Forty-eight floors above the hurly-burly of Times Square, all you can hear is the crackle of ice in a cocktail shaker, the murmur of hushed conversation, and the barely-there tinkle of a baby grand ...

In the year 879 BCE, the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II threw a party of historic proportions. He had just built himself a palace in the newly-revitalized city of what is now Nimrud, and he decided to ...