Ashurbanipal ruled an empire that stretched from Cyprus to Iran – little wonder he referred to himself as “king of the world”
THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
The name Ashurbanipal can hardly be counted among the most famous when it comes to ancient leaders. Against the likes of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra and many others, he may struggle, in the Western world at least, to get picked out of a line up. Even the curator of a the British Museum exhibition about him and his often-overlooked Assyrian Empire, Gareth Brereton, says that he is “the greatest king you’ve never heard of”.
Yet as has been revealed in ‘I am Ashurbanipal: King of the World, King of Assyria’, he was the most powerful person on Earth. As the dominant force in seventh-century-BC Mesopotamia, the crucible of civilisations, he furthered Assyria’s reach beyond what had been achieved in the previous two millennia. And he used his power to build a vast library of texts from across his empire – the oldest of its kind surviving – that has bestowed a wealth of knowledge about this ancient world and its peoples.