✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Visual Arts

Review: I Am Ashurbanipal, British Museum ★★★★★

08 Nov 18 – 24 Feb 19, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM

New British Museum exhibition sheds light on the world’s first empire and the great, unknown king who ruled it

5 CW readers are interested
I Am Ashurbanipal: King Of The World, King Of Assyria, the British Museum
I Am Ashurbanipal: King Of The World, King Of Assyria, the British Museum
Review: I Am Ashurbanipal, British Museum 4 Review: I Am Ashurbanipal, British Museum Sam McPhail

Unless you happen to read ancient Aramaic, chances are the name ‘Ashurbanipal’ doesn’t ring many bells. It doesn't trip easily off the tongue either (Ash-er-ban-ee-pal). However he was one of the most powerful men you’ve never heard of. This new exhibition at the British Museum introduces his remarkable story to a modern audience. For forty years in the 7th century BC he strode the ancient world like a colossus, humbly signing himself ‘King of the World’. This world was in fact the ancient empire of Assyria, carved out of lands stretching from Egypt to Kuwait and Turkey to Jordan.




Ashurbanipal on horseback hunting a lion.


Ashurbanipal was heavily invested in stamping his name on history. A letter written at age 13 to his father, or a boastful tablet in a palace he had built, allow the exhibition to tell Ashurbanipal's story in his own words. In pride of place are the wall carvings he commissioned for his vast palace complex in Nineveh, meant to read like the perfect royal CV. Stylised, elegant, intricate, these reliefs lose none of their ability to impress despite the passing of 2000 years, easily immersing the viewer in the king's narrative, projectors highlighting the major plot points or recreating their original vivid colours. Ashurbanipal is right at the centre of course, a giant amongst mere mortals, smiting lions and enemies astride his fiery steed with a sword in one arm, but a quill in the other. This was what made Ashurbanipal unique: at a time when rulers were meant to be grizzled soldiers, Ashurbanipal was revolutionarily proclaiming the pen as mighty as the sword.



This was not mere posturing. At the centre of the exhibition lie two large bookcases, filled from ceiling to floor with Ashurbanipal's reading material, the cracked clay tablets covering a vast range of subjects in a mysterious spiky script. Ashurbanipal is thus a man of contradictions, a brutal warrior and refined scholar, capable of brutal destruction and exquisite creation. The destruction of the revered and beautiful Egyptian city of Thebes, melting down its' monuments and enslaving the inhabitants, was just as important for him as collecting books for his library, which at 10,000 works was the largest collection of its time. He is possibly the only person ever to have been both a librarian and a lion hunter, relishing the chance to gallop off into the palace grounds and strike down one of the beasts with a club before returning home to discourse with learned men on the positions of the stars.



His empire was a mover and shaker, and Assyria’s strong sphere of influence is witnessed by a collection of objects from across the globe imitating the imperial styles. As far away as Italy and Cyprus, local elites sported the latest Nineveh fashions, their flowing square-cut beards and long skirts an attempt by this ancient jet-set to align themselves with what was going on at the centre of the world. Such context explains why Ashurbanipal had good reason to crow.




An Assyrian protective deity, a lamassu (left) and cuneiform tablet from Ashurbanipal's library (right)



But this pride came before a fall. Cracked tablets and defaced wall panels litter the galleries, an ominous premonition of the empire's nemesis. Less than twenty years after Ashurbanipal's death the empire fragmented, the library burned down and the city was sacked, raiders carrying away the trophies of old Assyrian conquests before razing Nineveh to the ground. What had been the largest city in the world, nestled at the centre of the largest empire in the world, became a forgotten ruin for the next 2000 years.



The story is still ongoing, and recent political events are added into the exhibition’s narrative. The vandalism wrought by Isis on Nineveh’s ruins in 2015, coupled with the shocked reaction of ordinary Iraqis, show how the site still lives as a battle-ground for the country's identity. Noble endeavour this may be, but there is a bitter irony to defending Assyrian art from the merciless destruction of Isis: an elephant in the room, trumpeting out from panels lauded for their beauty yet depicting the violence and misery wreaked by Ashurbanipal on those who resisted him.



By Alex Colville


What Review: I Am Ashurbanipal, British Museum
Where British Museum, Great Russell St, London, WC1B 3DG | MAP
Nearest tube Holborn (underground)
When 08 Nov 18 – 24 Feb 19, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Price £17.50
Website Read more here



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Things to do in London this weekend: 27–29 January
Harrison Ford in Shrinking, AppleTV+ (Photo: Apple)
What to watch on TV this week
Culture After Dark: The Best Museum Late Night Openings
Culture After Dark: the best museum late-night openings

Editor's Picks

Culture After Dark: The Best Museum Late Night Openings
Culture After Dark: the best museum late-night openings
Egon Schiele, Nude Self-Portrait, Squatting, 1916
Royal Academy Exhibition review: Klimt/Schiele: Drawings from the Albertina Museum
London Design Biennale 2018, Hong Kong, Sensorial Estates
What's on at Somerset House: exhibitions, art, design & more
NG726  Giovanni Bellini  The Agony in the Garden  about 1465  Egg on wood  81.3 x 127 cm  © The National Gallery, London
Mantegna and Bellini at the National Gallery
Pierre Bonnard, The Terrace at Vernon (1939)
Review: Pierre Bonnard exhibition, Tate Modern
Quentin Blake and a history of unseen art
The Unseen Art of Quentin Blake and Illustrations of the Refugee Crisis, House of Illustration
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

We recommend nearby

  • Abeno

    The first (and still the best) Japanese restaurant in London to specialise in Kansai-style okonomi-yaki pancakes from Osaka. These savoury pancakes, cooked on hotplates embedded in diners' tables, are made with a special flour imbued with bonito and seaweed, spring onions, chilli, cabbage and more.

    Read more...

    Discover new and exciting restaurants like Abeno in Holborn with Culture Whisper’s guide to things to do in London!

    Book Map
5

British Museum

Art Exhibitions

Things To Do

You might like

  • Japan House London

    Japan House London

  • Detail: Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Woman inspired by Lucretia, c.1530-3. © The National Gallery, London

    Review: Lorenzo Lotto at The National Gallery ★★★★★

  • Don Carlos, A Rose Theatre Kingston

    Don Carlos, Rose Theatre Kingston

  • Miriam Escofet, An Angel At My Table. Photograph by Jorge Herrera.

    BP Portrait Award 2018, National Portrait Gallery, London

  • Lily James and Gillian Anderson: All About Eve, London Theatre 2019

    Lily James and Gillian Anderson: All About Eve, Noel Coward Theatre review ★★★★★

  • Steve Carell shrinks to size in Welcome to Marwen

    Welcome to Marwen film review ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×