The famous library containing major surviving tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh was found at Nineveh. It belonged to Ashurbanipal, the Neo-Assyrian king who ruled from 669 to about 631 BCE.
Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire in northern Mesopotamia, near modern Mosul in Iraq. Archaeologists excavated the library in the nineteenth century, uncovering thousands of clay tablets written mainly in cuneiform.
The tablets preserve the Standard Babylonian version of the epic, copied by scribes centuries after earlier Sumerian Gilgamesh poems were composed. Nineveh is sometimes confused with Uruk, the city ruled by Gilgamesh in the story; Uruk is the epic’s setting, while Nineveh is the archaeological findspot of Ashurbanipal’s library.