Nimrud, the palaces of Ashurnasirpal II, about 883 to 859 BCE
Slabs of gypsum alabaster cut for Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria at Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, between about 883 and 859 BCE, and excavated by Austen Henry Layard in the 1840s. They are the pictures that circulate as Sumerian and as evidence of visitors, and they are neither: Sumer's cities had been gone for more than a thousand years when they were carved. Layard published the first reading of the eagle-headed figure in 1849, named it Nisroch, and set a footnote under his own identification withdrawing most of it. The records here quote him on both counts, and quote the king's own inscription, which runs across the middle of the pictures and never explains them.
