Neo-Assyrian Empire · 668-612 BC

Ashurbanipal's library: a king who collected everything

The last great king of Assyria could read and write, and he sent scribes across his empire to copy every text they could find. Students explore his library at Nineveh and the flood story of Gilgamesh, found in its ruins.

Teach it live New Open on the map
Length
45 minutes
Ages
11–14
On the map
3 steps, 660 BC to 612 BC
Live lesson
7 rounds, 3 on the map
Worksheet
Two A4 pages, with Classroom
You need
A projector; phones for live

Live lesson · new in Classroom

Teach it live. The class answers on their phones.

Put the board on the projector. Students join with a six-digit code, no account needed, and tap the map: where was the frontier, where did the grain come from. Their pins drop in together when you reveal, and the closest student takes the round.

€19 per month: every lesson live, every worksheet, cancel anytime. Rome at its height runs live for free.

A live lesson on the projector: the class's pins on the map around Alexandria, the closest students listed beside it A student's phone: the question and a map to tap
7 rounds
3 places to find on the map, quiz questions, a class vote and a one-line answer.
About 15 minutes
Run it as the map step, or to open the discussion. You move on with the space bar.
A report
Every answer, per student and per round, to read back or print after the lesson.
1

Introduction

5 min

Read aloud

The last great king of Assyria could read and write, and he sent scribes across his empire to copy every text they could find. Students explore his library at Nineveh and the flood story of Gilgamesh, found in its ruins.

By the end of the lesson, students can

  • Explain what Ashurbanipal's library was and how its tablets survived.
  • Locate Nineveh, Babylon and Susa and describe Ashurbanipal's relations with each.
  • Describe how the Epic of Gilgamesh was rediscovered and why it caused a sensation in 1872.
2

Explore the map

12 min

Project the map, or let students follow on their own devices. Each step opens the map at the right year and place.

a

660 BC

The library city

Open the map in 660 BC on Nineveh with the Cities layer on. Ashurbanipal's palace stood on the mound of Kuyunjik, inside the walls. About 30,000 clay tablets and fragments were found there. Why clay and not papyrus?

Open this view on the map
b

650 BC

Where the texts came from

Zoom out in 650 BC. Ashurbanipal's scribes copied texts from Babylon, Nippur and Uruk in the south. Follow the Euphrates and Tigris south from Nineveh and find Babylon with the Cities layer. How far did a tablet travel to reach the library?

Open this view on the map
c

612 BC

The end

Jump to 612 BC and turn on Historical Events. Nineveh burns. The fire baked the clay tablets hard and the ruins buried them for 2,500 years. Find "Fall of the Assyrian Empire".

Open this view on the map
3

Class discussion

14 min

Pick two or three. They run from what happened to why it mattered.

  1. Ashurbanipal boasted that he could read the oldest scripts and solve hard mathematics. Why would a warrior king want to be known as a scholar?
  2. The library held omens, medicine, rituals, word lists and stories. Which of these would a king use most, and why?
  3. A fire destroys a paper library but bakes a clay one. What else about Mesopotamia helped its records survive?
  4. In 1872 George Smith read a tablet with a flood story older than the Bible's. Why did people in Victorian London find this so shocking?
  5. Ashurbanipal sacked Thebes in Egypt (663 BC) and destroyed Susa (647 BC). Can the same ruler be both a destroyer and a preserver of culture?
4

Game round

9 min

Play one round as Darius the Great, whose own scribes wrote in three languages on the cliff at Behistun. Compare him with Ashurbanipal: which king used writing more cleverly to hold an empire together?

Open Rule History
5

Worksheet

5 min

This worksheet comes with Classroom

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