which depicts a pair of gods attended by the duplicated figure of the Assyrian king. Both the Great Relief and the other sculptures of the Khinnis site were carved on the orders of Sennacherib (r. 705-688 BCE), to commemorate the canal head he constructed there. The Great Relief itself was positioned over the exact juncture wherein the waters of the river Gomel were canalized and sent on their way towards Nineveh, designated by Sennacherib as Assyria’s new imperial capital, irrigating fields and orchards along the way. In this thesis I examine the composition and iconography of the Great Relief, both in the context of Sennacherib’s irrigation programs and the inscription carved at the Khinnis site. This inscription contains a curiously bifurcated account of both vi Sennacherib’s civil works in Assyria and his brutal sack of Babylon in 689. In both cases, Sennacherib emphasizes his ingenious technical ability to manipulate water for the benefit of the Assyrian state, either through the creative irrigation of the Assyrian heartland and the new capital, or the destructive flooding and leveling of Babylon. I argue that the dichotomy presented by these activities, a dualism of “nurture and control” through technical expertise, is a persistent theme throughout the rhetoric of Sennacherib’s inscriptions and reliefs. Through a close analysis of the Khinnis inscription, the Assyrian tradition of landscape sculpture, and the emblematic and narrative strategies employed in palatial relief programs, I argue that the Great Relief at Khinnis is an emblematic image of the dualistic ideology of Sennacherib’s reign. Ultimately, the Great Relief stands as a carefully devised visual statement about the nature of state power, consciously created by Sennacherib to signal his conceptual re-founding of the Assyrian empire. vii Table of Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................ ix Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Site of Khinnis ................................................................................8 Chapter 2: The Khinnis Inscription........................................................................26 The Titulary .........................................................................................30 Nineveh and its Irrigation Works .........................................................35 “The Technical Function of Power” ....................................................44 The Blooming of Nineveh ...................................................................49 Divine Aid ............................................................................................55 Halule and Enūma Eliš.........................................................................62 The Sack of Babylon ............................................................................68 Logistical Power ..................................................................................73 Chapter 3: Assyrian Relief in Landscape and Palace ............................................77 Sculptural Context: The Peripheral Monuments..................................80 The Emblem .........................................................................................89 The Sacred Tree ...................................................................................92 Sculptural Context: The “Palace Without Rival” ..............................102 Chapter 4: Gods, Ilus and the Great Relief ..........................................................120 Nurture and Control ...........................................................................132 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................136 Appendix: The Khinnis Inscription .....................................................................188 Bibliography ........................................................................................................191 viii List of Figures Figure 1: Map of the Assyrian heartland, with the major canals indicated in bold black lines. After Bagg, 2003 .........................................................145 Figure 2: Bachmann's plan of the site of Khinnis, with the Great Relief carved at the point labeled "grossen Relief." After Bachmann, 1927. .................146 Figure 3: The Great Relief. After Bachmann, 1927..........................................147 Figure 4: Diagram of the Great Relief. After Bachmann, 1927. .......................148 Figure 5: Detail of the vegetal object held by Mullissu. After Bachmann, 1927.149 Figure 6: View of Khinnis from the east, with the Great Relief locate left of center. After Bachmann, 1927. ...................................................................150 Figure 7: View of Khinnis from the south, with the Great Relief left of center and the Rider Relief at far left. After Bachmann, 1927. ........................150 Figure 8: View of the Great Relief and the sculpted weir block, or Gate Relief, at lower left. After Bachmmann, 1927. ..............................................151 Figure 9: Diagram of the lion posts. After Bachmmann, 1927. ........................152 Figure 10: Diagram of the Rider Relief. After Bachmmann, 1927. .................152 Figure 11: Diagram of the Gate Relief. After Bachmmann, 1927. ...................153 Figure 12: One of the king niches. After Bachmmann, 1927. ..........................154 Figure 13: Diagram of the king niche. After Bachmmann, 1927. ....................154 Figure 14: L. W. King’s diagram of Khinnis looking from the east. After Bachmmann, 1927. .........................................................................155 Figure 15: The gateway of Sargon II’s palace at Khorsabad. After Russell, 1991.155 Figure 16: Bachmann’s rendition of how the Gartental might have appeared. After Bachmann, 1927. ............................................................................156 ix Figure 17: Diagram of the proposed course of the canal through the Khinnis site, leaving the Gomel under the cluster of reliefs. After Jacobsen and Lloyd, 1935.................................................................................................157 Figure 18: Diagram of the Gate Relief’s function as a weir for the canal. After Jacobsen and Lloyd, 1935. ..............................................................158 Figure 19: King niche 4, which contains fragments of the Khinnis inscription written over the king’s figure in the lower half of the image. After Bachmann, 1927. ............................................................................159 Figure 20: Relief image of Sennacherib travelling through an artificial marsh created near Nineveh. Palace Without Rival, Court VI, slab 61. After Barnett et al., 1998. .........................................................................160 Figure 21: Assyrian workmen carve a peripheral salam šarrutiya into the wall of the Tigris Tunnel, on a band from the Balawat Gates. After Börker-Klahn, 1982.................................................................................................161 Figure 22: