Small project funded!
I have good news! Before Christmas, I did apply for a small funding scheme to finance a sub-project of mine. I got the news that it got funded! This is great as it allows me to travel to three museums to do some scanning and using the data to solve a virtual puzzle. Let me explain…
What project?
A while ago I wrote about a project I am involved in called “In the garden of the Queen“. It was initiated by Prof. Dr. Dominik Bonatz of the Freie Universität Berlin. In this project we scanned the famous Garden Scene found at the North Palace in Nineveh belonging to Ashurbanipal. I have already started to build a website that presents this object, but am not finished yet. Some planned features just need some time.
However, while researching the relief I found out that it was part of a much bigger composition. It was composed of many more fragments. This was very interesting to me, especially because some of the fragments where known in various museums around the world. So I decided to create a small sub-project.
What sub-project got funded?
In my sub-project, funded by the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung, I will go to the British Museum again to scan additional fragments of the larger composition. There are also fragments in Berlin, Germany and Leiden, The Netherlands. I will be travelling also there to scan the objects. I have already talked to the museums and they all agreed to cooperate.
When I have the scans, I will try to reassemble the composition virtually and present it all together on the already mentioned website. I hope by doing so to find even more fragments in museums around the world belonging to the same composition as these fragments obviously where scattered all around the world. I was even able to trace down a fragment to Tasmania, but this scan needs to be done some other time with more funding.
What’s next?
So currently I am planning my trips that all should be completed by the end of March. When I have collected the data, I will prepare it for the web-viewer, but I also plan to offer downloads to the original scans. If all goes well, I think I might be able to release the website mid-2024, but you know how it is with deadlines…
In any case, if you have any further information about the Garden Scene (or Banquet Scene) of Ashurbanipal, please let me know, as I am currently collecting everything I can. I hope by the time I released the website, more people might have some ideas where to find additional fragments. This project seems to be a long-term puzzle, which will be very interesting to solve. Not only from an archaeological point of view, but also from the perspective of an object biography.
