The Throne Room of Aššurnaṣirpal II: A Multisensory Experience

The Throne Room of the North West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud has been the subject of several studies, mainly focused on its decorative program. Scholars have long acknowledged that this space was used, especially in a political sense, to separate the more public area from the more private, or ceremonial, wing of the palace: a sort of reception suite. Despite many insightful ideas on some particular aspects, there appear to be few works or even no specific studies on this Room as a whole, with special regard to the audience. This paper fills part of this gap by reconsidering the Throne Room as transitional or borderline context – both for Assyrians and guests – and as a sensory space that is both manipulative and synesthetic. In this way the Room is evaluated holistically: the images and the so-called «Standard Inscription» are seen to cooperate with the immaterial aspects, such as 1) the management of the entrances and the space – judged on the basis of a ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ rule; 2) the manipulation of fields of view, interplay of light and shadow; 3) the emotional responses to the auditory, visual and olfactory stimuli which allowed the audience to fully experience the space, even activating what is commonly referred to as ‘non-sense’ or ‘sixth sense’. Following the methodologies used in the recent archaeology of the senses, I argue that the Throne Room of Ashurnasirpal II was a melting pot of sensorial stimuli, intended to cause the phenomenon of the arousal for a psychological control of the minds.