Clay Tablets That Outlived Empires

Fire destroys paper but bakes clay, which is why the oldest literature on Earth survives. The 12 tablets of Gilgamesh, copied for the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, lay hidden until 1853.

The Code of Hammurabi preserves 282 laws from 1754 BCE on a diorite stela now in the Louvre. The Amarna Letters open 14th century BCE diplomacy, and the Babylonian Map of the World shows how ancients pictured the cosmos.

Browse the manuscript database and meet the oldest books that are not books at all..