The Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, Preserved by the Fire That Destroyed It
The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal assembled at Nineveh the greatest library of the ancient Near East — some 30,000 clay tablets. When Nineveh burned in 612 BC, the fire that ended Assyria baked the clay hard and buried it safe. Dug up from 1849, the tablets yielded the Epic of Gilgamesh — and a flood story older than Genesis that stunned Victorian Britain.
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