Discover the remarkable story of Ashurbanipal's legendary library, one of antiquity's greatest repositories of knowledge. When Victorian archaeologists excavated a seemingly ordinary mound in Iraq, they unearthed thousands of clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform—humanity's earliest written language. Though vengeful successors destroyed the Assyrian king's collection in the seventh century BCE, the intense heat paradoxically preserved these invaluable texts for posterity. This compelling account reveals how a sophisticated civilization safeguarded its intellectual heritage and offers profound insights into the ancient world's most advanced empire.