About the project
Museum visitors and their online counterparts are often just as curious to explore how an artefact made its way into the museum case or web database as they are to learn about its original uses and meanings in the past. Similarly, historians of science are increasingly interested in the processes by which objects in the natural world become scientific specimens.
Monumental winged bulls TT typically protected the entrances to Assyrian palaces. This one, at the main entrance to king Assurnasirpal II's PGP palace in Kalhu (c. 885 BC) wears a fish-skin cloak, symbolising the importance of scholarship and wisdom in the functioning of the court and state. Photo: Eleanor Robson (2001). View large version of image.
In this project we tackle these two sets of questions together, by tracing the biographies of cuneiform TT tablets TT and other inscribed artefacts from their manufacture and use in the ancient Assyrian city of Kalhu, to their excavation at modern Nimrud and current locations in museum collections, plus their virtual representations on the web.
We welcome re-use of the contents of the website subject to our licensing conditions.
Our technical focus is on the development of Linked Open Data TT , especially for handheld devices such as mobile phones and tablet computers, to encourage meaningful connectivity between previously isolated resources and to bridge the gap between the museum case and the online world.
In this way we aim to develop academics', curators' and museum-users' understanding of the processes by which the ancient past is understood and reconstructed by academic research, and thus to enrich public engagement with one of the most influential and yet largely forgotten civilizations of antiquity.
Events
The project team organised a number of public events in 2013-14, including museum gallery talks and family activities. Several events were live-tweeted with the hashtag #nimrud enabling people to join in from afar. The event summaries linked to below include archived live-tweets where available.
- 27 April 2013: From Mound to Museum: Making Knowledge from Archaeological Objects, study day at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
- 19 June 2013: The Genies on the Stairs, gallery talk at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
- 26 October 2013: Discovering Ancient Assyria, family events at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
- 21 January 2014: Kings and Scholars, gallery talk at the British Museum, London
- 27 June 2014: Kings and Scholars, gallery talk at the British Museum, London
- 9 September 2014: A Tale of Two Cities: Kalhu and Nimrud [/nimrud/images/tale-of-two-cities-poster.jpg], public lecture by Eleanor Robson at the University of California, Berkeley, sponsored by the Assyrian Heritage Fund
We have also produced re-useable resources for Assyrian-themed events, including downloadable images of kings and genies TT .
In addition to public events, the project also organised a day workshop for UK museum professionals, showcasing mobile-friendly resources for interpreting cuneiform collections:
- 12 December 2013: Tablets on Tablets: Reusable Mobile-Friendly Museum Resources on Ancient Mesopotamia. Event summary includes archived programme and live-tweets.
Project team members also presented findings at academic conferences and workshops:
- 31 October 2014: Ruth Horry, "Things and Virtual Things". Paper in session on stored museum collections in the digital age, at the "Tales From The Crypt: Museum Storage And Meaning" workshop organised by the Indian-European Advanced Research Network Research Group, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
- 3 February 2014: Ruth Horry, discussant to paper by Alice Stevenson, Petrie Museum, UCL. Field Notes: Histories of Archaeology seminar series, Centre for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge.
Project staff, funders and partners
The research project "Materialities of Assyrian Knowledge Production: Object Biographies of Inscribed Artefacts from Nimrud for Museums and Mobiles" was funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/K003089/1). It was based at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), University of Cambridge, UCL, the British Museum's Department of the Middle East, and the Babylonian Section of Penn Museum [http://penn.museum/].
The project team comprises:
- Ruth A. Horry, (Cambridge HPS), postdoctoral researcher
- Alex Loktionov (Cambridge Assyriology), student research assistant
- Eleanor Robson (UCL History), principal investigator
- Christoph Schmidhuber (Cambridge Assyriology), student research assistant
- Jonathan Taylor (British Museum, Department of Middle East), co-investigator
- Steve Tinney (Penn Museum, Babylonian Section), co-investigator
- Silvie Zamazalová (Cambridge HPS), postdoctoral researcher
The Nimrud Inscribed Objects Database was created by Christopher Walker and a group of volunteers at the British Museum. We are very grateful for Christopher's generous permission to host the database.
Official project partners were The British Institute for the Study of Iraq and The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (with particular thanks to Dr Paul Collins, Assistant Keeper for Ancient Near East). We also collaborated closely with the following museums:
- Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham
- Bolton Museum, Bolton, Lancashire
- Durham University Museums, Durham
- The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (with particular thanks to Keeper of Antiquities, Dr Lucilla Burn)
- Ipswich Museum, Ipswich, Suffolk
- Manchester Museum, Manchester
- Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge (with thanks to Imogen Gunn, Archaeology Collections Manager)
- Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter
Timing, development and feedback
Phase 1 of project ran from January 2013 to March 2014; phase 2 was released at the end of 2015. Feedback is always welcome: please email us at .
Content last modified: 18 Dec 2019.