Library of Ashurbanipal: tablet
- Gallery: Room 55
- Culture: Neo-Assyrian
- Date: 7thC BC
- Object type: tablet
- Materials: clay
- Museum number: K.171
- Museum: The British Museum
- Collection record: British Museum website
- Image © The Trustees of the British Museum, shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.
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About this object
Before you is a clay tablet from the Neo-Assyrian period, part of what was once a larger inscribed object. This fragment is a piece of a scholarly document—an explanatory list of names of gods, carefully written in cuneiform script across three columns. You can see clear, ancient markings in Assyrian characters, divided across sections of text that may have once belonged together.
This tablet is associated with Ashurbanipal, the famous Assyrian king known for his vast royal library. The writing here is part of a broader tradition of lexical lists, which were vital for training scribes in the extensive vocabulary of cuneiform. This particular example contains parts of Emesal vocabulary, a Sumerian dialect used in religious or poetic contexts.
Though broken and incomplete, the tablet still bears signs of its original shape and purpose. Over 60 lines of text remain, preserving knowledge passed down by ancient scholars more than 2,600 years ago.
See it in person
Library of Ashurbanipal: tablet is on display in Room 55 at the British Museum on Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London — free to enter. Choose British Museum on audioguide.london and take a photo of it to hear this free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
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