The Kurba'il Statue of Shalmaneser III

Abstract

The discovery of an inscribed statue of Shalmaneser III at Nimrud during the 1961 season of excavations by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq was reported in the last issue of this journal. It is the purpose of the study which follows to present the text of the inscription, together with a translation, some discussion of setting and content and notes on deserving passages.As was stated in the first report, the statue, a fraction over one metre in height and diagonally broken at its left lower corner, was found leaning against the North wall of the storeroom NE 50, situated in the North-East courtyard of Fort Shalmaneser. The exact position is shown on the accompanying detail from the 1961 plan, given in Fig. 1. The statue ‘had apparently been brought in to Fort Shalmaneser for repair, since we found dowel holes bored in the opposed faces of the fracture. It seems unlikely that an object of such importance would have been broken in normal circumstances, and the damage may have been the work of the invaders in 614 B.C.’ One may perhaps admit the possibility of another explanation (see below), but it is worth recalling that the fragmentary condition of the Shalmaneser statue found at Nimrud in 1956 has also been plausibly attributed to an act of Median violence.