An Ancient " Encyclopedia of Human Knowledge "

King Ashurbanipal of Assyria , whose library held cuneiform clay tablets,
650 B.C.E.

Picture yourself in the Middle Eastern country known today as Iraq.
The year is 650 B.C.E.
You are within the towering walls of the city of Niveveh.
( near modern- day Mosul)

Looming before you is the imperial palace of King Ashurbanipal--
ruler of Assyria , Egypt and Babylonia. *

* Ashurbanipal thought to be the Asenappar mentioned in the Bible at Ezra 4:10, was a contemporary of Judean King Manasseh... *

Theses men have just returned from the extremites of the Assyrian Kingdom and are attempting to gather every known work about the social,
cultural, and religious traditions of the people liveing in Ashurbanipal's realm.

Opening one of the jars,
you notice that they are full of pillow-shape clay tablets about
three inches wide by four inches long.
You follow one of the men inside the palace,
where you see scribes with bone styli makeing wedge- shaped
impressions on small tablets of moist clay.

They are transalating foreign- language documents into Assyrian.
Later the tablets will be baked in an oven,
makeing the records almost indestructable.
The records are stored in rooms filled with shelves that are stacked with hundreds of jars.
On the doorposts of the rooms ,
plaques state the subject of the records held in each location.

The more then 20,000 clay tablets in this library contain information about business transactions ,
religious customs , law, history, medicine , and a human and animal physiology, forming what a later scholar described as...
" an encyclopedia of human knowledge.. "