This relief was once part of a procession of prisoners being deported from Babylonia to Assyria following Ashurbanipal’s victory over his older brother Shamash-shumu-ukin, King of Babylon, in 648 B.C. Preserved here are two women walking to the left through a grove of date palms. Both wear ankle-length garments with some fringe details delineated. The lead figure has her right hand raised while in the other she holds the neck of a bottle-shaped vessel, likely a water skin. The second figure holds a water skin over her right shoulder.
Following his conquests in Babylonia and Elam in 646-644 B.C., Ashurbanipal built a new palace in the capital city of Nineveh. This new structure, today called the North Palace, was known as bit riduti, the “House of Government” (see pp. 20ff, Brereton, ed., I am Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria). The present relief is thought to have once decorated the walls of Courtyard J, situated between the throne room and the private quarters of the palace. Adjoining slabs from the same relief are today in the Museo Barracco, Rome and the Oriental Museum, Durham (pls. xxx,a and c in Barnett, op. cit.). Similar scenes adorned other parts of the North Palace, including the throne room, Room M (see the lower register of the relief in the British Museum, fig. 237 in Brereton, op. cit.).
The North Palace was discovered by Hormuzd Rassam in December 1853, while still serving as agent for the British Museum. This relief, together with the adjoining slabs, must have been dispatched to Layard by Rassam prior to the termination of the museum’s excavations in 1855. Layard gifted the present relief to his friend, Sir William Gregory (1816-1892). It was later inherited by Sir William’s son, Robert Gregory (1881-1918), who was Layard’s godson, and thence by descent to Robert’s daughter, Catherine Kennedy (1913-1999).