The British Museum

Incredible, fascinating, breathtaking, jaw dropping, brow lifting, educating, and so much more! We can't wait to go back.
Here are some pictures from the Assyrian palaces. There were six rooms filled with these treasures.

From a sign in the museum:
Assyrian kings competed to make each new palace finder than the last. Carved reliefs decorated the interior walls, while colossal man-headed lions or bulls stood as guardians of gateways.
The tradition of decorating royal residences with sculpture began with Ashurnasirpal II who reigned from 883-859.

In 612 BC, the Assyrian cities were looted and destroyed by invading Babylonians and Medes. The sculptures remained buried in the ruins until the mid-nineteenth century, when many were exacavated by British and French archaeologists.

The area was then part of the Turkish Ottoman empire which granted excavation and export permits. As a result, London and Paris have the largest collections of Assyrian reliefs outside Iraq.