16 Francesca Stavrakopoulou frequent of images to decorate the marbled palace walls is the repeated scene of the sacred tree. The recurrent association of this motif and its variations with Neo-Assyrian kingship is widely recognized, though a consensus is yet to be reached concerning its meaning and function (63). Seth Richardson has conducted a detailed study of the sacred tree scene and the nature of its occurrences in the Northwest palace (64). He finds that whilst this scene might include images of the king or divine figures, it most frequently occurs alone and as the dominant motif in the palace, appearing 190 times throughout all its buildings, 96 of these in Room I, in which the sacred tree is the only motif. Though the function of this room is not clearly discernable, most are agreed that it was employed for a ritual purpose, and it seems probable that the room’s function was bound up with the sacred trees covering its walls. Richardson observes that the number of sacred trees in Room I closely approximates the number of deceased kings listed in contemporary recensions of the Assyrian King List, that is, 100 dead kings. This, plus the near-correlation of 96 sacred trees in Room I and 94 sacred trees throughout the remainder of the palace, suggests that the repeated motif of the sacred tree represents a system directly related to the ritual use of the Assyrian King List. Accordingly, a plausible case can be constructed in arguing that each sacred tree in Room I represents a dead king (65), and that this room played a role in a cult of royal ancestor veneration. This “garden of ancestors”, as Richardson describes it, would have been of crucial ideological importance to Aππurnas≥irpal II, for in relocating his capital, he was leaving behind the royal tombs situated conventionally beneath the old palace. “A venerative royal cult to ancestors, situated on a grand scale in the new Kal˙u palace, would have supported Aππurnas≥irpal II’s claims to legitimate and traditional kingship, and would have solved the peculiar (63) E.g., B.N. PORTER, “Sacred Trees, Date Palms, and the Royal Persona of Ashurnasirpal II”, JNES 52 (1993) 129-139; S. PARPOLA, “The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and Greek Philosophy”, JNES 52 (1993) 161-208. (64) “An Assyrian Garden of Ancestors: Room I, Northwest Palace, Kal˙u”, SAAB 13 (1999-2001) 145-216. I am grateful to Stephanie Dalley for bringing this article to my attention. (65) In his discussion, Richardson is quick to acknowledge and to address the apparent disparity between the numbers of sacred trees and dead kings, for which he offers several solutions based upon new reconstructions of Room I and the arrangement of its trees, the grouping of dead kings into their dynasties, and comparative evidence concerning inconsistencies in Egyptian king lists.