The Ashurbanipal Library project at the British Museum

Abstract

• It was a remarkable stroke of luck that the first large corpus of cuneiform texts to be rediscovered in Mesopotamia was the Library of Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria (668–c. 630 BC). It quickly became the foundation stone on which the modern study of Assyriology was built. The Library remains a key Assyriological resource 160 years later. The British Museum’s Ashurbanipal Library Project is working to make the entire Library available in digital form. A digital catalogue is now publicly available; it will be updated and expanded regularly, keeping pace with the intensive research that continues to be undertaken on its texts. New, high-resolution digital images of the entire Library are available, together with an extensive library of historical photos and line drawings dating back as far as the 1850’s. We also include bibliography and as many transliterations and translations as possible. The catalogue is intended as a long-term resource to stimulate interest and facilitate teaching and research on the texts.