Travelling with Taryn and Brad: The British Museum!

The British Museum was AWESOME to say the least!! I liked it way more than the Louvre... you know why!?! Because there was 10X more Assyrian stuff at the British Museum!! It was fantastical!! And there was lots of Mesopotamian stuff too!! I was fully in my glory :) Check out some of the Assyrian wall reliefs! They were known for their gruesome depictions of war and their depictions of lion hunts (also gruesome) so viewer discretion is advised!!

This is part of the Lion Hunt series and it shows the King (depicted as larger than all the other people) as stabbing a Lion. Because that seems reasonable... right?? Propaganda much??

They show an injured lion throwing up... ew!

A little boy releases the lion from a cage. Notice that he is sitting in his own cage for protection.

All the slaves / servants carrying off the dead lion!

So you might be wondering about why they hunted lions... in what is now Iraq / Syria?? Apparently they were very prevalent and ferocious, so depictions of the king killing them and hunting them (most likely not even in the wild) was seen as the king being strong and protecting his lands.

Now onto the real war stuff!! Check out this old school tank!! It has a battering ram to take down walls!

The vultures were pecking at all the dead bad guys!

And as a warning to anyone who would go against the kingdom check out what they do to people they fight!! Put them on sticks in front of the city wall!!! Ew.

But their protective deities always have a smile on:

We also saw the Assyrian kings library! It has some of the oldest and most famous tablets ever!

Like Tablet 11 from the Gilgamesh epic! Yes.... it is a flood story ... yes... it is from approximately 1400 years before biblical times. There are great translations of it at the library if you are interested!

We also saw one of the first "maps of the world" with Babylon at the center! duh!

One of my favorites was the Standard of Ur! One of the oldest and best preserved articles. No one really knows the purpose it had... but doesn't it look awesome!