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Pursuing Primary Sources

A guide to historical and data research.

The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal


Clay tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal displayed in a museum

Library of Ashurbanipal CC0 Gary Todd This link opens in a new window

Ashurbanipal was the king of Assyria in the 7th-century B.C.E.. He ruled over the largest empire in the world from Nineveh, the largest city in the world. Ashurbanipal collected texts from around his empire and assembled them into a library. These texts included:

  • legal and business documents
  • works of literature
  • scientific and medical texts
  • books on divination.

This collection reflected the interests of a powerful king who had the resources to assemble a library, ran an empire, was a scholar, and who viewed supernatural forces as essential to preserving his power.

The city of Nineveh was destroyed in 612 B.C.E., and the library was burned. In most cases, fires in libraries are incredibly destructive events. In this case, many of the texts were written on clay tablets and then fire hardened them into a more durable state. These clay tablets were then able to survive for an extended period of time in the rubble.

Fast forward to the middle of the 19th century. New empires had emerged whose leaders had interests not so different from Ashurbanipal's. France and Great Britain were eager to showcase their worldwide influence. This resulted in a competitive rush to bring artistic and historical material from around the world to the Louvre and British Museum. Governments, museums, and private individuals provided funding for excavations. The British Museum funded digs in Nineveh and scholars unearthed many tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal.

Clay tablet with cuniform script detailing part of the epic of Gilgamesh

Tablet containing part of the This link opens in a new window Epic of Gilgamesh This link opens in a new window CC BY-SA 3.0 This link opens in a new window

George Smith was an employee of the British Museum during this time. He translated the Cuneiform script on the clay tablets and fragments that were brought to London. Smith had his own interests. He was looking for noteworthy material that he could use to justify funding an expedition of his own. Among the material Smith translated was an epic poem that told the story of an oppressive king named Gilgamesh.

Smith translated what has become known as Tablet 11, or the Flood Tablet. This tablet contained a story of Gilgamesh meeting an immortal named Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim describes a great flood send by the gods. They warned Utnapishtim in advance and he built a boat and filled it with his family, animals and craftsmen. The flood turns humanity to clay. Utnapishtim's boat ultimately lodges on a mountain and he releases birds to search for dry land. This story contained remarkable parallels with the Bibical account of Noah's Ark.

Smith presented his translation to the Society of Biblical Archaeology and later published his translations. The content of tablet 11 captured the British imagination. Some felt that this primary source corroborated the basic facts of the Bible. Others felt that it was evidence that there was an older Mesopotamian story that was the common ancestor of both accounts. Some folks interpreted Smith's translation and the recent release of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species as a scientific challenge to the Bible as the authoritative source on human development and history.

The result was that Tablet 11 became, and remains, the most well known cuneiform text in the world. It is widely available in multiple translations and high quality digital copies of the original are available online.