Historic panel shows Assyrian soldiers swimming with inflatable goat skins

A recently studied historic panel from an ancient Assyrian city reveals soldiers using inflatable goat skins to cross a river - offering fascinating insight into early military ingenuity nearly 3,000 years ago. 

A carved gypsum panel discovered at Nimrud, a key city of the ancient Assyrian Empire in present-day Iraq, depicts soldiers swimming across a river while using inflatable goat skins as flotation devices, Caliber.Az reports via Live Science. 

Often misinterpreted online as evidence of scuba diving nearly 3,000 years ago, the panel actually illustrates an army’s clever river crossing using primitive but effective technology.

Unearthed in the 1840s from the Northwest Palace, the relief dates back to around 865 B.C. when King Ashurnasirpal II commissioned the palace along the Tigris River. The panels, originally placed on the walls of the throne room and royal apartments, showcase the king’s military campaigns, rituals, and hunting expeditions.

This particular fragment, now part of The British Museum’s collection, shows several men and horses navigating a river. While the horses swim, cavalry soldiers guide them by holding their reins. Among the soldiers, one swims freely, another rows a small boat, and two use inflated goat-skin bags to stay afloat.

A cuneiform inscription along the panel’s top outlines the king’s ancestry and accomplishments. The figures’ fully visible, two-dimensional style—rather than showing partial submersion—is typical of Assyrian artistic conventions, notes The British Museum.

Animal skin or bladder floats, probably crafted from goat or pig skins, appear repeatedly in Nimrud’s wall panels. These flotation aids helped soldiers keep weapons dry and allowed for stealthy river crossings, contributing to King Ashurnasirpal II’s military successes and brutal expansion of his empire during the ninth century B.C.

While the idea of ancient scuba diving is fanciful, these simple goat-skin floats were a key innovation that helped the Assyrians maintain their power in Mesopotamia for centuries until the empire’s fall around 600 B.C.

By Naila Huseynova