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How was Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh organized?

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British Museum: Reading Room — library Reading Room of the British Museum, designed by Sidney Smirke in collaboration with Anthony Panizzi and built in the 1850s. Illustration by Smirke, from the *Illustrated London News*, 1857.

Ashurbanipal’s library at Nineveh was the first systematically collected and cataloged library in the ancient Middle East. The king personally supervised its construction and organization, drawing upon centuries of experience in managing large temple archives, such as those in Ashur.12

To build the collection, Ashurbanipal commanded scribes to search for, collect, and copy texts of every genre from temple libraries throughout the country. These were integrated with existing tablets from Ashur, Calah, and Nineveh. The library was organized to cover a vast range of subjects, including:13

Omen texts: Observations of natural phenomena, human and animal behavior, and celestial bodies.1
Lexicographical texts: Dictionaries listing Sumerian, Akkadian, and other words essential for the scribal educational system.1
Literature: Traditional Mesopotamian epics, such as the stories of Gilgamesh, Creation, and others.1
Scientific and practical texts: Handbooks, mathematics, botany, chemistry, and administrative records.13

Many works were kept in multiple copies, and some bore the royal mark of ownership in their colophons. Today, approximately 20,720 Assyrian tablets and fragments from this collection are preserved in the British Museum.12