Awesome things my friends sent me recently

[minoanmiss]

Lemonsharks let me know that Good Eats: Reloaded is coming soon

caitri sent me this epic essay on Ashurbanipal

and

bironic told me that the Harvard museums have assembled a special exhibition of ancient animal-shaped pottery, which is free on Wednesdays and running through Jan 2 2019.

*beams gratefully*

Comments

[kore]

He built a great library
While he wasn’t crushing enemies and killing lions, perhaps incongruously Ashurbanipal enjoyed scholarly pursuits. He could read and write, which was unusual for a king. He loved to boast about his scholarly abilities, and he even represented himself in his palace reliefs with a stylus (used for writing) in his belt, along with his sword. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but Ashurbanipal was pretty handy with both!

Ashurbanipal developed the first systematically collected and catalogued library in the world. He wanted a copy of every book worth having and sent his minions across the empire to gather all the knowledge in the world. Assyrian books were mostly written on clay tablets, not on paper, in a script called cuneiform, which used little wedges to make up symbols. In total he gathered hundreds of thousands of these tablets, around 30,000 of which are now in the British Museum.

ohmigod, historic hottie

[darkmarcy]

Yay nice things!