Assyrian Imperial Elites and Textile Culture of the 1st Millennium BC: Shaping Power Visions Through Textiles

1 Introduction

As a crucial although partially invisible component of the materiality of the first world empire, textile culture of 1st-millennium BC Assyria – documented in archival cuneiform documents, visual art, and archaeological materials – enables historians to reconstruct not only the economic system and the elite goods circulating within the social elite who ruled the “Land of (the god) Aššur” (māt ^dAššur) in the imperial age (9th to 7th century BC), but also the vision of power that informed their lives and activities and that manifested the success of the imperial project.

Research on the textile culture of the ancient world corroborates this interpretation and offers another perspective for understanding the Assyrian imperial project and the ruling elite’s culture. Textiles, especially clothes, are important not only for their intrinsic material, technical and workmanship characteristics, but also for their symbolic significance within social and political contexts.^[1] The use of clothing to convey social messages such as status and affiliation to a group appears to have been a primary function almost since the beginning of history.^[2] Seen in their function as a form of non-verbal social communication,^[3] clothes convey the shared values of a social group, defining the individual identity of the wearer and the collective identity of the group to which he or she belongs, and constructing complex systems of signification that are projected onto the world.^[4] Dress has a relational function, as it helps the individual to explicitly present his or her identity, values and attitudes to another, and to socially construct the basis for his or her interactions.^[5] An individual’s dress signals to the external viewer the type of social relationship to be entertained with the wearer (equal or hierarchically subordinate) and the information it conveys is crucial in regulating the wearer’s interactions with the outside world. Clothes concur with bodies and gestures to express political norms and practices in a variety of forms, even theatricalized, of manifestation of power and play a significant role in the definition of ideological systems and as powerful carriers of political messages.^[6]

Political and religious ideologies play a major role in dress. In the field of political ideologies, the dress – of the king or the political leader – expresses and consolidates power.^[7] The clothed body thus becomes a fundamental vehicle of the system of values and policies to which the ruling class adheres. The body is also the privileged space of the religious identity. The religious dress concretises the values of the religious system to which the individual belongs and materialises the hierarchical position within a religious group.^[8] Not only the dress itself, but also its representation in visual art plays a crucial role in political and religious communication. This aspect is of particular relevance to the way the Assyrian imperial elite constructed their cultural identity. It also plays an important role in our modern reconstruction and understanding of what Assyrian elite dress looked like. Although idealisation and symbolism play a crucial role in royal depictions and the depiction of dress was not the main focus of Assyrian artists,^[9] these depictions nevertheless offer important information on how kings, queens, court dignitaries and service personnel dressed and were expected to dress. Moreover, considered in the context of the social image of an individual and, in particular, of a political leader, clothes and other personal accessories are not separate elements from the wearer’s body. Anthropological research shows that every dress can be considered from the point of view of its visible and invisible signs, the former relating to the outward features exposed to the viewer’s sight and the latter hidden from view. The information that these different signs contain makes it possible to identify the individual and the society to which he or she belongs.^[10] According to the perspective of the sociological study of dress, the non-verbal communication that clothing establishes contributes to constructing the individual body as a social actor and conveys the social, political and cultural meanings that the wearer represents in a given community. Dress is also an indicator of gendered identity.^[11] This leads one to see the Assyrian king’s (the queen’s and other court figures’) clothes also in the role they play in the construction of gender identity and its properties, dictated by developments in Assyrian elite’s culture. The construction of the king’s masculinity, his emphasisation or de-eroticisation, is an integral part of this process of constructing the public image of the Assyrian ruler that is visible in imperial art.^[12] The study of the queen’s clothing and her clothed body represents another important field of investigation, for example to understand how the socially constructed category of femininity in Assyrian elite’s culture is expressed in relation to power and high rank.

Not unlike other civilizations of the ancient world, Assyrian society can be defined as a “clothing-society” to use Marzel’s terminology, i.e. one in which conservatism and adherence to tradition are valued as signs of social stability and order.^[13] When applied to specific cases of the cultures of the ancient world, for example the dress culture of the Assyrian king and the ruling elite of the imperial age, Marzel’s definition of “clothing-society” appears too rigid in any case, as innovations in dress are certainly recognisable even in this type of society. Changes in clothing may have been determined by the variables of time and place, by the aesthetic tastes of new power groups within the imperial elite, the elite’s increased economic resources and new cultural trends that affected the court and the ruling class.^[14]

In the light of these preliminary considerations, in this study I will consider three aspects that are relevant to understanding the role played by textiles in the construction of the identity of the elites that ruled Assyria, benefitting from the expansionistic project: 1) the king’s dress and its significance in the Assyrian political discourse; 2) the queenly dress as representative of the “other side of Assyrian imperialism”; and what can be termed as 3) “the textile landscape” of the empire. The analysis of these aspects reveals how clothing (and other types of textile products linked to the royal figure and the palace) constituted a powerful channel of expression of Assyrian imperialism and its success. To do this, the investigation must necessarily rely on different types of sources, written, visual and archaeological. These sources differ in context and purpose and their peculiarities will be discussed in this study. However, each of them adds an important piece in the understanding of what dress and dress practices were in the Assyrian imperial elite. As shown by other disciplinary fields of textile research on the ancient world where the corpus of organic textile finds is limited,^[15] the interplay between textual, iconographic and archaeological sources appears vital for the reconstruction of what textiles were like in terms of workmanship and as vehicles of social messages.

If the items of clothing of the king and the members of the government elite of Assyria shared the common characteristic of being the product of the large-scale mobilization and centralized control of fibres, materials for textile processing, craftspeople, techniques, and artistic styles from all the near-eastern regions politically and militarily subjugated by the Assyrians – all witnesses to the success of the Assyrian expansionist project – the clothes that covered the king of Assyria were of paramount importance. The royal ensemble vestimentaire was not only central in asserting Assyria’s military and political superiority but also in communicating the specific power system that ruled Assyria, the political-religious construct that informed the office of kingship (šarrūtu) and its objectives to the internal and external recipients of this message of dominion. As vectors of social meaning, the items that made up the royal dress played a role in the construction of identity both at the level of the single individual king and the social group to which he belonged. They also played a role at the level of the ideological discourse that shaped the communication strategy underlying the Assyrian elite’s imperialistic project. In a few generations of kings, the imperialistic project led Assyria to expand enormously its political boundaries, unifying a vast area of the Near East from southern Anatolia to the Persian Gulf and from Western Iran to the Levantine area and Egypt, bringing to reality the millennia-old royal claim of universal dominion and predating the later programmes of imperial unification of the Near Eastern scenario that were launched by the Chaldean kings, the Achaemenid Persians, Alexander the Great and the Seleucid kings, the Romans, the Parthians, the Sasanians and the Arab-Islamic rulers. In Assyria, it was not only the royal insignia, namely the ḫaṭṭu, “sceptre”, the ušpāru, “ruler’s staff” or šibirru, “pastoral staff”, and the kakku, “weapon”, represented by the sword or by the bow and arrows, that materialised the royal office^[16] but also all those objects that covered the royal body and that were considered befitting the king’s functions: these were the jewels (šakuttu), the ornaments (tiqnu), and the dress (lubussu).^[17]

The king’s clothes embodied a full range of meanings to be conveyed visually during public ceremonies, from court meetings limited to palatine members (members of the royal family and high-ranking civil and military officials) to larger ceremonial events open to visiting foreign delegates from vassal kingdoms, as well as parades in the presence of military officials and royal troops, triumphal processions after military victories, akītu-processions and other yearly cultic festivals in the Aššur Temple of the Holy Citadel of Assur (Qal‘at Šerqāṭ) or in other shrines of the country, and oath-taking ceremonies for the stipulation of succession treaties or related to the imposition of vassalage treaties on submitted foreign rulers. The common people of Assyria would have had the opportunity to see at a remote distance the royal person during public official ceremonies, presumably without any chance to appreciate the specific details of the luxury and finely crafted items that covered his body (and that constituted the professional pride of the royal tailors and dress decorators who created them). However, the same clothes, although in simplified form and bearing no details about decoration, were also visually accessible to commoners in various regions of the empire’s territory through the media that conveyed the king’s message of dominion in the central cities of the Assyrian heartland, provincial centres, and vassal states, as the sovereign was depicted in countless royal stelae, rock carvings, and other public monuments located in different parts of Assyria to celebrate his achievements.

2 The King’s Dress and Its Significance in the Assyrian Political Discourse

Everything we know about the royal costume of 1st-millennium BC Assyria can be reconstructed on the basis of the textile terminology documented in written cuneiform sources and from representations of the Assyrian king in visual art, especially large-scale artefacts such as palace bas-reliefs, stelae, obelisks, and statuary. Both material culture terminology and visual evidence are sources that document objects in use. But both sources present a limited selection of the artefacts they refer to. Types and details of textiles mentioned in the textual evidence are subject to the purpose of the message the text was meant to convey, the interest of those who commissioned the scribes to record textiles in writing, the context of production of the message and the scribe’s ability to describe the textiles (in terms of appearance and workmanship) he had to record on texts. Representational evidence of textiles is also subject to certain constraints that are peculiar to the specific artefact, above all the type of message to be conveyed, the artist’s skills, the artistic style, the king’s personal tastes and the public it was intended for. Firstly, representations of textiles show a limited selection of products, some of which can be compared with items mentioned in contemporary texts, but many others cannot. This selection in visual art is clearly determined by the specific choices made by the kings who commissioned these artefacts. In addition, textiles represented in visual art are inserted in specific royal scenes and narratives and as such they are imbued with the notions that informed Assyrian imperial ideology. This means that these textiles (as many other categories of material culture objects) also work at symbolic or ideal level of communication, reflecting the ideological (political, religious and in general cultural) vision of the commissioner and the social and cultural group to which he belonged. Since this high-ranking social group participated in the imperial project and enjoyed its fruits in terms of possession of high-quality objects and social visibility within the court and the ruling elite, it shared the same values, ideals and visions of power of the king. These different and opposite readings of the objects represented in royal visual art – as real objects or symbols – is especially evident in the case of Neo-Assyrian bas-reliefs, a monumental medium primarily aimed at reinforcing the imperial elite’s self-image and instil fear and awe in external visitors,^[18] prompting them to recognise the inevitability of the Assyrian empire and the need to submit unconditionally to it. Gods and posterity were probably other potential viewers of the images in the bas-reliefs.^[19] The former would have rejoiced to see that their human protégé had fully realised the divine mission in the world, the latter, primarily future successors to the throne, would have found in this visual memory the model of perfect kingship and civilization at its highest degree of realisation. In any case, there is no explicit information as to whom the reliefs were addressed, nor is it clear whether there was a specific message that the reliefs were intended to convey.^[20]

In the carved wall panels different levels of communication interpenetrate, leading to different positions regarding the degree of reliability that these monumental representations have as historical source.^[21] The textiles and other royal objects represented in these artefacts certainly refer to real objects. The assumption is supported by the fact that many Assyrian royal objects match items of the archaeological evidence. Textual information, albeit scarce, incomplete, originating from specific communicative contexts and produced for specific informational purposes and target audiences, can offer a contribution to a deeper understanding of the objects depicted in visual art and found at archaeological level. The interpretation of the items depicted in the reliefs must in any case go beyond the use of the reliefs as a mere illustration of reality and of what is documented in textual documentation^[22] and take into consideration other important factors, such as the artefact-specific factors that affect the representation, from the artistic and architectural programmes to which the medium belongs to the ideological message^[23] and the degree of idealisation of the images depicted, not to speak of the royal culture of the specific reign period in which the medium was created. Although inspired by the reality of everyday life, the iconography selected textiles and other royal artefacts that were recognisable to viewers and reflected the perceptions, expectations and ideological systems shared by specific social groups.^[24] Clothing and other textiles have a significant place in the definition of the Assyrian royal figure as transmitted through the carved wall panels and other monumental sculptures. What these visual media convey of the royal figure is an idealised image, where the material accessories that connote it contribute to constructing the values and functions of Assyrian kingship as it was conceived at that precise historical moment, rather than the peculiarities of the individual person of the sovereign. These material items associated to the royal person also act as signature elements to make the scenes depicted in the reliefs real and situated in specific events.^[25] The degree of adherence to reality in the representation of textiles, i.e. the resemblance to textiles actually in use, evidently varied according to the skill of the artist, the style and the message to be conveyed. Through a visual representation apparently characterised by cultural continuity, loyalty to tradition and immutability of content, the culture of kingship, the political-religious message and the royal imagery underwent changes during the Neo-Assyrian era,^[26] changes that are partly witnessed through the textiles documented in visual art.

The analysis of the royal imagery shows that underlying the construction of the person of the king in visual art was a conceptualisation not only of the king’s clothing but also of his body. As royal iconography of bas-reliefs shows, the Assyrian royal figure communicated his leadership qualities through physical and postural characteristics, such as a well-formed and muscular body, an upright and proud posture and a direct gaze. Clothing and accessories, which are elements external to the person, played a key role in highlighting these physical and postural characteristics of the sovereign (or, in the case of less physically gifted rulers, presumably compensated for their absence) and communicating notions of the royalty he embodied.^[27] If we compare this posture and its relation to royal dress with that of enemy rulers kneeling at the feet of the Assyrian sovereign or tearing off elements of their royal dress through convulsive acts of the body,^[28] it is clear how these examples in visual art and ideologically-charged texts serve to depict the unsuitability for kingship of enemies. The enemies’ royal robes do not manifest what kingship should be and their destruction by the enemy kings themselves signals the inconsistency of their power.

In the case of the Assyrian royal dress, the main components of the outfit – the headdress; the long, short-sleeved fringed tunic; and the fringed overgarment – were not only markers of the ruler’s social identity^[29] and position in the eyes of the elite and all the Assyrian subjects; they also conveyed values and meanings of crucial importance in the imperial ideology and religion of 1st-millennium BC Assyria. The royal dress contributed together with other accessories of the royal person not only to making the historical figure of each king a perfect and superhuman figure, thus demonstrating the rightness of the divine choice on that particular sovereign, but also helped to construct through the king’s clothed and accessorized body the very image of kingship (ṣalam šarrūti), i.e. the embodiment of Assyrian royalty itself. From this perspective, the royal dress represented a material vector of the ideas that in the written political communication of royal inscriptions were conveyed by the titulary and the narratives of the king’s military, ritual, and building activities. The same ideas conveyed by the royal discourse of inscriptions were also channelled by royal ritual texts and court literature, all written media that bore witness to a restricted and literate circle of recipients of the royal discourse within the ruling elite, and by oral channels to different levels of recipients within the government elite and the Assyrian urban society in the context of public ceremonial events. We can argue that the visual and material medium of the royal dress functioned as a manifesto or a political programme of Assyrian kingship, enabling the construction of Assyrian royal identity and the communication of the Assyrian king’s message of power to his subjects. Depending on social position and official circumstances, the Assyrians could have experienced in different ways the vision of the royal person in its full majesty, through direct encounter in private or official occasions, at a remote distance, or through indirect channels. Along with other material vectors of both monumental and minor arts of the Assyrian imperial age, textile art – a sector of Assyrian art and craftsmanship long neglected in studies of Neo-Assyrian art history because of the poor archaeological evidence regarding textiles, limited to representations in visual art and a few fibre remains from burial contexts – was consciously developed in the imperial period as a powerful means to spread the message of unrivalled dominion achieved by the Assyrians with their expansionist project.

Although it is possible that the Neo-Assyrian royal wardrobe included a variety of ceremonial and non-ceremonial clothes to be used on different occasions, private and public, in which the presence of the king was required, this alleged variety of the royal clothing is not documented in Assyrian art and details on the characteristics of the king’s dress, for instance in regard to colour, are very scarce. From Til Barsip wall paintings, it seems that the royal outfit was polychromatic, as shown by the red-coloured motifs and the blue background of both the shawl and the long tunic worn by the king^[30] or by the representation of the monarch wearing a green tunic adorned with rosettes and a white tiara with ribbons on a 9th century BC glazed wall tile from the North-West Palace in Kalḫu (Nimrud), possibly representing a ritual scene connected to a victorious military campaign.^[31] In this glazed tile, it is also interesting to note the chromatic alternance of green and yellow in the petals of the rosettes adorning the royal tunic and in the frontal rosette of the headband, in the tassels, and in the discs of the knee-high band, as well as in the round-shaped locks of the shawl’s fringes and in the ending tassels of the tiara’s ribbons. The linear borders of the tunic, included the collar, are yellow-coloured. A white tunic bordered with red and blue fringes is attested in the decoration of Residence K at Dūr-Šarrukēn (Khorsabad).^[32] In the Neo-Assyrian period, tiaras could be of different chromatic combinations, due to the colour of the truncated headgear and to those characterizing the decorative horizontal bands and the ribbons.^[33] The royal headdress on the above-mentioned glazed tile is characterized by a white main part with a black pointed top with a black horizontal band; the headband was white, with a frontal yellow rosette and ribbons.^[34] Another example from the early Neo-Assyrian period is given by a Til Barsip wall painting in which the king’s headdress, which has no decorative bands, is completely red and equipped with blue and red ribbons on its back.^[35] As far as the late Neo-Assyrian evidence is concerned, Sargon II’s headgear that we see in a Khorsabad relief shows a white background with red bands adorned with white rosettes, but other attestations of royal tiaras in imperial art show the preference for red colour and white bands with yellow rosettes or blue disc-shaped motifs.^[36] The general impression is that a wide variety of chromatic combinations characterized these items of the royal dress, presumably dictated by the specific ceremonial occasion in which the monarch was involved as well as by aesthetic preferences that were specific to individual kings and historical periods. From letters of the royal correspondence we learn that Neo-Assyrian sovereigns were consulted about the quality and workmanship of royal images,^[37] and it is plausible that their opinion on the shape, colours, colour combinations and decoration of the clothes depicted on statues, bas-reliefs, and other art objects was decisive to accord the materiality of the royal representation with the aesthetic vision and the political message that the kings intended to convey. In the field of textile art and royal dressmaking, given the importance that royal costume had in the presentation of the Assyrian king’s person on various ceremonial and ritual occasions, it is just as reasonable to assume that sovereigns were consulted in the choice of materials, shapes, colours, decorative themes and accessories when making a new dress. This leads one to think that every ceremonial dress worn by the king was the result of an active interaction between patron, aesthetic and dress advisors, tailors and dress decorators. Every ceremonial royal dress was therefore the material synthesis of an ideological, aesthetic, and technical project.^[38]

2.3 Dress Decorations as Materialisation of Key Concepts of Assyrian Royal Ideology

2.3.1 Assurnaṣirpal II’s Royal Dress

Royal robes play a leading role in the monumental art of the reliefs in the North-West Palace of Assurnaṣirpal II in Kalḫu, as shown by the numerous royal images characterised by extreme attention to garments’ details. However, it is difficult to believe that neither before nor after this king did the royal tailors not make richly ornamented robes for the rulers of Assyria. Much more likely is that only with Assurnaṣirpal II did the king’s dress become a central element in the construction and communication of the Assyrian state’s message of power, along with and in close relation to other media of imperial visual communication. The finely depicted decorations on Assurnaṣirpal II’s garments are preserved in some of the bas-reliefs from his royal residence.^[107] Accurately incised on the stone of the carvings by the most talented artists, the finely embroidered scenes that decorated the king’s sumptuous garments were probably enhanced by the use of painting. This probably served as a means to give more visibility to these miniaturised motifs and to show the unrivalled richness of the royal outfit.^[108] As much as Assurnaṣirpal II’s robes depicted in the reliefs contribute to the construction of an idealised image of the royal figure and the robes themselves may have been rendered by the artists in an idealised manner, they remain an important source of information on the royal attire of this period. In fact, the absence of organic remains of Neo-Assyrian decorated royal robes makes it impossible to know how realistic the depictions of dress decorations in the palace reliefs are or how much they diverge from reality, either for reasons of practical difficulty in depicting them on stone or because of stylistic choices and the message to be conveyed to the viewer. Whatever was the reality of the decorations on the royal dress, these decorations are not only revelatory of the textile art and aesthetic taste of this king (and perhaps also of other kings of Assyria who did not leave us detailed visual information on their dress). They also tell us how the king of Assyria was expected to dress and appear, and constitute important vehicles of meanings relating to the king’s image and the ideology that it embodied.

These decorations could consist of isolated motifs freely spread over the garment’s cloth and of patterned bands with continuous sequences of motifs, generally of figural, geometrical, or floral type. These bands were presumably woven separately and stitched onto the main cloth of the garment, principally onto the edges (the collar, sleeves, and edge of the tunic; the tiara; and the ribbons). In the case of the edges of the overgarment and the tunic, the band with the decorative motifs was attached to that bearing the fringes or the tassels. Alternatively, a single band with both decorations and fringes or tassels could be sewn to the dress. Also the ending part of the ribbons was adorned by stitching a decorative band. In this connection, it is worth noting that the figural scenes of winged heroes wrestling with wild or supernatural beasts, of the double royal person facing the “sacred tree”, of Aššur’s winged symbol, of protective genii with lamassus, and vegetal motifs of palmettes, flowers, and buds are abundant in the textile art evidenced by Assurnaṣirpal II’s outfit (Figure 1).^[109]

Figure 1:

A beardless lamassu grasped by a winged protective genius on the royal garment’s border band, Room G, North-West Palace, Nimrud (BM 124567, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

Hunting and wrestling scenes symbolized masculine vigour and strength and were prerequisites for a successful king, as they recalled the royal obligation to defeat disruptive forces and expand the cosmic and civilizing order of the gods over the world as the human counterpart of Ninurta.^[110] Royal hunts constituted the arena where the king’s function as protector of the “Land of Aššur” and the divinely sanctioned cosmic order was expressed and spectacularized.^[111] These themes concur with the iconographical programme carved in the palace rooms to exalt the unrivalled heroism, strength, and military abilities of Assurnaṣirpal II. As for the vegetal motifs, these elements do not speak the language of war and the king’s unrivalled martial skills, but that of peacetime and construction. They probably referred to the prosperity of the country and the generative capacity of the Assyrian sovereign in the service of the state: the Land benefitted from the territorial expansion and agricultural exploitation of previously unproductive foreign lands resulting from the king’s warlike endeavours. The creational and generative abilities of the king were especially manifested through the construction of capital cities,^[112] royal residences, and temples as centres of wealth hoarding and seats of unrivalled power, as well as of hydraulic infrastructures for the enhancement of palace gardens and the agricultural productivity of Assyria’s heartland.

Among the vegetal motifs, that of the “Assyrian sacred tree” is central, since it is represented both as an individual motif among various motifs in sequence on decorative bands and as the main decoration of the chest part of the tunic. The sacred tree motif may occur on the chest area of Assurnaṣirpal II’s costume in a stylized form in horizontal position^[113] or in a more complex design. In the case of Assurnaṣirpal II’s sitting figure of Reliefs 2–3 of Room G (Figure 2), the scene portraying the double royal figure facing the “sacred tree” under Aššur’s emblem and holding the streamers of the disc-shaped emblem on the chest part is encircled within a band formed by a row of buds and palmettes (Figure 3).^[114]

Figure 2:

Assurnaṣirpal II sitting with a bowl of wine among attendants, Room G, North-West Palace, Nimrud (BM 124565, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

Figure 3:

Decoration of the chest area of Assurnaṣirpal II’s dress from Layard 1849–53, I: pl. 6.

It cannot be ruled out that the artist deliberately enlarged and accentuated the chest decoration compared to how it must have appeared in reality on the king’s dress, in order to make the iconographic motif and the message it embodied more visible to the viewer.^[115] The centrality of the “sacred tree” motif in the artistic and architectural programme of the North-West Palace explains its presence also in the royal dress. In the bas-reliefs of the North-West Palace the “sacred tree” is represented in isolation or in scenes in which the king is depicted twice on either side of the tree.^[116] The latter motif may have been inspired by a royal ritual that was performed near a real object resembling a palm tree,^[117] but in Assurnaṣirpal II’s artistic programme it becomes a component of an idealised representation of the royal figure that combines the mythical and historical, the divine and human dimensions.^[118] In the Throne Room’s decoration, the scene with the doubling of the king’s body flanking the “sacred tree”^[119] attracted the visitor’s attention as the main focal point of the sequence of the sculpted images of this space. The two figures are not perfectly symmetrical, as shown by the different way in which the shawl is worn. The same can be observed in the scene reproduced in the chest decoration of the royal tunic of Room G.^[120] However, whereas in the Throne Room the shawl spirally wraps around the body of the royal figure on the right more than once and entirely covers the left arm,^[121] in the decoration of the tunic the shawl worn by the king on the right side leaves the left arm uncovered and covers the tunic at length with the two flaps almost entirely. In the scene, the different way of wearing the royal shawl is determined by the king’s different position (in physical/ritual and ideal/religious terms) in relation to the tree and the divine symbol. The different representation of the shawl seems to have been instrumental in highlighting the meaning of the “sacred tree” scene, certainly consistent with the message that the decoration of the Throne Room expressed.^[122]

This motif as a decoration of the tunic’s chest area will not disappear in the textile art of the late Neo-Assyrian period, as we shall see below. In addition, the chest area of Assurnaṣirpal II’s costume is predominantly enriched by repeated series of figural scenes, with a minor role played by garlands of palmettes, pinecones, and stylized flowers. Narrow bands of small rosettes also occur on the chest, while in the end part of the ribbons the band with rosettes occurs between a band with a rectangular motif and the tassels. It is also worth noting how in Assurnaṣirpal II’s reliefs the artists intend to greatly emphasise the chest area of the king’s body. By rotating the torso towards the viewer, the profile of the shoulders and chest are shown in all their mass and vigour, resulting in accentuating the masculine features, but also highlighting the decoration of the dress and, presumably, its meanings. In terms of gender construction of the royal body, it is clear that this way of representing the king’s body masculinises his otherwise completely covered and uniformly compact figure.^[123] But this artistic solution also shows how the textile language plays a crucial role in the re-definition of the corporal vocabulary of the Assyrian kings in imperial art. If the represented body is shown completely covered, powerful in its solid mass and impenetrable in its physicality,^[124] it is on the details of the dress, the decoration and the accessories that the royal image invites the spectator’s gaze. The viewer’s gaze is invited to read the visual narrative unfolding along the sovereign’s robes and to identify the web of interconnections with the message conveyed by the sculpted panels in the palatine rooms.

The basic decoration on Neo-Assyrian royal ribbons is given by a band with a rosette (or a square-shaped element with an internal rosette), accompanied by a fringed ending, as can be seen in the stele of Šamšī-Adad V^[125] and in the Khorsabad reliefs depicting Sargon II and the crown prince.^[126] Rows of small-shaped elements occur in two bands that adorn the middle part and the fringed ending of ribbons of Sennacherib’s tiara in the scene regarding the booty from Lachish.^[127] The same decoration also occurs in the ribbons of the crown prince’s headband depicted in the same scene. In the stele from Sam’al, both Esarhaddon and Crown Prince Assurbanipal show fringed ribbons with an ending part adorned with small discs.^[128] The number of these decorative bands probably constituted another marker of status. In fact, it is interesting to observe that on the ribbons of the king’s headdress there are two bands with discs, while on those of Assurbanipal’s headband there is only one.

To come back to Assurnaṣirpal II’s dress, the figural scenes that occur as decoration in ceremonial garments related to specific occasions of the royal presence at court and in ritual contexts^[129] were inserted within bands that adorned the fringed borders of the tunic and the shawl and the upper part of the tunic, that is to say the chest area and the shoulders. The most complex figural motifs only occur in specific reliefs of the iconographical programme of the North-West Palace. This suggests a connection between the high degree of realism in the representation of the royal clothes and the ceremonial functions of certain rooms, as in the case of Room G, where the carved royal clothes are extensively decorated with such scenes and the royal drinking seems to be ritually connoted.^[130] The limitation of highly decorated garments to specific reliefs in the figurative programme seems to suggest that these representations played the role of focal points of the narrative cycle in relation to other scenes and were aimed at presenting to the spectator the king in his full majesty. Hence the greater emphasis on the depiction of decorative details in the garments. However, it is surprising that no such complex figural decorations appear on the royal clothes represented in Throne Room B, where the preference of the artists (and of the king that commissioned the work) was oriented to geometrical decorations.^[131] In recalling analogous motifs on the garments worn by genii and in other representations carved on the stone wall panels of the North-West Palace in Nimrud, the royal dress shows how the king’s political message of unrivalled dominion was spread through different visual media that worked as single but complementary components of an integrated visual communication system. By reiterating motifs that were disseminated through different communication media of visual art, on ceremonial occasions the narratives of power “worn” by the king helped to establish a continuous dialogue between the decorated robes and the sculpted halls of the palace. These narratives on the royal dress also shifted the message of power from the static dimension of monumental art to the movable, dynamic, and living dimension of the royal person and his gestures in everyday situations. However, the repertoire of the above-described figural motifs was not systematically applied to all the garments worn by the king. Specific occasions must have dictated the use of clothes on which figural scenes were reduced to a minimum, while a central position was given to certain motifs; for instance, the “Assyrian sacred tree”. This motif, possibly on account of its meaning in the Assyrian royal ideology, occurs both on the chest part and on the shoulders. The standing royal figure carved in Relief 3 of Room S in Assurnaṣirpal II’s palace^[132] represents another piece of evidence regarding the most complex figural motifs of the royal dress and, as in the case of Room G, raises the question about the specific function of this place in the palace, possibly a reception room functioning as part of the king’s residential suite.^[133] Room S must have been a protected environment, as the overabundant figures of genii and “sacred trees” and the unique portrait of the sovereign at the end of the room would prove.^[134] For those entering this space, the royal image at the end of the room certainly constituted the focal point.^[135] This relief shows an extremely refined decoration on the tunic in which rows of rosettes, lotuses, pinecones or buds, and palmettes are central, while rows of rosettes and a garland formed by palmettes, pinecones (or buds), and what appear to be lilies^[136] feature on the overgarment (Figure 4).

Figure 4:

Assurnaṣirpal II’s royal dress from Layard 1849–53, I: pl. 34.

The ending part of the tiara’s ribbons show a narrow, chequered band and tassels. The centrality of the stylized “sacred tree” is evident from its large size and the position in the royal dress: it is represented in horizontal position on the chest part and as a vertical motif on the left sleeve. The figural motifs occur on the sleeves and on the overgarment; a procession of human figures is portrayed on the lower part of the overgarment between a series of opposing half-circles and a chequered band, while a sequence of wild goats adorn the border band of the left short sleeve, surmounted by a narrow band with rosettes. Bartl’s reconstruction of the figural decoration on the overgarment’s lower part shows that it represented the king in a standing position with bow and arrows and accompanied by an attendant, in the act of receiving a procession of high-ranking figures paying homage to him and presumably introducing submitted enemies and tribute-bearers from conquered countries.^[137] An analogous audience scene is displayed on the western side of the Throne Room façade^[138] and it cannot be excluded that the reference to the same motif of the Throne Room is an indication of the function for which Room S was intended,^[139] namely to host receptions of selected groups of high-ranking personalities. The motif frequently occurs in war narratives of royal inscriptions and in monumental art and pertains to the king’s ability to channel goods in the form of gifts, tribute, or booty, but certainly also via trade, from conquered countries.^[140] In addition, the wide, fringed border of the overgarment is embellished by a double sequence of rosettes or other vegetal motifs within square-shaped elements, delimited by narrow, grid-shaped bands.^[141] Partially covered by the overgarment, the tunic exhibits two main decorative bands: one is a knee-high band while the other characterizes the edge. In Layard’s drawing, the former is constituted by five narrow bands with, from top to bottom, sequences of lilies and palmettes, rosettes, two opposing rows of half-circles, and palmettes and rosettes again, while the latter shows, from top to bottom, a double series of rosettes, a grid-shaped band, a row of lilies, and a large garland of palmettes and pinecones (or buds), closed by the tassels. However, from Bartl’s reconstruction, the bands adorning the tunic’s lower part seem to contain rows of concentric half-circles and rhomboidal elements, opposing palmettes, a separating grid band, opposing buds and lilies, and a bull-hunting scene with mounted soldiers, infantrymen, and the king on his war chariot, closed by various vegetal motifs and surmounted by astralized divine symbols.^[142]

To return to the possible function of the rooms in which the most detailed depictions of Assurnaṣirpal II’s decorated clothes occur, it is reasonable to think that the spatial context in which these royal images were inserted had to meet the aesthetic and ideological expectations of the king and the royal elite, and those pertaining to the performance of specific ceremonial or ritual events aimed at constructing and making explicit the role of the sovereign. When the king is portrayed in mythical-symbolic scenes, he is represented as encountering the divine world but not being completely absorbed by it.^[143] His physical features, emphasised by sumptuous and richly ornamented robes, accessories, weapons and royalty insignia, show him as perfect, imbued with divine attributes, and irradiating an awe-inspiring and powerful aura. His close association with the purifying genii in the scenes also establishes a relationship between his clothing and those worn by the apkallus, both richly ornamented to signal the king’s special closeness to the divine world. If rites were performed in these rooms, they were probably aimed at purifying his body, insignia and clothes.^[144] To this aim, the royal images were probably intended to illustrate the necessary ritual steps to achieve perfection and enable the monarch to fully exercise his functions of power.^[145] In this regard, one wonders whether the different way of depicting the royal shawl may have played a role in instructing the sovereign on how to wear it at different stages of the ritual. In all likelihood, a restricted number of viewers were admitted in these rooms as participants in the royal rites; they represented a privileged and internal audience.^[146] In the eyes of these internal spectators, some of which were presumably ritual operators, the images of the king among apkallus would have confirmed the crucial role of the ritual experts in the imperial project and specifically in guiding, purifying and protecting the royal figure.^[147] The attention of those who were admitted to the Throne Room would have been directed towards the portraits of the king in the scenes between genii and “sacred trees”, focal moments of the decorative cycle of the sculpted wall panels and probably capable of inspiring an effect of calm and equilibrium in visitors.^[148] Other portraits of the sovereign occur in limited points of the palace and show him in his benevolent and reassuring role of shepherd with the royal staff, aimed at blessing the visitors on their way to other parts of the palace^[149] or acting as focal point in otherwise homogeneously decorated spaces, access to which was probably limited to a few visitors of higher rank, as assumed in the case of Room S.^[150] The intended addressees of these portraits of the king in his pastoral duties are unknown, but they could have been members of the administrative and political staff, thus an internal audience.^[151] Moreover, the sensorial experience of these royal images and details of the king’s robes in viewers may have been intentionally conditioned depending on the ceremonial occasion and the visitors admitted. It cannot be ruled out that the amount of light inside the palace rooms was intentionally manipulated to highlight the images of the king at focal points in the decorative cycle of the reliefs and to emphasise decorative details,^[152] such as those with figural scenes on the royal robes.

2.3.2 The Sargonid Royal Dress

As far as the late imperial period is concerned, innovations regarding the royal imagery reflect the new programme of presentation of the king’s figure inaugurated by Tiglath-pileser III’s imperial politics and the developments that occurred from Sargon II’s reign onwards. In general, the sovereign is now depicted as creator of the empire, the holder of the power insignia and the one who dominates as an absolute autocrat his enemies and vassals. However, ideology and political message change during the Sargonid period. Innovations of Sargon II’s reign concern the unprecedented role of the aristocracy that accompanies the king in his deeds and takes part to festive banquets in the court. This is evident in the case of the Khorsabad reliefs, that witness to the central role played by the social group who helped Sargon’s ascent to the throne and the solidarity and common interests that linked the king and the aristocracy as a crucial factor in making the empire an efficient system of government.^[153] In the art of Sargon II’s successors, evidenced by the wall panels of the royal palaces of Sennacherib (South-West Palace) and Assurbanipal (North Palace) in Nineveh, the king’s power becomes more personalistic and the nobles loose the former centrality and protagonism. The presence of the aristocracy in the scene is now confined to a merely ceremonial role in proximity to the royal figure, depicted as distant and inaccessible. The traditional motif of the king’s heroism and the direct involvement of the sovereign in combat action also lose value in this era, while the emperor’s unrivalled capacities of control over the world are now exalted in the carved scenes.^[154]

On the royal dress of the Sargonids the preference of decorative elements is oriented towards a more limited presence – if not a complete absence – of figural motifs and a much more consistent presence of geometrical and floral motifs in the form of concentric circles, square-shaped elements, rosettes or encircled rosettes, and star-shaped items.^[155] Geometric motifs are not absent in the royal garments of Assurnaṣirpal II’s reign period, but they are limited to border bands of garments or other items of clothing worn in non-palatine and outdoor contexts, namely in hunting or war activities.^[156] An interesting case is the above-mentioned short stole covering Assurnaṣirpal II’s hips, decorated with concentric hexagons.^[157] Other very elaborate concentric elements in royal dress borders of the 9th century are the rectangles bordered with palmettes and resembling small-scale carpets at the ends of Assurnaṣirpal II’s sash^[158] or the hexagons embedded in concentric rectangles on the shawl’s border of the same sovereign.^[159] Concentric figures represent another category of geometric figures. Probably, the different levels of the concentric element’s structure made it possible to create woven patterns of alternating colours using different coloured threads.

The repertoire of decorative motifs of the late imperial period shows a great variety of combined geometrical shapes and floral elements. Especially in the reign of Assurbanipal, concentric circles with central dots, encircled rosettes, and stars (or star-like rosettes) were the favourite motifs in the decoration of royal garments,^[160] as shown in the carved wall panels of the North Palace in Nineveh. Some of these elements were probably intended to represent the Assyrian deities, namely the great gods of the imperial pantheon, in astralized form. The “sacred tree” motif does not disappear in the textile art of the reign period of Assurbanipal. In contrast, the tailors and dress decorators of Assurbanipal’s reign revived this 9th century motif^[161] through a renewed language and style of royal dress. On the chest part of Assurbanipal’s dress in the hunting scenes, the scene with the double image of the king confronting the “sacred tree” under the supreme god’s symbol is represented as a highly simplified and miniaturised image compactly inserted between two large floral discs within a rectangular frame formed by narrow bands decorated by rows of various items (Figure 5).

Figure 5:

Decoration on the chest part of Assurbanipal’s dress, Room C, North Palace, Quyunjiq (BM 124866, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

It is important to observe that also the dress worn by the royal figures flanking the tree is depicted in a highly simplified manner. Moreover, differences are recognisable in the way the shawl is worn by the two kings. The sculptor’s artistic solutions are probably due to the difficulty in rendering complex figural motifs on stone. The narrative cycle of royal hunts in the North Palace^[162] certainly constituted the privileged context for displaying the sovereign’s virtues and abilities. It also constituted the ideal context to display the symbolism of the “sacred tree” scene and communicate to the viewer the message that Assurbanipal’s kingship was in full continuity with the old tradition of heroic rulers of the first imperial phase. Assurbanipal takes up and reworks the motif of the lion hunt – a royal prerogative and a ritual signifying the king’s control over the forces of nature – already present in the art of Assurnaṣirpal II.^[163] In line with royal culture of Assurbanipal’s reign, the royal hunt now takes the form of a public spectacle,^[164] becoming a further stage on which to display, with voyeuristic taste and extreme attention to detail, the royal person and his unrivalled abilities. The rectangular element and the scene are clearly visible in chariot hunting representations^[165] and in that regarding horse-riding.^[166] This decorative element also occurs in the scenes depicting him in the act of shooting arrows^[167] and killing on foot a lion with a spear.^[168] The rectangle and one floral disc are partially visible when the king directly confronts and kills a wounded lion at the end of the hunt^[169] and when, clad in the ceremonial outfit with tiara and shawl, he makes a libation on the dead lions.^[170] The large floral items in the rectangle are actually concentric floral discs in the chariot hunting scene, namely with two rows of petals,^[171] and concentric flowers with a central concentric dot in the horse-riding, lion-killing on foot, and libation scenes.^[172] The element characterises the royal dress both in scenes in which the sovereign wears the tiara and in those in which he wears the diadem. The 9th century precursor of this rectangular frame in Assurbanipal’s chest decoration is visible on the sculpted garment of Assurnaṣirpal II. In that case, the element consisted of a large concentric rectangle in horizontal position, crowned on both sides by palmettes.^[173] If the iconography of the rectangle-shaped element realistically reproduces in the proportions the chest decoration of the ceremonial robe that Assurbanipal usually worn, the scene must not have been so easily recognisable in the context of a dress richly decorated with various geometric and floral multicoloured motifs. It is therefore possible that the colours of the double figure of the king and the tree accentuated the visibility of the image and its message, to make the motif stand out from the rest of the polychromatic decoration of the robe. In Assurbanipal’s dress, it is also important to note that the “sacred tree” scene with the double royal figures is also reproduced within small squares against a background of alternating concentric discs and rosettes in a decorative band on the belly part of the royal costume in one of the chariot hunting scenes.^[174] Apparently, it seems that the display of the “sacred tree” emblem on the royal costume’s chest part is only shown in public situations that were much more politically charged and, as such, relevant for the Assyrian royal construct and the political-religious discourse. In fact, in the garden scene on Relief BC of Room S’, a space that was located in the inner residential quarter of the North Palace in Nineveh, the motif is absent from the chest part of Assurbanipal’s tunic.^[175] The event carved in the scene seems to refer to a private situation – however strongly idealised and charged with symbolism – whose access was precluded to outsiders, except for the royal couple’s domestic staff.

What we see may be called a “geometrical revolution” in Assyrian textile art, which found expression not only in elements of clothing but also in draperies and carpets. This can be seen in the finely carved stone replicas of carpets that decorated the entrances to the palaces of Kalḫu, Dūr-Šarrukēn and Nineveh, clearly imitating real carpets that embellished the gateways of these places. With their combination of geometrical and vegetal decorations, carpets and drapery endlessly replicated the ideal microcosm that capitals and botanical gardens materialised on a large-scale and in three-dimensional terms, thus visualizing the Assyrian king’s capacity to manipulate the world into an ordered, civilized, and prosperous system. Some of these carpets permanently adorned the palace rooms (as was probably the case of carpets in the personal suites of the king’s palace) but others were probably used only at ceremonial events open to high-ranking visitors (presumably in ceremonial reception rooms). This “geometrical revolution” in the artistic language and style of the late textile art of Assyria cannot be ascribed to the autonomous creation of the royal textile artisans with no relation to the elites’ aesthetic tastes and power vision and the orientation the ruling elite gave to imperial culture. It certainly reflects the development of the royal ideological notion of the king’s role and mandate during the late Neo-Assyrian period. While in the first phase of the Assyrian expansionist project the royal elite felt the need to express the king’s power and above all the functions of kingship in terms of re-enactment of divine and mythical deeds, the ability to wage war and convey foreign, luxury goods as tribute or booty to his land, and to generate prosperity for the country, in the phase that saw the greatest extension of Assyria’s territorial dominion in the Near East and the full realization of the king’s autocratic power, reached through difficult dynastic successions and in open contrast with components of the Assyrian aristocracy, the focus was no longer on the functions of kingship and the military capabilities of the sovereign but on the special nature of the royal person. This change in textile language and style probably reflects the cultural impact due to the abandonment of the paradigm of the king’s heroism after the tragic death of Sargon II, a change that in the royal representations in official texts and monumental art led to the drastic reduction of the heroic-martial qualities of the king, with the dismissal of the royal prominence in warfare and the development of new forms of physical, moral, and intellectual superiority of the sovereign, with a marked increase of the symbolic dimension.^[176] The king’s figure is now seen as an entity elevated and protected by the gods, embodying universal power and superhuman perfection, and no more as an active counterpart of the gods who tests his skills on the battlefield. In monumental visual art, when the monarch is portrayed in close position to the god Aššur, as in the Bavian rock relief, the size of the royal figure and the similarities linking the figures of Aššur and the king – notwithstanding the different types of tiaras and shawls – underline the proximity of the monarch to the supreme god of the Assyrian pantheon. In the case of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, the king is no more the one who goes to the battlefield in person as a warrior armed by the gods but the one who is generated, raised, and protected by the gods. According to this ideological vision, it is the gods who are expected to go to war for him and defeat his opponents. In Assurbanipal’s war narratives are the great gods of Assyria who place enemy lands into the kings’ hands.^[177] They protect the king’s majesty, marching at his side, standing at the front of the royal troops, and personally striking down the king’s foes.^[178] For the period of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, it is Ištar, the warrior goddess related to prophetism, who acquires an unprecedented central role in the divine protection of the Assyrian king.^[179] It is the heroic goddess who goes into battle against Teumman, the king of Elam, accomplishing what by rule was a royal task and letting Assurbanipal achieve his heart’s desire.^[180] The libation on Teumman’s head in front of the shrine of Ištar at Arbela, carved on a panel of Room I of the North Palace,^[181] confirms the decisive role attributed to the goddess in the victory over the Elamite king. It is not by chance that in late war narratives of palace reliefs the king is no longer represented as a combatant engaged in battle and his centrality is now situated at the end of the pictorial war narratives.^[182] The sovereign becomes a detached spectator who merely follows the success of the Assyrian military machine and celebrates it with grandiose and triumphant public events.^[183] In the framework of this redefinition of Assyrian šarrūtu of the late period, if war capabilities are expressed in visual communication, they are in the sign of theatricalization, as clearly evidenced by representations of Assurbanipal in hunting activities that are performed in public – although physically closed and protected – spaces that facilitate the visual focusing on the king’s figure and gestures. In this context, his hunting and sporting dress plays a central role in emphasising his protagonism as a virile and skilled hunter in spectacular terms.^[184]

That the model for the star-covered dress of the king was inspired by the divine garments is evident from the traditional representation of the god Marduk and other deities of the Assyro-Babylonian pantheon, based on the notion that the divine beings, in addition to their anthropomorphic appearance, could also manifest their presence through their symbols or in astralized form.^[185] This aesthetic change, achieved through the adoption of the star-quilted divine clothes as the model for the Assyrian king’s attire, responded to developments in the notion of the king’s status and role in the imperial age. The diffuse presence of geometrical motifs in the form of astral symbols on the Assyrian royal outfit could indicate that the king’s power was conceptualized as pervasively spread over the whole world, similarly to that of the gods that extended over the entire cosmos. It showed that the empire had a cosmic dimension. This idea resulted from the Assyrian notion that saw the imperial control of the world as inextricably tied to the concept of divine universality, since the king’s action to extend the state’s borders meant extending the divine order to all the previously chaotic and unordered territories (people, material resources, etc.) of the universe.^[186]

The presence of astralized motifs suggests the special proximity with the great gods that the Assyrian king enjoyed in the exercise of his power. This proximity with the divine dimension could be further emphasised by using gold appliqués: as the numerous golden rosettes, stars, discs, and other items discovered in the Nimrud queenly tombs show,^[187] Assyrian elite garments could be adorned by stitching onto the cloth a variable number of such items. The use of metal decorations added luminosity to the king’s dress. Brightness was a peculiar characteristic of the divine manifestation and found expression through the idea of melammu or namurratu, the awesome radiance of the divine entity that from Tukultī-Ninurta I onwards became an attribute of the royal person in the Assyrian political discourse.^[188] In one of his inscriptions, Esarhaddon states to have restored the statues of the previously plundered Babylonian gods and to have returned them to their proper cultic places, and to have taken care of clothing them daily “in silver and gold”,^[189] an expression used to indicate garments fully covered with precious metal appliqués. In the same text, the monarch also states to have restored the supreme Assyrian god’s crown. He describes the object using words that underline the luminosity as the fundamental attribute of the object and of the sensorial experience related to it.^[190] Ištar of Arbela, who is mentioned in an inscription of Assurbanipal as the deity who defeated the king’s enemies by raining down fire upon the land of the Arabs, is also described in terms of luminosity: “(the goddess) who is clothed in fire (and) cloaked in awe-inspiring radiance”.^[191] Analogous words are used in a hymn in which Assurbanipal describes Ištar of Nineveh.^[192] The same can be seen in the case of Aššur-etel-ilāni, Assurbanipal’s son and successor, who in a Babylonian inscription concerning the fashioning of a gold sceptre for Marduk, qualifies this god as the “lord of lords, exalted, wh(ose) figure is splendid (and who) is vastly superior to all of the (other) gods, bearer of the awe-inspiring, terrible radiance, clothed in splendour”.^[193]

In comparison with the colour effect that could be generated by astral motifs woven in fabric on the Assyrian royal garment, the use of decorative appliqués made more manifest the notion that the king’s dress was the earthly counterpart of the gold-covered clothes that adorned the gods’ statues in the temples, suggesting commonalities between the king and the gods. The metal luminosity of the appliqués was instrumental to show the superior attributes of the Assyrian king. In his annals, Sargon II is referred to as the one who “is clad in awesome splendour (ḫālip namurrāti) and whose weapons are raised to strike down (his) enemies”.^[194] With analogous tenor, Esarhaddon describes himself as a “[valiant] warrior, [clothed] with numinous splendour; whom the god Aššur, king of the gods, made take up his weapons to overthrow the enemies of Assyria; light of the (four) quar[ters]”^[195] and as the one “who is clothed in splen[dour]”.^[196] The “luminous splendour” (šalummatu) is one of the gifts that the great gods gave to Assurbanipal at the coronation ceremony, as shown by the hymn related to this event.^[197] This radiance of divine origin is one of the attributes of the Assyrian royal person, who, according to the aforesaid hymn, was expected to rule the “Land of Aššur” with “command, attention, truth and justice”.^[198] The radiance-wearing of the king is a direct consequence of the divine gifts and of the identification of his role with that of the god Ninurta, as implied in a theological commentary in which the sovereign, who is crowned inside the Aššur Temple and carried to the palace, is equated with Ninurta and who, as the avenger of his father, receives the royal insignia and is adorned with the splendour of kingship (melam šarrūti).^[199] The brilliance that the royal body radiates comes from having been adorned (za’ānu) by the gods, his fathers.^[200]

However, different interpretations may be suggested concerning the idea of this special proximity with the divine sphere that could be emphasised by dress decorations. The multitude of these decorative astral symbols on the king’s covered body could indicate that Aššur’s vice-regent benefitted from a special and direct protection by the great gods of the country (a condition justified by the unrivalled hegemony reached by Assyria in the international scenario, as well as by the increasing internal instability due to succession problems and power conflicts within the Assyrian elite). In this perspective, the gods’ presence physically covered the royal body, ensuring that his rulership was under the control of the celestial sphere and that all his actions were divinely authorized and, as such, destined for success. The increase in abstract symbolism in textile decorations of the royal dress could also bear witness to the increasing isolation of the king’s person within the Assyrian state establishment in the late Neo-Assyrian period and the forms of control regulating access to his presence due to the need to preserve him, both physically and ritually, from external threats. This aspect reflects the importance of maṣṣartu in Neo-Assyrian royal culture. This term referred to the protecting watch regularly performed by court scholars towards the royal person to preserve him from any danger and to keep him ritually pure and his conduct in line with the gods’ decrees.^[201] The need for divine protection could explain the possible apotropaic function of these decorative motifs. The motifs’ apotropaic value has been suggested by Bartl and Lion.^[202] Following this interpretation, the decorative elements scattered on the royal dress and tiara would thus represent entities intended to protect the royal person and his sphere of action from external threats. In the case of early Neo-Assyrian royal dress, evidenced by the magnificent robe of Assurnaṣirpal II on the wall panels of his palace, the figural scenes were inserted within bands that adorned the fringed edges of the tunic and shawl, and the upper part of the tunic, that is to say the chest area and shoulders. Like magical formulas uttered by the āšipus, the repeated decorations reiterated the idea of the royal person as a being perpetually purified and protected by the divine world, replicating at the level of the royal body the protection guaranteed to the palace by the numerous apkallus carved on the wall stone panels. At the same time, these decorations showed the king’s privileged access to the divine world, whose cosmic deeds he re-enacted through the everyday rule of the Land. The emblem of the “sacred tree”, whose exact meaning still escapes us,^[203] perhaps reminded in a symbolic and synthetic way, by referencing the vegetal prosperity of the king’s divine mandate, the cosmic significance of the office of the Assyrian šarrūtu and the prosperity of the “Land of Aššur”.^[204] As such, this emblem delimited the different nature of the royal person in relation to the outside world, showing that his agency participated both at the mythical and the historical levels. In other words, it worked as an icon epitomizing the imperial project and the system of values on which the imperial elite’s political-religious identity was based.

Apart from the “sacred tree” motif, still used in the royal dress of the later period, a different situation characterizes the late phase of Neo-Assyrian history, when geometrical motifs were spread across the entire surface of the king’s robes, possibly to convey the idea of a more pervasive presence of the divine beings in the protection and guidance of the king in the everyday rule of the country. The legions of encircled stars (or encircled star-like rosettes), usually provided with an internal concentric circle or dot, constituted an innovation in the textile art of royal clothes of the late imperial period.^[205] These motifs, which are depicted as extensively covering the main surface of Assurbanipal’s tunic in the hunting scenes and the lower part of the robe worn in the garden scene, could refer, through astral symbolism, to the special protective role exerted by Ištar in favour of her royal protégé.^[206] Rosettes and star-shaped elements are traditionally linked to Ištar and to her manifestations and possibly refer to different attributes of the goddess: the fecundity, attractiveness, and fullness of life (the rosette) and the planet Venus (the star), with which Ištar was associated.^[207] The proliferation of all these star- or flower-shaped elements was a fashion innovation that also responded to the new aesthetic imagery of the king’s presence, skilfully constructed through the mixture of revival and new motifs^[208] to appear a perfect synthesis of all royal virtues and functions and at the same time a smug and aestheticizing spectacularization of an unlimited autocratic power.

As showed by the attestations of the Neo-Assyrian royal costume from the 9th to the 7th century BC, the upper part was usually much more thickly decorated that the lower part, which was generally left plain and decorated only on the border bands. In the case of Assurbanipal’s costume, the tunic could be adorned by isolated large items in both the upper and the lower part or only in the lower part. In the case of tunics that were fully adorned by such large decorative items, the borders of the sleeves show a series of narrow bands with rows of small adorning elements, and the chest part is characterized by the above-described rectangle, connected to the collar of the costume by border bands forming a V-shaped design.^[209] In some tunics, the upper part, including the sleeves, is thickly decorated by a series of alternating narrow bands that exhibit the whole repertoire of Assyrian textile motifs that we have seen in the central decorative rectangle. These elements are both geometrical and floral, namely concentric discs, encircled rosettes, rosettes within square-shaped frames and stepped triangles. It is tempting to think that these triangles are simplified representations of siqqurrutus, “ziggurats”, and as such symbols of Ištar and of her fall and rising from the dead.^[210] Other elements on this king’s tunics are small squares, garlands of lotuses and buds, and garlands of palmettes, and include bands with different alternating motifs (concentric discs and encircled rosettes).^[211] It is interesting to observe that the earliest appearance of the lotus in Assyria’s ornamental repertoire dates to the Middle Assyrian period, but it is in Neo-Assyrian art that it became widely attested.^[212] This motif was probably inspired by the Egyptian lotus, a flower appreciated for its colours but primarily for its scent.^[213] In the Sargonid period, presumably thanks to direct contacts with Egypt, it became a peculiar element in the official representation of the royal figure.^[214]

The proliferation of stars on Assurbanipal’s dress reminds us of Ištar’s words regarding her protective role; she is the deity who takes the king into her sweet embrace and protects Assurbanipal’s entire body (gimir lāni).^[215] This idea is also attested in one of the oracles in favour of his father Esarhaddon, in which the deity reminds the king that 60 great gods stood around him and girded his loins.^[216] That the star-shaped ornaments were related to the goddess is also evident from a fragmentary report on a prophecy in favour of Assurbanipal, in which golden kakkabāte, possibly of the deity’s garment, are mentioned.^[217] Other astral symbols visible on the hunting dress, possibly made of fabric or metal studs, are depicted on the waist-belt and refer to other deities of the imperial pantheon: the astral symbols of the “great gods” Ištar, Aššur, and Sîn are visible on the relief.^[218] The protective presence of the ilāni rabûti, reproduced in the form of their symbols, is a peculiar trait of the royal imagery and was also expressed through the jewellery, as may be seen in the case of the pendants of a necklace worn by Assurnaṣirpal II in his stele from the temple of Ninurta at Nimrud and in the “sacred tree” scene carved in the Throne Room of the North-West Palace.^[219] Encircled rosettes or other flower-like items and encircled stars with concentric dots characterize the three decorative bands of the tiara worn by Assurbanipal during the hunt on the royal chariot.^[220] The evolution of the circle, a common geometric element among the decorative shapes of Neo-Assyrian art, is the concentric disc formed by two or three rings with a central dot.^[221] Concentric discs alternating with encircled stars are peculiar to the lower part of the foot-length, fringed tunic that Assurbanipal wears to perform libations after the successful hunt, while the tall tiara required by the ritual act is decorated by encircled rosettes with central dots within square-shaped elements on the lower band and small concentric discs in the other bands of the headdress and the pointed top.^[222] It is in the headband worn in the garden scene that we see a decoration constituted by large concentric discs; this headband is different from the ones that Assurbanipal exhibits in the representations of horse-riding and lion-killing on foot, where the design is composed by encircled rosettes with central concentric dots inserted within square-shaped frames.^[223] Regarding the ribbons, we can observe that the ones that characterize the headband worn in the horse-riding scenes show a decorative band with an encircled star or rosette, accompanied by a fringe,^[224] while in the scenes where Assurbanipal confronts the lion on foot, three decorative bands with series of concentric discs and rosettes are depicted on the end parts of the fringed ribbons.^[225] A different typology of ribbon is represented in the scenes showing the libation on the killed lions, the garden party with the queen and attendants, the hunt on the chariot, and the lion-killing on foot with the spear.^[226] In all these cases, more than one decorative band adorns the ribbons. For instance, in the scene of the chariot, the tiara’s ribbons show three parts adorned by bands, all of which consisting of three narrow bands (the central band with stars or star-like rosettes and the others with small concentric discs).^[227]

Concerning the numerous concentric discs on the king’s dress, they are not a novelty, as they are reminiscent of the royal robe fully covered by these items worn by Sennacherib during the capture of Lachish.^[228] This shows that the dress culture of Assurbanipal’s reign was also heir to that of Sennacherib, despite the fact that Assurbanipal’s pro-Babylonian policy was the negation of his grandfather’s. In terms of apotropaic functions, one wonders whether they were meant to act as powerful and supernatural “eyes” aimed at protecting the bearer. This function, possibly shared with those eyestones that, in the form of pendants and inlays, constituted an integral part of the queen’s adornment, as the Nimrud evidence shows, presumably served to repel malevolence and any other threat.^[229] Another possibility is to interpret these concentric discs as a symbolic rendering of an astral body emanating its radiance or surrounded by its halo, perhaps to be identified with the sun (Šamaš) or the moon (Sîn).^[230] This latter interpretation would lead to seeing these concentric discs disseminated on the king’s dress as the visible manifestation (and the textile rendering) of the awesome radiance emanating from the royal body. It is also interesting to note that the disc was also a symbol of Ištar. This deified symbol is one of the deities that are present in the temple of Gula in Assur according to a cultic text related to the tākultu-ceremony for Assurbanipal.^[231] However, much more attested in Neo-Assyrian cultic texts is the goddess Kippat māti, “the Circle of the Earth”.^[232] This deity resided in the holy of holies of the Aššur Temple.^[233] During the Šabāṭu-Addāru festivities she was one of the gods who went in procession to specific cultic places: “the House of Dagan”,^[234] “the Labbunu House”,^[235] “the House of Anu”^[236] and “the House of Adad”.^[237] The group of female goddesses to which Kippat māti belongs is headed by Šērū’a and also includes Tašmētu.^[238] If the concentric circles on the royal robe recalled this goddess, they were intended to underline the universality of the Assyrian king’s power, which extended to the whole earth. In addition, Kippat māti’s power of intercession on the Assyrian king’s behalf^[239] leads one to think that her symbol on the king’s clothed body constituted not only a form of protection, but also the materialisation of her continuous intercession in the divine assembly.

What we see at work in the use of astral symbols is the result of different processes that affected the royal culture of Assyria: on the one hand, the attribution of divine splendour to the king paved the way to a further strengthening of the notion of proximity of the royal person to the divine world; on the other hand, the growing significance of astrology among the predictive sciences in Assyria and the rise of astronomy in the 1st millennium BC consolidated the ideal of royal dominion of the cosmos through the king’s control of wisdom, the divine knowledge.^[240] It is no coincidence that the Sargonid rulers portray themselves in their royal inscriptions as wise, expert, learned, and capable of broad understanding,^[241] all attributes stemming from the king’s mastery of both theoretical and technical knowledge of ultimate divine origin; these were perceived as crucial skills for ruling the “Land of Aššur” in the late imperial period.

The idea that the king’s person interacted directly with the divine sphere thanks to the superhuman qualities of wisdom and perfection that the gods granted to him could explain the proliferation of such astral symbols on his robes. The presence of the gods on his body – reduced to geometrical symbols – is indicative of a new paradigm of kingship that implied the full monopoly of divine knowledge, now epitomized in the perfect and wise person of the king. The monarch was thus seen as the one who knew the gods’ will. His privileged access to communication with the divine sphere and his ability to correctly interpret the celestial will gave him the full control over the divine designs and cosmic order, thanks to the intellectual qualities bestowed by the gods and his mastery of the divinatory sciences – an aspect suggested by the marked interest in the predictive sciences by Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal and by the regular interaction they had with experts in these disciplines in the everyday ruling of the empire.^[242] In recalling the value of the king’s scribal knowledge and education, the writing stylus tucked under the belt of Assurbanipal’s hunting dress in depictions of royal hunts becomes a central element in the construction of the new image of kingship, interacting with the royal dress in a similar way to jewellery and other royal insignia.^[243] The redefinition of the Assyrian royal person affected the visual communication media of the late imperial period, including royal textiles. These, in combination with jewellery and all the regalia, became another means to convey the reassuring message that the newly established autocratic control of the world rested on the full knowledge of divine decisions.

One of the appropriate contexts in which the royal person was publicized was represented by the state rituals. Participation in these rites is the context in which a focus on the king’s robes emerges in the texts. In a hymn of Assurbanipal, the king in the ritual scene appears as clothed in garments that are qualified by the scribe as ebbu, physically and ritually clean, pure, and, therefore, also shining.^[244] The visual appearance of his whole outfit is significant in the performance of cultic rites and aims at showing that the wearer is appropriate to the role of ritual actor and to interaction with the gods: his dress is qualified as rabbû, “magnificent”.^[245] It is reasonable to think that all the semantics attached to the items of clothing, the royal regalia, and relevant decorations that characterized the king’s presence in the scene were enhanced during the performance of cultic rites in the context of large public celebrations, such as the tākultu ceremonies and the rites related to the months of Šabāṭu, Addāru, and Nisannu (the eleventh, the twelfth, and the first month of the Assyrian calendar, respectively). In fact, in the dynamics of the ritual action, the textiles worn by the king cooperated with other ritual actors and objects involved in the cultic scene to construct and re-affirm the cosmic function of the Assyrian šarrūtu, the king’s status, and his centrality for the well-being of the Land. For instance, the wearing of the tiara (agû) belonging to the god Aššur’s statue represented a crucial moment during the Šabāṭu celebrations^[246] and symbolized the universality of the king’s dominion. From what is known about the tiara of the gods’ simulacra, called agû, it was generally made of precious stones and metal, not of fabric.^[247] In all likelihood, this head covering was only worn in special cultic contexts, while in ordinary situations the king used a cloth headgear (kubšu) or a headband (kulūlu). The wearing of the divine crown on different days of the Šabāṭu-Addāru festive cycle^[248] implied a transformative change in the status of the king, making the royal person and the exercise of his power an extension of Aššur’s agency. This act also showed the complete merging of the divine and human intentionality.^[249] All these aspects were emphasised by the king’s appropriation of the god’s tiara and its divine radiance.^[250]

Presumably, all the ritual acts and gestures that the king performed as the central actor in these cultic events represented multisensorial experiences for the ones who could take part in them, accentuated in the public space by the chromatic and luminescent interaction of all his clothing components (i.e., the fringed shawl, the tunic, and the metallic dress decorations) and accessories (jewellery and the royal regalia). The movement of the fringes and tassels of the shawl and tunic followed every gesture of the king and amplified the spectator’s visual perception of the ritual event. Probably, another factor in the sensory amplification of the king’s presence and action in ritual space was the jingling of the metal appliqués that accompanied gestures and movements in the ritual space, an aspect that also characterized the queenly clothes, as we will see below. Palace ceremonies constituted another context of multisensorial experiences concerning the royal dress. The chromaticism of the robes, combined with the decoration and insignia of royalty, must evidently have communicated to anyone received in audience by the king a sense of superhuman terror and splendour, sensations that the king’s isolated position (sitting on the throne, or in a standing or seated position elsewhere) and the distance from his audience, rigidly regulated by royal etiquette, certainly increased.^[251] It is possible that occasions like this and other public events, such as palace banquets and receptions of guests, processions of tribute-bearers, and reviews of troops, required lengthy and complex preparation by the court tailors and craftsmen, both for the preparation of new clothes and the mending of old ones. Metallic appliqués on the headgear and the clothes, and the jewellery apparatus, were presumably polished for the occasion to increase the lustre and aura surrounding the royal figure. New fringed, embroidered border bands and ribbons, enlivened by polychromatic decorations, replaced the old ones, in all likelihood also innovating the colour scheme according to the wearer’s taste and hence the general aesthetic perception of the royal dress and the type of message to convey to the observer. We ignore how much in everyday reality the royal tailors’ creative flair could dare in terms of innovation, but it is plausible that this happened. In any case, the solutions that the royal tailors proposed were part of stylistic choices that were negotiated with the king and in compliance with what the Assyrian court protocol and tradition required for the solemnity of the event.

3 The Queenly Dress: The Other Side of Assyrian Imperialism

The clothes that constituted the wardrobe of the Assyrian queens were another product of the exceptional mobilization of textile materials, skilled professionals, and textile techniques brought about by the Assyrian expansionist project. Evidence on the clothing and dress ornaments of the Assyrian queens and upper-class women in written and iconographical sources is scarce compared to the clothing of kings, but fortunately includes the materials found in the 8th century burials at Kalḫu, the former capital of the Assyrian state. These finds allow us to reconstruct a more balanced and less king-oriented discourse on clothing and adornment in the Assyrian royal context. Among the various valuable grave goods interred together with the bodies of the queens – identified as the consorts of Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V or of Sargon II – were also remnants of linen and cotton fabric, two high-class and expensive textile materials from which the queenly garments were made. The latter fibre was evidently a rare product,^[252] perhaps acquired in the Babylonian textile market and originating from the Elamite area in whose trade network this luxury material circulated.^[253] The clothes of these queens were accompanied by a huge number of dress ornaments in the form of gold rosettes, star-shaped ornaments, circles, triangles, and discs, to name but a few of these precious objects.^[254] Unfortunately, no mention is made in the funerary inscriptions of royal women from Kalḫu about the garments with which they were buried. Yabâ’s alabaster tablet mentions only the jewellery (šukuttu),^[255]evidently as pars pro toto of the grave goods, consisting of clothing, jewellery and other accessories. The only exception where explicit reference is made to a textile of funerary use is in Mullissu-mukannišat-Nīnua’s inscription, written on a marble tablet. However, since the reference occurs in a section of injunctions against future visitors of the tomb and addresses to anyone who would care for it, the “cover” (tapšû) in question^[256] may have served as a shroud to cover any mortal remains found in the opening of the tomb or perhaps to wrap around the tablet of the inscription itself.^[257]

The burial materials testify to the aesthetic and power vision of the women belonging to the Assyrian royal family in the 8th century BC. Analogous objects probably also characterized the attire of palace women of the 7th century BC. As the carved images of the Assyrian queens in palace stone reliefs and other works of visual art show, the richness of the clothing, ornaments, and jewels worn by the Assyrian queens represented powerful vectors for communicating the imperial message of dominion through the social position, wealth, dignity, and power reached at the Assyrian court by powerful women. The new imperial image promoted by the ruling elite also found its way through the prominence of the female queen and female court culture. There is no doubt that the female component of the Assyrian elite – the most important figures of which were the king’s consort and the king’s mother,^[258] who had their own female entourages – played a significant role as a catalyst for resources, precious artefacts, and luxury textiles that came from both Assyria’s internal production and the economic exploitation of subjugated foreign countries. The presence of a deputy of the chief of trade in the administrative staff in the service of Naqī’a, Esarhaddon’s mother,^[259] indicates that, like kings, the queens were able to receive revenue directly from abroad,^[260] presumably including luxury textiles, both raw and finished.

In the royal political discourse, the display of costly clothes and precious ornaments in visual art became a means to materialise the queens’ membership of the court milieu and their fundamental contribution to the Assyrian state by sustaining the royal male lineage and preserving the legitimate royal authority.^[261] The increasing economic, social, and especially political role of queens,^[262] the latter being evident in the case of irregular successions to the throne of Assyria and when ensuring dynastic continuity and legitimation became crucial,^[263] explains the visibility of queens in the visual art of the late imperial period. The privileged position of the king’s consort enabled her to fully enjoy the imperialism’s fruit, receiving a share of tribute and audience gifts.^[264] Due to their wealth and authority, these palace women played an active role in the political and economic life of Assyria. In the royal residences, queens lived in a domestic wing reserved for women, where they had their own court and dependent personnel, presumably including their own expert weavers, tailors, dress decorators, and clothes menders.^[265] Also in the case of Assyrian queens, information from contemporary written sources helps to shed light on the textiles used by the sovereigns’ wives and to supplement what we know from archaeological evidence and representational art. The wardrobe of queens and other high-ranking palace women probably included items of clothing that often occur both in administrative records from state archives and in dowry-related private legal documents. From what we know of the Neo-Assyrian textile terminology about female clothing, the designation kuzippu was by no means confined to royal clothing,^[266] and one may assume that it was also applied to items of the queenly wardrobe. In addition, it is possible that queens worn long tunics (gulēnu, urnutu),^[267] overgarments (ḫullānu, naḫlaptu, qirmu),^[268] veils (raddīdu, ša-kaqqidi),^[269] and headbands or crenellated crowns (kulūlu),^[270] to quote the main items attested in the written sources.

It is beyond the scope of this study to review all the evidence for the visibility of queens in imperial art^[271] and I will only cite a few examples. When queens are privileged to be present in royal representations, they occupy a central position in the scene, as can be seen in the case of Naqī’a, Esarhaddon’s powerful mother, who played a crucial role in the succession of both his son and the grandson Assurbanipal. On a fragmentary bronze plaque from Babylonia, possibly part of a temple’s furnishings (an altar or a deity’s throne dais?), she is portrayed together with her son Esarhaddon, carrying a mirror and wearing a headband with striped ribbons, a long tunic, and an overcoat^[272] – all of which bear witness to her majesty and power in the royal court.^[273] In addition, the size of her figure as well as the pose and the gesture are similar to those of Esarhaddon,^[274] showing that what had been the exclusive prerogatives of kings in the Assyrian official imagery became the terrain in which elite femininity was affirmed. The fact that the queen mother is accompanying the sovereign, his son, in what probably was a procession or another cultic rite, is illustrative of the queen mother’s role in state rituals and his authority.^[275] Another example is provided by the banquet scene on Relief BC of Room S’ in the North Palace in Nineveh, where the royal couple – Assurbanipal and his wife Libbāli-šarrat – is portrayed under a vine-covered pergola in the palace garden (Figure 6).^[276]

Figure 6:

The royal couple at the banquet in the royal palace’s garden, Room S’, North Palace, Quyunjiq (BM 124920, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

This garden party is a private event for the royal couple but is also part of the celebrations that followed the Assyrian victory over Elam. This representation for an elite woman is exceptional in light of the predominantly king- and male-gendered discourse that informs Assyrian imperial art, including that of palace carved slabs and other monumental artefacts.^[277] This pictorial representation of Libbāli-šarrat in her attire, certainly inspired by a real event, crystallizes her figure in a timeless reality, making her appearance and celebrating gesture another way of materialising the positive effects of the imperial project, considered not from a king-centered perspective but as shared by the queenly component of the king’s family. As this relief shows, the Assyrian queen’s dress consisted of a long, fringed tunic and an overgarment or shawl, both decorated with large, disc-shaped ornaments (Figure 7).

Figure 7:

Libbāli-šarrat in her festive dress attending the king’s banquet in the royal garden, Room S’, North Palace, Quyunjiq (BM 124920, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

In this scene, she is clad in elements that identify her high-ranking social position and power at court: seated on a throne in the foreground of the scene, she wears a mural crown and an overgarment finely adorned by small decorative items, possibly woven on the cloth or metal sequins stitched onto it, as the Nimrud burial finds suggest. If the decorative items of Libbāli-šarrat’s depicted clothes were metal appliqués similar to those that decorated the garments of the Kalḫu queens, it means that the use of richly ornamented clothes was the prerogative of Assyrian queens even before the age of Assurbanipal. All these elements – the headdress, the shawl, and the throne, combined with her prominent position in the scene and the gesture of raising the wine bowl in celebration – are usually associated with royal imagery and certainly speak of the central role attained by queens in imperial Assyria.^[278] Even the cloth hanging from the back of the throne seems to signal her position of prominence. In Neo-Assyrian bas-reliefs, this element usually adorns thrones of kings, but whereas in the case of royal thrones it appears fringed and richly decorated,^[279] that of Assurbanipal’s consort appears undecorated. The fact that Libbāli-šarrat also raises the wine cup in a blatant gesture to celebrate the victory is illustrative not only of her status, but also of her active participation in the imperial project, the fruits of which she now enjoys with her king. It is worth noting that in this scene Assurbanipal, who is depicted as reclining on a couch in secondary position although at a greater height, holding with the left hand a lotus flower and with the right one a wine bowl, does not wear the typical royal tiara, the shawl, and the waist-belt, but only a headband and a tunic, confirming the protagonism of the queenly figure in the scene. It is the figure of the queen that is primarily offered to the observer’s gaze. It has been suggested that this unexpected centrality of the queen in the scene could have been charged with symbolism referring to fertility, attractiveness, and eroticism,^[280] as such reflecting the imperial (and male-oriented) ideal of control, possession, and display of valuable resources for the king’s exclusive benefit. However, it is plausible that this novelty in visual art was due to the unprecedented social and political standing reached in the late imperial period, when elite women started to play a significant role in the phase of irregular successions to the throne of Assyria. Consequently, it is equally valid to believe that more than feminine charm and sexuality, pictorial representations of queens intended to communicate dignity and power.^[281] In accordance with the female dress culture of the Assyrian court, clothes covered from neck to toe the royal female’s body, protecting it from unwanted glances. Assyrian women’s dress conceals the body, rather than accentuating its physical characteristics. This is also true in the case of Libbāli-šarrat in the garden scene, in which her dress obscures the contours of the physique, emphasising, albeit slightly, a certain roundness of the breasts. How tight or loose the queen’s clothing was in reality and how much her robes highlighted her physical characteristics is impossible to say. Just as it is impossible to know what ordinary clothes the queen wore on private occasions in the wing of the palace reserved for her, although it is plausible to imagine that they were less elaborate and allowed for ease of movement. In any case, the Assyrian queen’s attractiveness did not lie solely in her clothed body, idealised in the visual art, but also in the combination of clothes with regalia and accessories.^[282] At the same time, or perhaps more than physical attractiveness, clothes and regalia embodied the queen’s dignity and power and materialised through a royal female’s fully dressed and richly adorned body the ideals of Assyrian imperialism and the political and cultural networks that the empire’s expansionism generated and sustained.^[283]

The prominence of queens and the use of dress as a signal of status and power are also evident in another field of monumental royal art. The installation of stelae was a royal prerogative in Assyria, but at least three Neo-Assyrian queens installed stelae in Assur, presumably as a result of the pro-queen policy implemented by the Sargonid kings and also of the active role that the kings’ consorts, as part of the royal establishment, played in state affairs.^[284] On a limestone stele from the Stelenreihen of Assur, which is another example of how the monumentality of political communication in the public space also became the prerogative of queens, Libbāli-šarrat, still portrayed as seated on a throne, wears a tall mural crown and a fringed overcoat with rosette decorations.^[285] The fragmentary condition of the stele makes it impossible to know any further details about her dress. The presence in the stele of the throne cloth – in this case apparently decorated with a pattern of horizontal lines – confirms that this was the official iconography of the queen, also followed in carved and inscribed stelae.

In the light of these images of Assyrian queens, it appears that geometrical and floral elements are the only items that occurred as decoration in queenly clothing. The analysis of patterns on a mass of detached linen threads from embroidery found in the queens’ tombs at Nimrud reveals that petal-shaped decorations (rosettes?) and leaves (buds?),^[286] which recall recurring motifs of the Assyrian ornamental repertoire of the time, met the aesthetic taste of palace women. Moreover, two tassels of finely woven linen from the same tomb contexts, probably originally sewn onto the edges of what originally was a luxury female shawl or tunic, show stepped, rhomboid decorations in series^[287] that remind us of similar motifs in representations of foreign and Assyrian clothes in the visual art of the time.^[288] These examples of decoration from Nimrud textile remains are in line with the textile art of the late Neo-Assyrian period. It is clear that figural representations, which in Assurbanipal’s reign were limited to “sacred trees” and royal figures, were only prerogatives of the king’s dress. The queen’s tunic depicted in the royal garden scene ends in a broad and high collar with a bordered row of circles. The edge of the shawl is characterized by two border bands, one with a row of stepped triangles and the second with a row of discs, while on the lower part of the tunic the border bands of stepped triangles and discs are alternated by rows of small, square-shaped items. That the sleeves were woven and decorated by tailors as separate parts is evident from the patterned cloth of the right arm sleeve: this part is finely decorated with alternating rows of small discs, crenellated structures, and small, square-shaped elements.^[289]

We are unable to say if the garden scene realistically depicts a normal high-class and comfortable dress worn regularly by the Assyrian queen at banquets. Given the high degree of symbolism of the royal depictions, we cannot exclude that the artist portrayed the queen in one of her most luxurious dresses, more suitable to ceremonial events than a private garden party. The crown, the jewellery, and the finely decorated robes suggest a fully public and ceremonial dimension of the Assyrian queen’s presence, thus seemingly contrasting with an event of domestic life. All these elements are given full visibility in the scene and appear in line with the new centrality accorded to queens at court and in politics that characterized the new image of the empire. The representations depicting the king in his ceremonial and more majestic robes during warlike actions of unparalleled heroism – robes that appear more appropriate for receiving high-ranking persons in palace audiences or simple ritual gestures like pouring libations – suggest similar considerations about the degree of symbolism and idealisation of these scenes and the semantic charge that certain garments had in political communication and as icons in which the imperial elite’s ethos was materialised. It is hard to believe that the sovereign wore his bulky tiara, his heavy mantle quilted with legions of metallic appliqués, and the numerous pieces of his jewellery in the theatres of war of his campaigns, and that in such an outfit he engaged in acts of war among his soldiers. If the queen’s attire depicted in the scene was equally heavily decorated with hundreds of golden sequins, we can assume that its use was limited to ceremonial occasions, not private events. It is therefore much more reasonable to assume that the wearing of such clothes also required appropriate posture and gestures, which were certainly codified by the ceremonial rules of court, above all keeping the body upright and without movement for the entire duration of the event except to express limited and slow gestures, but always in accordance with the ceremonial circumstances and the royal protocol.^[290]

4 The Imperial Project and Its Success in Terms of “Textile Landscape”: The Uniformity of Dressing and the Autocratic Vision of Power

Less represented in Neo-Assyrian textual sources and material evidence are other upper-class sectors of Assyrian imperial society, in which textiles played an equally important role as markers of social identity and status. Even less represented are the middle-lower social classes of the Assyrian population, apart from scenes of daily life in the contexts of deportees and prisoners of war, of work activities carried out by palace-dependent personnel, and of servile manpower in military camps and construction sites in the capital.

However, some observations can be made on non-royal clothing in relation to royal power. The contexts of visual art in which the king and the queen were given a central position also show how the protagonism of the ruler or his consort was visually enhanced by the presence in the scene of courtiers, high-ranking civil and military officers, attendants, and common palace servants. The careful depiction of the clothing of members affiliated with the royal court in the depictions of the palace reliefs suggests that the content of these scenes also addressed these courtiers and high-ranking officials in order to emphasise the role of these royal associates in the construction and management of the empire. It is reasonable to think that the presence of figures from the aristocracy in the royal scenes and the detail in the depiction of their dress responded to a programmatic vision intended to materialise the king’s autocratic power and the might of the empire through scenes of broad collective participation.

In the case of the queen, her highly decorated clothes stressed the social position she had in the court not only in relation to her powerful husband but also in relation to other women of the court milieu who held lower positions in the royal family and palace hierarchy. We do not know how the dress varied within the queenly wardrobe according to the type of event (public, private, profane, or ritual) in which the queen participated. We also ignore if differences existed in terms of attire and decoration among the queens, for instance, between the queen mother and the king’s wife or between the queen and the wife of the crown prince. To judge from a comparison between the above-discussed representations, Naqī’a’s status as Esarhaddon’s queen mother was probably underlined by her headband, adorned with ribbons, while the crown shaped as a towered wall was appropriate to Libbāli-šarrat in her role of Assurbanipal’s consort. Beyond these cases, however, it is difficult to make generalizations. The king’s primary consort and mother of the crown prince probably marked her status compared to the sovereign’s other wives through dress and accoutrements, but no evidence confirms this.^[312] Perhaps, rank differences also played a role as markers of status and privilege among other high-ranking palace women. Within the court and palace milieu, the king’s sisters and daughters certainly had a higher status than other palace women due to their family ties with the king, but their specific position and authority in the palace hierarchy escapes us. A different privileged standing was certainly acquired by royal sisters and daughters through marriages to foreign kings and high-ranking Assyrian state officials, namely when they lost their connection to the palace and the royal family and became consorts of powerful men.^[313] If status differences among Assyrian palace women did play a role in the palace hierarchy and everyday life and were expressed through attire and decoration, we can assume that any innovation in the queenly outfit as well as in the dress of other royal women had to be in line with the tradition of Assyrian court clothing and harmonized with the appearance of the sovereign’s dress, especially in the case of ceremonial clothes to be shown in public during events that entailed the presence of both the king and these women.

Along with other costly materials collected by the Assyrian kings and displayed in the court milieu, highly elaborate clothes of local and exotic provenance that excelled in elegance and wealth represented another powerful means to confirm the success of the imperialistic project and probably served to consolidate the inner elite’s consensus to the ruling king and the expansionist project. Assyrian aristocracy’s support for and participation in the project certainly benefitted from the regular redistribution of war booty and tribute, and the acquisition of exotic and fine textiles through international trade, since this possession consolidated the elite members’ status, wealth, and power. Royal collecting of exotica has been considered as regards various foreign objects, such as ivory and wooden furniture, metal, glass, and stone vessels,^[314] but it is clear that luxury textiles, especially the ones coming from the royal wardrobe of submitted foreign rulers, were among the most sought after exotica that entered the collections of the Assyrian kings and queens, as well as other members of the royal family, although they are not documented in the extant visual art and archaeological evidence. In the case of the goods looted from Kushite royal residences in Memphis and Thebes, a large number of high-class linen clothes for which Egypt was renowned in the ancient world entered the Assyrian king’s and the queen’s wardrobe in Nineveh. Their presence inside the palace environment certainly expressed Assyria’s deep admiration for Egypt’s millennia-old civilization, and their possession among other high-class foreign objects consolidated the idea of the Assyrian kings as unrivalled conquerors as well as high-class collectors.^[315] The exoticism of the foreign material, style, and craftsmanship of the goods carried out to the royal residences must have been highly prized by the Assyrian elite, who saw in these finished products not only a source of wealth and social prestige but also the tangible positive effects of the imperialistic project promoted by the king. The circulation and possession of these items of foreign origin consolidated interest for the acquisition of analogous textiles, thus implementing the exploitation of foreign resources through war, tribute, and commerce. Concerning the exotic textile products that entered the king’s wardrobe, presumably a number just became collection items and enriched the royal collection of exotic products accumulated in palace and temple treasuries of the Assyrian capitals (Kalḫu, Dūr-Šarrukēn, and Nineveh). In the case of other foreign textiles to be used as dress by the royal person, we can suppose that they were probably reworked by the royal tailors in order to adapt them to the vestimentary tradition of the Assyrian royal court and especially of the royal dress. It is possible that not only different materials, but also different styles coexisted in royal and queenly dress, not unlike the items that formed the mortuary ensembles of the queens of Nimrud, although these traits do not emerge from the idealised representations of kings and queens in Neo-Assyrian visual art. The queenly dress and adornment that are documented in the Nimrud tombs, for example, show a combination of styles and the incorporation of foreign components in the Assyrian artistic language of certain objects. This combination was crucial to express the new identity and status acquired by royal women at the Assyrian royal court and, in case of foreign origin, at the same time to affirm their ethnic background through styles that best reflected the broad geographical and cultural composition of the Assyrian empire and were evidently already known in their regions of origin.^[316] Their foreign background could also have found expression through styles that incorporated heterogeneous cultural elements and that as such reflected the empire’s composite culture.^[317] Indeed, the figurative repertoire of dress decorations on royal and queenly clothes may have been much richer than the palatine reliefs and visual art in general suggest and may have included decorative styles that combined foreign iconographic elements with indigenous Assyrian ones.

That foreign textiles entered the queens’ wardrobe is evident from textual information about redistribution of tribute and audience gifts within the Assyrian imperial court. The much-quoted letter by Crown Prince Sennacherib to his father shows that the Assyrian queen was one of the recipients of šaddīnu-garments and linen clothes as audience gifts and tribute from the Levant along with the royal palace, the crown prince and high-ranking officials of the state apparatus.^[318] These and other elite commodities most likely came from the trading cities on the southern Palestinian coast, where goods of Egyptian origin passed through. Unfortunately, no administrative or epistolary text from the state archives clarifies how these textiles, evidently manufactured with materials foreign to Assyria, and woven and adorned according to dress styles and traditions alien to the “Land of Aššur”, were used by the royal women and in which contexts of public and private life. These textiles of foreign origin could have been transformed and “Assyrianised” by palace tailors by adding bands decorated with typically Assyrian iconographical motifs (in the collar, the end borders of the robe and the sleeves) or by stitching geometric and floral motifs of fabric or metal over a part or the whole surface of the dress. If not used as clothes, it is reasonable to assume that luxury textiles from abroad were reworked by royal tailors for a different use. Once suitably adapted, they could become curtains and draperies for the king’s and queen’s palace rooms, tablecloths and other upholstery for both residential and ceremonial areas of the palace.

Presumably, the display of luxury items made of fine foreign materials by the royal couple on palace gatherings acted as a powerful means to strengthen the competition within the Assyrian aristocracy. These exotic textiles must have been seen by the members of the elite outside the royal family as embodying the success of the imperial project and, consequently, as a means for the king’s servants to reinforce social position and increase authority and prestige within the court and the government sector. This probably also increased the Assyrian elite’s interest in possessing luxury textiles similar to those of the royal family and acted as a powerful factor in promoting and keeping active individual participation in the imperialistic project.

The strengthening of positive attitudes towards the imperial project also acted on other social and professional groups linked to the palace. These groups too became a target audience for the royal communication conveyed by the palace reliefs. The king’s domestic personnel participated in the organisation of the official events at the royal residences and were presumably exposed to the interior decorations of the palace rooms during their everyday service activities.^[319] In the eyes of the palace servants, the depictions of the domestic staff embodied the values of loyalty to the king and adhesion to his every will and plan. These images also showed the palatine staff what the ethos of service and care towards the royal person should be. In the construction and communication of the ethos of domestic servants, the display of these professionals’ clothes in visual art must have played an important role. In the aforementioned royal garden scene,^[320] one is struck by the vivid contrast between the queen’s highly adorned clothes and the plain garments worn by the women of her retinue. The display of these domestic garments must be considered an integral part of the Assyrian empire’s visual communication strategy. The message of dominion and success achieved by Assyria thanks to the expansionist project was also expressed in monumental art through the tendency towards uniformity of the clothing worn by the groups of attendants, soldiers, and officials, as evident especially for the late Neo-Assyrian period. For example, the apex of the standardization of military uniforms was reached under Assurbanipal’s reign,^[321] and it can be assumed that similar processes also affected the clothing of the palace sector, as evidenced by the scenes of male and female servants depicted in the palace reliefs of Nineveh. We are not in a position to say if this process of coercive standardization of clothing was systematically applied to all professional groups serving the palace sector, but the examples provided by the terminology of standard items of clothing circulating within the state milieu for military personnel and the pictorial evidence of palatine sculpted wall panels seem to point in this direction. On the one hand, the power vision of the last Assyrian emperors found expression through the autocratic and semi-divine figure of Aššur’s vice-regent, and this implied distinction and enhancement of the royal figure from the rest of the population. On the other hand, however, this unrivalled power seems to have also been conceived as spread over the whole country of Assyria, manifested visually through the individual dress of the king’s servants. The various socio-professional components of the country, called upon to contribute to the success of the imperial project with their individual daily work service, manifested their adhesion through their standard dress (uniforms or work clothes). If this hypothesis is valid, the display of the clothes of the king’s servants was instrumental to the political discourse conveyed by visual art in order to show the universally diffuse nature of this imperial power – embodied in every single social actor of the “Land of Aššur” – and the cosmic and social unity of the world that resulted from the success of the Assyrian king’s actions. The Assyrian royal custom of donating high-quality clothes, generally of red-dyed (purple?) wool, to the king’s high-ranking servants, as well as foreign rulers and visiting delegates, as a sign of favour^[322] confirms the political will to unify the king’s subjects and to shape or consolidate their spirit of service to the imperial cause. Other beneficiaries of this royal practice of donating high-quality clothes were professionals and workmen, as the cases of canal diggers and architects show.^[323] The gift of finely crafted clothes could also be the reward to state officials on account of their faithful service to the Assyrian crown. For all beneficiaries, including those of lower social status, the gift of the robes functioned as an incentive to continue to work and be loyal to the Assyrian king, each supporting the imperial project in his own role and capacity. Through the act of dressing the king’s servants, the unbalanced and subordinated relationships that linked the subjects to the Assyrian king were constructed or consolidated. This act was felt as a sign of royal favour and a privilege for the recipient, who could benefit from the direct connection with the king and the royal court, consolidating his social standing and power. Wearing clothes donated by the king established the wearer’s membership to the imperial organization and conformity within the hierarchical system; it also entailed duties on the part of the recipient and full adhesion to the Assyrian imperial project and to the values that inspired it. This practice also shows how Assyrian kingship constructed itself through the act of royal gift-giving and how it helped to mould the mass of the king’s subjects as a single, submissive, uniform, and controllable social body.

A few examples may be cited here of how Assyrian royal power was materially diffused over the king’s subjects via textiles. The motifs of the figural decorations seen on Assurnaṣirpal II’s dress in the relief of Room G in the North-West Palace are also diffusely spread on the border bands adorning the outfits of the king’s attendants in the same drinking scene, as shown by the bands with wild goats, winged bulls, and “sacred trees”; the row of alternating buds and palmettes on the cupbearer’s waist-belt; and the purifying winged genii, “sacred trees”, wild bulls, concentric “carpet-like” rectangles, and scenes with human hunters and wild goats on the fringed border band of the same individual’s long tunic.^[324] The decorated edge of the cupbearer’s short sleeve shows a double band of rows of rosettes within squares, separated by stripes with half-circles, and large palmettes and buds in alternation,^[325] while the pectoral decoration is characterized by a double series of buds, palmettes, and lilies.^[326] The first of the two individuals bearing fly-whisks and bows behind the monarch wears a waist-belt decorated with scenes of winged genii, who purify the king, and the “sacred tree” and an alternation of palmettes and buds, while the fringed border band of his tunic shows wild goats and “sacred trees” and the same band of vegetal motifs as the waist-belt. His short sleeves end in a double band with the same alternating vegetal items and a row of rosettes. The waist-belt and the tunic’s border of the second attendant show the same motifs, although accompanied by ostriches, namely two rectangular bands with buds, ostriches, and palmettes inserted within a frame of rows of small rosettes.^[327] All these decorative items are also present on their quivers. An analogous case of the presence of royal motifs on the clothes of the entourage occurs in the above-described 9th century BC glazed tile from the North-West Palace in Nimrud,^[328] in which one can identify some similarities between the royal dress and the outfits of two attendants, characterized not only by the same large-sized rosettes, locks of fringes, and linear border bands but also by the same alternance of colours.

As already pointed out, the centrality of courtiers and officials is indicative of how Sargon II’s policy was to enhance the role of the Assyrian aristocracy in the running of the empire. The scenes of processions, hunts and banquets in the Khorsabad reliefs offer interesting examples in this regard. The detail in the rendering of clothing and ornamental motifs suggests that the figures depicted were members of the aristocracy. The Assyrian dignitary’s costume in procession scenes, therefore reflecting ceremonial events at the palace in the presence of the king, consisted of an ankle-length tunic ending in tassels, wrapped in a fringed stole or shawl made of woollen locks and bordered at the top with a wide band decorated with multiple series of rosettes set in squares or concentric squares.^[329] The fact that the former motif is also present in the decoration of the Sargon II’s tunic and in the stole worn by the crown prince, while the latter in other representations of Sargon II’s tunic^[330] underlines the special bond between king and aristocracy. Analogous decorations may be recognised in the clothes worn by the attendants in hunting scenes of Khorsabad reliefs. The king’s hunting staff includes courtiers, cavalrymen and archers worn in long robes, and soldiers in knee-length uniforms. A bearded archer wears a short tunic without fringes and entirely decorated with concentric squares (Figure 8).

Figure 8:

An archer from the king’s hunting staff dressed in a short tunic decorated with concentric squares, Royal Palace, Khorsabad (BM 118829, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

He is depicted between another archer, dressed in a long, tasselled robe, and a hunter who wears a knee-length tasselled tunic with a border band adorned with concentric squares.^[331] These hunters were dignitaries that accompanied the sovereign in the hunt in the royal park, experienced in the time of Sargon II as an entertainment for the king and his retinue.^[332] The central figure in the scene is a high-ranking member, perhaps belonging to the royal family, as suggested by the rich decoration of his dress. The above-mentioned ankle-length, tasselled tunics with fringed stoles made of woollen locks and the knee-length tunics are also shown when the members of the Assyrian aristocracy are depicted as protagonists of symposia in banquet scenes,^[333] those of highest rank sitting on stools while taking part in the banquet, as shown by the beakers raised for the toast, and those of lower rank in standing position, dressed in long and short robes, while assisting the banqueters or toasting among equals.^[334] Since these scenes were confined to the less accessible areas of Sargon II’s royal palace, they were probably addressed to an inner audience,^[335] the only one that could have appreciated the protagonism of the aristocracy in the management of the empire, finding in it a further incentive to continue supporting the king’s activities.

The resulting impression from these scenes is that of a royal power materialised through a homogeneous environment in the form of a “textile landscape”. The reality of ceremonial occasions may have been less homogeneous in terms of elite clothing than the idealised vision of the palace reliefs, but it is likely that rules dictated by aristocratic and court etiquette, as well as the aesthetic taste of each sovereign played a role in determining standard trends in ceremonial clothing. The “textile landscape” of the royal power, constructed in palace reliefs through the strategy of emphasising details of non-royal clothes and their decoration, as well as through the interplay between the king’s clothes and those worn by his closest attendants, is also visible in Assurbanipal’s palace reliefs. The multitude of rows of rosettes and buds on the upper part of the robes worn by the charioteers who assisted Assurbanipal during his hunt^[336] and the bands of discs and small squares decorating the sleeves’ edges of the female attendants holding fly-whisks behind the seated queen in the scene of the royal pergola^[337] are also part of the visual programme aimed at asserting Assyria’s dominion through the sense of a pervasive royal power that also affects the closest entourage of the royal and the queenly figures. Interestingly, in Slab 14 of Room C the rectangle-shaped decoration with the “sacred tree” scene and one of the large floral elements on the chest part of the garment of the young beardless spear-bearer behind Assurbanipal are partially visible (Figures 9 and 10).^[338] Perhaps, this suggests that the wearer, a hunting assistant who had the privilege of being part of the royal chariot staff, was a member of the royal family.^[339] No other members of the royal chariot team wear a costume with such a decoration on the chest.^[340] The only person besides the sovereign who could have worn a dress with such an ideologically-charged decorative motif was the heir to the throne. If this interpretation is valid, the depiction of this costume would confirm the Sargonid communicative strategy of making the figure of the heir to the throne more visible, as evidenced by the reliefs depicting Sargon II and the crown prince at Khorsabad, the scene with Sennacherib and the crown prince at Lachish and the Zincirli stele with Esarhaddon and his sons Assurbanipal and Šamaš-šumu-ukīn.

Figure 9:

Assurbanipal and attendants with spears on the royal chariot during the lion hunt, Room C, North Palace, Quyunjiq (BM 124867, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

Figure 10:

Detail on the young spearman’s dress (BM 124867, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

Regarding the royal garden party, decorative border bands are certainly an indicator of the different role within the palace service staff. We can see that the women who bring culinary products to the banquet wear simpler clothes than the female attendants who stand behind the queen’s throne. However, all of them wear long robes that, not unlike the queen, conceal the features of the body, reflecting the Assyrian view of female decency and composure in public, the court dress code and perfect adherence to royal protocol in serving the royal couple. On the contrary, the two attendants at the side of the reclining monarch wear clothes whose border bands are far more elaborate than those of the pair of women in proximity to the queen’s throne (Figures 11 and 12).

Figure 11:

Detail on the queen’s female attendants, some with fans, others with dishes to serve at the garden banquet, Room S’, North Palace, Quyunjiq (BM 124920, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

Figure 12:

Detail on the male attendants with fans next to the king’s couch, Room S’, North Palace, Quyunjiq (BM 124920, © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved).

In addition, the queen’s attendants all wear a headband, not unlike the king’s servants. In this regard, one wonders on what occasions the “veils” mentioned in Neo-Assyrian texts^[341] in relation to the female wardrobe were used. Royal palaces as well as private homes were protected environments. The case of public space was different, however. Middle Assyrian laws place great importance on the female veil as head covering as a sign of dignity and decorum in public space,^[342] but there is no trace of this element of dress in Neo-Assyrian art, if we exclude depictions of foreign women taken as captives.^[343] Concerning the king’s male attendants, they are probably eunuchs, whose domestic duties required caring for the king’s person and protecting him from any discomfort in daily life.^[344] Moreover, the king’s bearded servant in the foreground of the scene also wears a long, fringed overcoat, perhaps a sign of higher rank.^[345] In addition, we are unable to say whether the colour of the clothes, now not visible in the reliefs,^[346] could have played a role in identifying the king’s and queen’s attendants, highlighting their common membership to the class of personal attendants of the royal couple (uniform clothes of the same colour?) or their specific position in the attendant hierarchy (different colours according to role and domestic duties, and perhaps also as a visible sign of the king’s personal favouritism?). It is also possible that, apart from reasons pertaining to the individual position of the attendant within the palace service staff, the wearing of certain clothes and decorations was part of the dress code required of those standing in the immediate vicinity of the royal couple for reasons of court etiquette and aesthetics of the royal couple’s public image. Presumably, court etiquette also required that the servants’ clothes were clean, decorous and tidy both on the occasion of official ceremonies and private events. In royal representations, details of the servants’ clothes and accessories concur to building the image of power of the Assyrian kingship and the empire. This visually pervasive royal power consolidated the idea of a world under the full control of the king and an empire animated and guided by the same power vision. The same applies to the jewellery worn by the kings and queens but also by their close attendants. In the case of palace servants, the presence of earrings and bracelets is not necessarily accompanied by decoratively elaborated clothing. Nevertheless, their widespread presence in royal and queenly scenes communicates the unity and cohesion of the Assyrian palace people, its adherence to the imperial project, and, in essence, the common identity in which this elite recognised itself.^[347]

The depiction of elite dress in visual art did not only concern the figures of the king and queen, but extended, albeit in varying degrees of detail, to those of other high-ranking individuals. In this regard, it is possible that the focus on finely decorated details on the clothes of the king and the court members, government personnel, and military officers in the monumental art was also intended to show the unrivalled level of technical development of the textile art itself under the auspices of the Assyrian king and the superior wisdom that informed the Assyrian šarrūtu, a conclusion also suggested by Sennacherib’s well-known statement about the innovative cultivation of cotton trees in his royal botanical garden and the processing of this fibre into textiles by the Assyrians.^[348] This is also evident in the display in Neo-Assyrian visual art of palace reliefs of other textile products of high quality and fine decoration, equally functional in materialising the absolute power of the Assyrian king, isolating and distinguishing in the public scene his superhuman person and embodying the empire’s grandeur, such as the richly ornamented parasols that accompanied the king’s person in public parades and ceremonies or the sumptuous carpets that adorned entrances and halls of royal residences.^[349] The decorations of both these objects recalled the floral and geometric motifs of the king’s robes and palaces and contributed on the one hand to physically and symbolically mark the space occupied by the royal person, and on the other hand to further multiply the figurative and symbolic repertoire that characterised the ordered and perfect cosmos under the king’s leadership. One can assume that if the carpets were made by craftsmen originating from regions where carpet-making and its techniques were more widespread than in Assyria, the display of these textile products (also through stone replicas) further magnified the power of the king, capable of transferring the decorative and symbolic repertoire of imperial art onto fabric thanks to the control of new carpet techniques. In all likelihood, the finely sculpted depictions of royal parasols and carpets expressed the imperial elite’s self-satisfaction for the unprecedented development that textile art in the service of imperial power had achieved under royal patronage. In light of these observations, we can state that the intergenerational competitiveness that led each Assyrian king to launch ambitious projects never attempted by his forefathers – as we read in royal inscriptions – was the rationale not only for explorative and military missions to remote lands or for construction works in the capital cities^[350] but probably also for textile art, which under the wise and expert king’s patronage became another powerful means of asserting Assyria’s superior power in the world. The heroic superiority that the Assyrian king boasted over the past also found expression through the concentration of textile craftsmen of different origins and experiences in the workshops of the capital cities, the import of an unprecedented number of exotic textiles from abroad, and the adoption of innovative craftsmanship techniques that were in the exclusive service of the sovereign and the imperial elite.^[351]

5 Conclusions

The successful accomplishments of the Assyrian kings were presented in the official texts – and superbly represented in monumental art – as the result of a divine mandate that was entrusted to the vice-regent of Aššur and of the monarch’s personal desire. The Assyrian king’s intentionality and desires (bibil libbi) were considered to be in line with the divine will (ṭēm ili) and, accordingly, the king’s deeds were seen as protecting and consolidating the cosmic order through the success of the imperial project. The clothes worn by the Assyrian king manifested this success.

As finely crafted products and vectors of social meaning, royal and queenly clothing and their related adornment objects were central in imperial identity construction and in contributing to the ideological discourse that informed Assyria’s expansionistic project from the 9th to the 7th century BC. The ensemble formed by the royal insignia and the royal dress with all its decorative attachments materialised the splendour of kingship and all its functions, acting as a visual manifestation of the political programme entrusted to the king as a divine mandate. The potential of textile language was consciously and deeply explored in the Neo-Assyrian period. This was due to the new availability of textile materials and craftspeople, a new sensibility regarding royal and court fashion, the culture of ostentation and spectacularization, and the coherent integration of textile language into the apparatus of visual communication in the service of imperial power. Variations in royal dress over the course of the reigns are indications not only of the individual kings’ personal tastes but also of how the imperial elite represented themselves and their ambitions, expectations, and plans through the public figure of the sovereign.

The development of royal textile art in the late imperial period probably also reflects a change in the paradigm of kingship. Possibly, a change of paradigm also affected the public role of the Assyrian queens, who were now allowed to access the public arena of royal monumental art with their finely crafted outfits and related decorative items – personal belongings that epitomized at the same time the success of the imperial project and their individual success in terms of socio-political ascent. In the case of the queens, the assemblages of ornamental items are illustrative of how dress and adornment were crucial to establishing the royal women’s identities in the personal, courtly, and queenly spheres^[352] and the success they had achieved in these areas. In addition to the value of queens as central figures in determining the dynastic succession of the Assyrian throne, the queenly polychromatic dress and the relevant brilliant attachments and jewels seem to have been also functional to visually stress that the Assyrian queens represented the earthly embodiment of the divine qualities of the goddesses in charge of protecting the king, the royal lineage, the empire, and the “Land of Aššur”. In this perspective, the display of the queenly dress would have balanced the predominantly male, warlike, and king-oriented imagery and political discourse of the time, at least in those specific social contexts and public occasions to which the queens had access. It is also worth noting that both the king’s and the queen’s multicoloured clothes replicated decorative motifs (circles, rosettes, stars, stepped triangles, etc.) that were diffusely spread in their closest entourage as well as in the interiors of palace rooms (e.g., in wall painting decorations, on carpets and drapery, portable objects, and furniture). In all likelihood, this contributed to creating the royal space as a visual synthesis of the wealthy, luxuriant, and powerful cosmos ordered by the combined action of the king and his divine protectors.

The world unified under the yoke of Aššur abruptly came to an end with the Chaldean and Median attack to Nineveh in 612 BC and the plunder of the precious goods belonging to the royal treasury. The sacking of the capital would have had in store for the Assyrian elite the same destiny Aššur’s vice-regents had assigned for centuries to foreign rulers who experienced Assyria’s territorial expansion, with high-quality polychromatic and linen clothes plundered by enemy soldiers from the royal family’s wardrobe along with jewels, objects of gold, silver, and ivory, and all the palace elite’s appurtenances. In the corridors and rooms of the royal residences, the superb and finely carved bas-reliefs reminded the invading soldiers of the unrivalled wealth and power reached by the Assyrian elite thanks to the warmongering of their kings. As a small revenge, the faces of Assurbanipal and of his queen in the banquet under the garden’s pergola^[353] were meticulously chiselled away by the invaders of Nineveh.^[354] It is interesting to observe that while they had no mercy on the protagonists of Assyria’s success, they apparently refrained from chiselling away their sumptuous fringed and richly adorned garments, stone replicas of the ones that the invaders evidently plundered from the palace treasury of Nineveh. Clearly, those untouched sculpted clothes, which epitomized the level of unequalled wealth, power, and prestige reached by the Assyrians, appeared so precious, of such exquisite and unparalleled craftsmanship, and so full of dignity as to uniquely deserve the conquerors’ respect and curious gaze.