The Library of Ashurbanipal was the first searchable archive

In 650 BC, Assyrian king Ashurbanipal built the first searchable library in Nineveh. He sent scribes across his empire to copy every important text in cuneiform, over 30,000 clay tablets on history, law, medicine, astronomy, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. He organized them by subject and room, with catalog tags. When Nineveh was sacked in 612 BC, the city burned and the clay tablets were baked hard, preserving them. British archaeologists dug them up in 1852, giving us our first window into Babylonian knowledge. Fire that destroyed the city saved its memory.