Cigarette Card

Wills’s Cigarettes “Wonders of the Past” Cigarette Card #20 “Assyrian Palace, Nineveh”

Produced in 1926 by W. D. & H. O. Wills.

Issued by The Imperial Tobacco Company (of Great Britain & Ireland) Ltd.

Text on reverse of card reads:

“Gateways, and portals from hall to hall, in Assyrian palaces were flanked by grotesque monsters-bulls or lions winged and with human heads. The walls were covered with painted sculptures in low relief exhibiting the victorious exploits or religious observances of the king. Above, the ceilings were formed of beams of painted and inlaid cedar-wood. In this reconstruction of a palace at Nineveh the king is seen entering the hall attended by eunuch and vizier, and received by three-musicians playing a kind of harp. All the costumes are copied from actual sculptures discovered among the ruins by Sir Austen Henry Layard.”