Communication · c. 650 BCE

Library of Ashurbanipal

An Assyrian king collects over 30,000 clay tablets into a catalogued royal library.

At Nineveh in the 7th century BCE, Ashurbanipal ordered texts copied and gathered from across Mesopotamia, including the Epic of Gilgamesh. Its more than 30,000 tablets and fragments, now in the British Museum, preserved much of what we know of Mesopotamian literature and science.

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