Besides its importance as the Assyrian capital, Nineveh is famous for another reason . one of the world's first great libraries was at Nineveh. The last great kink of the Assyrians, Ashurbanipal, created the library. Ashurbanipal's library included books on fables, proverbs, religion, magic, law, science, folktales, and ancient stories. Some of the books were written in the Sumerian language and some in the Babylonian language. Archaeologists have uncovered more than 20,000 of these books. All of them are clay tablets. These tablets may have made up only a small part of the collection Ashurbanipal once had. When archaeologists found Ashurbanipal's library, they did not know that the Sumerian language existed. By studying Ashurbanipal's Sumerian books and comparing them with others that had been found elsewhere , scholars learned to read Sumerian. It is fortunate for us that Ashurbanipal collected books. Such a large library can tell us a great deal about the Sumerians and other peoples of the time. If Ashurbanipal had not loved knowledge and books so much, we would know far less about Mesopotamia than we do.