Historicity in Representation
Furthermore, the reliefs are separated from their artistic predecessors in that their narratives allow them to be historical, as opposed to commemorative, only depicting an episode. The Nimrud reliefs express a certain novel artistic specificity that allow them to be considered narrative art:
“This combination of sequence, action, and particularity is precisely what distinguishes the Assurnasirpal reliefs from their predecessors in the ancient Near East…The Standard of Ur, as we discussed above, consists of a series of episodes following in sequence from the lower register to the upper, but without particularity or syntax. The victory stele of Eannatum of Lagash (ca. 2450 B.c.)…does indeed refer to a specific historic event, the successful military settlement of a border dispute with the neighboring city-state of Umma. This we know from the extensive inscription on both obverse and reverse. The visual component, however is again either generic or episodic.” (Winter 13)
The distinguishing quality of the reliefs from the Northwest Palace is that they can be understood largely without prior knowledge of the events; this is precisely what distinguishes them from the commemorative works mentioned above. In order to properly interpret the victory stele of Eannatum of Lagash (Stele of the Vultures), one would have to already know of this border dispute with Umma. The Nimrud reliefs transcend this condition of prior knowledge to become historical narratives in and of themselves. Winter goes on to argue that historical narrative can only be developed with this kind of self contained specificity of time and place; “one of the requirements for narrative representation is that the units of narrative find integration, such that ultimately the narrative itself ‘transcends its contents’. This the reliefs of Assurnasirpal achieve even in sequences that are confined to a single slab. On those in which the action extends over three or more slabs, it is even more dramatic: one literally reads the register as one would a line of text.” (Winter 15) This “integration” Winter speaks of is achieved with the aforementioned “combination of sequence, action and particularity.” Therein lies the novelty of the Nimrud reliefs; they represent the first instance of this integration, and thus the first instance of narrative art.