Comics in stone - I Am Ashurbanipal at The British Museum

War camels! The humvees of the era
Assyrian soldiers pursue Arabs on camelback. 645-640 BCE

The British Museum's big exhibition over the winter was I Am Ashurbanipal, a look at the last ruler of the Assyrian empire that stretched from Egypt up to Syria and Turkey then arced East through Iraq to the Persian Gulf in 670-630 BCE. The Assyrian empires fit neatly between the end of the main Egyptian pyramid-building eras and the rise of ancient Greece. There's a map here. Source

What I'm interested in here is the nature of the narrative art in Ashurbanipal's palace at Nineveh. There's conventions on show which still hold true in today's comics, plus some ways in which the displays made sense of the narratives.

This frieze is one of a pair on display showing Ashurbanipal's hunting prowess

For this first bit, we're reading the narrative right-to-left, top-to-bottom. There were a number of three-level friezes, so maybe this was the standard page layout of the day. I've captioned the images, but they don't really need it.

A child slave releases a lion

On the right, the lion has been shot by Ashurbanipal, but keeps coming.
The king is unafraid and the lion is speared.

On the second line we have a hunting chariot

A slave keeps the lion at bay

Ashurbanipal grabs the lion by the tail and presumaby talks it to death in the caption

The third ine is the successful return to the palace

The king has single-handedly (cough) killed four lions!

Musicians lead the parade showing off the dead lions

This is a fairly simple narrative, but it gets the message across.
Also note that the king is so kingly that he is bigger than the frame:

From the other frieze - other horse riders don't get to stretch above the line.

This is a technique used in modern comics, especially manga, to emphasise size and power. However, you seldom see a page without vertical cell lines.
Neil Gaiman and J.H. Williams III take this idea of bursting out of the frame to the extreme in this double-page from Sandman Overture

Source There's lots to love in this, but see how the giant figures are outside their frames, but human-sized figures are mostly within frames. If you've never read the Sandman series, then you should go find it NOW

This however, is a totally indecipherable mess:

Battle on the banks of the River Ulai
Luckily, the curators are able to show us the narrative:



Two traitors are killed when their chariot is overturned, then a fight for the bodies ends with their heads being cut off and sent to the king
The projections include a caption nearby, so you can watch the whole madness unfolding.

The entire narrative fills these 2 massive friezes In the top-right of the lower image, Ashurbanipal is shown filling 2 narrative strips - he was present at both events but because he's king he gets to be shown once, double-size. Needless to say, he wins this battle, and the traitors are dealt with severely.

One last close-up:

The top section is a depiction of the siege of the city - familiar to anyone who saw Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers. The bottom bit is a separate depiction of the aftermath. But it manages to merge in the captured slaves being led down from the ruined city. This sleight of hand is totally understandable, despite being chronologically awkward. Also note the two soldiers waving the severed head and skulls of the traitors we met earlier.

Another rather neat way the curators enhanced some of the stonework was to colour it in:

Sebetti Gods from Ashurbanipal's throne room
The colour scheme is based on surviving pigment traces from items within the palace. I've not shown it very well, but the colours are 'painted' on to the friezes and then wiped off. The accuracy of the projections is incredible - I couldn't see any overlaps, and I was looking.

Parkland near Nineveh

There'll be another post about the writing and art, but I'll leave you with this poster for an exhibition I am REALLY looking forward to...