Ashurbanipal

Hello! My name is Ashurbanipal. I was a king a very, very long time ago. My story started around the year 685. I lived in a land called Assyria. My home was a big, beautiful palace in a city named Nineveh. It was a wonderful place to live. As the king, I had a very important job. It was my job to be strong and keep all of my people safe from harm. I was a good king, and I worked hard to take care of everyone in my kingdom.

Even though I was a mighty king, my very favorite thing wasn't ruling my kingdom. My favorite thing was reading. I loved to read stories and learn all sorts of new things from books. I had a wonderful idea. I decided I wanted to collect all the stories in the whole world. So, I built a huge library to keep them all in one place. My books were very different from your books. They weren't made of paper. My books were special tablets made of clay. The writing on them looked like tiny little wedge shapes. I collected thousands and thousands of them for my amazing library.

I lived a long and full life as a king who loved to read. My palace is gone now, but something amazing happened many, many years later. Around the year 1849, people found my library of clay tablets buried under the sand. Because I worked so hard to collect all those stories, we can still read them today and learn about my time. My love for books helped save stories for everyone, and that makes me very proud.