Austen Henry Layard excavated the royal library at Nineveh (Kuyunjik mound, near Mosul, Iraq), unearthing over 30,000 cuneiform tablets from the 7th century BC Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. This included literary, administrative, and scientific works. The discovery in ancient Mesopotamia provided the largest surviving ancient library archive.

The tablets preserved epics like Gilgamesh, revitalizing ancient Near Eastern literature and influencing comparative mythology in poetry. Poets drew on Assyrian imagery for themes of empire and scholarship. It enriched scholarly poetry and translations bridging ancient and modern literary worlds.