World's Oldest Library - The Library of Ashurbanipal. "Before the discovery of the Library, almost everything we knew about ancient Assyria came from stories in the Bible or classical historians. With the discovery of the Library, thousands of cuneiform texts were recovered, telling the Assyrians’ story in their own words. From these we can follow court intrigues, listen in on secret intelligence reports, follow rituals step-by-step, hear the words of hymns and prayers, and thumb through medical handbooks, as well as reading in incredible detail about the deeds of the kings. The Library was also famous in antiquity – centuries after Ashurbanipal’s death (and Assyria’s destruction), scribes in Babylonia celebrated the compilation of the Library. Perhaps these stories inspired the great libraries of the Greek world – such as the great Library of Alexandria in Egypt. While many tablets have been found at other sites over the last 170 years, Ashurbanipal’s tablets remain our primary source for most of what we know about Mesopotamian scholarship of the time" (British Museum, n.d.).