Episode Details

Ashurbanipal was the last great king of Assyria, a ruler who built the ancient world's largest library while flaying his enemies alive and stacking their skulls into pyramids. His collection at Nineveh preserved the Epic of Gilgamesh and thousands of other texts that would otherwise have been lost.

This episode examines the paradox of a king whose love of knowledge coexisted with a capacity for cruelty that shocked even the ancient world.

• The Library of Nineveh and how it preserved Mesopotamian literature
• The military campaigns and the graphic violence of Assyrian war art
• His fratricidal civil war against his brother in Babylon
• The fall of Nineveh just decades after his death