Ashurbanipal 𒀸𒋩𒆕𒀀 was the most famous last great king of Assyria, from 669 BC to his death in 631, when the empire collapsed, two decades after his death. Experts are disputed on which responsibility he has in this.
He was named directly after the Assyrian God, Ashur, which was also the name of the (or one) capital.
One legacy he left is that of a patron of art and culture. The famous room 10a of the British museum hosts his Hunting of lions, a monumental relief masterpiece of epic proportion, lootted by the British in Nineveh but deligthing the world and one of the most famous tribute to the Assyrian civilization.
Ashurbanipal was himself learned in a variety of topics, including mathematics, he constructed a eponymous library, with 100,000 texts, only surpassed in antiquity by the library of Alexandria, centuries later. This was, apparently, the first universal library ever assembled. Experts say that there is a unique "epic quality" to the works that survived from his library, when they are related to the events that took place under his reign. He had a great opinion of himself in this regard:
I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, on whom the gods have bestowed intelligence, who has acquired penetrating acumen for the most recondite details of scholarly erudition (none of my predecessors having any comprehension of such matters), I have placed these tablets for the future in the library at Nineveh for my life and for the well-being of my soul, to sustain the foundations of my royal name.
We owe to this library works such as the Epic of Gilgamesh and folk tales such as The Poor Man of Nippur, a predecessor of one of the tales or the One Thousand and One Nights.
At the same time, he was also one of the most brutal Assyrian kings, assieged Babylon in 648 and genocided Elam, a civilization that was a part of what is now Iran. He was significantly more brutal than other rulers of his time or his predecessors. He boasted about his gory massacres of civilians, while it was in fact uncommon to retribute on civilians. And women also had a status of higher protection, but not under Ashurbanipal, whose reign produced the most brutal act against a woman ever recorded in an Assyrian relief: Assyrian soldiers ripping open a pregnant Arab woman. War crimes are, of course, nothing of our time. Maybe that explains the "epic qualities" and his fondness for keeping records and archiving events. Here is a prose from this king-poet, possibly composed by him directly:
Like the onset of a terrible hurricane I overwhelmed Elam in its entirety. I cut off the head of Teumann, their king, – the haughty one, who plotted evil. Countless of his warriors I slew. Alive, with my hands, I seized his fighters. With their corpses I filled the plain about Susa as with baltu and ashagu. Their blood I let run down the Ulai; its water I dyed red like wool.
There is some beauty to it, some sensibility, definitely. He gave rise to the legend of Sardanapalus, an effeminate degenerate and decadent king whose vices screwed up Assyria. That's the other legacy he left.
His queen was not called Lily exactly, but Libbali or 𒊩𒌷𒊮𒌷𒊬𒋥. Little seems to be known about her, despite the fact that she got considerably more exposure than would be for her status in that society, including a famous garden party relief where she hosts the king, and thus appears as, somehow, more important than him!
The real business of Ashurbanipal was about graphic description of destruction. This what makes the most interesting material. This is an account of the sack of Elam:
Susa, the great holy city, abode of their gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered according to the word of Ashur and Ishtar. I entered its palaces, I dwelt there in rejoicing; I opened the treasures where silver and gold, goods and wealth were amassed [...] the treasures of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon that the ancient kings of Elam had looted and carried away [...]. I destroyed the ziggurat of Susa [...]; I smashed its shining copper horns. [In]shushinak, god of the oracles, who resides in secret places, where no man sees his divine nature [along with the gods that surround him], with their jewelry, their wealth, their furniture, with the priests, I brought as booty to the land of Ashur [...]. I reduced the temples of Elam to naught; their gods, their goddesses, I scattered to the winds. The secret groves where no outsider had ever penetrated, where no layman had ever trod, my soldiers entered, they saw their mysteries, they destroyed them by fire. The tombs of their ancient and recent kings who had not feared [the goddess] Ishtar, my lady, and who were the cause of torments to the kings, my fathers—those tombs I devastated, I destroyed, I exposed to the sun and I carried away their bones toward the land of Ashur. [...] I devastated the provinces of Elam and [on their lands] I spread salt [...].
There is some interesting dynamics of what history retained and what the king himself retained. For instance, his Arabian campaigns have received little attention from modern historians but they are the conflicts with the most lengthy and detailed accounts in Ashurbanipal's own writings.
The end of his reign and transition is less well documented. Someone else attended more to the urgent and current matters than to attending the library. After 639, two mentions only of him are known, which is incredible given that he once was the most powerful ruler on Earth. We are graced, however, to have the counterpart of his last words:
I cannot do away with the strife in my country and the dissensions in my family; disturbing scandals oppress me always. Illness of mind and flesh bow me down; with cries of woe I bring my days to an end. On the day of the city god, the day of the festival, I am wretched; death is seizing hold upon me, and bears me down...