The Library at Nineveh

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Library at Nineveh, a treasure house of Assyrian ideas from the 7th Century BC. In 1849 a young English adventurer called Henry Layard started digging into a small hill on the banks of the River Tigris in Northern Iraq. Underneath it he found the ancient city of Nineveh. Layard unearthed extraordinary things - wonderful carved reliefs, ancient palace rooms and great statues of winged bulls. He also found a collection of clay tablets, broken up, jumbled around and sitting on the floor of a toilet. It was the remnants of a library and although Layard didn’t know it at the time, it was one of the greatest archaeological finds ever made.Conceived to house the sum of all human knowledge the library was built in the 7th century BC as the grand Assyrian Empire entered its last years. The clay tablets have proved to be a window into all aspects of Assyrian life, its literature, politics, religion and medicine - practises that are both deeply alien to us and alluringly familiar.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Eleanor Robson 5 episodes
  Senior Lecturer at Cambridge University and Vice-Chair of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq
• Karen Radner 2 episodes
  Lecturer in the Ancient Near Eastern History at University College London
• Andrew George 3 episodes
  Professor of Babylonian at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London

Related episodes

• Archaeology and Imperialism
  
  14 Apr, 2005 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Library of Alexandria
  
  12 Mar, 2009 020 Library and information sciences
• Babylon
  
  3 Jun, 2004 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Hittites
  
  23 Dec, 2021 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Tale of Sinuhe
  
  1 May, 2014 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Rosetta Stone
  
  11 Feb, 2021 930 History of the Ancient World
• Epic of Gilgamesh
  
  3 Nov, 2016 890 Other literatures
• The Dead Sea Scrolls
  
  4 May, 2023 220 The Bible
• Persepolis
  
  7 Jun, 2018 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Egyptian Book of the Dead
  
  27 Apr, 2017 930 History of the Ancient World
• Episode 2
  
  3 Jan, 2012 000 Computer science, knowledge and systems
• Pliny’s Natural History
  
  8 Jul, 2010 500 Science
• Carthage’s Destruction
  
  12 Feb, 2009 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Minoan Civilisation
  
  7 Jul, 2011 930 History of the Ancient World
• Vitruvius and De Architectura
  
  15 Mar, 2012 720 Architecture
• The Venerable Bede
  
  25 Nov, 2004 270 History of Christianity
• The Sassanid Empire
  
  13 Dec, 2007 930 History of the Ancient World
• Episode 3
  
  4 Jan, 2012 200 Religion
• The Translation Movement
  
  2 Oct, 2008 500 Science
• Edward Gibbon
  
  17 Jun, 2021 900 History

---

Programme ID: b00b7r71

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00b7r71

Auto-category: 935 (Mesopotamia and Assyria)