Statue of Ashurbanipal

This fifteen-foot tall bronze statue depicts Ashurbanipal, the seventh-century BC king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. He is famously remembered by historians for establishing the first systematically organized library in the ancient world at his capital in Nineveh. The sculpture shows the monarch standing with a clay tablet in one hand and a lion cub cradled against his chest. It was commissioned by the Assyrian Foundation for the Arts and presented to San Francisco in 1988 as a gift from the Assyrian people to celebrate their enduring cultural heritage.