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Fascinating Biblical and Biblical Era Archaeology

Khalid Elhassan May 4, 2025 17 min

Archaeology - Ashurbanipal in a chariot, inspecting booty and prisoners from Babylon — Ashurbanipal in a chariot, inspecting booty and prisoners from Babylon. Wikimedia

20. A Bookworm King

Ashurbanipal’s library. Hutchinson’s History of Nations

The Neo Assyrian Empire, founded in the tenth century BC, became the world’s biggest state until then, and dominated the Middle East before it collapsed in 609 BC. Ashurbanipal was not just a great military commander, but also an intellectual, which was rare for rulers back then. He was literate, mastered multiple languages, and passionately collected texts and tablets. He hired scribes to copy writings, and sent others across the empire to find more. Ashurbanipal seized texts from defeated enemies as booty, and used military threats to convince neighbors to send him writings from their countries.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.