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the state. Ancient Romans attributed the prosperity of their empire in part to the purchase of three divine books by the ancient King Tarquin. According to the story, Tarquin bought the volumes from the prophetess Sibyl only after spurning her original offer of nine books, six of which she proceeded to burn out of spite. Realizing his mistake, Tarquin quickly came to his senses and snapped up the remaining volumes. Those books would later occupy a place of honor in the Roman forum, providing a tangible bridge from the mythic world to the present, until they were finally destroyed along with the empire during the great sieges. The Assyrians assigned a similar mythological significance to the power of writing in their tale of Zu, a lesser god who steals a divine tablet from the ruling god Enlil and brings it to Assyria. The tablet is said to reveal the fate of the gods, thus granting the Assyrian kingdom a measure of power over the gods themselves.
    Throughout the ancient world, writing played a crucial role in the expansion of empires. In the seventh century BC, King Ashurbanipal took control of Mesopotamia, establishing the great Assyrian empire. As one of his first acts, he commanded his scribe Shadunu to collect every available written artifact in the kingdom. “No one shall withhold tablets from you,” the king decreed, “and if you see any tablets and ritual texts about which I have not written to you, and they are suitable for my palace, select them, collect them and send them to me.” Executing the king’s decree, Shadunu traveled the countryside impounding every written tablet he could find. He confiscated every single document from every temple and private home in the kingdom. Eventually, he returned with a vast collection of poems, proverbs, hymns, fables, omens, horoscopes, incantations,prayers, and more than 500 drug recipes. 13 From this act of imperial confiscation the world’s first library emerged. In addition to a vast array of factual records, King Ashurbanipal’s collection included a literary component: the now-famous legend of Gilgamesh, 12 tablets of the old Babylonian account of the great flood, and numerous translations of older Sumerian stories. Of the 25,000 tablets later excavated at the vast Royal Library at Nineveh, more than two-thirds were created in response to orders from the king. Just as Ptolemy would later build his library at Alexandria by confiscating books from incoming ships, Ashurbanipal built his library through coercion. And lest there be any doubt about who owned the books, the king ordered that every book in the kingdom carry this royal inscription:
     
    Palace of Ashurbanipal, king of the world … who has possessed himself of a clear eye and the choice art of tablet-writing, such as none among the kings, my predecessors, had acquired. The wisdom of Nabu, the ruled line, all that there is, have I inscribed upon tablets, checking and revising it, and that I might see and read them, have I placed them within my palace. 14
     
    Some manuscripts he further commended to posterity, “for the sake of distant days.” The books also included a warning that anyone who stole or vandalized a book would be subject to a curse “terrible and merciless as long as he lives.” The king instituted rules requiring a high degree of bibliographic control: Every text would be copied in a consistent format, bearing the name of the scribe and the name of the king. The library also bore several hallmarks that would become characteristic of subsequent early libraries: forming part of a temple dedicated to the worship of a deity, following stated acquisitions guidelines, and employing a dedicated staff conversant in multiple languages. Of the organization of the library we know almost nothing. But we do know that it proved instrumental in supporting the expansion of the Assyrian empire. Armed with a vast arsenal of recorded information about governance, military strategy, weapon making, agriculture,