The Library of Ancient Wisdom - Mesopotamia and the Making of HistoryWhen a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen: the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, seventh century BCE ruler of a huge swathe of the ancient Middle East known as Mesopotamia. After his death, vengeful rivals burned Ashurbanipals library to the ground yet the texts, carved on clay tablets, were baked and preserved by the heat. Buried for