Ashurbanipal (Sardanapalus)
(ruled 668 to 627 B.C.) Iraq
Assyrian King
Ashurbanipal assembled in Nineveh the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East (this collection of over 22,000 clay tablets has given modern scholars most of what they know of Babylonian and Assyrian literature). He was described by a physician in his court as spending a great deal of time dressed in women's clothing, and key nobles used reports of his cross-dressing as justification to overthrow him. The most complete texts of Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh were discovered in the seventh century library of this king. The ruins of Nineveh were excavated in the nineteenth century.
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