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THE LIBRARY OF ASHURBANIPAL
in the middle of the 7th century BCEUnder the reign of Assurbanipal (from ~669 until ~627), the Assyrian Empire reached its largest territorial expansion and enjoyed overflowing wealth.
Assurbanipal had the reputation of being an ingenious and literate ruler , one of the few of his era who mastered cuneiform writing. He had lavishly decorated palaces built in Nineveh and founded one of the first libraries. In it, more than 2,000 tablets were collected in an organized and systematic manner. It contained scientific texts on mathematics, chemistry and biology, Sumerian-Akkadian dictionaries, works on magic and literary texts as the epic of Gilgamesh. The bigger part of these tablets are kept at the British Museum in London. "