Historical Context

This drawing is based on a gypsum wall relief from the North Palace of King Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, in present-day northern Iraq, now held by the British Museum. Carved between 645 and 640 BCE, the panel depicts a protective genie known as the urmahlullu, or “Lion-Man” — a hybrid figure combining a lion’s head and mane with a human body, shown wearing an Assyrian kilt and a horned helmet, the horns marking its divine status.

Genies of this kind stood guard at doorways within Assyrian royal palaces, alongside other protective figures such as the ugallu (“Great Lion”) and the winged, human-headed lamassu. Their role was apotropaic: shown with dagger in hand in a gesture of threat, they were believed to ward off evil spirits and misfortune from the rooms they guarded.

The relief was uncovered in the North Palace during 19th-century excavations led by Hormuzd Rassam and Henry Creswicke Rawlinson. Nineveh’s remains have since faced renewed threats: in 2016, Daesh (ISIS) bulldozed sections of the Mashki Gate, one of the city’s ancient entrances, as part of a wider campaign against pre-Islamic heritage in the Mosul region. During later reconstruction work, archaeologists uncovered carved stone slabs from the reign of King Sennacherib, buried and preserved beneath the gate for over a century — a reminder of both the fragility and the resilience of this heritage.