Key facts
- Location
- Nineveh , capital of Assyria
- Established
- 7th century BCE
- Size
- over 30,000 cuneiform tablets
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Image
- Der Palast von Sennacherib.jpg
Show 5 more facts
- Commons category
- Library of Ashurbanipal
- start time
- 0700-00-00
- time of discovery or invention
- 1852-00-00
- collection or exhibition size
- 30000
~12 min read
Article
The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, named after Ashurbanipal, the last great king of the Assyrian Empire, is a collection of more than 30,000 clay tablets and fragments containing texts of all kinds and in various languages from the 7th century BCE. Among its holdings was the famous Epic of Gilgamesh.
Ashurbanipal's Library gives modern historians information regarding people of the ancient Near East. In his Outline of History, H. G. Wells calls the library "the most precious source of historical material in the world."