I Am Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria


Fabulous exhibition at the British Museum looking at the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.

I love Assyrian art and this show makes you realise how much of what we see is from this period. This is partly because the British Museum led the excavations at Nineveh. The show gave a picture of an absolute ruler but a much more subtle man than we see from biblical texts.

The first section looked at the palace at Nineveh and court life. It cleverly used the reliefs to tell this story including sections on banquets and gardens and of course the already mentioned lion hunts. It was also lovely to see other objects from the site such as chair ornaments.

I loved the section which discussed the library he created which contained over 100,000 works mostly newly copied in the finest clay. Each piece has his name on it. There was a lovely display of these tablets in a floor to ceiling glass case to give an idea of the enormity and coverage of this reference library.

Before looking at the fall of the city the show looked at the king’s empire and featured displays on each of the countries he conquered and with which he traded. It also looked at the vast administrative system that developed to manage this.

It was sad that the show had to end by looking at the damage which has been done to the site of Nineveh, now Mosul, in the Iraq was and since due occupation by the Islamic State. At Nimrud, the other major Assyrian city, 80% of the standing archaeology has been destroyed. There was a good video of the work the British Museum is doing to train Iraqi’s in rescue archaeology and conservation.

Closes on 24 February 2019

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