Library of Ashurbanipal
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A remarkable archaeological discovery credited to Austen Henry Layard, The "royal library" of Ashurbanipal consists of thousands of clay tablets and fragments containing texts of all kinds (royal inscriptions, chronicles, mythological and religious texts, contracts, royal grants and decrees, royal letters, assorted administrative documents, etc.) from the 7th century BC. The materials were found in the archeological site of Kuyunjik (then ancient Nineveh, capital of Assyria) in northern Mesopotamia. The site would be found in modern day Iraq.
Most texts were taken to England and can now be found in the British Museum.
The library actually comprised several smaller collections. 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 di Ashurbanipal (668 - 627 BC), on the opposite side of the mound. Unfortunately, no record was taken for 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".
The whole set is known as "the Library of Ashurbanipal" as it is known that this king was literate and was a passionate collector of texts and tablets.
The total number of registered pieces is about 26,000, but we must deduct all smaller fragments that actually belong to the same text, and thus we may submit that the "library" originally included some 10,000 texts in all.
