Fred Parhad

Fred Parhad (born 1947) is an Iraqi sculptor, most known for his monument of Ashurbanipal which stands in San Francisco in front of the Asian Art Museum. Fred Parhad is a self-taught sculptor, who, at the beginning of his career, focused on ancient Assyrian art.

The statue of the Assyrian King, Ashurbanipal, looks onto the San Francisco Public Library. Dressed in a short tunic, if the king's right arm cradles a lion cub, his left hand holds a clay tablet. Bronze plaque and rosettes adorn the concrete base of the statue.. The clay tablet held by the king reads as follows:

"Peace unto heaven and earth

Peace unto countries and cities

Peace unto the dwellers in all lands"

Ashurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon, was the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (668BC–c-627 BC). He introduced the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East, the Library of Ashurbanipal, now at Nineveh, partially though, which survived through the ages.

The sculptor Fred Parhad was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1947. Following Northern Iran's great massacre, a little before World War I, his grandfather Dr. Baba Parhad moved the entire family including his parents. He spent his younger days in Iraq, Iran and Kuwait, where his father, Dr. Luther Parhad, held the position of a director in the health sector.

He had a keen interest in sculpture right from his early days and spent time on it through his school days and continued further while studying at University of California, Berkeley. He made this passion of his a career choice when he moved to New York in 1976.