The purchase of a 3,000-year-old Assyrian sculpture at Christie’s on Wednesday for a record US$31 million has upset members of the Assyrian community, who view the ancient gypsum relief as part of their cultural heritage and not as a work of art that can go to the highest bidder.

Christie’s detailed in a release that it had the legal right to sell the seven-foot sculpture on behalf of the Virginia Theological Seminary, which received the it from an American missionary, Henri B. Haskell, in 1859. Haskell acquired the relief,...