The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, named after Ashurbanipal, the last great king of the Assyrian Empire, is a collection of thousands of clay tablets and fragments containing texts of all kinds from the 7th century BC. Among its holdings was the famous Epic of Gilgamesh. The remains of this great repository was discovered in modern-day northern Iraq, near the city of Mosul, the area of ancient Nineveh, capital of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia. The site was in ruins, yet 30,000  clay tablets and fragments survived.

Ashurbanipal was ruler of the Assyrian Empire from around 668 BC to 627 BCE. During this time, the empire underwent its greatest expansion and eventually included Babylon, Persia, Syria and Egypt. Ashurbanipal was known to be especially cruel to his enemies, however. is said to have treated his own subjects fairly and justly. He was literate and passionate about collecting written knowledge from anywhere in the world. Most of the collection consists of legal and administrative texts, as well as science, philosophy, by literary and sacred texts.

Most likely destroyed by fire, only portions of clay tablets survived, whereas any texts on leather, papyrus and wax tablets would have been destroyed, so it is impossible to know how large this library may have been. The remaining fragments are giving researchers an enormous amount of information on the civilization, history and beliefs of that time, as well as earlier times since the collection was designed to include any knowledge that could be found and preserved at the time. The most famous of these is one of the best copies of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is considered the oldest surviving work of literature in existence. International efforts are being undertaken to to restore and re-open this library as soon as possible.