Babylonian Story of the Deluge | Page 4

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:
"I, Ashur-bani-pal, within it (i.e., the palace) understood the wisdom of
Nebo, all the art of writing of every craftsman, of every kind, I made
myself master of them all (i.e., of the various kinds of writing)." [3]
These words suggest that Ashur-bani-pal could not only read cuneiform
texts, but could write like a skilled scribe, and that he also understood
all the details connected with the craft of making and baking tablets.
Having determined to form a Library in his palace he set to work in a
systematic manner to collect literary works. He sent scribes to ancient
seats of learning, e.g., Ashur, Babylon, Cuthah, Nippur, Akkad, Erech,
to make copies of the ancient works that were preserved there, and
when the copies came to Nineveh he either made transcripts of them
himself, or caused his scribes to do so for the Palace Library. In any
case he collated the texts himself and revised them before placing them
in his Library. The appearance of the tablets from his Library suggests
that he established a factory in which the clay was cleaned and kneaded
and made into homogeneous, well-shaped tablets, and a kiln in which
they were baked, after they had been inscribed. The uniformity of the
script upon them is very remarkable, and texts with mistakes in them

are rarely found. How the tablets were arranged in the Library is not
known, but certainly groups were catalogued, and some tablets were
labelled. [4] Groups of tablets were arranged in numbered series, with
"catch lines," the first tablet of the series giving the first line of the
second tablet, the second tablet giving the first line of the third tablet,
and so on.
Ashur-bani-pal was greatly interested in the literature of the Sumerians,
i.e., the non-Semitic people who occupied Lower Babylonia about B.C.
3500 and later. He and his scribes made bilingual lists of signs and
words and objects of all classes and kinds, all of which are of priceless
value to the modern student of the Sumerian and Assyrian languages.
Annexed is an extract from a List of Signs with Sumerian and Assyrian
values. The signs of which the meanings are given are in the middle
column; the Sumerian values are given in the column to the left, and
their meanings in Assyrian in the column to the right. To many of his
copies of Sumerian hymns, incantations, magical formulas, etc.,
Ashur-bani-pal caused interlinear translations to be added in Assyrian,
and of such bilingual documents the following extract from a text
relating to the Seven Evil Spirits will serve as a specimen. The 1st, 3rd,
5th, etc., lines are written in Sumerian, and the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc., lines
in Assyrian.
The tablets that belonged to Ashur-bani-pal's private Library and those
of the Temple of Nebo can be distinguished by the colophons, when
these exist. Two forms of colophon for each class of the two great
collections of tablets are known, one short and one long. The short
colophon on the tablets of the King's Library reads:--"Palace of
Ashur-bani-pal, king of hosts, king of the country of Assyria" and that
on the tablets of the Library of Nebo reads:--"[Country of ?]
Ashur-bani-pal, king of hosts, king of the country of Assyria." See on
the Tablet of Astrological Omens, p. 22. The longer colophons are of
considerable interest and renderings of two typical examples are here
appended:--
I. Colophon of the Tablets of the Palace Library. (K. 4870.)
1. Palace of Ashur-bani-pal, king of hosts, king of the country of
Assyria, 2. who trusteth in the god Ashur and the goddess Bêlit, 3. on
whom the god Nebo (Nabû) and the goddess Tasmetu 4. have bestowed
all-hearing ears 5. and his possession of eyes that are clearsighted, 6.

and the finest results of the art of writing 7. which, among the kings
who have gone before, 8. no one ever acquired that craft. 9. The
wisdom of Nebo [as expressed in] writing, of every kind, 10. on tablets
I wrote, collated and revised, 11. [and] for examination and reading 12.
in my palace I placed--[I] 13. the prince who knoweth the light of the
king of the gods, Ashur. 14. Whosoever shall carry [them] off, or his
name side by side with mine 15. shall write may Ashur and Bêlit
wrathfully 16. sweep away, and his name and his seed destroy in the