ICOBASE

Object identity: IC060810-1

Museum identity: Not known: Museo Archaeologico Nazionale, Naples, Italy

Origin: Southern Italy

Culture: Greco-Roman

Period: 100 BC/AD

IC060810-1

Object identity: IC030810-10

Museum identity: British museum: BM ME 49992; 1926,0508.149

Object types: bowl

Materials: steatite

Techniques:relief

Origin: Found in Egypt, perhaps Iranian?

Period: 500 BC

Description: Steatite bowl with relief decoration of a musical procession towards an image of Hathor.

Inscriptions: Demotic: dedicated to the “lord of Coptos” by Petearpocrates

Dimensions: Height: 6.5 centimetres; Diameter: 12.5 centimetres

Condition: good

Curator’s comments: The instrument to the left of the lyre player may well be a chalcophone

Bibliography: cf. Manniche, Music and Musicians in Ancient Egypt: 60, pl.9; Vleeming, Studia Demotica 5, No. 25, p. 11. Published in ‘BMQ’ 29/1-2 (1964/65), pp.19-21′ ref to in ‘JEA’ 63 (1977), p.189 and Anderson: ‘Catalogue of musical instruments in the British Museum’, p.8.

Acquisition date: 1926

Acquisition name: Purchased from Denis P Kyticas

IC030810-10

Object identity: IC030810-9

Museum identity: British museum: BM ME 124922; 1856,0909.56

Object types: wall panel; relief

Materials: gypsum

Techniques: relief

Origin: Niniveh. North Palace, Room S (fallen into)

Period: 645 BC – 635 BC, Neo-Assyrian under ruler Ashurbanipal

Description: Gypsum wall panel relief: a complete garden scene on the right end of a series showing Ashurbanipal’s garden. The topmost register shows a series of musicians playing on a lyre, vertical harp and double pipes advancing towards two courtiers holding staves who stand on duty by the canvas(?) wall of the enclosure which protects the royal party from public view. The middle register: another pair (or the same pair) appear (or reappear) amid the trees and bushes. In the lower register skulks a boar in the reeds. A small fragment of this relief has been trimmed off the top right-hand corner, showing the edge of a palm tree, and the bottom right corner is restored.

Dimensions: Length: 170.18 centimetres; Width: 53.34 centimetres; Depth: 15.24 centimetres

Curator’s comments
In set with 1856,0909.53 (BM.124920); In set with 1856,0909.55 (BM.124794); In set with 1969,0416.1-6 (BM.135115-135120).

Plaster cast of detail made by BMCo (no.124): type cast stored with ANE casts at Blythe House (November 2006). The cast is listed as available in the British Museum Facsimile Service ‘Catalogue of Replicas from British Museum collections’ (n.d.), in the series “Assyrian Bas-Reliefs”.
With this scene is usually associated a fragment of a scene of larger dimensions showing servants preparing for a banquet, and moving to the right.

Acquisition date: 1856

Acquisition name: Excavated by John George Taylor; Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson;  Hormuzd Rassam;  William Kennett Loftus

IC030810-9

Object identity: IC030810-7

Museum identity: Unknown

Origin: Ur, cemetery; PG/789.

Culture: Sumerian

Period: 3000 – 2600 BC

Field Number: U.10556

Curatorial notes: This is a shell plaque, part pof the ornamentation of the front of a boviform lyre.

Bibliography: Woolley,1934,  Ur excavations, volume II, Pl. 105

IC030810-7

Object identity: IC030810-5

Museum identity: British museum: BM ME 118916; 1856,0909.22; AS.75; G10/LIONHUNT/B

Materials: gypsum

Techniques: relief

Origin: Niniveh, North Palace, Room E Panel 5

Period: 645 BC – 635 BC, Neo-Assyrian, under king Ashurbanipal

Curator’s comments: Part of BM.127370. Moortgat, ‘Die Kunst des Alten Mesopotamien’ p.106, makes the interesting suggestion that this scene represents the power that music exerts over wild beasts, a kind of Orpheus motif, which is also to be seen on an unfinished ‘kudurru’ from Susa, and that it may be of Iranian inspiration. It is, however, found on pottery from Palestine (Loud, ‘Megiddo’ II, pl.76) and on a seal from North Syria (Rimmer, ‘Ancient musical instruments of Western Asia in the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, the British Museum’, fig.6 and pl.VIIIa).

Dimensions: Height: 168 centimetres

Acquisition date: 1856

Acquisition name: Excavated by John George Taylor; Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson; Hormuzd Rassam; William Kennett Loftus

IC030810-5

Object identity: IC030810-4

Museum identity: British Museum: BM ME 124947; Registration number: 1856,0909.8

Place (findspot): Excavated/Findspot: Niniveh,  South West Palace, Room XLVII (JJ)

Period: 700 BC – 692 BC, Neo-Assyrian, under Sennacherib

Description: Gypsum wall panel relief: showing an Assyrian soldier and three lyre-players, possibly Judaean prisoners, advancing towards the right in wooded, mountainous country.

Dimensions: Height: 99.06 centimetres; Width: 101.6 centimetres

Curator’s comments: Layard’s description of the scenes depicted in Room XLVII (JJ): ’The bas-relief still preserved the king in his chariot receiving the captives; musicians playing on harps before him; mountains and forests, and a castle whose name has not been identified or deciphered’. (Layard, 1853, p. 584)

Acquisition date: 1856

Acquisition name: Excavated by John George Taylor; Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson; Hormuzd Rassam; William Kennett Loftus

IC030810-4

Object identity: IC010810-26

Museum Identity: Unknown

Origin: Megiddo, Israel/Palestine

Period: 1000

IC010810-26

Object identity: IC010810-25

Museum identity: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Burgon archive No. 203. (Thomas Burgon (b. 1787 d. 1858 age 71) was a merchant who traded between London, Greece, and Turkey, and Smyrna in particular. He was also a connoisseur of Greek antiquities. During his lifetime he collected and documented over 300 artifacts, many of which are now in the British Museum. To document his collection he created watercolour paintings of his collections, and these have ended up in the Ashmolean Museum. While in Smyrna Burgon married Catherine Marguerite de Cramer. They had six children, one of whom was the notable fundamentalist bible scholar and Dean of Chichester, John William Burgon. Unfortunately Thomas Burgon was unable to make an adequate living as a merchant and chose instead to become a member of the coin department at the British Museum. He offered his collection of antiquities to the museum in 1842. He is buried in Holywell cemetery, Oxford, where most of his family are also buried.

Origin: Greece, Athens, lekythos

Period: 500 BC

IC010810-25

Object identity: IC010810-16

Museum identity: Ashmolean museum; Burgon archive N0. 123. (Thomas Burgon (b. 1787 d. 1858 age 71) was a merchant who traded between London, Greece, and Turkey, and Smyrna in particular. He was also a connoisseur of Greek antiquities. During his lifetime he collected and documented over 300 artifacts, many of which are now in the British Museum. To document his collection he created watercolour paintings of his collections, and these have ended up in the Ashmolean Museum. While in Smyrna Burgon married Catherine Marguerite de Cramer. They had six children, one of whom was the notable fundamentalist bible scholar and Dean of Chichester, John William Burgon. Unfortunately Thomas Burgon was unable to make an adequate living as a merchant and chose instead to become a member of the coin department at the British Museum. He offered his collection of antiquities to the museum in 1842. He is buried in Holywell cemetery, Oxford, where most of his family are also buried.

Origins: Greece; Athens, Lekythos.

Period: 500 BC

IC010810-16