Mesopotamia on His Mind
An inquiry at the banquet hall next door is answered by the manager. “Those statues are called lamassu,” he says. “They’re a symbol of the Assyrian people–like the bald eagle is the symbol of America.” He says the building is the Mesopotamia Museum. How does he know this? “I am Assyrian,” he says, “and I know the man who started the museum.”
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A short, ebullient man in his late 60s, Solhkhah is a psychologist by profession and Assyrian by ethnicity. Born and reared in Iran, Solhkhah was living in Argentina when he visited Chicago for his brother’s wedding in 1959. He stayed on here, earning his doctorate, building a practice, marrying, and raising children. He had no particular interest in archaeology or Assyrian history until 1995.
Solhkhah stayed in Helsinki for a week, the length of the symposium, learning about Assyrian history. The exhibit of artifacts–mainly reproductions from museum collections around the world–continued for three months. “Fifty-five thousand people came to see this display,” Solhkhah says. “Finland is a small country, you know, so that’s quite a lot. They didn’t know what to do with these items afterwards, so I offered to purchase them. They said, ‘Yes, we’ll sell them to you.’ I paid $30,000. Six months later they said ‘Come and pick it up.’”
He explains that the lamassu is a symbol of power: it has the eyes and wings of an eagle, the intelligence of a god, the power of a bull. “These things were all over the place in Assyria. They were all over the palaces. The capital of Assyria changed four times,” so there were many palaces. Lamassu carved from stone during the Assyrian Empire have been dispersed all over the world. Six are in the United States, including the massive sculpture at the Oriental Institute here in Chicago, Solhkhah says. “There are six in Britain, a dozen in the Louvre. A bunch fell off a barge some years ago into the Tigris River. They were never brought up. And can you picture how many must be underground? There are many more palaces yet to be opened.”
