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 By far the most noted of the tablet libraries, and still unequalled for its literary contents, is the library of Ashurbanapal at Nineveh discovered by Layard in 1850 and excavated by him and his successors. From this altogether more than 20,000 tablets were recovered for the British museum.

Here, as in most places, it was not one single library, but several and in this case there were two very distinct main ones. Layard found in the southwest palace or Sennacherib's palace a series of rooms entirely filled to the height of a foot or so from the floor with tablets, the greater part of which, however, were broken. There were tablets also in adjoining chambers but not in such large quantity. The other part of this library or the other library was found by Rassam in the north palace in the center of the great room famous as the lion chamber. These two libraries are commonly spoken of and treated, as one.