Reading about Assyrian reliefs in texts provides a lot of information about these images and offers the reader the opportunity to gain insight into the purposes of Assyrian narrative and art. However, being able to visit a museum helps to make the reader the actual viewer, thereby strengthening the relationship between the observer and the ancient wall reliefs. Irene Winter mentioned (and demonstrated) this during the museum visit by imploring us to carefully examine the carved reliefs and their etchings, where we noticed small, minute details that would’ve been impossible to witness in a black and white photograph. This is perhaps the greatest benefit of museums: the modern viewer is allowed to interact with ancient reliefs in ways that are closer to how an inhabitant or guest in an Assyrian palace would have so many millennia ago.

Personally, and on a specific note, the museum visit helped me see something on the reliefs I always knew was there but never paid much attention to. The text that accompanies the carved reliefs tends to appear so tiny in the black and white pictures that it is barely noticeable unless clearly marked in other ways on the paper. This problem is obviously alleviated when one has the chance to closely examine the wall reliefs in person. The texts are not readable to the average museumgoer, of course, and they are certainly not more important than the images themselves. But Winter noted in “Art in Empire” that the methods of studying such reliefs have shifted so that we perhaps pay closer attention to how the images and texts relate to one another, whether they “match” each other or not (and when they don’t, there probably exist intriguing reasons for why).

Of course, museums cannot be said to fully maintain the integrity of the reliefs with regards to how they are displayed. Irene Winter pointed out that reliefs that would’ve been viewed side-by-side or relatively closely with regards to one another are sometimes separated from each other, sometimes for a number of reasons (not enough room, thematic room themes, etc.). Even when a museum tries to rectify this by at least noting that two reliefs correspond to one another, the practice robs the viewer of the chance to fully experience narrative as it was originally constructed in palace form by the ancient peoples. In other cases, of course, the narrative might be preserved and even enhanced by the museum’s choice of display, such as with the lighting of the reliefs and art. In those situations the original functions of the artworks, such as instilling within the viewer a sense of conviction in the empire’s power, are preserved. The viewer, though, would be able to experience the true grandeur of the Assyrian palace if the reliefs were kept together to further their own tales of might.

When museums do it right, though, they help propagate the narratives’ tales and functions. When we had the ability to examine the images closely and carefully, we were really able to get a sense of how the Assyrian kings helped promote the state ideology. That one small carving, in particular, that depicted a lioness attacking a man was so beautifully displayed by the museum so that you really got a sense of the power inherent in the royal lion and the power, therefore, so prevalent with the empire as a whole.