Prism of King Ashurbanipal Recording His Campaigns against Elam
Unknown · Neo-Assyrian period, reign of Ashurbanipal, 668-627 BC
A hollow clay prism thirty-three centimetres high has several flat faces, each covered top to bottom with tightly written cuneiform. It is the document scholars call Prism F, one of the editions of the annals of Ashurbanipal, the last great king of Assyria. The text is devoted largely to his wars against Elam in south-western Iran, and above all to the sack of Susa in 646 before our era, when the Assyrians looted the city, carried off its gods and, in the king's words, sowed its ground with salt. It also records the restoration of his palace at Nineveh.
Prisms like this were buried in the foundations of buildings as a message to the gods and to future kings, which is why they survive intact. This one comes from Kuyunjik, the citadel of Nineveh, and the Louvre purchased it in 1948. There is a neat irony in its presence here: many of the Babylonian monuments in the neighbouring rooms were found at Susa, where the Elamites had taken them as booty, and this prism records the destruction of that very city by the Assyrians five centuries later.
Did You Know? The prism boasts of the sack of Susa, the same city whose ruins yielded the Code of Hammurabi and so many other treasures in the rooms around you.
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