The Master of the Sacrifice, Wall Painting from the Palace of Mari
Unknown · Amorite period, c. 1780 BC
A fragment of painted plaster over a metre wide shows a king leading a procession towards a sacrifice. He is drawn much larger than everyone else, so that his figure takes the height of two registers, while behind him smaller attendants in fringed robes walk in file. Among them a bull is led forward, its horns and head decorated for the ceremony. The colours are the earth tones of the palace painters, red, ochre and black on a pale ground, and the outlines are firm and simple. The painting is only a piece of a much larger composition arranged in three horizontal bands.
The panel decorated the upper part of the south wall of court 106 in the palace of Mari, the Court of the Palm, the same courtyard that held the investiture painting displayed nearby. It is a little older, dating to around 1780 before our era when Mari was under the control of the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad and his son. It was recovered by André Parrot's French mission from the debris of the palace, which Hammurabi of Babylon destroyed a generation later, and came to the Louvre through the partage of finds.
Did You Know? The painter made the king twice the height of his courtiers, a simple trick that tells you at a glance who matters in the scene.
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