Teʾumman’s Last Supper – Literary Motifs in Ashurbanipal’s Garden Party and the Scholarly Origin of Assyrian Narrative Art

In this contribution, I discuss the textual sources for Ashurbanipal’s „Garden Party“ and its implications for Assyrian narrative art in general. The Garden Party consists of a series of stone reliefs found at Nineveh and now on exhibit at the British Museum. I argue that this scene is replete with references to literary motifs, which I discuss as emblematic of the entanglement between narrative art and royal inscriptions in Assyria. I suggest that the master sculptors were educated in the scribal milieu of the royal court and worked in close contact with its master scholars. In this view, Assyrian narrative art is a direct product of the scribal schools and scholarly circles active at the Assyrian capitals. This proposition has direct consequences for the time scope and geographical range of this specific art form. Assyrian narrative art, as opposed to other forms of monumental art, enjoyed only limited life outside the core of the Assyrian empire.

This contribution discusses the textual sources for Ashurbanipal’s “Garden Party” and its implications for Assyrian narrative art in general. The analysis focuses on the literary motifs encoded into Ashurbanipal’s Garden Party as expression of the entanglement between narrative art and royal inscriptions in Assyria, revealing the high degree of literacy of Assyrian sculptors. In this view, Assyrian narrative art is a direct product of the scribal schools and scholarly circles active at the Assyrian capitals. This proposition directly affects this specific art form's time scope and geographical range.