Libraries have long become an integral part of the culture of every nation. But once collections of books were owned only by the richest and most powerful people and only select readers were allowed into the vaults. What is the oldest library in the world? Historians consider it a huge collection of clay books, which belonged to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who lived more than 2.5 thousand years ago - after all, all the copies there were already sorted and cataloged.
Winged bulls liked more
In 1847, the English explorer Austin Henry Layard, in search of ancient monuments, began excavations of the Kuyundzhik hill on the left bank of the Tigris River. Under a layer of earth, he discovered the remains of a ruined palace erected on an artificial terrace. Among the items ancient art Layard found large basalt stones with cuneiform inscriptions, after deciphering which it turned out that the archaeologist managed to find Nineveh, ancient capital Assyria, and the palace itself belonged to its ruler, King Ashurbanipal, who lived in 685-627 BC.
In addition to a large number of preserved statuettes, seals and even sculptures, the workers led by Layard brought to the surface about 30,000 cuneiform clay tablets burned in the fire or in the sun. Layard himself was not too interested in them, the researcher was much more attracted by the preserved works of art (such as stone winged bulls with human faces), which he sent to London. Nevertheless, the tablets also moved to the British Museum, where they simply lay in storage for several decades.
In 1852, Layard's assistants found about the same number of written clay tablets in another wing of the palace, and they were also taken to London. IN british museum both parts of the collection of clay texts were placed in a common repository, so it is now impossible to determine in which place certain tablets were found - but the main thing is that the texts, consisting of several parts, became scattered, and this made further research very difficult.
In 1854, Layard arranged an exhibition of his findings at the Crystal Palace in London, the main exhibits of which were reconstructed statues and bas-reliefs. The event aroused a wide interest in Assyrian culture, many scientists began to decipher its writing. After reading the first clay manuscripts, it became clear that they were the main treasure of the found ancient city.
Like a wine cellar
The collection of clay tablets turned out to be the oldest library in the world, created at the behest of King Ashurbanipal. During his reign, Nineveh reached the pinnacle of power, there was no longer anyone to fight, and the king gave all his strength to collecting texts.
First of all, Ashurbanipal decided to collect any documents of the state. He sent his people to all the settlements and temple archives, who were to copy the texts available there and deliver them to the king. Some plates reproduce much more early monuments writing and contain information about events that happened hundreds and thousands of years before the time of copying.
The library itself was very different from modern book depositories and outwardly looked like a wine cellar. On the floor were benches made of clay, on them were large earthenware vessels, where the tablets were placed. The same vessels stood on the shelves. There were almost no trees in Mesopotamia, so the shelves were also made of clay. The vessels that stood on them were smaller; short texts were stored there - songs, royal decrees, letters, etc.
At the same time, the collection of texts was a real library. It had a catalog where data about any book was recorded: the title, the number of tablets, as well as the section of knowledge to which the manuscript belongs. A clay tag was attached to each shelf indicating the section and the titles of the books placed on it. Above the entrance to the vault was an inscription threatening those who would wish to steal or spoil the books - the inevitable punishment of the gods awaited them, and the names of the villains and their heirs were forgotten forever.
Evidence of the Flood
Most a large number of texts belonged to the field of magic. The powerful king was very interested in how to find out the events of the future and retain power by communicating with higher powers. Therefore, conspiracies, religious rituals and prayers are recorded on many clay tablets. But in the library there was a place for mathematical works, works on astronomy, history, medicine, as well as dictionaries. foreign words, because trade relations connected Assyria with many states. Some books are copied from much older Sumerian or Babylonian texts, the originals of which have not survived to our time.
Among the clay manuscripts there were even the first geographical maps! They displayed quite large territory from the state of Urartu (modern Armenian highland) to Egypt - with the names of countries and cities.
The library kept and works of art, in particular, a copy of the record of the Sumerian legend about fairy tale hero Gilgamesh, the original of which, according to scientists, was created in XVIII-XVII centuries BC.
In 1872, the translator George Smith announced that one of the tablets contained an excerpt from the story of the Flood. The Daily Telegraph gave him funds for a separate expedition to Nineveh in order to find the missing parts of the book - and Smith did it successfully. Subsequent linguistic research proved that it is a copy from ancient book, written in the Sumerian city of Uruk (in the Bible it is called Erech) almost three thousand years ago, is another confirmation that global flood was a real event.
Assyrian printers
Scientists believe that the first clay books appeared among the ancient Sumerians. First, blanks were made, the dimensions of which were approximately 32 by 22 centimeters, and the thickness was 2.5 centimeters. For the convenience of writing, they were marked with a stretched thread. parallel lines. Then symbols were squeezed out on the tablets with a pointed stick. Usually they covered both sides of the workpiece, and sometimes even its ends, while the last line of the previous plate was reproduced at the beginning of the next. Under the text, the scribe put a deep cross line, and under it - the name of the book to which he referred this fragment, and serial number tablets.
If the work had to be interrupted, the workpiece was wrapped in a wet rag and stored in this form. The completed tablet was fired in a kiln or dried in the sun.
The Assyrians took over from much more ancient people technology for creating clay books - but they made changes to it that can be called revolutionary.
The study of the tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal helped scientists make a startling discovery: it turned out that in the time of the Assyrian kings there already existed printing. Small documents that had to be sent to all the settlements of the country - for example, state decrees - were not copied manually. For their manufacture, a wooden matrix was cut out and clay slips were made from it.
Mysterious and wise people
The oldest library in the world contributed to the study of the mysterious, which is considered one of the most ancient on our planet. It originated in the valley of the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates six thousand years ago. Where these people came from is still unknown. Their language is unlike any other in the world, including the languages of the Semitic tribes living next to them. The Sumerians themselves in their legends claim that they arrived from the large island of Dilmun, but so far they have not been able to find their homeland. That they most likely came by sea, says the fact that their first settlements were built at the mouths of rivers. In addition, all the most important gods in their mythology are associated with the sea, and the main occupation of the Sumerians was shipping.
It is not clear where the people who came from had amazing knowledge in the field of astronomy (including the fact that the Earth was born as a result of a cosmic catastrophe), medicine, mathematics, architecture and others. scientific disciplines. Many scholars claim that it was the Sumerians who invented the wheel, the potter's wheel, and even brewing. At the same time, due to the complexity of their writing (in the writing of the Sumerians in different time there were from 600 to 1000 characters), researchers for a long time could not read the texts that have survived to this day. And in the library of Ashurbanipal, dictionaries for translating from Sumerian into the Assyrian language were preserved, as well as scientific work devoted to the interpretation of difficult passages in Sumerian texts. They helped a lot in deciphering the ancient writing.
Gold is more valuable than books
Ashurbanipal was the last great king of Assyria. Already 15 years after his death, hordes of nomads invaded the country - mostly Medes, who were supported by the soldiers of the states conquered by the Assyrians. About the capture of Nineveh tells ancient legend: residents of the capital, surrounded by impregnable walls, successfully repelled enemy attacks. Then the besiegers blocked the Tigris, the water overflowed its banks and flooded the city. The last king of Assyria, in order not to fall into the hands of enemies, set fire to the palace and burned in its flame.
The city was almost completely sacked, but clay tablets, unlike gold and jewelry, did not attract the attention of illiterate nomads. Moreover, the re-fired inscriptions acquired additional strength and have survived to this day. And after a few centuries, hills formed above the ruins - and the oldest library in the world disappeared underground.
Nikolai Mikhailov
The library is not just a place where books are read in silence, it is a temple of thought, a museum of history. These institutions have collected and carefully stored the most various works writing and printing intended for public use. We present to your attention the TOP 10 oldest libraries in the world.
The first place in the ranking of the TOP 10 oldest libraries in the world is Vatican Apostolic Library. It was founded at the beginning of the 15th century by Pope Nicholas V and holds the largest number of Renaissance and medieval manuscripts. To date, the walls of the Vatican Library store 150,000 manuscripts, more than 200,000 engravings and geographical maps, about 300 thousand medals and coins, and most importantly, about two million printed books. According to rumors, there are a huge number of secret rooms in the premises of this library, access to which only a select few have. Officially, the library is open for free use by scientific and research work. But in reality, no more than 150 researchers per day can get access to these walls. Among the numerous books that the Vatican Apostolic Library is still replenished with, there are old manuscripts of the works of Cicero, Terence, Virgil, letters of Petrarch, Michelangelo, Luther, as well as a rare sample of the Bible printed by Gutenberg in the middle of the 15th century. The interior halls are decorated with frescoes.
One of the oldest libraries in the world is − Bodleian Library. It is located in the UK at Oxford University. Many experts believe that this library is the oldest in Europe and the largest in Britain. This was facilitated by a decree issued in 1610, according to which all books published in the country had to send one sample here. Today, the Bodleian Library is named after Thomas Bodley, who was a diplomat to Queen Elizabeth and donated many books and ancient manuscripts to the library.
National Library of Malta was founded in 1555 by the 48th Master of the Order of Saint John, Claude de la Single. It was he who issued a decree according to which, after the death of the knights, their personal books became the property of the Order. The peak of the development of the National Library of Malta falls on the reign of the bailiff Louis Girene de Tencines. Thanks to his efforts in the library, a deed of gift 1107 from Emperor Charles to King Baldwin of Jerusalem. In addition, the walls of this library contain the rarest samples of books, minutes of the meetings of the Order of St. John, as well as many documents about members of the order. Since 1812, part of the library has been open to the public.
National Library of the Czech Republic was founded in 1366. Its building is the second largest in Prague. It is located in the city center, in the Stare Mesto quarter. The National Czech Library is part of the Clementinum. This is a complex of Baroque buildings of the Jesuit Collegium, covering an area of 20 thousand square meters. In one year, this library serves about one million readers. It contains more than 6 million books and ancient documents. It is worth noting that the National Library of the Czech Republic was one of the first in Europe to start digitizing books back in 1992. On average, the collection of this library is replenished with 70 thousand new items.
Bavarian State Library in Munich was founded in 1558 by Duke Albrecht of Wittelsbach. It contains the manuscripts of the largest collection of incanubula in Europe. In addition, the funds of this library store more than 9 million books, more than 50 thousand printed publications and about 90 thousand manuscripts. To date, the Bavarian State Library has managed to digitize 35 thousand books, which is about 103 terabytes. About 3,000 visitors visit the reading rooms every day. 130 volumes provided for their use reference literature. During the Second World War the building of the Bavarian state library was destroyed by 80%, and about half a million books are lost forever.
Royal Library of Belgium located in Brussels on the Mount des Arts, dates back to the 15th century, when the Burgundian nobility began to collect manuscripts. In 1559, by order of Philip II, they were taken to Brussels. Since then, book stocks have been replenished, but they were able to find their place only in 1837, when the Royal Library was formed. In 1969, the library moved to a new building, 67 thousand square meters. About 8 million books, periodicals and 6 special collections are stored on 150 kilometer shelves.
Seventh place in the ranking of the Top 10 oldest libraries in the world is Austrian National Library. It was founded in 1368 in Vienna at the Hofbug Palace, the former residence of the Habsburg imperial family. It houses more than 7.5 million copies of books, about 200,000 papyri dating back to the 15th century BC, books from the 6th century, as well as paintings, globes and scores by famous composers Bruckner and Strauss.
The most old library in the world to be in the British Museums in London. Library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was founded in the 7th century BC and discovered in 1851 by archaeologist Austin Henry during excavations on the banks of the Euphrates. The king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal, spoke several languages, was an excellent astronomer, mathematician and managed to create a library with more than 30 thousand clay tablets. 25,000 clay tablets have survived to this day. Preserved ancient artifacts due to the fact that during the raid of the Medes, the library was under the ruins of the palace. Among the records in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal there is a description of the political events of that time, legislative documents, prophecies, descriptions of religious rituals, as well as songs and prayers.
In ninth place in the ranking of the Top 10 oldest libraries in the world is library of the monastery of St. Catherine, dating back to 565. It is located in Egypt at the foot of Mount Sinai. Officially, the library was founded in 1734 by Archbishop Nikifor. Due to the fact that since its foundation the monastery has never been conquered and ruined, it has a huge collection of manuscripts and icons. There are more than 3 thousand manuscripts, 1700 scrolls, more than five thousand books, among which there are the first copies of book printing, in the funds of the library of the monastery of St. Catherine. special value present manuscripts - the Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century and the Syriac Codex of the 5th century with quotations from the Bible. In addition to books, the library of the monastery of St. Catherine contains historical documents, gold seals and letters of the Byzantine emperors and twelve sheets of one of the oldest texts of the Bible.
Closes the ranking of the TOP 10 oldest libraries in the world National Library in France. Today, this library has the largest collection of French-language literature in the world and is one of the largest in the world. At first, the building of the National Library of France was located in the center of Paris. Today, the old building houses ancient manuscripts and a hall with medals. The main books are in the library located on the left bank of the river Seine. Vault erected in the form open books, stores 14 million books, 12 million engravings and drawings, 530 thousand coins, as well as about 900 thousand maps and plans. Every year in National Library France gets 1.4 million readers. The budget of this institution is 254 million euros per year. The library has 2,651 employees. The total length of the shelves is 395 kilometers.
Compiled for 25 years in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh by order of King Ashurbanipal (7th century BC). It also served as a state archive.
After the death of the king, the funds were scattered among various palaces. The part of the library discovered by archaeologists consists of 25,000 clay tablets with cuneiform texts. Library opening in mid-nineteenth century was of great importance for understanding the cultures of Mesopotamia and for deciphering cuneiform. 
Ashurbanipal intended to create a library that was supposed to exhaust all the knowledge accumulated by mankind. He was especially interested in the information necessary for governing the state - on how to maintain constant communication with the deities, on predicting the future by the movement of the stars and the entrails of sacrificial animals. That is why the lion's share of funds were texts of conspiracies, prophecies, magical and religious rituals, mythological tales. The bulk of the information was extracted from the Sumerian and Babylonian texts by specially organized teams of scribes.
The library had a large collection of medical texts (with an emphasis on healing through sorcery), but the rich mathematical heritage of Babylonia was inexplicably ignored. There were numerous lists literary and epic tales, in particular, tablets with the epic of Gilgamesh and the mythological translation of Enuma Elish, as well as tablets with prayers, songs, legal documents(for example, the code of Hammurabi), economic and administrative records, letters, astronomical and historical works, records of a political nature, lists of kings and poetic texts.
The texts were written in Assyrian, Babylonian, a dialect of the Akkadian language, and also in Sumerian. A great many texts are presented in parallel in Sumerian and Akkadian, including encyclopedic editions and dictionaries. As a rule, one text was stored in six copies, which today greatly facilitates the work of deciphering the tablets. To date, Ashurbanipal's library is the largest collection of texts in the Akkadian language.
The foundation of the library took place on the orders of the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal, who was distinguished by a great interest in texts and knowledge in general. Ashurbanipal's predecessors had small palace libraries, but none of them had such a passion for collecting texts. Ashurbanipal sent numerous scribes to different regions of their country, so that they make copies of all the texts they come across. In addition, Ashurbanipal ordered copies of texts from all major temple archives, which were then sent to him in Nineveh. Sometimes, during military campaigns, Ashurbanipal managed to capture entire cuneiform libraries, which he also delivered to his palace.
The librarians of Ashurbanipal did a great job of cataloging, copying, commenting and researching the texts of the library, as evidenced by numerous glossaries, bibliography and commentaries. Ashurbanipal himself gave great importance organizing the library. His name was written on each tablet (a kind of ex-libris), the name of the original tablet from which the copy was made was given in the colophon. The library had hundreds of waxed-page codices, which made it possible to correct or rewrite text written on wax. Unlike cuneiform tablets (which are only hardened during fires), wax tablets are short-lived. They have not survived, as well as the scrolls in the library - parchment and papyrus. Judging by the ancient catalogs, no more than 10% of all funds collected by Ashurbanipal have survived to this day.
A huge array of cuneiform texts has come down to our days solely thanks to Ashurbanipal's passion for the written word. In many cases, ancient Mesopotamian writings have survived only in copies made by order of this ruler. Some of the texts presented have a history of thousands of years (although the tablets themselves are not very ancient, in normal conditions they have rarely been kept for more than 200 years).
Ashurbanipal himself was proud that he was the only Assyrian ruler who could read and write. On one of the tablets, his personal record was found:
“I studied what the wise Adapa brought me, mastered everything secret art letters on tablets, began to understand predictions in heaven and on earth, participate in discussions of pundits, predict the future together with the most experienced interpreters of predictions from the liver of sacrificial animals. I can solve complex, complex division and multiplication problems, I constantly read masterfully written signs on such difficult language, like Sumerian, or as difficult to interpret as Akkadian, is familiar with antediluvian stone records that are already completely incomprehensible.
Ashurbanipal's own notes (probably compiled by the best scribes) are of high literary quality.
A generation after Ashurbanipal, his capital fell under the blows of the Medes and Babylonians. The library was not plundered, as is usually the case in such cases, but turned out to be buried under the ruins of the palaces where it was kept.
In 1849, the British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard found most of the library (which was kept in the northwestern palace on the banks of the Euphrates). Three years later, Layard's assistant, the British diplomat and traveler Hormuzd Rasam, found the second part of the library in the opposite wing of the palace. Both pieces were taken to the British Museum for storage. The opening of the library allowed scientists to get a first-hand idea of the Assyrian culture. Prior to this, Assyria was known only from the works of Herodotus and other historians of Hellas, and the Persians, in turn, served as their source. the greatest sensation in the scientific community made the discovery of the epic of Gilgamesh with a presentation biblical history about the global flood.
When extracting the tablets from the wreckage, careful accounting of the place of their discovery was not carried out. In the British Museum, both parts were placed in a common depository, so it is now impossible to judge which tablets were found where. Scientists are still working on sorting separate fragments("joints"), cataloging and deciphering texts. The British Museum is working with Iraqi scientists to create a museum-library in Iraq, where reproductions of the original tablets are to be displayed.
In 1846, a failed English lawyer G. Layard fled from cold London to the East, where he was always attracted by hot countries and cities buried underground. He was neither a historian nor an archaeologist, but it was here that he was extremely lucky. G. Layard stumbled upon the capital of the Assyrian kingdom - city of Nineveh, which Europeans have long known from the Bible, and which has been waiting for its discovery for almost three thousand years.
Nineveh was the royal residence for almost ninety years and reached its peak under King Ashurbanipal who ruled in 669-633 BC. During the reign of Ashurbanipal, "the whole earth was a peaceful home", there were almost no wars, and free time Ashurbanipal dedicated his library, which he collected from big love, systematically and with knowledge of the ancient "librarianship".
The one who dares to carry away these tables...
let them punish Ashur and Ballit with their anger,
and let his name and his heirs
Will be consigned to oblivion in this Country...
Such a formidable warning, according to the plan of King Ashurbanipal, should have plunged into fear and trembling anyone who only thinks about stealing books from the Nineveh library. None of the subjects of the king, of course, dared ...
But in 1854, Ormuzd entered the library of Ashurbanipal, breaking the laws of ancient Assyria in order to save it in the memory of mankind. And if the discoverer of Nineveh was G. Layard, who accidentally discovered several tablets from the Nineveh Library, then the library itself was unearthed by Ormuzd, one of the first archaeologists - representatives of the indigenous population of the country.
Among the ruins of the palace of Ashurbanipal, he discovered several rooms into which, it seemed, someone had deliberately dumped thousands of cuneiform tablets. Subsequently, scientists calculated that about 30,000 "clay books" were stored in the library. During the fire, when the city subsequently died under the blows of the Median and Babylonian warriors, in the fire that destroyed Nineveh, the “clay books” were fired, hardened and, thus, preserved. But, unfortunately, many crashed.
Ormuzd Rassam carefully packed the "clay books" in boxes and sent them to London, but it took another thirty years for scientists to study them and translate them into modern language.
The library of King Ashurbanipal kept on the clay pages of its books almost everything that the cultures of Sumer and Akkad were rich in. The Clay Books told the world that the wise mathematicians of Babylon did not limit themselves to four arithmetic operations. They easily calculated percentages, knew how to measure the area of various geometric shapes, they had a complex multiplication table, they knew squaring and extracting square root. Our seven-day week was also born in Mesopotamia, where the foundation was laid modern science about the structure and development of celestial bodies.
The Assyrians could rightfully claim to be the first printers, because how many royal decrees, state and economic documents had to be written and rewritten before they were sent to all parts of the Assyrian state! And in order to do this quickly, the Assyrians carved the necessary inscriptions on a wooden board, made prints from it on clay tablets. Why is such a board not a printing press?
In the Nineveh Library, the books were kept in strict order. At the bottom of each plate was the full title of the book, and next to it was the page number. In addition, in many tablets, each last line of the previous page was repeated at the beginning of the next.
There was also a catalog in the library, in which they recorded the title, the number of lines, the branch of knowledge - the department to which the book belonged. Find the right book It was not difficult: each shelf had a small clay tag with the name of the department attached to it - just like in modern libraries.
There were historical texts, scrolls of laws, medical reference books, travel descriptions, dictionaries with lists of Sumerian syllabic signs and grammatical forms, and even dictionaries of foreign words, since Assyria was connected with almost all the countries of Asia Minor.
All the books of the Nineveh Library were written on clay tablets (tablets) made from the clay of the High Quality. First, clay was kneaded for a long time, and then briquettes were made from it, 32 x 22 centimeters in size and 2.5 centimeters thick. When the tablet was ready, the scribe wrote on the raw tablet with a triangular iron stick.
Some of the books in the Nineveh library were brought from the countries defeated by Assyria, some were bought in the temples of other cities or from private individuals. Ever since books appeared, there have been book lovers. Ashurbanipal himself was a zealous collector, and this is no coincidence.
Ashurbanipal is a rare case among kings ancient east He was the most educated person for his time. His father Asargaddon intended to make his son a high priest, so the young Ashurbanipal studied all the sciences of that time. Ashurbanipal retained his love for books until the end of his life, which is why he assigned several rooms on the second floor of his palace to the library.
Complete the task:
The significance of LIBRARIES in the history of world culture is enormous. “Houses of Tablets”, “Shelters of the Mind”, “Pharmacy for the Soul”, “Houses of Wisdom”, “Books Chambers”, “Temples of Literature” - so they called it at different times and in different countries libraries.
Which definition do you like best? Try suggesting your own.
Think.
Why are library books stamped?
Read the book:
Lipin B., Belov A. Clay books. - M. - L., 1952.
Make up a story about what scientists managed to find out about the life of the inhabitants of Assyria.
In one of the halls of a luxurious palace, the walls of which were decorated with sculptural scenes royal hunting on the lions, most of the library was found. We can imagine how library visitors read these unusual books here.
Instead of the usual rustle of pages for us, a light clatter of clay tablets was heard in these walls.
Try to imagine and draw the premises of the library of King Ashurbanipal.
Libraries already existed before the first bound books appeared. In cities around the world, these temples of knowledge not only served as warehouses for storing clay tablets and scrolls, but were also used as centers of culture and learning. Below you will find interesting facts about the eight most magnificent libraries of the ancient world.
Ashurbanipal Library
The oldest known library in the world was founded sometime in the 7th century BC. e. for the "royal contemplation" of the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal. Located in Nineveh ( modern Iraq), it included about 30,000 cuneiform tablets organized according to themes. Most of these tablets were archival documents, religious incantations and scientific texts, but it also housed several works of literature, including the 4,000-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh. The book lover Ashurbanipal created much of his library by taking works from Babylonia and other territories he conquered. Archaeologists stumbled upon the ruins of this library in the mid-19th century, and most of its holdings are now in the British Museum in London. It is interesting to note that although Ashurbanipal obtained many of the cuneiform tablets by plunder, he seems to have been particularly concerned about theft. An inscription on one of the texts warns that if anyone decides to steal the tablets, the gods will “throw him down” and “wipe out his name, his seed on the earth.”
Library of Alexandria
After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. e. control of Egypt began his former general Ptolemy I Soter, who sought to establish a center of learning in the city of Alexandria. The result was Library of Alexandria, which eventually became an intellectual decoration ancient world. Little is known of the site's physical layout, but at its peak, the library may have included over 500,000 papyrus scrolls containing works of literature and texts on history, law, mathematics, and natural sciences. The library and associated research institute attracted scholars from all over the Mediterranean. Many of them lived on its territory and received government scholarships when they conducted research and copied its contents. At various times, Strabo, Euclid and Archimedes were among the scholars of this library.
The end of this great library is traditionally dated to 48 BC. BC, when it allegedly burned down after Julius Caesar accidentally set fire to the harbor of Alexandria during the battle against the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy XIII. But while the flames may have damaged the library, most historians now believe it continued to exist in one form or another for several more centuries. Some scholars argue that the library finally disappeared in 270 during the reign of the Roman emperor Aurelian, while others believe that this happened even later - in the fourth century.
Library of Pergamon
Built in the third century BC by members of the Attalid dynasty, the library of Pergamon, located in what is now Turkey, was once home to 200,000 scrolls. The library was located in a temple complex dedicated to Athena, Greek goddess wisdom, and is believed to have consisted of four rooms. The books themselves were stored in three rooms, and the fourth served as a conference room for banquets and scientific conferences. According to the ancient chronicler Pliny the Elder, the library of Pergamum eventually became so famous that it rivaled that of Alexandria. Both libraries sought to collect the most complete collections texts, and in them competing schools of thought and criticism developed. There is even a legend that the Ptolemies of Egypt stopped the supply of papyrus to Pergamon in the hope of slowing down the development of the library. As a result, the city later became a leading center for parchment paper production.
"Villa of the Papyri"
Although it was not the largest library of antiquity, the so-called "Villa of the Papyri" is the only one whose collection has survived to this day. About 1800 of its scrolls were located in the Roman city of Herculaneum in a villa that was most likely built by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Piso. When Mount Vesuvius erupted nearby in 79 AD, the library was buried under a 30-meter layer of volcanic material, which was the reason for its preservation. The blackened and charred scrolls were rediscovered in the 18th century, and modern researchers have used every possible tool, from multispectral imaging to X-rays, to try and read them. Most The catalog has yet to be deciphered, but research has already shown that the library contains several texts by an Epicurean philosopher and poet named Philodeus.
Trajan Forum Libraries
Somewhere around 112 AD. e. Emperor Trajan completed the construction of a multifunctional complex of buildings in the center of Rome. This forum had squares, markets and religious temples, but it also included one of the most famous libraries of the Roman Empire. The library technically had two private rooms: one - for work on Latin, the second - for works in Greek. The rooms were located on opposite sides of the portico where Trajan's column was located - big monument, built in honor of the military successes of the emperor. Both rooms were made of concrete, marble and granite and included large central reading chambers and two levels of shelf niches containing approximately 20,000 scrolls. Historians are not sure when Trajan's double library ceased to exist. There are written references to it at the end of the fifth century AD, and this suggests that it existed for at least 300 years.
Library of Celsus
During the imperial era, there were more than two dozen major libraries in Rome, but the capital was not the only place, which housed magnificent collections of literature. Somewhere around 120 AD. e. the son of the Roman consul Celsus completed the construction of a memorial library for his father in the city of Ephesus (modern Turkey). The decorative façade of the building still stands today, and there are marble stairs and columns, as well as four statues representing wisdom, virtue, reason and knowledge. The interior consisted of a rectangular chamber and a series of small niches containing bookcases. The library contained about 12,000 scrolls, but the most feature turned out to be, without any doubt, Celsus himself, who was buried inside in a decorative sarcophagus.
Imperial Library of Constantinople
The imperial library appeared in the fourth century AD during the reign of Constantine the Great, but it remained relatively small until the fifth century, when its collection grew to 120,000 scrolls and codices. However, the Imperial Library's holdings began to dwindle, and it fell into disrepair over the next few centuries due to neglect and frequent fires. It suffered its most crushing blow after the crusader army captured Constantinople in 1204. Nevertheless, its scribes and scholars copied countless pieces of ancient Greek and Roman literature, making copies of damaged papyrus scrolls.
House of Wisdom
The Iraqi city of Baghdad was one of the world's centers of education and culture. Perhaps no institution was more significant to its development than the House of Wisdom. It was created at the beginning of the ninth century AD during the reign of the Abbasids and was centered around a huge library filled with Persian, Indian and Greek manuscripts on mathematics, astronomy, science, medicine and philosophy. The books attracted the leading scholars of the Middle East, who flocked to the House of Wisdom to study the texts and translate them into Arabic. Their ranks included the mathematician al-Khwarizmi, one of the fathers of algebra, as well as the thinker al-Kindi, who is often referred to as " Arab philosopher". The House of Wisdom remained the intellectual center of the Islamic world for several hundred years, but met a terrible end in 1258 when the Mongols sacked Baghdad. According to legend, so many books were thrown into the Tigris River that its waters turned dark with ink.
