A library fit for a king

'I, Ashurbanipal, learned the wisdom of Nabu [the god of writing], laid hold of scribal practices of all the experts, as many as there are, I examined their instructions.'

King Ashurbanipal of Assyria was a fearless warrior and a ruthless empire builder. But he wasn’t only a mighty leader – he was also a scholar and librarian…

The ‘Library of Ashurbanipal’ is the name given to a collection of over 30,000 clay tablets covered with cuneiform script. Texts like the ones above were made by pressing a reed pen into clay. This created the distinct shapes that gave the writing its modern name – cuneiform simply means ‘wedge-shaped’.

The tablets were unearthed in the ruins of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire (now in northern Iraq). In around 612 BC Nineveh was consumed by fire, but rather than being destroyed, the tablets baked hard. This makes them some of ancient history's most well-preserved documents. The Library’s discovery meant the Assyrians' story could finally be told in their own words.

Ashurbanipal was a proud scholar – here he’s depicted wrestling a lion with a writing stylus tucked into his belt. He relied on his Library to rule the empire, using the tablets to interpret omens from the gods and predict the future. His collection spanned many topics from medicine to magic, ritual to daily court gossip.

Many of the texts in Ashurbanipal’s Library bear a ‘library stamp’ – the tablet above notes that it belonged to the collection of ‘Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria’. Researchers are still working to re-join and translate the fragments today.