by Antonio Napoli
From a hilltop, in the crisp morning air, the lieutenant—son of a Babylonian scribe—pointed out the latest conquest to the Assyrian king, Asenappar.
“What is that building over there, distinct from the others?” the king asked.
“It is a library. The city we see today is but a pale shadow of what it once was. Only the library remains as a reserved symbol of its former splendor,” replied the lieutenant.
The king gazed at the structure for a long time, then inquired:
“What do you know about this library?”
“I have made inquiries. It is said that the last librarians, driven by an insatiable curiosity, collected books of every kind.”
“A rich library, a rich bounty… But if I were to order you to destroy it, would you hesitate?” asked the king.
“No,” replied the lieutenant, suppressing his surprise. “However, I urge you to reflect on such a command. Truth has made its way into the world through books. Burning libraries would lead to the decline of knowledge; ignorance would find fewer enemies in the world. Without truth, we cannot rise above our misfortunes, our petty interests, our base schemes—we would be nothing more than violent beasts. My sovereign, do you truly wish to bring about all this?”
The king replied: “No one can assert with certainty that all those books contain truth. If they hold poetic fictions, they do not. If they contain treatises from philosophical schools, they contradict one another. If they speak truths that our senses can easily verify, they are useless. I fear they harbor more lies than truths and that, rather than revealing hidden and future things, they hinder us. And if a library can be a repository of falsehoods and errors, then it is right to destroy it. You will do so tomorrow at dawn.”
That night, the lieutenant, unable to bear the dishonor imposed by such an order, abandoned the camp without ever looking back, vanishing forever into the darkness. Meanwhile, the king, unaware of the consequences of this desertion, weary and dejected, fell asleep. He dreamed a long dream in which it seemed to him that a mountain rested upon his head. The wise Adapa appeared to him and explained that he would have no rivals. Adapa also taught him that writing was a peaceful conqueror, that the lies it harbored sometimes served the purpose of living. Finally, Adapa foretold that one day, as he looked out from the palace in Nineveh, he would see an army of scribes ready to salute him with tablets in hand. Still in the dream, Adapa granted Asenappar an extraordinary vision, enabling him to glimpse, on the horizon of a distant future, all the enemies of the Assyrian people—enlightened by great libraries that transformed roughness into gentleness, plunder into gift, hostility into friendship. Then Adapa disappeared, and, to the king’s painful realization, he found himself in a burning room—a room crammed with books.
And so, there was the great king Asenappar, rising like a sleepwalker to his desk, sitting down, and hastily drafting an edict. Then, mounting his horse, he personally posted it on the library’s gate. The edict ordered the preservation of the library—any library.
At the lark’s song, the troops set out, reaching the repository of knowledge. The first soldier on the scene, unable to read the edict, destroyed it with an irritated sneer. Then he gave the signal to set the fire. Thus, the original order was executed with ruthless, relentless, meticulous fury, sparing neither a scroll of papyrus, a fragment, nor a word.
After this calamity, for which a repentant Asenappar suffered greatly, an order was issued in Nineveh to gather every text from various centers and temples throughout Mesopotamia. Thus, twenty thousand clay tablets—tablets hardened by fire—were safeguarded within the city’s palace, for the king’s personal consultation, but also to teach the people that writing, an eternal tool that regenerates the spirit, is superior to the ephemeral weapon that destroys the body.