Mentioned earlier during The Epic of Gilgamesh post, the Library of Ashurbanipal was a great boon to the ancient world.
The Library of Ashurbanipal (668–627 BC)
The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal and the world’s oldest known library was founded sometime in the 7th century B.C. for the “royal contemplation” of the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal, named after Ashurbanipal, the last great king of the Assyrian Empire.
Located in Nineveh in modern day Iraq, the site included a trove of some 30,000 cuneiform tablets organized according to subject matter, most of which are housed in the British Museum. Most of its titles were tens of thousands of clay tablets and fragments, archival documents, religious incantations and scholarly texts, but it also housed several works of literature including the 4,000-year-old “Epic of Gilgamesh.” The collection of Nineveh actually a collection of two different libraries. Some parts of the clay tablets discovered in 1849 in the Royal Palace of King Sennacherib (705–681 BCE). Three years later during excavation archaeologists discovered a similar “library” in the palace of King Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE).
Ashurbanipal was known as a tenacious martial commander; however, he was also a recognized intellectual who was literate and a passionate collector of texts and tablets. The book-loving Ashurbanipal compiled much of his library by looting works from Babylonia and the other territories he conquered. Archaeologists later stumbled upon its ruins in the mid-19th century, and the majority of its contents are now kept in the British Museum in London. Interestingly, even though Ashurbanipal acquired many of his tablets through plunder, he seems to have been particularly worried about theft. An inscription in one of the texts warns that if anyone steals its tablets, the gods will “cast him down” and “erase his name, his seed, in the land.”
Part of a clay tablet, Neo-Assyrian. (Credit: Public Domain)
Ashurbanipal was one of the few Assyrian kings to have been trained in the more intellectual scribal arts by one Balasi, a senior royal scholar. He systematically built up the palace library through a variety of means.
The texts were principally written in Akkadian in the cuneiform script and all the books were placed systematically in the library:
• The tablets were often organized according to shape.
• Four-sided tablets were for financial transactions.
• Round tablets recorded agricultural information.
• Tablets were separated according to their contents and placed in different rooms: government, history, law, astronomy, geography, and so on.
• The contents were identified by colored marks or brief written descriptions, and sometimes by the “incipit,” or the first few words that began the text.
Multiple type of clay tablet belong to different category were discovered.
• Letters.
• Administrative documents, and legal records.
• Literary and historical works.
• Religious rituals and prayers.
• Medical collections.
• Compilations of terrestrial and celestial omens, with complex commentaries.
Few of the most famous and important clay tablets were discovered are:
• The Epic of Gilgamesh, a masterpiece of ancient Babylonian poetry, was found in the library (download ebook on Epic of Gilgamesh).
• Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa” with astrological forecasts.
• Bilingual Tablet of synonyms.
• The Epic of Creation told, how Marduk, city god of Babylon, earned the right to rule the gods by defeating the monstrous sea Tiamat and creating the world from her body.
• Another tablet telling the myth of the goddess Ishtar’s visit to her sister.
• Stories such as the Poor Man of Nippur.
Nineveh was destroyed in 612 BCE by a coalition of Babylonians, Scythians, and Medes, an ancient Iranian people. It is believed that during the burning of the palace, a great fire must have ravaged the library, causing the clay cuneiform tablets to become partially baked. This potentially destructive event helped preserve the tablets.
Interested in a topic of your own? Just ask here and I will be glad to post it!
Instagram: 3 Cats and Cauldron
TikTok: 3 Cats and a Cauldron
From our altar to yours, with love from the sea,
Click here for an Index to all posts
