Libraries to preserve scholarly works

31 January 2021

Libraries are a common cultural asset. They are currently some of the last places of culture still open in these times of lockdown and curfews due to the pandemic. In these libraries, collections of writings are preserved and consulted, and have been since antiquity. Libraries were first established in the 2nd millennium BCE and developed throughout the following millennium in Mesopotamia. One of the most famous is the one built by Ashurbanipal in Nineveh in the 7th century BCE.

From the beginning of writing, the Mesopotamians gathered their texts into collections and thus formed archives, which were first kept in institutional buildings and later also in private homes. These archives contained mainly administrative and legal texts, and correspondence. Libraries, on the other hand, collected scholarly, literary, and scientific texts. They developed at a time when scholars, who had been copying scholarly writings for centuries, gave literary texts their final form. The place in ehich scholarly manuscripts were preserved and produced was called the "house of tablets". 

Priests, diviners and other scholars collected clay manuscripts in their libraries or in those of palaces and temples, dealing with science and technology, such as divination and medicine, or with religion and literature. These texts were sometimes written in several languages. For example, in the library of the high priest of Ugarit, dating from the 13th century, there are more than a hundred works relating to mythology written in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hourrite and Ugaritic languages, using cuneiform signs according to logographic, syllabic and alphabetic systems.

In the palaces, libraries were developed on the initiative of the royal power. The Assyrian rulers probably took most of their libraries with them each time they changed capital. It was in Nineveh, the last capital of the Assyrian Empire, that archaeologists discovered more than 20,000 cuneiform tablets forming several royal libraries (and now kept in the British Museum). The collections were enriched under Sennacherib (704-681) and Assarhaddon (680-669), and systematically completed under Assurbanipal (668-627).

Manuscript collections, stored in niches in the walls, were built up in various ways. Kings took advantage of their military campaigns to bring scholarly texts back to their capitals, or they confiscated works from individuals. In a letter probably sent by Ashurbanipal to his governor in the Babylonian city of Borsippa, the king ordered: "On the day you read this letter, take with you (...) the scholars of Borsippa whom you know, and gather all the tablets that are in their houses, as well as all the tablets that are placed in the temple of Ezida (...) Search for me : tablets concerning amulets for the king, [...] incantations (...), series in connection with war, [...] rituals (...), all the texts that might be needed in the palace, as many as exist, as well as the rare tablets, which are known to you and which do not exist in Assyria."[1]

Assurbanipal, who was not originally destined to rule and received a scholarly education, thus built up an encyclopaedic library of about 5,000 works, the tablets of which were copied tirelessly in order to preserve them over time. Today, we have only a part of this library because the texts were copied not only on clay tablets but also on wooden writing pads covered with wax – an organic medium that has not survived the passage of time. The main texts written on clay tablets are divinatory texts, prayers, rituals, lexicographical texts and, to a lesser extent, literary texts. These include, for example, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh may not be as famous as the one founded by Ptolemy in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE, but unlike the latter, which was burnt to the ground, the clay tablets containing the thousand-year-old works of Mesopotamian culture have survived.

[1] Text published in copy in Cuneiform texts from Babylonian tablets in the British Museum, Part XXII, London, 1906, n°1, edited by G. Frame and A. R. Georges, "The Royal Libraries of Mesopotamia". R. Georges, "The royal libraries of Nineveh: new evidence for king Assurbanipal's tablet collecting", in D. Collon and A. George eds, Nineveh. Papers of the XLIXth International Assyriological Meeting, London, 7-11 July 2003, London, vol. 2, 2005, p. 280-281.