![]() (Credit: De Agostini/Getty Images)Ĭonstructed in the third century B.C. An inscription in one of the texts warns that if anyone steals its tablets, the gods will “cast him down” and “erase his name, his seed, in the land.” Interestingly, even though Ashurbanipal acquired many of his tablets through plunder, he seems to have been particularly worried about theft. Archaeologists later stumbled upon its ruins in the mid-19th century, and the majority of its contents are now kept in the British Museum in London. Most of its titles were archival documents, religious incantations and scholarly texts, but it also housed several works of literature including the 4,000-year-old “Epic of Gilgamesh.” The book-loving Ashurbanipal compiled much of his library by looting works from Babylonia and the other territories he conquered. Located in Nineveh in modern day Iraq, the site included a trove of some 30,000 cuneiform tablets organized according to subject matter. for the “royal contemplation” of the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal. ![]() The world’s oldest known library was founded sometime in the 7th century B.C.
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