Alabaster bas-relief showing Ashurbanipal rescuing foreign princes from a lion. Those princes, the men on the right of the panel, are kneeling and throwing their bows before the king; the came to the Assyrian capital as political refugees. Ashurbanipal took them off to shoot lions, but they have missed, and he is shooting over their heads. There will have been a charging lion on the lost panel to the right. From Room S of the North Palace, Nineveh (modern-day Kouyunjik, Mosul Governorate), Mesopotamia, Iraq. Circa 645-535 BCE. The British Museum, London. Photo©Osama S.M. Amin.