Total War at the Ashmolean Museum: Storms, Wars and Shipwrecks

Video

This year, Creative Assembly were invited to contribute to the ‘Storms, Wars and Shipwrecks’ summer exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK.

Telling the story of the pivotal Mediterranean island of Sicily over the last 2500 years, the exhibition features a range of incredible artefacts recovered by underwater archaeologists from the surrounding sea bed. Including treasures as varied as ship anchors to soldiers’ armour, and from amphorae to a byzantine church interior the exhibit is a fascinating exploration of ancient cultures and the story of the modern-day divers who worked to uncover them.

One of the key exhibits is a display of Roman and Carthaginian warship rams, thought to be from the Battle of the Egadi Islands in 241 BC. To help illustrate these giant weapons, Creative Assembly have created a video re-enactment of the battle using the Total War: ROME II game engine and art, which is projected on to the wall behind the display.

The Battle of the Egadi Islands was an important turning point in the First Punic War, more about the battle and the exhibition can be seen in this video short.

The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford was founded in 1683 and is home to thousands of diverse artefacts dating from 8000 BC to the present day, representing most of the world’s great civilisations. The Storms, Wars and Shipwrecks exhibition is open now and runs until the 25th September.

For more information on visiting the museum and the exhibition, please visit www.ashmolean.org