In the seventh century BCE, at Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian empire, a king had the largest collection of texts in the ancient world before the library of Alexandria gathered in his palace. That king was Ashurbanipal, and his library is still the main source for our knowledge of the magic, divination and literature of Mesopotamia.
A king who could read
Ashurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon, is one of the few ancient rulers who proudly claimed his own education. In his inscriptions he declares that he learned the scribal art, that he could solve complex problems of calculation and that he had read very ancient texts, written in Sumerian and in difficult Akkadian. He even claims to be able to read inscriptions «from before the Flood».
Beyond royal rhetoric, this insistence has a precise meaning: the king wished to present himself as keeper of the knowledge of the gods and the ancient sages. Owning the texts meant owning the tools to read the signs, protect the kingdom and maintain the order of the world.
How it was gathered
The library did not arise only from copies made at Nineveh. Some letters show that the king sent officials to the cities of Babylonia, such as Borsippa, with orders to search for rare tablets and bring them to court, in particular ritual texts, incantations and omens. The tablets gathered in this way were copied, checked and arranged in the palace.
The result was a collection of exceptional proportions, spread across several rooms of the royal palaces.
What it contained
The share of literary texts, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, is in fact modest. Most of the material concerns the «technical» knowledge of the ummânū:
| Genre | Examples |
|---|---|
| Omens | Enūma Anu Enlil, Šumma ālu, Šumma izbu, Bārûtu |
| Incantations and rituals | Maqlû, Šurpu, Utukkū lemnūtu, namburbi |
| Lexical lists | lists of signs and words in Sumerian and Akkadian |
| Medical and diagnostic texts | symptom series and prescriptions |
| Hymns and prayers | Sumerian texts with Akkadian translation |
| Literature | Gilgamesh, Enūma eliš and other tales |
This distribution tells us a great deal: for the Assyrian court the most precious knowledge was the kind that served to interpret and to intervene, that is, divination and magic.
The king's colophons
Many tablets end with a colophon, a closing note indicating ownership. A typical formula declares that the tablet belongs to the «palace of Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria», and sometimes adds that the king had it written, checked and placed in the palace for his consultation.
Some colophons also contain a curse against anyone who would steal or erase the tablet, invoking the wrath of the gods. The book was already a sacred and protected object.
The discovery
The library was discovered in the nineteenth century during the excavations of Kuyunjik, the great mound of Nineveh, led by Austen Henry Layard and his collaborator Hormuzd Rassam. Tens of thousands of tablets and fragments were taken to the British Museum in London, where they are still kept.
In 1872 the scholar George Smith, examining those fragments, recognised an account of a flood very similar to the biblical one, contained in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The news caused a sensation and gave great impetus to the study of Mesopotamian civilisation.
Why it matters so much
Without the Nineveh library, much of what we know about Babylonian magic would be fragmentary. Many ritual and divinatory series are known chiefly through Ashurbanipal's copies, and their numbering and structure often depend on the Nineveh editions. Paradoxically, the destruction of Nineveh at the end of the seventh century BCE helped preserve them: the clay tablets, baked by the fire, became more durable.
A symbolic reading
Ashurbanipal's library embodies an idea that runs through the whole history of esotericism: sacred knowledge as a treasure to be guarded, copied and handed on. The Assyrian scribes did not merely create new texts: they protected the memory of the masters. It is the same spirit that, centuries later, would drive the copyists of Hermetic and alchemical manuscripts.
In short
- Ashurbanipal's library was gathered at Nineveh in the seventh century BCE.
- The king had rare tablets sought in Babylonia, above all rituals and omens.
- Most of the texts concern divination, incantations, lexical lists and medicine.
- It was discovered in the nineteenth century at Kuyunjik by Layard and Rassam and is now in the British Museum.
- Many magical and divinatory series are known chiefly through the Nineveh copies.
