Inventing Assyria: exoticism and reception in nineteenth-century England and France

Long's subject derives from Herodotus. The painting was exhibited at the British Royal Academy with a lengthy quotation from a nineteenth-century popularization of the work. The custom ascribed to the Babylonians, which Herodotus deemed their wisest, was that once a year all eligible females were gathered together in their villages for men who wished to marry. The most beautiful among them was presented first, for purchase by the highest bidder, followed by the others, in decreasing order of beauty and selling for decreasing amounts. Finally, the deformed and ugly were presented, and the money of those who purchased the more beautiful women went to subsidize the takers of the uglier women, so that "the plainest was got rid of to some cynical worthy, who placidly preferred lucre to looks. By transferring to the scale of the ill-favoured the prices paid for the fair, beauty was made to endow ugliness, and the rich man's taste was the poor man's gain."(87)

Long's subject is the transformation of woman into currency. The characteristic feature of this system is the hierarchical ranking and measurement of the women/commodities. Long's primary innovation lay in setting the scene in a place devoted solely to such ranking, one without a trace of the functional setting of the village mentioned by Herodotus. Instead, Long set the work in an auction house. Some of the male viewers hold boxes of coins and other valuable objects, while a balance stands in front of the auctioneer's podium.

The woven beards, bracelets, earrings, wrapped garments, headwear, and similar features pictured on Assyrian reliefs are transferred to the crowd of male viewers in the picture. The crowd is leavened with some black Africans, a few Italic figures, and a white-bearded, Rembrandtesque Jew. The women, too, notably in their hairstyles, rounded heads, and similarly wrapped garments, are modeled after Assyrian sources. The setting is just as consciously historicized, as most of the wall and floor decorations, the pattern on the curtain, and even the relief on the auctioneer's podium derive from Assyrian reliefs and other decorations.(88)

The reception of Long's work, painted in 1875, suggests that Assyria by this time has become assimilated by Western viewers. On the details of setting, the Art-Journal stated, "We accept the archaeological details as presented to us, and without any hesitancy, fix our attention on the rare disposition of figures."(89) Long's archaeological details are completely credible to Art-Journal and also quite unremarkable, merely a prologue to the examination of its figures. Yet just as the look of ancient Assyria becomes commonplace to the English viewer, it highlights larger themes at work throughout the nineteenth-century representation of Assyria. Notably, unlike Brown, but like John Martin before him, Long conflates Assyria and Babylonia. Even more, the primary subject of the work is the display of women, and of men gazing at them with an eye toward possession. This reiterates the gendered power structure of Delacroix's work. The composition again flatters the viewer at the expense of male figures in the scene.