that they formed a part of the great Private Library of Ashur-bani-pal,
which that king kept in his palace. The tablets found by Layard in 1852
and by Rassam in 1853 form the unique and magnificent collection of
cuneiform tablets in the British Museum, which is now commonly known
as the "Kuyûnjik Collection." The approximate number of the inscribed
baked clay tablets and fragments that have come from Kuyûnjik and are
now in the British Museum is 25,073. It is impossible to over-estimate
their importance and value from religious, historical and literary
points of view; besides this, they have supplied the material for the
decipherment of cuneiform inscriptions in the Assyrian, Babylonian
and Sumerian languages, and form the foundation of the science of
Assyriology which has been built up with such conspicuous success
during the last 70 years.


Ashur-bani-pal, Book-Collector and Patron of Learning.

Ashur-bani-pal (the Asnapper of Ezra iv, 10) succeeded his father
Esarhaddon B.C. 668, and at a comparatively early period of his reign
he seems to have devoted himself to the study of the history of his
country, and to the making of a great Private Library. The tablets that
have come down to us prove not only that he was as great a benefactor
of the Library of the Temple of Nebo as any of his predecessors, but
that he was himself an educated man, a lover of learning, and a patron
of the literary folk of his day. In the introduction to his Annals as
found inscribed on his great ten-sided cylinder in the British Museum
he tells us how he took up his abode in the chambers of the palace
from which Sennacherib and Esarhaddon had ruled the Assyrian Empire,
and in describing his own education he says: