In history we learned about the vicious yet loved (at our house, anyway) Ashurbanipal, king of the Assyrians. The feared man fought like a lion, and even fought lions. He was the last strong king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (about 650 BC), and he developed his favorite place: Nineveh. What we love about him, besides his crazy name, is that he started the first library. In fact, some of the cuneiform tablets from his vast library still exist in museums. He collected tablets about everything - from astronomy and medicine to folktales. He even searched out more ancient tablets, like from Babylon and Mesopotamia and kept them safe. He built room after room to hold these bulky, heavy treasures - and so we call him the first librarian. Big Sis has listed librarian in her top five career aspirations for the future, and she took the job of constructing a replica of his first library out of play dough quite seriously. Every child helped - and though it's hard to tell from the picture, there were soooo many individual tablets, each inscribed by little toothpicks or tools. Ashurbanipal sits on a throne, with tablet in hand - and his writing desk nearby. This took an enormous amount of time, but burned the story in their minds. Even E! will shout out "Ashurbanipal!" on occasion.
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