"Conservation in Ancient Assyria: Honoring Past Kings in the Palaces of Nimrud" with Dr. Ben Dewar

In this year's Yadgar Lecture, Dr. Ben Dewar will discuss how Assyrian kings used royal inscriptions and palatial reliefs to engage with, preserve, and honor the legacies of their predecessors in the Northwest Palace at Nimrud. It will focus on three episodes from across the lifespan of this building that provide insights into how Assyrian kings negotiated the tension between the need to alter and adapt living cultural heritage and the need to honor obligations towards their predecessors. In doing so, it will illuminate Neo-Assyrian attitudes towards aspects of the preservation of heritage that remain very much relevant to conservation today.

Dr. Ben Dewar is an Assyriologist and historian of the cuneiform-writing cultures of ancient Mesopotamia with a particular interest in the intellectual, literary, and political history of the late 2nd and early 1st Millennia BC. He completed his PhD, on Representations of Rebellion in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, at the University of Birmingham before working as an Associate Lecturer in the Department of History at University College London from 2022 to 2024. He is currently an Early Career Research Associate at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.

Lecture is free and open to the public; no registration required. Presented by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Critical Support is provided by the Yadgar Family Endowment, Bowdoin College.

Image: Assyrian Relief: Two Winged, Eagle-Headed Spirits from Kalhu (Nimrud), Iraq; Northwest Palace, Room H, panel 30, ca. 875 BCE - 860 BCE, 9th century BCE, 84 1/4 x 6 1/4 in. (214 x 15.8 cm), gypsum (Mosul alabaster). Gift of Dr. Henri Byron Haskell, Medical School Class of 1855. Critical support for the Assyrian Collection at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is provided by the Yadgar Family Endowment.

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