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Ashurbanipal

The Last Powerful Monarch of the Assyrian Empire, Founder of the Earliest Systematic Library in Antiquity

Those Who Fought the Map Into Being · Generals & Conquerors

The Neo-Assyrian EmpireThe Library of NinevehThe Cuneiform Collection

Who they are

Ashurbanipal (reigned c. 668–627 BC) was the last powerful monarch of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, who during his reign expanded the empire’s territory to its historical greatest extent, once taking Egyptian Thebes. Unlike many contemporary monarchs noted for military conquest, he had received a good literary education, and built at his capital Nineveh the most systematic library of the ancient Near East, sending men to gather and copy tens of thousands of cuneiform clay tablets from across the empire and its conquered lands, covering history, law, medicine, astrology, literature, and every field (the most complete version of the famous Epic of Gilgamesh was in fact discovered archaeologically in the ruins of this library). This library was later destroyed in the fires of the fall of the Assyrian Empire, but was thereby accidentally baked hard and preserved, and the tablets excavated by nineteenth-century archaeologists at the Nineveh site became the most precious treasury of primary material for modern scholars reconstructing the history and literature of ancient Mesopotamia.

Primary sourcesThe archaeological discovery of cuneiform tablets in the Library of NinevehAssyrian royal inscriptions

Key stories

The Library of Nineveh

Ashurbanipal ordered tens of thousands of cuneiform clay tablets gathered and copied from across the empire and from cultural centers such as Babylon, systematically ordered and held in the library of the royal palace at Nineveh, covering historical records, legal documents, medical prescriptions, astrological prophecy, and even literary epic; the scale and systematic quality of this library were exceedingly rare in the whole ancient Near Eastern world, one of the earliest prototypes of a "national library" in human history.

The Reemergence of the Epic of Gilgamesh

When nineteenth-century British archaeologists excavated the ruins of Ashurbanipal’s library at the Nineveh site, they accidentally unearthed the most complete tablet copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh yet found, and this ancient epic recording the Mesopotamian flood legend and a hero’s adventures came back to light, letting modern scholars come to know anew the exceedingly rich literary and mythological tradition of Mesopotamian civilization — its flood narrative bearing a striking resemblance to the account of Noah’s Ark in the Hebrew Bible.

Relationships

Ally

⛪Justinian I　The two, more than a thousand years apart, were both noted for the systematic ordering of texts and documents

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The reemergence of the Epic of GilgameshThe tablets excavated by nineteenth-century archaeologists in the ruins of Ashurbanipal’s library let this ancient epic recording the flood legend come back to light, becoming the most important primary document for modern scholars’ understanding of the Mesopotamian literary tradition and its potential link to the flood narrative of the Hebrew Bible.

Appears in

The Empires and Thought of the Axial AgeThe Rise and Fall of Babylon and Assyria

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