Before and After the Nineveh Library

Other great libraries existed before Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh.
King Hammurabi built a library in the Babylonian city of Borsippa a thousand years before Ashurbanipal.

Rameses II founded a famous library in the Egypitian city of Thebes more than 700 years before Ashurbanipal.
But the diversity of information and the sheer number of records earn Ashurbanipal's library the reputation of being
"the greatest of the ancient world."

It was 350 years before another library surpassed it.
The great library was built by Ptolemy I Soter,
one of Alexanders the Great's generals, about the year 300 B.C.E..

It was constructed in the Egyptian seaport city of Alexandria,
and it's librarians endeavored to collect copies of most of the writings in the inhabited world.
According to tradition, it was at Alexandria that about 70 scholars started translating the Hebrew portion of the Scriptures into Greek.
This translation came to be called the Greek Septuagint and was used extensively by early Christians.