Ancient Assyrian Decorative Bricks

This time on Artifactually Speaking, I take a look at bricks.

I've covered bricks before, and that's no surprise since they are the basic building blocks for Mesopotamian structures in general. In this case, I'm looking at decorated bricks from the Neo-Assyrian temple of Ninurta at Nimrud/Kalhu. We have found hundreds of these fallen between and in front of the entrance to the shrine of Ninurta and I believe they originally formed an arch or vaulted roof that led to the shrine itself. The design is elaborately decorated in black, white, yellow, and blue. Mostly they are geometric designs, but some floral are also noted. We will attempt to join the designs where possible to see the overall motif of this archway.

I've gotten particularly interested in the designs on the brick that would not have been seen. This seems a curious addition, that there would be drawings and lines on surfaces of the brick that would be covered by other bricks. I wonder if these might be instructions for how to lay the bricks in the first place, by matching different numbers of lines. Or perhaps they are just doodles that the artists made in partial boredom or in creative moments.