Detail of the Upper Portion of a Relief with Two Registers in the Brooklyn Museum, August 2007

Relief with Two Registers
Alabaster
Neo-Assyrian Period, reign of Ashur-nasir-pal II (circa 883-859 BC)
Iraq, Nimrud (Kalhu), from room I of the Northwest Palace
Accession # 55.146

Assyrian artists favored symmetrical compositions, the exact correspondence of figures on opposite sides of a real or imaginary dividing line. On both the upper and lower registers of this slab, winged genies strike similar poses on either side of a sacred tree, forming near-mirror images of each other. These scenes were repeated along the walls of the room where the relief once stood.

Text from the Brooklyn Museum label.