Timeline Entry - Historical
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ca. 650 B.C.: Ashurbanipal's Royal Library at Nineveh comprised of cuneiform tablets is developed as the world's largest collection for reference and research using methodologies for collection, arrangement and cataloguing that would not be duplicated in Europe for almost two thousand years.Ashurbanipal (668-626 B.C.), King of Assyria, expands his great-grandfather's library holdings at Nineveh to include not only archival records but also a current source of reference materials, contributing to the education of future generations. The Royal Library at Nineveh was the greatest library, some say the first documented functioning library, of its time, and its collection is believed to have consisted of 30,000 clay tablets, over 20,000 of which were collected, organized, marked, arranged and often translated during Arshurbanipal's reign. A "keeper of the books" functioned as the first "librarian" in recorded history.
Resources:
An encyclopedic treatment of Ashurbanipal's library may be found at the Encyclopedia Brittannica online Web site .
See also:
- The Libary of King Ashurbanipal Web Page , with bibliography and links to additional Web pages
- The Age of Ashurbanipal and The Library of Ashurbanipal , sites maintained at NBCi.com
- An excerpt from Survival of a Nation at the Ashurai Web site
- A description of the discovery of Nineveh at the www.utahcard.com site
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Susan Laura Lugo
GSLIS MS Candidate