Context: Imperial Incentives
Now that we have established the conditions of narrative art (exemplified in the Nimrud reliefs), we must turn to a discourse on the connection between narrative art and its use as propaganda. With the advent of pictorial narrative, patrons, in this case Ashurnasirpal, had the opportunity to decide what to commission. The kind of reliefs found in Nimrud would presumably have been quite expensive and highly labor intensive to create, so it would have made sense that Ashurnasirpal would have liked them to be of some value to his imperial agenda. Expense aside, the reliefs would have been relatively long-lasting given their gypsum construction, which in the context of art, is a strong base. In this light, the reliefs can be interpreted as a sort of state investment in media (or perhaps more specifically, in a medium of communication). Given Ashurnasirpal’s political goals, this investment may have been well worth it.
The Nimrud reliefs were of course created for Ashurnasirpal’s new Northwest Palace in Nimrud, not Ashur. Five years into his reign, the new king decided to move his capital from Ashur, which had long been the political and religious capital of Assyria, to Nimrud roughly 40 miles north of Ashur. This shift of the political center is of particular consequence because it represents a departure from the relative territorial stability of Neo-Assyrian state under Ashurnasirpal’s predecessors. Winter suggests that this shift should not be divorced from our understanding of the scenes in the Nimrud reliefs; “The appearance of historical narrative in works of art of the ancient Near East is correlated with the establishment by Assurnasirpal of a new capital at Nimrud/Kalbu, after 1,000 years of residence by Assyrian kings at Assur. It is further correlated with the expansionist activities that made Assyria a territorial empire. The decorative scheme of Ashurnasirpal's Northwest Palace as we have laid it out may therefore be seen as a response to the imperial situation and to imperial needs” (Winter 25). If indeed he was willing to move the capital to an entirely new site, Ashurnasirpal was probably interested in regulating depictions of kingship and the Assyrian state. Thus, the move to Nimrud only further substantiates the idea that Ashurnasirpal would have deliberately chosen to commission propagandist reliefs.
Indeed, Ashurnasirpal was blatantly imperialistic in his desire for territorial expansion. Healy concludes that it would be “too see his policy in the first part of his reign as a conscious preparation for his later, ambitious push into Syria and the Mediterranean seaboard… In controlling the routes to the Mediterranean he secured an economic advantage for Assyria in assuring the supplies of raw materials vital to its burgeoning economy and to the war machine that made this possible” (Healy 9-10). This portrayal of Ashurnasirpal as both territorially and economically ambitious fits into the larger narrative him as a deft political tactician with an imperial agenda. He had clear territorial ambitions from the onset of his political career, and so it seems increasingly logical that he would be inclined to use his palace at Nimrud as a means to advance his agenda.
In his assessment of the palace artwork at Nimrud, John Malcom Russell suggests that Ashurnasirpal’s imperial ideology can be found in the imagery of the reliefs. He contends “that the relief decoration of Assurnasirpal’s palace expresses a four fold Assyrian ideology of military success, service to the gods, divine protection, and Assyrian prosperity” (Russell 655). It should come as no surprise that these four folds all emphasize his role and successes as the Assyrian king. Even the divine protection only comes a result of his service to the gods. Through this framework, Ashurnasirpal becomes almost more powerful than the gods themsleves, for every element of Assyrian success flows through him. This too may have been entirely calculated. As mentioned earlier, Ashurnasirpal moved the capital from Ashur, the traditional home of the main god, to Nimrud, where he built a political capital. Liverani likens this power of creation to that of the gods:
“The foundation of a new capital is the apex in the action of the creator king. It is the apex because instead of taking place at the periphery, or a random spot in the cosmos, it occurs exactly in its center… Operating an intervention of the center itself, rather than on the marginal details, the king in fact asserts his privileged position vis-a-vis the long series of founder heroes. The construction of the monumental capital at the center of the empire can be compared, for its symbolic value, only to the works of basic creation, owed to gods” (Liverani 309).
By orienting the center of the Assyrian state around his new capital, Ashurbanipal, in effect, places himself at the center of the Assyrian worldview, rendering the gods peripheral in relation to him.
Nonetheless, Winter concurs with Liverani’s position, suggesting that “The shift to Nimrud therefore broke the old focus around the god of the city-state and reflects a new imperial movement. Subsequent kings simply continued the pattern” (Winter 25). Yet again, this development bolsters the understanding of Ashurnasirpal as a calculated ruler, interested primarily in centralizing power for himself. Given that the construction of the palace itself was probably a move to consolidate political power, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that Ashurnasirpal would have been concerned with the artistic representations adorning the walls of his new palace. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it would be naïve to assume he would not be interested in propagandist artistic representations of his power and that of the state.
Ashurnasirpal would also not be the first ancient ruler to move his capital in order to stem the influence of religious figures. The Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten of the 18th Dynasty moved the capital to Amarna from Thebes, which had been the New Kingdom capital for over 200 years. In doing so, he also shifted focus to a new god Aten, making himself the sole intermediary between the people and Aten. The religious change was actually an attempt to thwart the growing power of the priests of Amun (previously the preeminent god) at Karnak. By stripping of them of any religious legitimacy, he was able to centralize all power around himself at his new capital. Ashurnasirpal would ultimately be more successful in this operation than Akhenaten, whose customs and policies were almost immediately reversed upon his death. Ashurnasirpal’s shift, on the other hand, set a precedent for subsequent kings to establish capitals of their own, presumably realizing the the political benefits of moving away from Ashur or the associations with any other central figures, for that matter (i.e. Ashurnasirpal).