BIBLICAL LIBRARIES
term library to "literary collections" (p. 174) then to large literary collections" and then to the library of Ashurbanapal. Many collections are large but not literary. They are mainly or wholly public documents. Lagash e.g. with 30,000, is wholly official documents. Sippara with 50,000 and Nippur whether with 28,000 or 60,000 are mixed. All these exceed the 20,000 of Ashurbanapal but are not libraries because they are not literary.
Many collections on the other hand are literary but they are altogether "too small in extent" (p. 148) to be called libraries; the religious texts "may have amounted in some of the larger temples to several hundred tablets but there is no good reason for believing (p. 174) that the literary tablets even in the Marduk collection ranged high into the thousands." There is no collection therefore except that of Ashurbanapal big enough to merit the name of library.
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