They are just links to articles/videos on the great Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.

Intro to Ashurbanipal: https://goo.gl/W58wPJ links to https://blog.britishmuseum.org/who-was-ashurbanipal/ which is an article on the British Museum's blog.
The second link goes to a youtube video featuring Irving Finkel explaining how to write cuneiform
The third link goes to https://blog.britishmuseum.org/lion-hunting-the-sport-of-kings-2/ which is another article on the Museum's blog, on lion hunting in ancient Asyrria.
The final link is also on their blog, and is an article on King Ashurbanipal’s botanical gardens https://blog.britishmuseum.org/paradise-on-earth-the-gardens-of-ashurbanipal/

Uh......slavery didn't start in the 1700's. It likely began in Mesopotamia as an industry, but probably existed long before cuneiform existed to record it.

Even sticking to Africa, Egyptians used slaves extensively eons before this.

Most active slavers in 18 th century Africa were Arabs or Europeans. Africans traded/sold POWs from other tribes caught during tribal warfare, and later began to actively participate in the European slave trade. They absolutely were not the sole kidnappers, however, nor were they the first.

But altruism is how you portray the works of the church, but you're correct, it's absolutely NOT the right word. They do 'good' for rewards, it's the same reason religious people do 'good deeds', just different 'rewards'.
If atheists did 'good deeds' but required conversion to atheism/abandonment of religious beliefs before offering needed assistance, that would be quite wrong. That's usually how the church, and religious charities work....it's NEVER how atheist charities work.

Religions are evil, not just the churches that use them. Yours starts with instructions to murder, torture, commit incest, enslave non believers, and ends with threats of eternal torture if you don't submit mind body and soul. All that from the bible, which is not a church, but is a doctrine.
EDIT: Religion is terrorism. It is a way to control the actions of others through threat of never ending supernatural torture if they don't do as the church/the preacher/your grandmother/your political party/whomever is using religion says.

You don't need any religion to live honorably, sacrificially, or lovingly. In fact all those things are easier without the blind worship and certitude that 'your religion has the right answer' (to the exclusion of all other 'answers') that all religions insists on, and they are nearly impossible with religion. History has recorded that consistently since cuneiform.

Ok,
I have been pondering this same question for the last two years; mainly reading about the earliest recorded events of humanity and focusing on the science that led to where we are today; Obviously, anything earlier than Planck Time cannot be resolved scientifically, so there's a leap of faith there just like with religion.
One of the major discoveries I stumbled into is that religion exploded around the same time human cuneiform (writing) was invented. The oldest and most prolonging religion from panbabylonism is Mesopotanian Religion which extended from 4200 B.C. to 600 A.D. Religion's first and foremost goal was self-governance; in other words, since the lawmakers couldn't watch you all the time, they figured out a way to make a policeman within you, they called him God. He knows if you've been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake!
On the topic of the universe itself, logic dictates that as humans, our limbs and torso are mostly there to supply the brain with energy; extrapolating this a few billions years (and assuming we can survive that long), we could end up with no limbs at all. There is also the strong craving for putting more and more information in smaller and smaller space; Again, extreme extrapolation would dictate that over infinite time, the universe would be filled with smaller replicas of itself where the golden ratio of sufficient universal information vs space volume proliferated across time-space might indeed bring the universe online. The ultimate no-reservations goal of the universe would be for it to become self-aware...

All I have said here is in direct contradiction with information loss from black holes, and the big freeze, but I like to think this way as a Gedankenexperiment. I don't necessarily believe what I say, and I'd like to hear other sifter's thoughts about what they think is the role of the universe.

Funny, years ago I read Zecharia Sitchin's work regarding a "12th planet" and the origins of man, etc. This is exactly what he had surmised back in the 70's after decrypting the cuneiform on cylinder seals from ancient Sumeria.