page_title: Ashurbanipal
hierarchical_section_title: Ashurbanipal
caption_attribution_description: In ancient Assyria, lion-hunting was considered the sport of kings, symbolic of the ruling monarch’s duty to protect and fight for his people. The sculpted reliefs in Room 10a illustrate the sporting exploits of the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (668-631 BC) and were created for his palace at Nineveh (in modern-day northern Iraq). The hunt scenes, full of tension and realism, rank among the finest achievements of Assyrian Art. They depict the release of the lions, the ensuing chase and subsequent killing.
context_page_description: Ashurbanipal, also spelled Assurbanipal, Asshurbanipal and Asurbanipal was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Esarhaddon in 668 BC to his own death in 631 BC. The fourth king of the Sargonid dynasty, Ashurbanipal is generally remembered as the last great king of Assyria.
  At the time of Ashurbanipal's reign, the Neo-Assyrian Empire was the largest empire that the world had ever seen and its capital, Nineveh, was probably the largest city on the planet. Selected as heir by his father in 672 BC despite not being the eldest son, Ashurbanipal ascended to the throne in 669 BC jointly with his elder brother Shamash-shum-ukin, who became king of Babylon. Much of the early years of Ashurbanipal's reign was spent fighting rebellions in Egypt, which had been conquered by his father.
  The greatest campaigns of Ashurbanipal were those directed towards Elam, an ancient enemy of Assyria, and against Shamash-shum-ukin, who had expected to be an equal to Ashurbanipal and began to resent the overbearing control his younger brother held over him.
context_section_description: Ashurbanipal, also spelled Assurbanipal, Asshurbanipal and Asurbanipal (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , Aššur-bāni-apli or Aššur-bāni-habal, meaning "Ashur has given a son-heir") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Esarhaddon in 668 BC to his own death in 631 BC. The fourth king of the Sargonid dynasty, Ashurbanipal is generally remembered as the last great king of Assyria.
  At the time of Ashurbanipal's reign, the Neo-Assyrian Empire was the largest empire that the world had ever seen and its capital, Nineveh, was probably the largest city on the planet. Selected as heir by his father in 672 BC despite not being the eldest son, Ashurbanipal ascended to the throne in 669 BC jointly with his elder brother Shamash-shum-ukin, who became king of Babylon. Much of the early years of Ashurbanipal's reign was spent fighting rebellions in Egypt, which had been conquered by his father.
  The greatest campaigns of Ashurbanipal were those directed towards Elam, an ancient enemy of Assyria, and against Shamash-shum-ukin, who had expected to be an equal to Ashurbanipal and began to resent the overbearing control his younger brother held over him. Elam was defeated in a series of campaigns in 665 BC and 647–646 BC, after which the cities of Elam were destroyed, its people slaughtered, and the land was left barren and undefended. Shamash-shum-ukin rebelled in 652 BC and assembled a coalition of Assyria's enemies to fight against Ashurbanipal alongside him, but was defeated by Ashurbanipal.
  Ashurbanipal is most famous for the construction of the Library of Ashurbanipal, the first systematically organized library in the world. The king himself considered the library, a collection of over 30,000 clay tablets with text of a variety of genres including religious documents, handbooks, and traditional Mesopotamian stories, as his greatest achievement. Ashurbanipal's library is the primary reason why texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh managed to survive to the present day.
caption: Ashurbanipal, closeup from the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal
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