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Some Remarks on the Samaria Ivories and Other Iconographic Resources

(Pritchard 1969: nos. 386, 393). Glyptic and sculptural evidence suggest that, in the second millennium BCE, the adaptation of the Egyptian sphinx with the addition of wings may have originated in Anatolia, rather than Syria (Canby 1975:234). During that period, both male and female sphinxes occurred. In Beach's description of the banquet scene on the wall relief from Ashurbanipal's North Palace at Nineveh (1993:96), she states that "the woman at the window and lions adorn the couch, and winged sphinxes decorate a box on the table between king and lady." Photographs of those carved decorations on the assyrian stone relief, taken by the present writer and reproduced in this article, disclose that the above-quoted description requires modification. The woman at the window motif does not occur on the square panels attached to the king's couch. Rather, each panel shows a pair of personages en face; a column stands between them. The human figures (attendants?) are posed with their right arms lowered and their left arms held across the waist. Below each figural grouping is a row of three columns. The small box (pyxis) set upon the table is decorated not with sphinxes, but with two winged human-headed bulls arranged back-toback. Iconographically, the bovine creature was a prerogative of the Assyrian king and had symbolic significance (Albenda 1986:101-102). It should also be mentioned that the small lions which embellish the royal couch may allude to the efficacy of the Assyrian king, since those animals were the object of the royal hunt (Barnett 1976: pls. VII-XIII, L-LIII).