Wall Painting

Stratum II, palace passageway L15B

Painted mud-plaster

1928.182.1

Length: 73.6 cm

Width: 31.8 cm

Painted mud-plaster embedded in modern concrete and wood frame. Original black, red, and white colors, although extremely faint, are still visible. The original image included geometric designs, flowers, and bovine and anthropomorphic heads. See Wall Paintings and Wall Painting Fragments for a selection of images from additional wall paintings and modern color reconstructions.

Context

Room L15B is a passageway between the palace bathroom L25 (cf. Starr 1937, pl. 15A) and room L15A, a wide room paved with baked brick and containing a hearth in the northeast corner. The L15B passageway had very wide doorways and baked brick wall facings. The bricks were covered by lime plaster overlaid with bitumen, which would have provided some waterproofing. This wall painting fragment was considered the only object of note from the passageway. Starr (1939) suggested, based on the even distribution of fragments, that murals ran continuously around the passageway. The largest fragments were found at an angle in the rubble before the doors to L25 and L15A, indicating that they had decorated the wall above the doorways, which accords with the placement of wall paintings in private houses at Nuzi.

Publications: Lyon 1930; Nunn 1988, pl. 73, 94–96, 205; Starr 1937, pl. 129D; Starr 1939, 143–44, 491

Original Field Catalogue Entry

Unknown