History of Ancient Libraries
Development of culture and civilization has
caused the development of libraries they were
established to save the cultural heritages
It is being said that a Man is social animal and
libraries are the social institutions
Development of libraries are depend upon the
development of civilization
Mesopotamia was the first region to established
the society and libraries
Sumerian used to store the clay tablets in their
religious schools.
Most part of the Sumerian literature was on
religion
In Mesopotamia region we found that there
were govt. religious and historical libraries.
After that the city of Babylon was established
currently situated at South Baghdad in Iraq
They follow the Sumerian culture and used to
produce literature on religion science commerce
on clay tablets .
At that time different buildings has been
established by Iraqi King Sargon for library to
store the literature on Astronomy, history ,
religious
Assyrian Libraries: Assyrian ruled by defeating
Babylon in1100 BC they also adopted Sumerian
and Mesopotamian culture and literature and
culture for development of their civilization.
They also used to store the information like
Agriculture; Trade; Administration etc;
In this era different public and private libraries
were established among them the biggest
public libraries was Ashurbanipal Library
3200 B.C. – Earliest known libraries Connected
to Palaces & Temples Were called “House of
Writings” or “Place of the Records of the Palace
of the King”
they preserve mostly official records and
documents
First “Librarians” were called Scribes
Literacy was so rare that the literature were not
commonly able to read
Their ability to read and write was considered
mystical and spiritual
Ashurbanipal Library (668-627 C)
He was ruler of Ancient Assyria ; estt:
a great library at Nineveh (capital of
Assyria)
He collected thousands of clay tablets
and other material of all kind from diff:
areas
Ashurbanipal's library was not the first
library of its kind but it was one of the
largest and one of the ones to survive
to the present day. Most of it is now in
the possession of the British Museum
or the Iraq Department of Antiquities
King Ashurbanipal was
literate and a passionate
collector of texts and tables
He sent scribers into every
region to collect ancient texts.
He hired scholars and scribes
to copy text mainly from
Babylonian source
He collected different fragments (a small broken
parts) from the different royal lib: including royal
inscriptions (words written on monuments or
books); Chronicles (a factual written accounts of
historical events in order of their occurrence)
Mythological (traditional stories ) religious text;
contract; royal grants; degrees ;royal letters and
various administrative doc: from all over the world
Most of the text were written in Akkadian in
Cuneiform scripts
When Nineveh was destroyed in 612 BC by a
Collation of Babylonians ; Sythian and Medes on
ancient Persian race
This palace was burnt out during the conflict
along with library
Arrangement of library material was sought out
as subject wise and separate rooms and
catalogue on door side; and every person has
a common access to library collection
A collection of 20,000 to 30,000 cuneiform
tablets containing approximately 1,200 distinct
texts remains for scholars to study today
Library of Ancient Egypt
Egypt considered as the Cradles of civilization in the
middle east
History of civilization found around 7000 year ago
They use pictography, ideography and phonetic as
repositories of ancient inscriptions (writing, ideas,
thoughts) on tombs walls, pyramids, and rarely on clay
tablets and papyrus
Like Assyrian, Babylonian they start their libraries from
their temples / religious schools
Libraries of Rameses – II known as library of
ozymondays is the example of static library
Temple of Edfu (is an Egyptian city, located on the west
bank of the Nile River) was the oldest library in Egypt.
This was built in the name of Horus, “Son of God”
Alexandria City: second oldest city in Egypt costal area
of Mediterranean sea.
it is important industrial center for natural gas and oil
pipeline from SUEZ
it is important trading port b/w Europe and Asia
city was founded in small Pharaonic town in 332 B.C by
Alexander the great
It remained Egypt capital before muslim conquest in
641 AD then became the Cairo
This city create the link between Greece and Rich
Nile River Valley
It was captured by Julius Caesar 47 BC during the
Roman Intervention in the domestic civil war b/w
king Ptolemy XIII and his advisor and Cleopatra
VIII
Vast part of the city was destroyed during the war
Alexander established a great library along with a
museum as a institute for learning
The Royal Library of Alexandria
was once the largest library in the world,
It is generally thought to have been founded at the
beginning of the 3rd century BC, during the reign of
Ptolemy II of Egypt, after his father had set up the
temple of the Muses, know called "Museum".
The Library was initially organized by Demetrius of
Phaleron (Librarian). Demetrius was a student of
Aristotle and is estimated to have stored at its peak
400,000 to 700,000 parchment scrolls.
Another concerns how its collection grew so large.
By decree of Ptolemy III of Egypt, all visitors to the
city were required to surrender all books and scrolls
in their possession; these writings were then swiftly
copied by official scribes.
The originals were put into the Library, and the
copies were delivered to the previous owners.
The Ptolemies also purchased additional materials
from throughout the Mediterranean area.
The Library's contents were likely distributed over
several buildings, with the main library either
located directly attached to or close to the oldest
building, the Museum,
The Library's collection was already famous in the
ancient world, and became even more storied in
later years. It is impossible, however, to determine
how large the collection was in any era. The
collection was made of papyrus scrolls. Later,
parchment codices may have been substituted for
papyrus.
The Library comprises a walking area, garden, dining
rooms, reading rooms, lecture hall, meeting rooms just
like a modren library
Library seems to have a acquisition and cataloguing
dept
Hall contains the shelves of collection of scrolls
Library also host international scholars in Ptolemic
dynasty with travel, lodging and stipend for their
whole family
As research institution library filled its stack with new
work in math, astronomy, physics, natural science and
other subjects
