Table Talk

WHEN THE self-styled scholar-king Ashurbanipal ascended to the throne of the Assyrian Empire, he set out to amass within the carved walls of his Nineveh palace the greatest library of the ancient world. So proud was the king of his own literacy that sculptures of him show a reed pen tucked into his belt in place of a dagger—a substitution that stopped him neither from waging protracted campaigns during which he flayed and cut out the tongues of Elamite chiefs, nor from extorting conquered peoples for valuable additions to his prized collection of books. It was with these texts, he believed, that the bounds of his rule could be made unstoppable and infinite. Most of his library was devoted to decoding the vaulted heavens’ secrets or the meaning to be found in the glistening entrails of a sacrificial goat.

Viewing, in person, the books once held in this library is an extraordinary experience. Yet it’s impossible not to note the cracks, chips, and holes that crater the surface of the clay tablets. The Library of Nineveh as it exists today is a fragment of a fragment of a fragment: composed largely of partial texts, comprising only part of the once-enormous scope of the library’s holdings, containing only a sliver of all the knowledge of Ashurbanipal’s day. Those books in the royal collection that have