The British Museum of London, have permanent one of the most impressive collections of Assyrian reliefs that have survived until today.

Fotografía por moria

The North Palace at Nineveh, in present day Iraq, has art displayed in low relief with amazing profusion showing details of the favorite subject of the Assyrian kings at that time: the hunting of lions.

Ashurbanipal (668-631 BC), the most famous of the Assyrian kings, we are shown in different scenes of hunting lions wounding. Even we can see scenes in which a subject of Assurbanipal is wounded by one of the lions, when it appears the great sovereign to punish the cat.

In the reign of Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian glory was evident not only in military power but also its culture and the arts. Assurbanipal created the library of Nineveh, which was the first library material collected and organized systematically. Nineveh was collected all the available literature in cuneiform at the time.

Some tablets from the library of Nineveh retain higher-end versions of the poem of Gilgamesh in Sumerian and Akkadian languages. Others were used as Sumerian, Akkadian dictionaries, while some contained texts on astronomy and astrology.

The biggest game of tablets is also found in the British Museum in London. This word «prophetic», which taught the scribes to interpret the meaning of what they witnessed.

If we intend to visit the British Museum during our visit to London we must spare no time: it would be a shame to spend less than two hours to visit the museum, and is highly recommended to spend an entire morning or afternoon, at least.

If you do not have much time, we advise our visit focused on a specific section of the exhibition: for example, by visiting the Assyrian reliefs calmly, stopping at the detail of each and trying to follow the thread of the story we tell. If, instead, they spend five minutes in our frenetic tour through the museum, it is as if we had not seen anything.

It is also advisable to go prepared with some documentation about the topic you want to visit, read about the particulars of the reliefs of the Parthenon frieze, who was Phidias, the sculptor principal; LET ‘a book on Assyrian culture, it is sufficient brief explanations. Informémonos the vicissitudes of the Rosetta Stone from discovery, back in 1804.

Our visit to the British Museum will charge another dimension, and will be very pleasant to know their works there the house!