Broken guardians: the lamassu and fragmented historical vision in nineteenth-century France

Abstract

With the rise of interest in ancient Mesopotamia in the nineteenth century, the lamassu, the human-headed winged bull that guarded many Assyrian palace entrances, occupied a unique position in the popular imagination. As a signifier of an ancient civilization that was being revealed to European audiences for the first time, the lamassu embodied multiple discourses of fragmentation with respect to vision, representation, and historical narrativity. This article traces the representation and reception of the lamassu in nineteenth-century France, beginning with the campaign of Paul-Émile Botta in the early 1840s and the subsequent publication of the five-volume Monument de Ninive (1849–50), illustrated by Eugène Flandin. Many of Botta’s discoveries were mounted within the Louvre’s Musée assyrien, inaugurated less than a year before the revolutionary upheavals of 1848. The historical linkages between ancient Assyria and nineteenth-century France were not lost on many contemporaneous commentators, particularly after the archaeological campaigns were resumed by Victor Place in the 1850s. Place’s work culminated in the disastrous loss of a lamassu during a tribal raid on the Tigris River, and his subsequent publication, Ninive et l’Assyrie (1867–70), presents a self-conscious awareness of the limits of objectivity in the construction of history. Ultimately, it is argued that as a monumental yet mobile guardian of space and of history, the lamassu allegorizes the fragmented nature of historical vision in nineteenth-century France. Looking back to an era wracked by repeated revolutionary upheaval, the lamassu reads as a pointed and urgent warning against hubris.