Let’s head into Room 7. It feels like we’ve just stepped inside an Assyrian palace. The walls here are lined with carved stone panels — called reliefs — made from soft white gypsum with incredible detail. These once decorated a massive palace in Nimrud, a city in what’s now northern Iraq. Back then, Nimrud was the capital of the Assyrian Empire — a powerful kingdom that, at its height, ruled much of the Middle East.

This palace was built about 2,850 years ago by King Ashurnasirpal II. He expanded the empire through war and filled his palace with these carvings to show his power. In the original palace, hundreds of these reliefs ran from room to room.

Look closely — you’ll see battles where enemies fall before the king’s army, lion hunts where he strikes the killing blow, and scenes of him standing shoulder to shoulder with the gods. All sending one message: I am the king. The king is supreme.

And it’s not just pictures. Take a look at the middle section of the reliefs. You’ll see lines of wedge‑shaped cuneiform writing, packed tightly across the surface — more than ten lines in many cases. Right in the centre, it feels like it must be very important, doesn’t it?

Here’s what it says — more or less: “I am Ashurnasirpal, great king, strong king, king of the universe.” It repeats his name, his titles, divine commands, and his building projects — again and again. That’s why it’s called the Standard Inscription.

And it wasn’t just in public halls and the throne room — it was even in the king’s private living spaces, deep inside the palace. That makes you wonder — if it was carved where almost no one else would see it, maybe it wasn’t really meant to be read. And you’d be right — hardly anyone could read back then, not even the king himself. Scribes did that work for him.

So for someone walking through an Assyrian palace — and you’d have to be someone important to be there — it was a reminder: the king commands not only warriors, but also the language of the gods and the scribes who can fix his words forever. The point wasn’t what the words said, but how they looked — like a royal badge, showing everyone the king was in charge.

Today, we live in a world where almost anyone can read and write — writing isn’t just for temples and palaces. But the same trick still works. Take a look around. Most of the reliefs on display here have writing on them. In reality, there were plenty without any. Some showed dramatic scenes of battle or hunting, full of lifelike detail. And yet — the ones with writing are the ones chosen for display.

Why? Maybe it’s because we’re used to seeing words at the centre of an image to grab attention — the way a headline works in a poster or an advert. A headline hooks you in and points your thoughts in a certain direction before you’ve even read the rest. The museum’s display taps into that habit. So, yes — putting writing at the centre works. This is basically the king’s advert — and here we are, nearly three thousand years later, still looking at it.

Now let’s step into Room 55. Here, you’ll find something from ancient Assyria. It’s what’s known as the first great story in human history. Look inside the glass case near the entrance. There’s a small, flat clay tablet, about the size of your hand. On its dark brown surface, you’ll see rows of wedge-shaped writing. This is known as the Flood Tablet.

It was written about 2,700 years ago, and it’s part of the Epic of Gilgamesh — among the oldest stories ever written. The main character is Gilgamesh, a king who longs to live forever. He travels far to escape death, but in the end, he learns something important — Everyone dies. What matters is what you leave behind. He returns to his city, Uruk, and realises that the city and its walls — the things he built — will be what keep his memory alive. That’s where the story ends. At the time, people kept telling it because it wasn’t just adventure — it spoke about life, death, and what matters. That’s why it was set down on clay tablets.

The one you’re looking at tells a story of a great flood. Gilgamesh is warned by the gods, builds a boat, and saves his family and animals. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? A massive flood, a boat, animals, survivors — it’s very similar to the story of Noah’s Ark in the Bible. But this tablet was made several hundred years before the Bible.

It’s an important clue that ancient stories influenced each other, even across cultures. This tablet was found in the library of Ashurbanipal, in the Assyrian capital Nineveh. It’s one of twelve tablets that make up the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Now, Ashurbanipal was unusual for a king — he could read and write. He was serious about collecting knowledge, and his library had over 30,000 clay tablets. Across from the Flood Tablet, you’ll see a reconstruction of what his library looked like. The tablets were sorted by subject, and some had titles carved on the side or back, so you could see what they were — just like book spines today.

The library held everything — myths, medicine, astronomy, laws, magic spells, government records, even dream interpretations — a complete collection of ancient knowledge. In those days, magic and dream interpretation were central to how the kingdom was governed. Reading the gods’ messages was a key part of politics. That’s one reason Ashurbanipal learned to read — so he could interpret divine messages himself. Instead of relying on priests, he read the signs directly and used them to take control of political power. And he succeeded — at least for a while.

Maybe he was even influenced by Gilgamesh. To be remembered after death — Ashurbanipal may have believed his library would be his legacy. Later, the library was destroyed in a war, but the tablets didn’t burn. Because they were made of clay, most of them survived. In the mid-1800s, a British excavation team found them — and after thousands of years, they’re here in front of us today.

Alright, let’s head into Room 56. Here, you can explore how one of the world’s earliest writing systems began — and how it developed over time. It’s called cuneiform — a kind of writing made by pressing a sharp tool, like a pointed reed, into soft clay.

The marks look like tiny wedges, so we call it “cuneiform,” from a Latin word that means wedge-shaped. Cuneiform was used for over three thousand years, just as long as Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was used to write many different languages — Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, and more.

It all started around 3300 BC, in a city called Uruk, in what’s now southern Iraq. Uruk was one of the world’s first cities. As more people settled there and began farming, they needed a way to keep track of things — like taxes or trade.

At first, they used small clay objects to represent things. For example, one cone-shaped piece stood for a bag of barley, and one cylinder-shaped piece stood for a jar of beer. These little objects were like stand-ins for real items — today we call them tokens.

People would seal the tokens inside hollow clay envelopes that looked like balloons. That way, no one could lose or tamper with them. But there was a problem — to check what was inside, you had to break open the envelope. So over time, people began pressing the shape of each token onto the outside of the envelope. Now you could tell what was inside without opening it.

Eventually, they skipped the envelope altogether and started drawing the symbols directly onto clay tablets. If you wanted to record “three bags of barley,” you’d just press the cone shape three times into the clay. For scribes, this was much faster — no need to make tokens or envelopes.

This was the beginning of writing — using abstract signs instead of objects. But it would be another thousand years before it turned into the cuneiform we know today. At first, they only recorded numbers. Later, they began to write words — and eventually, even thoughts and stories.

Perhaps the best-known example is the Epic of Gilgamesh, found in Ashurbanipal’s Library. It’s the oldest known piece of literature, written in cuneiform — and you can see one of its most famous scenes, the Flood Tablet, in Room 55.

Now we’re going to take a look inside Room 64. Do you see that tall, cylinder‑shaped jar over there? It might not look like much at first glance, but it’s actually a key piece of evidence for how Egyptian hieroglyphs began.

This jar was found in a tomb from about three thousand years ago, when Egypt was still divided into Upper and Lower Egypt. It comes from the southern kingdom, Upper Egypt — the tomb of a king named Ka. Take a look at the middle section of the jar. There’s a painted design in black — a kind of rectangle with a pattern inside it. That rectangle is called a serekh, and back then, kings would write their names inside this frame.

Now, if you look closely, you’ll see a symbol that looks like a person raising both arms above their head. This sign meant “divine life force”, and it was also read as “Ka.” In other words, the king’s name was written the way it sounded. When scholars saw this, they realised — “Ah, by this time, people were already writing words phonetically.” Of course, it would take another thousand years before a full writing system for recording sounds was developed.

Symbols and writing can look similar, but over time, as symbols are used again and again, their shapes settle, rules form, and that’s how writing begins. Especially when people start recording sounds — that’s the real breakthrough, because then you can write down any word you want, not just pictures of things.

There’s something else worth noting. For a long time, people wondered — “Did Egyptian writing come from somewhere else?” After all, around the same time, the Sumerians in Mesopotamia were developing cuneiform. Some thought, “Maybe Egypt copied from Sumer?” But today, scholars don’t think so. Instead, it seems that both civilisations created writing independently, around the same time, each in their own way. (If you’re curious about cuneiform, you can learn more about it back in Room 56.)

In fact, even older traces of hieroglyphs have been found — scratched onto broken jar fragments, nearly three hundred years older than this one. These early signs probably showed the name of the jar’s owner — one of the very first uses of Egyptian writing. And it makes sense. When we learn a new language, the first thing we often write is our own name. “This is mine.” “That belongs to someone else.” That’s how recording things began — with a name.