A new trip to the British Museum
So I have already reported about my first visit and my second visit at the BM. There, I scanned the Ashurbanipal relief. I was also in Berlin and Leiden to scan further fragments of the same relief. This week I returned to the British Museum to scan yet another piece to the puzzle. Unfortunately, many of the fragments are on tour right now. Therefore, I couldn’t scan all of them, but the one I could is awesome.
What did I scan?
So the piece I scanned belongs to a wider relief from the North Palace in Nineveh. I have already scanned four other fragments of that same relief. All the pieces come from room S of the palace. We believe, that these belong to a greater relief telling the story of the defeat over the Elamites. The piece I scanned actually shows Elamite nobles that bring presents to the Neo-Assyrian king after their defeat.
What is also awesome is, that this piece has some cuneiform inscription at the top. It tells about the princes of Elam that bring food to the Neo-Assyrian king after he captured them. The inscription is already nicely visible on the photos. But I am also excited to try out new ideas with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) that I have in mind. We’ll see how this works.
What did I not scan?
Unfortunately, many pieces that also belong to the wider relief are currently on tour. They will not be back until 2028. They show various musicians, but also a very large and important end piece of the wider relief. I was really looking forward to seeing this as well, but I guess I will have to wait a bit. It doesn’t matter, I really like travelling to London and visiting the museum.
So until I can come back to scan the rest, I want to bring a first version of the website online. On the website, you will have access to all the models I scanned and additional information. I am really looking forward creating this and want to finish this summer. Based on the website, I want to try finding more fragments that I might have missed.
What’s the next step?
So first I need to post-process the data I have taken in London. I will then bring everything to the website I am creating and finally publish a lengthy article somewhere about it. This will at the same time be the launch of the website. So hopefully everything is done by the end of this year.
