Which royal library preserved the best-known tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh?

The Library of Ashurbanipal preserved the best-known tablets of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Its tablets were discovered at Nineveh, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, in the ruins of the royal palace and library.

Ashurbanipal ruled Assyria from 668 to about 631 BCE and was known for collecting texts in several languages, especially Akkadian and Sumerian. His scribes gathered copies of myths, rituals, royal inscriptions, medical works, omens, and scholarly texts.

The Nineveh tablets include the Standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. They are particularly famous because Tablet XI contains the account of a catastrophic flood told by Utnapishtim. The tablets do not represent the first creation of the story; they are later copies of older Mesopotamian traditions.

A common mistake is to associate the epic with the Library of Alexandria. Alexandria was a later Egyptian-Greek scholarly center, while the most famous Gilgamesh manuscripts came from Ashurbanipal’s Assyrian library at Nineveh.