About 30,000 tablets and fragments of tablets were discovered at Kuyuinjik, in the north of modern Iraq, which was the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. They were made from local clay, and impressed with cuneiform text, then dried in the sun or baked in ovens. These survive in greater quantities than the texts created by other ancient peoples on papyrus and parchment due to the fact that baked clay lasts much longer than other materials (they will survive longer than my own paper collection, too).
Most were collected during the reign of King Assurbanipal (668-626 BCE), who was the last of the great kings of his dynasty before the city and the library were destroyed by invaders fourteen years after his death. He will be discussed in further detail in a later post.
The library was excavated in the mid-nineteenth century by Austen Layard and Hormuzd Rassam, and then much of the initial translation and study was led by Henry Rawlinson in London. As was common archaeological practice then, they were shovelled out of the ground and transported to London without regard to preservation of their context or for keeping them in any kind of order. This is unfortunate, as it means that some of the information that could have been gleaned has been lost forever. It is likely, though difficult to be sure since the context has been destroyed, that when Nineveh was destroyed by fire, the clay tablets fell down from an upper storey where they had been housed.
Most of the contents of the library are now held at the British Library. It is estimated that excluding duplicate copies, of which there were many, the fragments constitute around 5000 ‘manuscripts’. It is highly likely that the tablets that survive were a small proportion of what existed originally.
The library’s contents cover a range of subjects, which reflect what was important to the society that created and collected them. The library originated as a kind of archival repository of letters and business contracts as well as historical records, during the reign of Assurbanipal’s great-grandfather Sargon II. The vast majority of the collection was accumulated during Assurbanipal’s reign, though. According to inscriptions, the collection was not only for use in his present, but to be preserved into the future: ‘for the sake of distant days he collated [the tablet] [and] placed [it] in his palace’ (square brackets indicate lacunae that have been surmised).
The largest number of tablets dealt with omens and divinations, which were relied on for the running of the kingdom and daily life and were taken from human entrails, astrology and dreams as well as other methods. There were also grammatical and lexical texts, many bilingual, and used similarly to modern bilingual dictionaries; spells; fables and proverbs; medical recipes; contracts and deeds for the sale of land, produce, cattle and slaves, and dowries; charms, spells and incantations; grammar, law and geography, and also epic literature. The most famous of the epics is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which originated in the much earlier Sumerian period, and which deals with the subject of a historical deluge that some have hypothesised may predate or be a basis for the Biblical flood story.
The tablets were stored in earthen jars, and the jars in rows on shelves in rooms. There was some subject arrangement by rooom - for example, there was one room dedicated to works on history and government. The rooms Each tablet had a kind of identification tag to indicate where it belonged. Beside the entrance to each room was a list of the works in that room, and tablets that appear to have been kept in each room and referred to regularly indicate titles and descriptions (but not authors), and location or classification symbols. These tablets can be described as a variation on a subject catalogue or descriptive bibliography.
This was not the ‘first library’, or even the first classification system; it is believed that writing and systems for distinguishing and classing documents came about with the emergence of cities close to 3000 years previously, but this is the largest and most comprehensive library dated prior to the Library of Alexandria that is known to us, and it is of great significance. It is clear that a great deal of care went into the Library of Assurbanipal, and that it was highly valued by those who used it.
Reference List:
Dunlap, L 1972, Readings in library history, R. R. Bowker, New York.
Fincke, JC 2004, 'The British Museum's Ashurbanipal library project', Iraq, vol. 6, pp. 55-60.
Harris, MH 1995, History of libraries in the western world, 4th edn, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J.
Lerner, F 1998, The story of libraries : from the invention of writing to the computer, Continuum, New York.
Lor, PJ 2007, ‘Libraries in times of open access’, in APE 2007: Academic publishing in Europe conference “Innovation & publishing”, Berlin, 23-24 January.
Max, GE 1994, ‘Ancient near east’, in WA Wiegand & DG Davis (ed.), Encyclopedia of library history, pp. 23-31, Garland Pub., New York.
Polastron, LX 2007, Books on fire : the destruction of libraries throughout history, trans. JE Graham, Inner Traditions, Rochester.
Potts, DT 2002, ‘Before Alexandria: Libraries in the ancient Near East’, in R MacLeod (ed.), The library of Alexandria : centre of learning in the ancient, I.B. Tauris, 2002, London.
Thompson, J 1977, A history of the principles of librarianship, C. Bingley, London.
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