Daisy Dunn

Hunter, scholar, boaster, dreamer

As this British Museum exhibition shows, the empire that made the statues that Islamists have since defaced were themselves no strangers to desecration

  • I am Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria

    British Museum, until 24 February

The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul, to ward off evil. The mighty lamassu to the right of the Nergal Gate had been on guard for some 2,700 years when Isis vandals took a drill to it in 2015 and blew away its face.

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