La testa di rame dal tempio di Ishtar a Ninive e l’affermazione della regalità accadica

Abstract

The copper head of a sovereign found by the archaeologists of the British Museum during the
excavation of the Temple of Ishtar on the citadel of Quyunjik at Nineveh in 1931, and now kept in the
Iraq Museum at Baghdad (I.M. 11331), was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of Akkadian
art. Countless studies have described its stylistic and iconographic characteristics. This article,
through a complete analysis of the context of discovery, of iconographic and stylistic comparisons
and also of the technological aspects of the work, proposes its attribution to the Akkadian royal
workshops during the reign of the second successor and son of Sargon, Manishtusu, and identifies
with the same sovereign, founder of the Akkadian dynasty and initiator of the visual propaganda
typical of this kingdom, the represented personage