“Son of man,” He said to me, “do you see this? Is it not enough for the house of Judah to commit the abominations they are practicing here, that they must also fill the land with violence and continually provoke Me to anger? Look, they are even putting the branch to their nose!
The left hand is occupied by an object – a mirror for the queen, a scepter for the king – while the right hand performs the well-known appa labānu “to stroke the nose”, gesture. The object they hold seems to be the libbi gišimarri (“palm shoot”), a cult/cleansing instrument, which is also attested in other iconographic and textual evidence. In fact, the use of the date-palm heart (libbi gišimarri) and the heart of a wood (libbi iṣṣi) is often attested in the ritual mîs pî, which is the ritual performed by the queen and king in the bronze relief. The former, in particular, is mentioned on a list of aromatic woods used during the ritual, while the second, translated by the editors also as “date-palm heart”, is encountered in the following sentence: “date-palm-“heart”…he/you lay down and raises his hand”. The movement of the hand which holds the libbi iṣṣi described in the text might recall the ritual action performed by the queen and the king, thus making them active participants and performers of the ritual.