Investiture of Zimri-Lim
As an investiture of the Zimri-Lim , a 1770 to 1760 BC Wall painting from the palace of Zimri-Lim in Mâri in today's Syria .
The picture is now in the Département des Antiquités orientales of the Louvre in Paris (inventory no. AO 19826). It is the only painting found in situ in Mâri, which was found there on the clay plaster of a south wall of the large palace courtyard during the French excavations by André Parrot in 1935/36. It uses the colors red, orange, yellow, blue, green, white and black and was believed to be a younger version of an even older painting. It is a tempera painting.
The picture surface is divided into several friezes. Two main motifs are in the middle, the lower one showing two goddesses bubbling water , the upper one showing the adoration of the goddess Ištar by Zimrī-Lim, accompanied by two Lamma deities . The upper frieze has repeatedly been referred to as an investor scene, as it shows the king in a gesture that could be interpreted as the acceptance of regal insignia. It possibly shows the installation of the old Babylonian king by Mari Zimri-Lim . In addition to the scenes in the middle, four trees, two of which are date palms, and hybrid creatures are shown. The decor of the painted picture frame is reminiscent of tassels and fringes, so that tapestries could possibly have served as a model here.
literature
- Ursula Seidl : Old and Middle Babylonian specialist art. In: Winfried Orthmann : The Old Orient (= Propylaea Art History Vol. 14). Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1975, pp. 303-304.
