The British Museum's Ashurbanipal Library Project

Fincke, Jeanette C.

doi:10.2307/4200559

Cited by 5 publications

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“…The university was also known as the Grand Lodge or Thebes or Luxor or Septer and it was built around 14 th century BCE. Another significant development in the establishment of library for purposes of education was witnessed in Assyria (Fincke, 2014). The Assyrian leader, Ashurbanipal, established a wellorganised library for his subjects in Nineveh in 7th century BCE.…”

Section: Background Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of activism as an impetus for setting up public libraries in Kenya

Kili¹,

K’Odhiambo²,

Odhiambo³

2023

IJLISS

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Community leaders are not focused on the literacy skills of the people they lead. It can be construed that the higher the rate of a community’s illiteracy, the more difficult it is for the community to develop. A look at Kenya shows that well equipped libraries for various constituencies is abysmal. Libraries can accelerate knowledge acquisition by the public through distance education. The study uses analytic methodology to critique lack of public libraries in Kenya. Analysis of community illiteracy rate reveals that the problem can better be addressed by community members playing the part of activists. Since activism is allowed in Kenya Constitution 2010, it becomes the only recourse to impel members of parliament and county assemblies to accelerate the setting up libraries in their areas of their jurisdiction and in this regard, activism is vital for social change. This study recommends more research to be carried out in Kenya on the need for and setting up more libraries for the citizens.

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Section: Background Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis of activism as an impetus for setting up public libraries in Kenya

Kili¹,

K’Odhiambo²,

Odhiambo³

2023

IJLISS

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“…Perhaps the earliest known library as an organized collection of documents is that of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, discovered during excavations in the city of Nineveh. In it, some thirty thousand fragments of clay tablets appeared buried among the remains of the Royal Palace (Fincke, 2004). Later, the libraries of Alexandria, Pergamum, and different Roman libraries were famous.…”

Section: Written Transmission Of Knowledge In Ancient Timesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical Approach and Scale Reconstruction of Two Medieval Mechanisms from “The Book of Secrets”

et al. 2022

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Abstract“The Book of Secrets in the Results of Ideas”, usually called “The Book of Secrets” is a codex containing drawings and descriptions of thirty-one artifacts attributed to the engineer Alī Ibn Khalaf al-Murādī, who lived in Andalusia in southern Spain at the beginning of the 11th century. This manuscript is one of the first written testimonies that describe medieval mechanisms with complex precision. The aim of this work is to reconstruct and study from a historical and technological point of view two of the ancient artifacts contained in the “Book of Secrets”, the “Fortress Demolisher” and the “Magic Well”. The “Fortress Demolisher” is a war machine designed to demolish the upper part of the walls or towers and consists of a battering ram mounted on a platform that can be raised several meters above the ground using a scissor mechanism. The “Magic Well” is a mechanism with several pulleys whose purpose is to raise water several meters from the bottom of a well by collecting a small portion of rope. To reconstruct the two artifacts, a digital model and a detailed study of the geometry and operation of the mechanisms, were first carried out. 3D printing, using the Fused Deposition Modelling technology, made the physical reproduction. The digitization and physical reproduction by 3D printing of the mechanisms represent an update of the traditional ways of transmitting knowledge. The use of these new technologies makes the knowledge more accessible, understandable and attractive.

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“…The Assyrian library records show that clay tablets were imported from Assyrian and Babylonian private libraries in their thousands. The remains of the excavated library, however, include comparatively few tablets in Babylonian script (Fincke 2004), and only a small proportion of tablets are identified by colophon as originating in private possession. Parpola pointed out that the tablets and boards listed in the Assyrian library records were taken while their owners still lived, rather than after their deaths (Parpola 1983: 9).…”

Section: Ashurbanipal and The Libraries Of Ninevehmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Royal libraries of Nineveh: New evidence for king Ashurbanipal's Tablet Collecting

Frame¹,

George²

2005

Iraq

113

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The two tablets published here for the first time, BM 45642 and BM 28825, are edited together for good reason, for the historical background of both texts is very probably the same episode in King Ashurbanipal's drive to acquire scribal learning. Where BM 28825 concerns the reception of the Assyrian king's demand for tablets among the citizens of Babylon, BM 45642 deals with the reaction of scholars of nearby Borsippa to a similar royal message. BM 45642 is the better preserved of the two tablets, and allows a fuller understanding of both texts' formal characteristics and of the contextual background. Consequently we present it first.The text inscribed on BM 45642 (81-7-6, 35) is a letter, though not a typical one. It begins with an extremely deferential address to Ashurbanipal (11. 1–4). Following a series of standard royal epithets, the address pays homage to the Assyrian king as the divinely appointed suzerain of Assyria and Babylonia. It goes on to record Nabû's patronage of the king, and to acknowledge his skill in Nabû's special field of writing, an expertise already well known from Ashurbanipal's own inscriptions. These clauses are chosen with care, for the writer is evidently a scholar from Borsippa, Nabû's cult-centre. With them he invokes a certain feeling of mutual fellowship. The name of the sender is expected at the end of the address, but although the end of 1. 4 is broken there does not seem to be a name there, and we have restored instead nilt[apra umma] “we send word as follows”. In this the text departs from normal Neo-Babylonian usage, perhaps because it is not a regular letter but, as becomes clear, a formal and collective communication on behalf of all the scholars of Borsippa.

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The British Museum's Ashurbanipal Library Project

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Analysis of activism as an impetus for setting up public libraries in Kenya

Analysis of activism as an impetus for setting up public libraries in Kenya

Historical Approach and Scale Reconstruction of Two Medieval Mechanisms from “The Book of Secrets”

The Royal libraries of Nineveh: New evidence for king Ashurbanipal's Tablet Collecting

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