Discovering Ancient Assyria at the Fitzwilliam Museum
On Saturday 26 October 2013 the Nimrud project worked with the Fitzwilliam Museum to hold an afternoon of Assyrian-themed activities in the Fitzwilliam's Ancient Near East galleries. The event formed part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2013.
» Discovering Ancient Assyria event 'What's On' leaflet PDF (647 KB)
Genies and kings get a makeover
Museum visitors learned about the Fitz's Assyrian relief panels of kings and genies in a series of mini-talks given by the project team.
Younger visitors successfully hunted down genies TT , kings and tiny cuneiform tablets in our Assyrian-themed quiz, and had a go at designing their own Assyrian-inspired mixed up animals.
The Fitz's Assyrian genies TT and kings also got colourful makeovers by younger visitors. Over 100 colour-in genies were completed in the galleries or taken home to finish off.
Trainee cuneiform scribes
During the afternoon 71 visitors of all ages became trainee Assyrian scribes TT , learning how to make a clay tablet and write their name using cuneiform script. Our enthusiastic Assyriology TT students Sarah and Christoph were on hand to explain the technique. Finished cuneiform tablets were carefully wrapped and taken home to air-dry – just like the Assyrians did 3000 years ago.
Trainee scribes also had chance to compare their efforts with those of genuine Assyrian scribes. Visitors viewed some of the Fitz's cuneiform tablets up close, in an object discovery session arranged by the Department of Antiquities. The Nimrud project team were also on hand to answer questions.
Visitors' futures divined
A consultation with our resident diviner: museum visitors have their future read from oil and water. Photo by Eleanor Robson.
An expert diviner TT (on special leave from 1800 BC Babylon) was ready and waiting in the Education Studio to interpret visitors' destiny through oil and water. Our diviner, Alex, recreated the process of oil divination based on a corpus of Old Babylonian lecanomancy (oil omen) texts.
Around 40 museum visitors enjoyed finding out what the mighty gods of Ancient Assyria had in store for them. Thankfully, our diviner also had good advice for keeping the gods happy!
Many thanks to staff at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and to our volunteers, for making the afternoon such a success.
Try the Fitz quiz, or colour your own genie!
Want to hunt down the Fitz's Assyrian genies and kings for yourself? Then download our Genies and Kings from Ancient Assyria quiz, designed for use in the Fitzwilliam Museum's Gallery 23 and Main Entrance staircase.
» Genies and Kings from Ancient Assyria quiz A4 (PDF 5.6MB) – version sized for A4 paper.
» Genies and Kings from Ancient Assyria quiz A3 (PDF 5.5MB) – version sized for A3 paper.
Or why not download and colour-in your very own Fitzwilliam Museum genie.
Content last modified: 18 Dec 2019.