The Library of Nineveh

Ashurbanipal, the king of all Assyria, stood on his palace walls looking out over the city of Nineveh. He had spent years making Nineveh beautiful. It was his favorite city, and he was the strongest king in the world! He had built himself a magnificent palace, full of high, cool rooms hung with silk and painted with rich colors: royal blue, scarlet, and yellow as bright as the sun.

“But it isn’t enough!” Ashurbanipal thought. “I have made this city beautiful, but will it last after I am dead? A hundred years from now, how will anyone know of my greatness?”

“Excuse me, sir.” A voice interrupted him. He turned to see one of his chief scribes, holding a clay tablet. The scribe held the tablet out. Ashurbanipal saw that it was covered with writing.

“Have you brought me a new book to read?” he asked. Ashurbanipal’s scribes, the men who were in charge of writing down all the events of his reign, knew that he loved to read. They were always on the lookout for new books for him. And in those days, books weren’t written on paper. They were carved into clay.

“We’ve found you a wonderful book!” the chief scribe said. “It’s a tale from the court of Hammurabi, the great king who ruled Babylon so long ago. No one has ever read it before! One of your men found it in the ruins of Babylon’s old walls, and kept it safe until we could bring it here to you.”

Ashurbanipal glanced down at the tablet.

That night, as Ashurbanipal sat in his room reading his new tablet by lamplight, he had an idea.

“How many of these tablets are left in the ruins of old cities?” he said to himself. “If they are not rescued, they will crumble away into dust. Then we’ll never know these stories from old times. What if I were to collect them all together, and keep them here in my palace? That would be a great project indeed! And then I would become known as the king who collected books—and people could read my books hundreds of years from now.”

Ashurbanipal set his new idea into action at once. He sent his scribes out into all parts of the vast kingdom of Assyria, ordering them to collect all the tablets they could find and bring them back to Nineveh. He commanded other scribes to go out and ask the people of Assyria to repeat the stories they had heard from their grandfathers and grandmothers. These stories had been told to children for centuries—but no one had ever written them down. Ashurbanipal’s scribes wrote them on clay tablets, so that they could be kept forever.

He ordered the priests of Assyria to write down the words of their prayers. The court astrologers wrote down the movements of the sun, moon and stars. The court doctors wrote down everything that they knew about illness and medicine. The court historians recorded all of the details of Ashurbanipal’s reign, and everything that they knew about the kings who had come before him.

All of those clay tablets were thick and heavy. So Ashurbanipal built more and more rooms to keep them in. Soon he had collected thousands and thousands of clay tablets full of stories, prayers, instructions, history, science, medicine, and law. He had created the first library in the world.

And Ashurbanipal’s wish came true. Although many of the tablets were destroyed in Assyria’s wars with other countries, some of them still survive today, thousands of years later. They can still be read. And because we have Ashurbanipal’s clay tablets, we remember him as the king who collected books—the first librarian ever.

Note to Parent: Assyria’s expansion took place between 1300–1200 BC/BCE; it reached its greatest extent under Tiglathpileser III (745–727 BC/BCE). Ashurbanipal, the last great Assyrian king, ruled 668–627 BC/BCE.