In one of the most memorable scenes in “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, the world’s oldest epic, the eponymous hero confronts Humbaba, a monster who guards the Cedar Forest, the realm of the gods at the edge ...

Today Ashurbanipal is not a household name, but in any account of the ancient Near East, he and his dynasty loom large. The last successful ruler of the Neo-Assyrian empire (911-609BC), Ashurbanipal ...

A single piece of jewellery reveals the true meaning of Assyrian reliefs from the 7th-Century BC. Kelly Grovier explores how images depicting a staged lion hunt were used to proclaim a king's ...

This verse from the Bible likely sounds familiar to many; it refers to the conquest of the Mesopotamian city by Cyrus the Great and the Persians in 539 BCE, the year they ended a period of Babylonian ...

A team from Heidelberg University excavating in Iraq made a spectacular find: In the throne room of the North Palace of King Ashurbanipal in the ancient city of Nineveh, the archaeologists discovered ...

King Ashurbanipal ruled over Assyria between 668 and 631 BC, a period when the empire was the largest and most powerful in the world. At its peak, Ashurbanipal's empire stretched from Egypt all the ...

The great king Ashurbanipal was seriously not into lions, absolutely hated the things. The first of many gorgeously detailed Assyrian wall reliefs in this mesmerising exhibition depicts the king ...