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Synchronistic History tablet K.4401

A cuneiform clay tablet fragment from Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh records relations between Assyria and Babylonia. The king did not write it.

A chronicle from Ashurbanipal's own library at Nineveh, showing the historical records his scribes kept, though he did not write it.

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Photo of a large clay tablet fragment covered in cuneiform wedge-shaped script, displayed in a museum case against a green background. A cracked, broken edge runs across the tablet, and a smaller tablet partly visible at the right edge.
Synchronistic History, fragment K.4401, from Nineveh, Library of Ashurbanipal. Photograph from Wikimedia Commons.

About this source

What it is

This is a fragment of a clay tablet written in cuneiform, catalogued as K.4401. It comes from Nineveh, from the library of Ashurbanipal. It is a synchronistic history, a chronicle that sets out the relations between Assyria and Babylonia. The photograph shows a large broken fragment in a museum case, with a smaller tablet partly visible at the edge. The facts do not give a date or a named author for the text.

Why it matters

Ashurbanipal gathered many tablets in his library, and this fragment shows the kind of historical record kept there. Chronicles like this one compared the reigns of Assyrian and Babylonian kings, so they show how scribes tracked political ties between the two lands. The tablet connects the king to the scribes and the learning that his library preserved.

Look closer

  • What can you see on the tablet, and what is missing because it is broken?
  • Who wrote this record, and why do you think a royal library would keep it?
  • What might a chronicle choose to record, and what might it leave out about the people of both kingdoms?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Ashurbanipal on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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