Before the Library of Alexandria there was the Library of Ashurbanipal – an Assyrian king who collected the data of historic Mesopotamia below one roof. This unbelievable library was forgotten for millennia, and stays largely unknown even as we speak. But it contained an abundance of texts that had been influential throughout the traditional world, and bequeathed a debt to modernity that’s hardly ever acknowledged.
Ashurbanipal assembled his library at Nineveh within the seventh century BC. At present generally known as Mosul in Iraq, Nineveh was then essentially the most splendid – and largest – metropolis on Earth, and the seat of the Neo-Assyrian empire that spanned from Turkey within the west to Iran within the east. Though it’s the Persians who’re normally credited with setting up the primary world empire, they constructed on foundations laid by the Assyrians, taking up their system of provinces, community of roads, and imperial ideology.
