Library of Ashurbanipal Information
The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, named after Ashurbanipal, the last great king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, is a collection of thousands of clay tablets and fragments containing texts of all kinds from the 7th century BC. Among its holdings was the famous Epic of Gilgamesh. Due to the sloppy handling of the original material much of the library is irreparably jumbled, making it impossible for scholars to discern and reconstruct many of the original texts, although some have survived intact.
The materials were found in the archaeological site of Kouyunjik (ancient Nineveh, capital of Assyria) in northern Mesopotamia. The site is in modern day Iraq.[2][3]
Old Persian and Armenian traditions indicate that Alexander the Great, upon seeing the great library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, was inspired to create his own library. Alexander died before he was able to create his library, but his friend and successor Ptolemy oversaw the beginnings of Alexander's library -- a project that was to grow to become the renowned Library of Alexandria.[4]
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Discovery
The library is an archaeological discovery credited to Austen Henry Layard; most tablets were taken to England and can now be found in the British Museum, but a first discovery was made in late 1849 in the so-called South-West Palace, which was the Royal Palace of king Sennacherib (705 – 681 BC).
Three years later, Hormuzd Rassam, Layard's assistant, discovered a similar "library" in the palace of King Ashurbanipal (668 - 627 BC), on the opposite side of the mound. Unfortunately, no record was made of the findings, and soon after reaching Europe, the tablets appeared to have been irreparably mixed with each other and with tablets originating from other sites. Thus, it is almost impossible today to reconstruct the original contents of each of the two main "libraries".
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Ashurbanipal was literate, and a passionate collector of texts and tablets. He sent scribes into every region of the Neo-Assyrian Empire to collect ancient texts. He hired scholars and scribes to copy texts, mainly from Babylonian sources.[2][3]
Ashurbanipal was not above using war booty as a means of stocking his library. Because he was known for being a scholar and being cruel to his enemies, Ashurbanipal was able to use threats to gain materials from Babylonia and surrounding areas.[5]
The fragments from the royal library include royal inscriptions, chronicles, mythological and religious texts, contracts, royal grants and decrees, royal letters, and various administrative documents. Some of the texts contain divinations, omens, incantations and hymns to various gods, others relate to medicine, astronomy, and literature. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a masterpiece of ancient Babylonian poetry, was found in the library as was the Enûma Eliš creation story, and myth of Adapa the first man, and stories such as the Poor Man of Nippur.[6][7][8]
The texts were principally written in Akkadian in the cuneiform script.
Nineveh was destroyed in 612 BC 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.[7] Paradoxically, this potentially destructive event helped preserve the tablets. As well as texts on clay tablets, some of the texts may have been inscribed onto wax boards which because of their organic nature have been lost.
The British Museum’s collections database counts 30,943 "tablets" in the entire Nineveh library collection, and the Trustees of the Museum propose to issue an updated catalog as part of the Ashurbanipal Library Project.[9] If all smaller fragments that actually belong to the same text are deducted, it is likely that the "library" originally included some 10,000 texts in all. The original library documents however, which would have included leather scrolls, wax boards, and possibly papyri, contained perhaps a much broader spectrum of knowledge than that known from the surviving clay tablet cuneiform texts.
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See also
References
- ^ Ashurbanipal Library Project (phase 1) from the British Museum
- ^ a b Polastron, Lucien X.: "Books On Fire: The Tumultuous Story Of The World's Great Libraries" 2007, pages 2-3, Thames & Hudson Ltd, London
- ^ a b Menant, Joachim: "La bibliothèque du palais de Ninive" 1880, Paris: E. Leroux
- ^ Phillips, Heather A., "The Great Library of Alexandria?". Library Philosophy and Practice, August 2010
- ^ "Assurbanipal's Library", Knowledge and Power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, British Museum
- ^ Nineveh Tablet Collection
- ^ a b Polastron, Lucien X.: "Books On Fire: The Tumultuous Story Of The World's Great Libraries" 2007, page 3, Thames & Hudson Ltd, London
- ^ Menant, Joachim: "La bibliothèque du palais de Ninive" 1880, page 33, Paris: E. Leroux, "Quels sont maintenant ces Livres qui étaient recueillis et consérves avec tant de soin par les rois d'Assyrie dans se précieux dépôt ? Nous y trouvons des livres sur l'histoire, la religion, les sciences naturelles, les mathématiques, l'astronomie, la grammaire, les lois et les coutumes; ..."
- ^ "Ashurbanipal Library Phase 1"
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External links
BBC audio file. In our time discussion programme. 45 minutes.
Categories:
- Assyria
- Defunct libraries
- Mesopotamian literature
- Clay tablets
- Libraries in Iraq
- Fertile Crescent
- 7th-century BC establishments
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