What is the oldest library in the world? Officially, the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal has this status. It is believed that it was created in the 7th century BC and served as a state archive. Originally located in Nineveh.
The Assyrian ruler intended to collect in his library all the knowledge ever accumulated by mankind. He was especially interested in the theory of public administration.
But in those days people were very religious, which also affected the ruler himself - most of the books from his library describe the texts of conspiracies and spells, rituals and ceremonies, as well as information about the gods.
Imagine how much a person wanted to maintain power if he used magic with might and main. Researchers believe that most of these texts were copied from the Sumerian and Babylonian sources.
There was also a lot of medical literature in the library, but the emphasis here was solely on magic. The question arises - if Ashharbanipal decided to collect all the knowledge accumulated by humanity in his library, then why not a single book on mathematics was found in his repository?
This is another mystery for researchers. The texts in the repository were written in languages such as:
1) Assyrian.
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2) Babylonian.
3) Akkadian.
4) Sumerian languages.
Interestingly, almost every text had about six copies. Most of the texts were written in Akkadian and Sumerian languages.
Before the reign of Ashurbanipal, his predecessors also had their own archives, but they were so small that they cannot be considered libraries. The ruler himself had a penchant for collecting texts.
To replenish his vault, he sent out his subordinates throughout the country so that they would copy famous ancient texts for him. He also asked to make copies of all the texts stored in ancient temples.
During his military campaigns in captured cities, he also came across vaults, from where he took all the texts for his library. His scribes have done a tremendous job of translating, copying and annotating the texts.
The ruler was very fond of the order in his storehouse. Most of the texts and the library were written on clay tablets, but there were also texts written in wax - this made it easy to edit them.
However, they have one big drawback - they are very short-lived. They have not survived to our time. There were also parchment with papyrus in the Ashurbanipal library.
Unfortunately, they have not survived to this day. All that remains are cuneiform clay tablets. But even those, according to researchers, make up only 10% of what was during the time of the ruler.
Interestingly, according to the official version of history, Ashurbanipal was the only Assyrian ruler who could read and write.
Personally, this version seems very strange to me - how was the country governed if the head of state did not know the most ordinary letter? How were negotiations carried out with neighboring countries, etc.?
After the death of the ruler, Nineveh was captured by enemy troops. However, nobody plundered the library. They did it easier - it was destroyed and it ended up under the ruins of the palace where it was.
The library was discovered in the middle of the 19th century - in 1849. The first European to see the ancient vault was the Englishman Austin Henry Layard.
Excavations in this area lasted three years, after which the archaeologist managed to find the second part of the ancient repository, located in the opposite wing of the palace.
Naturally, no one wanted to leave such values, so all the artifacts ended up in the UK. They are now within the walls of the British Museum.
All these texts helped archaeologists to recreate a picture of the life of this state, because before the discovery of the library about Assyria was known only from the works of Herodotus and other ancient historians.
But what is even more surprising - in the library of Ashurbanipal, texts were found describing some biblical stories - for example, the Great Sweat. What can say about two things:
1) Either the Bible was copied from an older source of information.
2) Either all these biblical events actually happened.