The Northwest Palace of Ashur-nasir-pal II at Nimrud

LEARNING SITES is in the process of creating an interactive 3D computer model of the Northwest Palace, beginning with the Great Northern Courtyard and Throne Room suite, and then progressing through the ceremonial east wing rooms.  We are using images scanned from photographs and drawings that are then applied to the digitally reconstructed walls to simulate the original positions of the carved bas-reliefs.  Please note that this is an interim model for study and comment only.  This exercise is being undertaken by LEARNING SITES, in collaboration with Samuel M. Paley, Richard P. Sobolewski, and Alison B. Snyder, as a demonstration of some of the techniques that we could use to re-create the look and feel of the Palace as it may have been constructed in the 9th century BCE.

The rendered views mounted on the accompanying pages come from several different iterations of the model.  An early version of the virtual reality model is also available for viewing as are two LivePicture^TM photobubbles.

The images marked Version 10 are renderings from the current iteration of the Palace model with the following additions: Assyrian chariots have been added to the Great Northern Courtyard along with standards representing two different regiments; a rolling brazier has been added to the Throne Room (set in grooves carved into the paving stones in front of the throne); some of the ceremonial east wing rooms (Rooms G, H, and L) have been modeled with their reliefs added (see the index below).

The images marked Version 9 (V through Z) are renderings from our model completed March 2, 2001, which added the following material to the Palace re-creation: the lamassu have been modeled; Room F (adjacent to the Throne Room) has been completed; huge wooden and bronze doors have been added (we have calculated that the each leaf of the doors visible in Rendering V weighed nearly 5,000 pounds); and 3D characters have been added to enliven the scenes.  We have created a 3-minute flythrough of the Palace from this version for an exhibit celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Williams College Museum of Art, (the museum is highlighting their two reliefs from the Palace). 

The renderings from Version 9a (AA, AB, AC) show a reworked model of the King (based on an original computer model created by Young-Seok Kim, a graduate student in the Virtual Reality Lab, University at Buffalo, SUNY).  We are in the process of researching ancient textile patterns and colors, so the garments depicted are preliminary.

The images marked Version 8 (Q, R, S, and U) are renderings from the model, expanded at that point to include the Throne Room (B) and the anteroom (C) prepared for demonstration at the XLVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Harvard University (July 5-8, 1998).  Dramatic strides had been made in visualizing the original appearance of the Palace, based on evidence from Layard's publications, actual bits of colored plaster from the discovered by the British and Iraqi excavations, some documented in the records of the Polish excavation teams in the 1970s, and decorative elements from Fort Shalmaneser and elsewhere.  Rendering U was created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for use in their newly designed Assyrian gallery, the new ceiling of which was based on our computer model.

Also added for this Version 8 were several text pages providing background narrative about the excavation of the Palace, the subsequent distribution of the reliefs, our rationale for the details of the reconstruction, and descriptions of the Great Northern Courtyard and Throne Room.  Many other features of the virtual reality publication prototype were included for the conference presentation, including: links between each relief and an index of visual and textual information about that relief, links to a preliminary drawing and photo archive about the Palace, and a simple virtual guide whose hand-held lamp lit the Throne Room reliefs as he walked through the space--these elements are not currently available in the online material.

The primary difference between images marked Version 7 and 7a and earlier views is the coloration of the reliefs.  The new coloration has been matched to photographs of the so-called Canford reliefs published in Christie's of London auction catalogue for the July 6, 1994 sale.

Theimages marked Version 6 include the following new elements: coloration and texturing added to all the bas-reliefs (including the lamassu), to simulate carved limestone, and a decorative frieze band added above the reliefs, the specific form of which has yet to be decided.  Coloration is based on Samuel Paley's slides, two of which can be viewed here for comparison.

You may read an explanation of and view images from the computer-based process used by LEARNING SITES to arrive at these renderings.  For orientation, a plan of the Palace is also available.

The images marked Version 5 (available on the Archives page) included the following new elements: improved wall and paving textures, coloration added to some reliefs to simulate carved limestone, some modeling added to the lamassu around Entry D (these had been incomplete at this point), and added drawings mapped onto other courtyard walls.

The images marked Version 3 (available on the Archives page) have four repeating relief images on the right-hand (West) wall of the courtyard. These images were generated only as a test of hues for the relief panels (they are not meant to be interpreted as part of the final model).