Hello I'm Carine Harmand I'm the project curator for the BP exhibition
I am Ashurbanipal: king of the world, king of Assyria.
Today we're going to talk about how Ashurbanipal's palaces in Nineveh
were a real representation of kingship.
So Ashurbanipal ruled the Assyrian Empire in the seventh century before Christ
from his capital city of Nineveh.
This city was probably the biggest city in the world at this time
and the city and the palaces in it represent the vastness of the Assyrian Empire
and the power of the king.
It all starts with Ashurbanipal's grandfather Sennacherib
who transformed the city of Nineveh into a vast metropolis.
He built two massive walls around the city
and he built his royal residence that he called
"the palace without rival"
which we now know as the southwest palace
because it's in the southwestern part of the royal citadel.
Ashurbanipal spends most of his life in the southwest palace
before rebuilding another palace which we know as the north palace
so we can call that palace Ashurbanipal's palace.
In a relief from the north palace of Ashurbanipal we see a depiction of a city
which is believed to be an Assyrian city
and is perhaps Nineveh.
So we see first a moat
and then three successive walls
and at the back so at the top of the relief
we see a palace with lion shaped column bases and sculptures of lamassus
lamassus are human-headed, winged bulls.
So these palaces were real display of kingship.
They were there to show the mightiness and the power of the king.
And the most important rooms in the palace were decorated with stone reliefs.
These reliefs depict the strength of the king through three main topics.
We first have lion hunts.
Lion hunt show the king as a protector of his people
and a representative of the gods because he is killing the lion.
Lion was the embodiment of chaos
was the embodiment of anything that could disturb the order that the gods had created.
The other topic that we see represented on the reliefs are military campaigns
always Assyrian victories.
They depict the superiority and ferocity of the Assyrian army.
In another video, my colleague Gareth Brereton will be talking about one of the most
impressive set of reliefs from the times of Ashurbanipal
which depicts the Battle of Til Tuba
the defeat of the Elamites by the Assyrian army.
So as a representative of the gods the king ought to be protected by them
and what we find in these reliefs are also gods and genies
who are there to protect the palace and to protect the king
So genies are just protective supernatural figures in general.
They're below the divine level of a god
but they're still a super natural protective figure.
So among those, two reliefs that were placed on both sides of a door represent two genies and one god.
So here what we see first is a lahmu: 'the hairy one'
He has big locks of hair and he's in a very tranquil position
he's guarding everything that is good inside the palace.
Then in the middle we see an ugallu.
This is a 'Great Lion'.
He's holding a dagger going towards the person who is entering the palace
and in front of him we have a god
because he's wearing this tiara with three pairs of horns
and this shows his divinity.
And he's there in the same aggressive position as the ugallu.
The lahmu - 'the hairy one' - he's there to keep all the good things in the palace
whereas the two other ones
the ugallu and the house god are there to keep everything bad
or any bad influences or malevolent intentions outside of the palace.
The location of these reliefs was very carefully studied
and it was decided by experts in the palace
so the best protection could be provided
and each palace had its own scheme of protective figures
and where they were placed.
We also know through the reliefs that
Assyrian kings planted gardens alongside their palaces.
They collected rare plants and animals as well from across the empire
kind of in a way to reproduce the empire at a smaller scale near their palace.
So in the gardens you would find gazelles, deers
you would find lions as well.
And the representations of these gardens always give an idea of paradise on earth
and it was showing that the king was
able to bring abundance to his palace.
We can see some ideally garden scenes in Ashurbanipal palace
a scene of a lion and a lioness calmly and peacefully resting in a garden
but we also have a relief that shows two musicians in a garden
and a lion who is just walking past them.
So seeing all of these reliefs in the palaces really showed that the king was absolutely indisputable
he could subdue all or any of his opponents
and he was a direct representative of the gods
he was protected by them
but he was also able to bring abundance to his realm
he was able to protect his people
and he was able to tame the chaos
he was able to kill the lions
he was even able to just domesticize them in his gardens.