The Voice of a Neurotic from 2,700 Years Ago

When I read the Epic of Gilgamesh in college, I may have learned in that history course about when the text was discovered, but I don't remember that I did.

The most recent 99% Invisible tells the story of the Library of Ashurbanipal in Ninevah, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire, which was destroyed in 612 BCE. It was excavated in the 1840s, and that was when the first copy of Gilgamesh was found. The burning of the library had baked the soft clay of the library's many tablets and made them more durable and likely to survive the millennia.

The 99PI episode isn't so much about that, however. It's a funny and very human look at the day-to-day records that were also found in the library, recorded on behalf of the previous Assyrian king, who was — as they say in the episode — a neurotic.

Be sure to listen to the episode's 40 minutes, if you can, and don't just read the page content; there's more there than they transcribed.