Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Greeks merged two brothers into one
The Greek version
In the Greek version, Sardanapalus was the last king of Assyria. He died in the flames of his palace alongside all of his riches and concubines. The ending belongs to Shamash-shum-ukin, who is believed to have thrown himself into the fire of his burning palace in 648 BCE. Ashurbanipal ruled from 668 BCE to 627 BCE, and Nineveh fell in 612 BCE.
The Romantic afterlife
The story outlived the Greeks. European writers and painters of the Romantic era took it up, including Lord Byron in his verse drama Sardanapalus and Eugene Delacroix in his painting Death of Sardanapalus.
What the tablets corrected
Until Ashurbanipal's library was discovered, what Europeans knew about the king himself came from Greek and Roman writers and the Bible. The tablets gave historians and other scholars a way to start correcting it.
How did Greeks learn about Assyria's kings?
A main source was Ctesias of Cnidus, a Greek physician at the Persian court around 400 BCE. His Persica described a long line of Assyrian kings ending in a luxury-loving ruler he called Sardanapalus. His work survives only in fragments and summaries. The later historian Diodorus Siculus repeated the story, which is how it reached Roman and medieval readers.
Why did Delacroix paint the death of Sardanapalus?
Delacroix took his subject from Lord Byron's 1821 play Sardanapalus, which retold the Greek legend of the king's last night. He painted the canvas in 1827 and 1828 and showed it at the Paris Salon of 1828. It measures nearly four meters by five, and it hangs in the Louvre today. Critics at the time disliked its crowded, violent composition.
How did the Bible shape European views of Assyria?
The books of Kings and Isaiah describe the Assyrian king Sennacherib besieging Jerusalem in 701 BCE. The book of Nahum celebrates the fall of Nineveh. The book of Jonah sends a prophet to preach there. For centuries these passages were Europeans' main account of Assyria, and they cast it as an enemy of Israel and Judah.
More from Stuff You Missed in History Class
