This splendid panel is one of a group of five low-carved reliefs (see also 66.4.2, .3, .4, .5) from the northwest palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883-859 BC), at Nimrud (ancient Kalhu). Located on the Tigris River in northern Iraq, the site was first excavated by British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard in 1845. Built of mud brick on stone foundations, the lower interior levels of the palace were decorated by an extensive sequence of alabaster slabs that were carved in place and originally painted in black, white, red and blue. This panel, which once filled a corner, depicts a stylized "sacred tree" or Tree of Life, believed to symbolize the prosperity and agricultural abundance of Assyria. Here and across the center of the other panels is a cuneiform inscription enumerating the king’s accomplishments.
The LACMA reliefs were discovered in adjacent rooms in 1855 by William Kenneth Loftus, who succeeded Layard. They were subsequently offered to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and for more than a century they were displayed near the entrance of that institution. In 1966, thanks to the generosity of Anna Bing Arnold, the reliefs were purchased and presented to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
