Lamassu

What it is

The lamassu is a protective spirit of ancient Mesopotamia. In its best-known form it is a hybrid being with a human head, a bull's or lion's body, and the wings of a bird. In earlier Sumerian times the same guarding figure was a goddess called Lamma, shown with both hands raised. People trusted the lamassu to watch over homes, palaces and cities: it stood sentinel at doorways and gates, and households buried its image under the threshold to keep a guard at the door. It is also read as standing for the zodiac, parent-stars and constellations. A male counterpart is named shedu, and together lamassu and shedu began as protective spirits of ordinary Assyrian households before becoming guardians of kings.

Where it comes from

The oldest layer is the goddess Lama of Sumer, shown as a mediator who comes before a praying person and presents them to the gods. A Kassite stele dug up at Uruk, in Ishtar's temple, names her clearly; King Nazi-Maruttash dedicated it there between 1307 and 1282 BC. The art historian Agnès Spycket proposed that similar female figures of the Akkadian period, seen in carved seals and statuary and often in presentation scenes of the Paleo-Babylonian era, should also be read as Lama, and that view is widely followed. A winged being with a human head is first recorded at Ebla around 3000 BC. The distinct lamassu image appeared in Assyria under Tiglath-Pileser II as a mark of power, and from Assyrian times Lamma herself became half animal, half human.

How it is done

Guardian figures stood in pairs at palace entrances, one facing the street and one looking into the inner courtyard. Cut in high relief on corner blocks, they are double-aspect: from the front the creature stands still, from the side it strides, and earlier versions have five legs, visible only at an angle. At city gates the statues grew colossal, one on each side of the doorway, each turned toward a different cardinal point. For a private house the image was engraved on a clay tablet and buried under the threshold. Colossal gate figures were often followed by a hero gripping a struggling lion.

Tools and materials

The early goddess wears a ruffled dress and a horned tiara, the horned crown marking a deity, with both hands lifted in prayer. The later hybrid gathers three signs: a human head for intelligence, a bull's body for strength, an eagle's wings for freedom, sometimes with the horns and ears of a bull. The image also travels in small formats, on cylinder seals and on the clay tablets buried beneath doorways. The great Assyrian sculptures are worked in high relief, cut to be read from two angles at once, standing to the front and walking to the side.

What it is for

Guarding was the spirit's whole office, as people held it. Lamassu and shedu began as household protectors of common Assyrian families and rose to be guardians of royalty, posted as sentinels at entrances. A house gained its watchman through a tablet buried beneath the threshold; a palace or city gained colossal paired figures at its gates, arranged to overwhelm the viewer with a sense of power, as one account of Sargon II's throne room entrance describes. The spirit's reach goes past the door: lamassu are said to stand for the zodiac, parent-stars and constellations, and as the goddess Lama, to present worshippers to the gods.

Who does it

The practice sat with households and courts. Ordinary Assyrian families kept lamassu and shedu as household protectors, and a family's guard took the shape of an engraved clay tablet under the doorstep. Kings used the same spirit at a grander scale: Nazi-Maruttash dedicated a stele of Lama in Ishtar's temple at Uruk, and the palace of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin gathered seven or more lamassu with two lion-gripping heroes around its throne room door. Assyrian sculptors cut the colossal gate figures, shaping them in high relief so that they stand to the front and walk to the side.

Peoples and places

The lamassu runs through several peoples of ancient Mesopotamia and its neighbours. Sumerians knew the guarding figure as the goddess Lamma, a woman with raised hands. Akkadians paired gods with the spirits, Papsukkal with the lamassu and Išum with shedu, and produced the female figures now called Lama by art historians. Assyrians created the hybrid winged-bull form and set the great gate statues; a Kassite king dedicated the Uruk stele. Among the Hittites, the Sumerian name dlamma served as a name for a tutelary deity, linked in some later texts to the goddess Inara, and as a title for similar protective spirits. Modern Assyrian people use the lamassu as an emblem of their ancient ancestry.

What people believe

In the worldview around it, the lamassu is a celestial being. It is described as holding all life within itself, and as a representation of the zodiac, parent-stars and constellations. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh shows the lamassu as a physical deity, an embodiment of divine higher principles tied to particular celestial origins, and some writings give the figure a goddess's identity outright. The spirits also answer to the gods: Akkadians associated Papsukkal with the lamassu and Išum with shedu, the female lamassu was later named apsasû, and in Hittite texts the Sumerian dlamma serves as a tutelary deity's name, joined in some later texts to the goddess Inara.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Art historians have done much of the sorting here. Agnès Spycket proposed that the unnamed women with raised hands who appear in seals and statuary of the Akkadian period, above all in presentation scenes of the Paleo-Babylonian era, should be identified as the goddess Lam(m)a. That reading is commonly followed, and such female figures are now generally labelled Lama in artistic terminology. The monumental palace sculptures themselves are treated in Henri Frankfort's survey of the art and architecture of the ancient Orient, which serves as a general reference for the subject.

Compare and confuse

The lamassu is easily mixed with its own kin. Shedu is its male counterpart and the female lamassu was named apsasû; in Hittite use dlamma is both a deity's name and a title. The monumental winged-man-bull statues were called aladlammû or lamassu interchangeably, yet this Assyrian motif is not the Sumerian lamassu or alad, which appear with quite different imagery. The names live on separately in games: in Dungeons & Dragons, lammasu have winged lion bodies while shedu are human-headed winged bulls.

Today

Colossal examples are kept at the British Museum and the Louvre, at Baghdad's National Museum of Iraq, at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute; Persepolis's Gate of All Nations is another famous survival. Statues left in the ground fared worse: Islamic State destroyed several in northern Iraq in the 2010s, among them the Nineveh lamassu, standing there since about 700 BC. The artist Michael Rakowitz later recreated that lost guardian for London's Trafalgar Square, shown from 2018 to 2020. Modern Assyrian people keep the figure as an emblem of their ancestry, and it has served as a military badge, from the British 10th Army to United States Forces-Iraq.

Questions people ask about Lamassu

Good reading and sources

• BBC - HistoryBBC, Article

• Lamassu on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data