Two thought-provoking shows conjure delight from the British Museum's existing collections

I thought I knew the British Museum's collections from the ancient Near East well. And yet, almost every time I looked at the provenance of artefacts in the current I am Ashurbanipal exhibition, I was surprised. The label said it was owned by the British Museum, but I couldn't remember seeing it. Where had it come from?

The basement.

Turns out the British bought so much of what archeologists dug up of the ancient capitals of Assyria
and Babylon (thanks to disinterested Ottoman Turkish sultans happy to sell) that even the expansive, then-new British Museum building couldn't hold it all. The museum created additional galleries and excavated a vast basement to hold the treasures. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, when the cultures of the Ancient Near East were a popular source of design inspiration, these galleries were well-patronised. But public interest has drifted to other cultures in recent times, while museum funding plummeted. In 2006 they quietly closed the basement rooms. While some artefacts have occasionally been loaned out for other exhibits, this is the first time they've been on general view on their home turf since those galleries closed.

The time is right for a re-discovery of these glories. Ashurbanipal was the last and most powerful king of an imperial line that had held sway for 300 years over what was then the largest empire the world had known. By the time he was running things in the middle of the 7th century BC, he controlled all of what we now know as Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Turkey and Cyprus. He directly ruled the whole Eastern coast of the Mediterranean and exerted significant influence on the other cultures starting to flourish around its shores. His empire was famed for its efficient administration and its brutal army. But Ashurbanipal also revelled in his reputation as a scholar and built a famous library. A towering display of its clay tablets is a moving centre piece of the show, and many sculptural representations show him with a pen in his belt along with his weapons. He was also fabulously wealthy, building a palace-cum-capital at Nineveh that was a wonder of the world.

Nineveh goes by a different name these days. Mosul. In the 170 or so years since ancient Assyria's wonders here were excavated, they've been caught in a lot of crossfire, but nothing so damaging as the past decade. Contemporary estimates say that 80% of what was left in situ at Ninevah was destroyed by ISIL during their occupation. Almost all of what's left of this ancient capital is in the British Museum. Anyone who doesn't understand why that's a tragedy, and why we must do whatever is necessary to save what's left, needs to spend some time in this show.
The Assyrians left behind images of staggering beauty. The fluidity of their lines and their ability to breathe life into their figures is exceptional for their time period.  If you have any doubt about that, just look at the second part of the exhibit that includes artefacts from Assyria's vassal states and partners. There are some beautiful objects there, too, but most of them look positively primitive beside the triumphal artwork of their overlords.

The Assyrians are at their best when depicting animals. Their lions are exceptional and there's a pair of hunting dogs here so real you expect them to leap from the stone that imprisons them. It's no wonder that the feline heads that once covered chair arms have been worn to a high sheen; they are eminently strokeable.

Most of what we have left of the Assyrians are shallow relief sculptures on giant gypsum slabs that once decorated palace walls. Some scenes are practically life-sized, like the jolly servants carrying in platters of easily-recognisable fruits and treats for a banquet, but most take place in strips like high-action comics. Today most are a sandy cream colour, but when people lived amongst them they were plastered and coloured. In several places the curators have done a dramatic job of using light to "paint" the walls to their original forms. Much more unusual, and precious, are fragments of furniture and jewellery. These, with the extraordinary decorative detail still clearly visible in the reliefs, give us a clear view into a culture obsessed with  tiny, nuanced detail. Even their cuneiform script has an exquisite symmetry to it, whether on clay tablets or large, multi-sided cylinders that were buried beneath building foundations to record the circumstances of construction.

You're looking at 2,600-year-old design innovations that have lasted. There's a carving of a rug that could easily be a CAD design for a modern weaver. You wouldn't have to look far in modern fabrics and wallpapers to find many of the designs that show up on the belts and borders of the people striding through those reliefs. This is a world of beauty.

At the same time, you can't avoid the reality that these were also brutal people. Ashurbanipal revels in killing lions and other beasts to demonstrate his authority. Death scenes are both gruesome and poignant, as if the artists are acknowledging the natural nobility of the animals dying beneath Assyrian blades and arrows.

There's no such empathy for enemies of the state. Here are some getting their tongues cut out. Others crushed under chariot wheels. Body parts get severed and stacked up like firewood. In one of the most perverse scenes here, Ashurbanipal and his queen sit in an exquisite garden, surrounded by beautifully detailed flora and dressed in ornate costumes. It's a vision of calming bliss. Until you realise that the ornaments hanging from the trees are the severed heads of enemies. It is one of the great paradoxes of the Assyrians that a people with such an eye for beauty and an intense respect for the written word were also savagely violent.

One suspects that Ashurbanipal didn't have to deal with much protest around Nineveh, given all the lavish public art leaving no aspect of its horrific punishments unimagined. For a look at those who did rebel, you can head upstairs for the British Museum's other special exhibition at the moment. I Object: Ian Hislop's Search for Dissent pulls a remarkable range of objects from across the museum's collections together to look at how people have used various creative arts to protest the establishment throughout history.

Given Hislop's long-time editorship of Britain's great satirical magazine, Private Eye, I had imagined that this show would be primarily about the British tradition of satirical cartooning, from Hogarth and Gillray down to Gerald Scarfe. While there's a nice selection of classic Georgian establishment-bashing, this show is much broader and at times surprising. There are defaced coins, subversive clothes and jewellery and messages of revolution designed into tableware. Some items ... like the collection of election buttons ... are blatantly public, while others stayed hidden for years. Most notable amongst the last was a medal designed to reward communist patriotism; only when she neared death did the artist reveal that the woman portraying a virtue on the medal's face was a portrait  of a girl who'd been unfairly killed by Stalin's regime.

There are times where you feel Hislop and the curators are working a bit too hard to make their point. Is an ancient Egyptian tomb artist's pornographic scribble really a protest against the pharaonic hierarchy, or just a bit of laddish fun? Is the word "sex" hidden in the engraved palm leaves on this bank note, or are people imagining things? Would the printer of a 17th century bible really risk his career (and maybe his life) for the puerile joke of leaving "not" out of the commandment about committing adultery, or was it just a particularly painful typo?

Like Hislop's magazine and Have I Got News for You appearances, this show works best when it makes you smile. There are plenty of such moments; we never lose track of the idea that humour is subversive. The best item of all is the show's parting shot. Seeming to be a fragment of neolithic cave painting, it's a modern hoax featuring a stick man pushing a shopping cart. British artist Banksy managed to hang it in the ancient British galleries here in the museum, complete with an accession number and a glorious label that sends up the pomposity of traditional descriptions. It was three days before anyone noticed it didn't belong there. That's British satire at its best.

Both Ashurbanipal and I Object rely on the museum's existing collections. In past reviews of major exhibitions I've had an issue when curators do this. When you're paying £12 and up to get into a show, you expect to see something new. Both of these are exceptions. With I Object, Hislop and the other curators are pointing out things you wouldn't normally notice, and are telling a story you simply wouldn't put together yourself ... especially since many of these items are quite unexceptional on their own. Ashurbanipal liberates treasures from long storage and with the help of dramatic lighting, powerful storytelling and a link to modern events gives us a visual feast.

In using their collections to illuminate the past, and then getting us to ask relevant questions about our present, the British Museum is once again delivering on what it does best.