Ashurbanipal

Hello! My name is Ashurbanipal, and I was a king in the mighty Assyrian Empire a very long time ago. I was born around the year 685 BCE. While my brothers were busy practicing to be soldiers, I loved doing something very different. I learned how to read and write! I spent my days practicing how to make wedge shapes on soft clay tablets. It was not very common for a prince to be a scholar, but I wanted to learn everything I could about the world.

My father, King Esarhaddon, noticed how much I enjoyed learning. Around the year 672 BCE, he made a big decision and chose me to be the next king of Assyria. When I finally became king around 668 BCE, I ruled from our beautiful capital city of Nineveh. Being a king was a very important job. I had to be a strong leader and lead my armies to keep our people and our lands safe. But even as a king, my biggest dream was still about books and knowledge.

My greatest project was building a library. I didn't want just any library; I wanted to build the biggest and best one in the whole world! I sent my fastest writers, called scribes, all across my empire. Their job was to find and copy every important story, poem, and scientific text they could. We collected over 30,000 clay tablets and carefully organized them in my palace at Nineveh. We had exciting adventure stories, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other tablets that taught us about the stars and medicine. It was the very first library to gather all kinds of knowledge together in one place for people to study.

After I was gone, my empire eventually fell, and my city of Nineveh was buried under sand for thousands of years. But something wonderful happened in the 1800s. Explorers discovered the ruins of my palace, and deep inside, they found my library! The clay tablets had survived all that time. Because I collected all those stories, people today can read them and learn all about my world. I lived a full and long life until around the year 631 BCE, and I am remembered as the king who built a library to share knowledge with the world.