Masterpieces of the British Museum

The ancient Egyptian galleries of the British Museum are justly renowned

what some people don't realize though is that equally

remarkable objects can be seen in the galleries next door

here you'll find relics of another ancient civilization

that of the Assyrians

one exhibit outshines all the rest and provides a startling

insight into the Assyrians rich though sometimes brutal culture

at the heart of the Assyrian galleries lies an extraordinary set of stone carvings

that depict a group of warriors engrossed in an unusual and violent past time

led by a tall beared hated figure who is clearly their king

the men are shown hunting and killing a large number of lions

Unsettling to some, wondrous many more

these are the extraordinary lion hunt reliefs

the death agonies of the Lions meticulously recorded

by the ancient sculptures are extremely vivid

for some people they're very strong meet

many others though see grandeur and beauty here which more

than compensate for the harshness of what's being portrayed

it is great art and like all great art it is the product of a religious act

in which the artist has opened himself to the soul of everything

has made himself a channel for the universal soul

and it comes through the work to the viewer, with impact that will last forever

the King doesn't matter. He is a forget about it King

the Lions are what matter. they are as real as the sculpture could make them

and their reality persists in the alabaster

it persists for all the centuries between the timer carving and now

obviously in a world that's very concerned about cruelty to animals

I think people aren't concerned with these but actually it's a lot about cruelty to animals

they are about the nobility and the force of an animal

and I think there are some of the greatest things in the in the British Museum

the Assyrians have got that notion of animals in movement,

and I can't think of anything else of this date that has this level

of understanding sophistication and achievement and she a beauty

The look at these I think are forever

I started coming to the museum when I was about 15 or 16. I

stumbled into this collection and I've been coming back ever since

I think they are a profound experience if you just kind of let yourself go

and look at it as a time when mankind was struggling to

almost kind of win control of the world and they didn't know what the world was

whenever I have friends who come to London I

always make sure that we kind of amble down here

and I can say, probably about 50% of them

have kind of set up a bit straight and say this is a totally different

sculptural artistic intellectual experience than probably anywhere else

although they aren't perhaps quite as popularly celebrated

as a few of the British Museum's other exhibits

the lion hunt reliefs attract thousands of visitors each year

this pleases the staff will care for them because

they realize not only how important the reliefs are

but how lucky it is that were able to see them at all

created around 645 BC while the Assyrian Empire was at its height

the reliefs were buried under tons of rubble for over 2500 years

they might never have come to light again if not for one man and

all but forgotten victorian archaeologist called Hormuz Rassam

Rassam looked and acted like a typical English gentleman but he wasn't English at all no

was he as many people thought a Turk. He was in fact what we today would call an Iraqi

Iraq back then wasn't the war-torn country known to us

in fact it wasn't a country at all. It was a province of the Ottoman Empire

ignored by almost everyone except those who had an interest in the ancient past

they were drawn to the region because they knew that some 3000 to 4000 years earlier

the fertile land surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

have given rise to some of the world's earliest civilizations

including arguably the greatest of them all, that of the Assyrians

the man who discovered more Assyrian remains than anyone

else was an english explorer called Austen Henry

he carried out many successful digs in the region during the 1840s

one of these took place on the site of the ancient city of Nineveh

this happened to lie just across the Tigris River from the

town of Mosul which is where Hormuz Rassam had his home

soon after arriving in Mosul for the first time in 1842

Layard met Rassam and instantly identified him as someone who could help him with his work

Layard needs to have a secretary interpreter, an assistant, someone to actually

manage their own affairs all the difficult and and day-to-day administration

and my great-grandfather Horuz Rassam takes up that role

and does it so well that they both become quite good friends with in matter of weeks

Rassan manage the money, he did a lot of managing the workmen

and he was clearly so capable that layered found he could hardly work without him

and then later on, Layard himself gave up archaeology and took up a career in politics in England

the British Museum wanted someone to go out and work for them in northern Iraq

the best person that they could find was Hormuz Rassan

taking over from Henry Layard was a huge responsibility for Hormuz Rassam

who was only 26 years old at the time. He was keen to continue and expand on Layard's work

but he knew from the start that he didn't enjoy the

full confidence of the British Museum's trustees

they were rather suspicious of him because he wasn't a traditional English gentleman

the person who they felt they could rely on was Henry Rawlinson the British consul in Baghdad

Rassam was answerable to Rawlinson but in practice Rassam worked

as an independent agent and took all the decisions himself

the biggest decision Rassam had to take concerned an unfortunate agreement that Henry

Rawlinson entered into with a rival archaeologists a Frenchman called Victor Klass

Klass asked Rawlinson for permission to carry out

excavations in the northern part of the niniven site

Rassan was deeply opposed to this idea because he believed that a large mound

which dominated this area concealed the remains of an ancient assyrian palace

for reasons that are hard to understand though Rawlinson

who was the British consul, let's not forget, chose to grant

the Frenchman's request causing a great problem for Rassan.

He agonized for months over what to do. Then unwilling to see the French

walk off of the prize which he fell to go to britain he took a decisive step

without tellingRawlinson, he instructed his workmen to go ahead and excavate the mound

to avoid detection by Monsieur Klass they were further instructed to work at night

This nocturnal adventure could easily have backfired on Hormuz Rassan

and for a while it looked as though it would.

The first nightstick produced a few ancient objects. the second night a few more

the fines weren't big or exciting enough to shield him from

the trouble he faced if word leaked out for what he was doing

by night three, he become seriously concerned.

He needed a break through, and luckily for him, one occurred. it was the

first sight of a great work of art "hidden for more than 2000 years

One division of the workmen, after 3 or 4 hours hard labor, were awarded by the

first grand discovery of a beautiful bas-relief in a perfect state of preservation

the delight of the workmen was naturally beyond description

they all rushed to see the new discovery, and after having guests at the bas-relief

wonder, they collected together and began to dance and sing? praises with all their mind

Rassan's most pressing problem had now been solved

thanks to the principle of finders keepers which

prevailed among archaeologists at the time.

No one could now force him off the site.

Unhampered by any need for secrecy, he ordered

his men to dig a massive hole in the mound.

As expected, this laid bare the remains of a royal palace.

The mud brick building itself had all but disappeared,

but the stone slabs which had once decorated had survived.

As soon as he laid eyes on the great reliefs, Rassam

realized that he'd found a masterpiece of ancient art.

He wrote to Henry Layard saying they surpass everything

yet discovered in the ruins of ancient Assyria

and that's a view that's become widely accepted since.

150 years on, the brilliance of their execution

continues to astound british museum staff.

The amount of fine detail the ancient covers managed to incorporate in their work

is what particularly strikes Paul Collins, the man in charge of the Lion Hunt Gallery.

Stepping close, you get a totally different appreciation of the quality of carving.

The extraordinary detail on this release needs the person to get up, the viewer, to

come within inches really, to see the little Lions Head at the top of the Kings bow

complementing the idea of this is Alliance hunt.

The lion is picked up again on the bracelets of some of his

officials that accompanied the king in the hunting chariot

and looking at the costume of the king himself we see extraordinary

embroidery that may have been picked out in color originally

finally incise over his entire body, rosettes and images of the

king himself about a centimeter high picked out in fine detail

how did the Assyrian sculptors achieve this extraordinary level of detail

nobody can say for sure. For nobody is entirely certain how the reliefs were produced

to shed more light and what the process might have been, we

asked sculpture Sue Nelson to make a copy of one of Lion's

Using modern tools but working in the same material

: alabaster, that the original sculptures used.

Copying the Lion itself, she found relatively easy. But she couldn't work out how

her ancient counterparts and managed to achieve the spectacular level of detail apparent in certain parts of the relief such as the King's costume.

The thing about alabaster is that you have to keep everything very sharp.

And so that probably would have been quite a problem for them,

because it's likely that they wouldn't have had hardened steel

the little rosettes where they've taken the groundout

it's so fine you think how do they do that

I've used masonry tool, and it's pretty tiny but it's still not tiny

enough to do some of those little rosettes which are minuscule and so neat

Sue Nelson may not have come to a firm conclusion

about how the most delicate carving was done

but she has a definite opinion about something else

she believes that contrary to what some experts have argued

the reliefs could not have been carved in situ on the palace walls

it's hard work working upright because you're using

energy to keep a mallet or something in the air

so that's why I think they would have laid the things out in a workshop

they would have designed the thing in a workshop

the cleverness and ingenuity of their overall design,

the way that one event is juxtaposed with another sometimes

foreshadowing modern art forms such as comic strips and film

are commonly agreed to be the reliefs greatest attributes

it's widely agreed too, that the design must have been the work of one artist

who he was, we simply don't know.

But the astonishing quality of his work means that for many people

he is the true hero of the Lion Hunt reliefs

the Stonecutters were brilliant technicians but whoever finish the

design the concept ability to put so much narrative into a continuum

in proportion with life in it and all that detail as well as the overall impression

that person was of course a major artist