Cathy's Art Diary

Enthusiastic online lecture from the British Museum on the cuneiform tablets discovered at Nineveh, the remains of Ashurbanipal’s Great Library. Irving Finkel talked us through some of the most important tablets including the one shown here which is a non-biblical version of the story of the Great Flood. He explained how the emperor commissioned copies of documents which were produced by the scribes in the library as well as demanding originals from other libraries around the empire. He talked about how the tablets are displayed at the British Museum and how they were used in the wonderful Assyria exhibition and showed us relief sculptures which showed scribes in the field recording details of a battle. It was a bonus to find the event was chaired by Edmund de Waal to mark his installation at the museum “Library of Exile”. 

Fun series of blog posts on the British Museum website imagining contemporary travel guides of ancient cities.   Each follows the pattern of a modern travel guide with sections on how to get there, how to get around, what the sites are, what to eat and where to go shopping. They are illustrated with pictures and objects from the collection. This is such a witty idea but the articles are also packed full of information. I hope there are more to come!   I think my favourite was the Edo one as all the pictures are contemporary Japanese prints including this wonderful one of a busy shopping street. There is also an article on London landmarks using prints and drawings from the collection for those of us dreaming of a day out in London. Edo (Tokyo),early 19th century T hebes, Egypt, 13th century BC Athens, 5thcentury BC Rome, 1st centuryAD Ninevah, 7th century BC London Landmarks

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 th...

Fascinating lecture at the British Museum examining the lion reliefs from Nineveh some of which are included in the current I am Ashurbanipal. The lecture was given by Paul Collins from the Ashmolean Museum. He started by describing the two palaces at Nineveh and looking at where these reliefs were situated. He then went on to describe them in detail with excellent slides and then to try to unpick what they might mean. He compared the very formal looking king with the naturalist lions and pointed out that the hunt was taking place in a formal space not in the wild. He related this to the Assyrian creation myths where the gods overcome chaos and bring peace and stability. The king is therefore showing himself as overcoming the chaos of wild life and building a stable empire. I was lovely to be able to leave the lecture and go to see the reliefs which were left in the normal museum galleries and then to do the exhibition. The lecture certainly shed light on the exhibition wh...