Name of Object:

Raft Conveying Winged Bull to Baghdad

Location:

London, United Kingdom

Holding Institution:

Victoria and Albert Museum

 About Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Date of Object:

1849–50

Inventory Number:

SD 257

Provenance:

United Kingdom

Description:

Layard describes the removal of the winged bulls from the site of the mound of Nimrud in Nineveh and its remains, 1849, from where they had lain for approximately the last 2,730 years. They were carefully loaded on to rafts, made in the traditional way of using hundreds of inflated goat and sheep-skins supporting a wooden superstructure. Layard (who had learnt Arabic and Persian) recruited the crew locally, as he had done with his workforce. In April 1847, he sent them floating with the current, off on a six hundred mile journey down the river Tigris to Basra, where ships of the British Navy were waiting to take them the next 12,000 miles to England. Although the artist Cooper was not present on this occasion, he subsequently witnessed similar events, and would have been able to reconstruct the scene.

Citation of this web page:

Victoria and Albert Museum "Raft Conveying Winged Bull to Baghdad" in "Sharing History", Museum With No Frontiers, 2025.
https://sharinghistory.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;AWE;uk;43;en

Prepared by: Victoria and Albert Museum

MWNF Working Number: UK 043