“Rome, Florence, all sultry Italy are between the four walls of his library. In his books are all the ruins of the ancient world, all the splendor and glory of the new!
G. Longfellow
The ancient world, through the mouths of great scientists, poets, statesmen, declared great strength and the importance of libraries. From time immemorial, libraries have been created by rulers, major dignitaries, priests and clergymen, scientists and educators.
The libraries of the most ancient civilizations and states - the custodians of the scientific and cultural achievements of the peoples - contributed to the mutual enrichment of the cultures of various countries, continuity in the development of sciences and literature. And in our time, the preserved information about the libraries of antiquity, their funds often serve as the basis for new scientific discoveries.
Libraries first appeared in the ancient East. Usually the collection of clay tablets, approximately 2500 BC, is called the first library. e., found in the temple of the Babylonian city of Nippur.
In one of the tombs near Egyptian Thebes, a box with papyri from the Second Intermediate Period (XVIII-XVII centuries BC) was discovered. In the era of the New Kingdom, Ramses II collected about 20,000 papyri.
The most famous ancient oriental library is a collection of cuneiform tablets (mainly legal nature) from the palace of the Assyrian king of the 7th century BC. e. Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.
In ancient Greece, the first public library was founded by the tyrant Clearchus (4th century BC).
Alexandria became the largest center of ancient literature. 
library. It was created in the III century BC. e. Ptolemy I and was the center of education of the entire Hellenistic world. The Library of Alexandria was part of the mouseĩon (museum) complex. The complex included living rooms, dining rooms, reading rooms, botanical and zoological gardens, observatory and library. Later, medical and astronomical instruments, stuffed animals, statues and busts were added to it, which were used for teaching. The museum included 200,000 papyri in the Temple (almost all libraries of antiquity were attached to temples) and 700,000 documents in the School. The museum and most of the Library of Alexandria were destroyed around 270 AD.
In the Middle Ages, the monastic libraries were the centers of literacy, in which scriptoria operated. There was rewriting not only Holy Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers, but also the works of ancient authors. During the Renaissance, Renaissance figures literally hunted for Greek and Latin texts preserved in monasteries. Due to the enormous cost of manuscripts and the laboriousness of their production, books were chained to library shelves.
The advent of printing made huge changes into the appearance and activity of libraries, which are now more and more different from archives. Library collections are beginning to grow rapidly. With the spread of literacy in modern times, the number of library visitors also grows.
The most famous libraries of antiquity:
Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh
Hellenistic Library of Alexandria
The Pergamon Library is its main competitor in antiquity
Otrar library in Otrar
Library of al-Hakam II in Cordoba
Library, translated from Greek - “biblio” - a book, “teka” - a repository, that is, a “storehouse of books”.
The role of libraries in people's lives can be judged by the figurative names that have long been assigned to them. They were called temples of wisdom, the memory of mankind, repositories of the treasures of civilization.
The library is ordinary and at the same time amazing place because books live in this room. We are accustomed to a book, we rarely think of it as a miracle, as a treasure, and it happens that we do not always appreciate and cherish it. But think about it, because the book until recently was the only means of transferring knowledge from generation to generation. As soon as people invented writing, it became possible to collect and accumulate knowledge.
Whole story human mind associated with books and libraries. This is not a quiet story! They fought for books, burned them, lost them, found them, dug them up in the ruins of cities buried by time, saved them from enemy invasion as the most expensive. Today's library seems to be the epitome of silence, peace and order.
As always, she serves people. It is interesting that even the first libraries were not just a room where books were stored: they were real libraries in the full sense of the word. There were special tablets on which the first lines of works stored in the library were written, which helped to conveniently group and then find the required literary source.
The very first libraries appeared in Ancient Egypt. They were called "houses of papyrus" and "houses of life". They were created at palaces and temples. Egyptian pharaohs attached great importance education. During excavations above the entrance to one of the rooms of the palace of Ramses II, archaeologists discovered the inscription: "Pharmacy for the soul." According to the ancient Egyptians, books can be compared with a medicine that makes a person’s mind strong and ennobles his soul.
In the 19th century, archaeologists excavated the capital of the Assyrian kings, Nineveh, on the banks of the Tigris River and discovered there a cuneiform library established by King Ashurbanipal. It was called the "House of Instructions and Advice" and was a huge collection of clay tablets, which, at the direction of the king, were taken from temples and from the houses of noble and educated Assyrians.
The tablets lay for about twenty years in the British Museum in London. When scientists managed to decipher the cuneiform, it became clear that this was a whole library of clay books. Each such "book" consisted of "sheets" - tablets of the same size. On each tablet was the title of the book - the initial words of the first tablet, as well as the number of the "sheet". Books were placed in a strict order, there were catalogs - lists indicating the titles of books and the number of lines in each tablet. It is noteworthy that this library had a thematic catalog. All her books were divided into topics: history, law, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, legends and myths. The title of the work was reflected in the catalog. As well as a room and a shelf where you should look for the right plate. About 30,000 clay books were stored there, each of which had a cuneiform stamp: "The Palace of Ashurbanipal, King of the Universe, King of Assyria." The Nineveh Library is the most famous ancient library.
Ancient Greece, or Hellas, was famous for its scientists and philosophers, who created schools and academies, in which libraries were opened. The first public library was founded by the tyrant Clearchus in Heraclea. The collection of the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle was considered the largest private library. Aristotle's library at Lika, near Athens, where the great ancient philosopher lectured, contained tens of thousands of scrolls. After the scientist's death, his library became part of the Mouseyon, the Temple of the Muses. During excavations in Heerculaneum, the library of the poet Philodemus was discovered, which consisted of about 1860 scrolls.
The center of Egyptian culture was Alexandria, where the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled. At the beginning of the third century BC, Ptolemy I decided to turn Egypt into a center of culture and arts and founded the famous Museion (following the example of Athenian). It was a huge ensemble: a university with teaching halls and living quarters, an observatory, a botanical garden, a zoo, and a renowned library of papyrus scrolls. Ptolemy II expanded the Library of Alexandria, sending his people to all corners of the world, who obtained the most valuable works.
Under Ptolemy II, the patron saint of scientists and poets, Museion and the Library of Alexandria reached the heyday. The son of Ptolemy II, Ptolemy III issued a decree according to which anyone who arrived in the harbor was obliged to give or sell the books he had. They were transferred to the library, and copies were returned to the owners with a note that they corresponded to the original. The library stock consisted of 700-800 thousand texts in many languages.
In 47 BC, part of the library burned down, the other was destroyed during clashes between pagans and Christians.
Modern Library of Alexandria. Egypt.
The Library of Alexandria competed with the Library of Pergamon, which was created in the second century BC and consisted of about 200 thousand papyrus and parchment manuscripts. The Pergamon Library was inferior to the Library of Alexandria only in terms of the size of the fund. Most of it was made up of medical treatises - Pergamum was considered the center of medicine. The history of the library ended in 43 BC, when Pergamum became a province of Rome, and most of the books ended up in the Library of Alexandria.
Today, Pergamum is located in Turkey, and the ruins of the library are among the tourist sites.
The first Roman public library was created on Greek models by Seasonius Pollio. Later, libraries arose in the Roman Empire, established by the emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Trajan, and Byzantine rulers. The earliest Christian libraries originated in large Episcopal churches.
In 1037 Kyiv prince Yaroslav the Wise (about 980 - 1054) founded the first library in Kievan Rus. She was in Kiev Sophia Cathedral. It was the most complete collection written monuments Ancient Russia- The Gospel, the books of the prophets, the lives of the saints. Here were kept important government documents. 500 volumes - not many libraries in Europe could boast of such a collection at that time. It is not known where the library of Yaroslav the Wise disappeared: perhaps it died during big fire in 1124 or was destroyed in 1240 during the defeat of Kyiv by troops Mongol Khan Batu.
One of the most mysterious libraries is the library of the first Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584). He possessed a unique book collection, which he kept in the deep vaults of the Kremlin. Foreigners who saw the book collection said that there were, among other books, very rare. After the death of the king, his library became a legend, as it disappeared without a trace. The mystery of the library haunts historians and archaeologists for more than one century. Until today, the search for the library has not been successful.
Ever since the first libraries arose, their keepers have been concerned that books do not go to waste. For a long time this purpose has been served book sign. Nowadays it is called an ex-libris.
The first public library in Russia was Public library in St. Petersburg. It was founded in 1795. It was allowed to visit "all decently dressed citizens" three days a week from 9 am until sunset.
The largest in Russia, and the second in the world in terms of the number of stored materials (after the US Library of Congress) is the Russian State Library in Moscow (until 1992 - Leninskaya). It contains about 40 million titles. At present, microfiches, microfilms, transparencies, audio and video cassettes are increasingly being distributed and are included in the library fund, and electronic media are also becoming more widespread.
Libraries are: state, municipal, private, educational and scientific.
There are special libraries: historical, medical, technical, pedagogical, artistic, agricultural, etc.
And there are the most ordinary libraries, which are always close to home - regional ones, just to go in and read a few pages about something interesting or look through a magazine that has long been impossible to subscribe or buy.
And there are, probably, personal (home) libraries in every family, at least those about which Conan Doyle wrote: “Let your poor bookshelf let it decorate your home. Shut the door of the room from the inside ... You left everything low, everything vulgar behind you. Here, waiting for you, your silent friends stand in rows. Take a look around their formation. Choose the one that is closest to your soul right now. Now it remains only to reach out to him and go with him to the land of dreams.
Eternal companions: writers about the book, reading, bibliophilia / Comp. A. Blum. - M: Book, 1983. - 223 p.
Student's handbook. History of world culture / Comp. F. Kapitsa.- M .: Philological. society "Slovo", TKO "AST", 1996.- 610 p.
Great Libraries // Book World Terra - 2000- №2 - p.44-45
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 conspiracies 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 with 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 Egypt started it former general Ptolemy I Soter, who sought to establish a center of learning in the city of Alexandria. The result was the Library of Alexandria, which eventually became the intellectual jewel of the 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 the 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.
End of this great library 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, the Greek goddess of 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 ancient chronicler Pliny the Elder, the library of Pergamum eventually became so famous that it competed with that of Alexandria. Both libraries strove to assemble the most complete collections of texts, and competing schools of thought and criticism developed in them. 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 she was not herself big library 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 AD 79, 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 used every possible tool, from multispectral imaging to x-rays, to try to read them. Much of 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 separate rooms: one for works in Latin, the other for works in Greek. The rooms were located on opposite sides the portico where Trajan's column was located - a large monument built in honor of the emperor's military successes. 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. Preserved written references about her at the end of the fifth century AD, and this suggests that she 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 prominent feature was, 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 language. Their ranks included the mathematician al-Khwarizmi, one of the fathers of algebra, as well as the thinker al-Kindi, who is often called the "Arab philosopher". The House of Wisdom remained an intellectual center 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.
Edition: A. Glukhov. "From the Depths of Ages"
In the foggy distance of centuries, this civilization originates, the existence of which even 60-70 years ago, even the largest experts had a very vague idea.
Studying the cuneiform tables of the library of Ashurbanipal, scientists found on one of them a mention of "secret Sumerian documents". And one more thing: the king himself, the owner of the library, wrote: “It was a great joy for me to repeat the beautiful, but incomprehensible inscriptions of the Sumerians.”
What kind of country, what kind of people? Already Ashurbanipal considered the Sumerian language "incomprehensible", and Herodotus - the father of history - did not know anything about this people at all. When excavations began in Mesopotamia, "the people who began history" (as the Sumerians are sometimes called now) began to tell.
Halfway between Babylon and the Persian Gulf, in the arid desert, Varka Hill has been rising for a long time. His excavations, begun before the First World War, resumed in 1927. They were led by the German scientist Y. Jordan.
Hiding under the hill ancient city Uruk, which has existed for three millennia. Quite extraordinary things were hidden in Varca Hill. And above all - one of the most ancient clay tablets with writings. The documents found belonged to the middle of the fourth millennium BC. Therefore, they are fifty-five centuries old!
Then other equally ancient cities were discovered. The ruins of temples and palaces, household items and tools arose before archaeologists. And - mountains of clay tablets, of various shapes and sizes, covered with cuneiform writing. From them we learn about the political and social life ancient Sumer, its economy and state structure, about agriculture, cattle breeding, shipping, shipbuilding (most of the cities of Sumer stood on the banks of the Euphrates), carpentry, pottery, blacksmithing and weaving.
Clay tablets tell us a lot about life ancient civilization on the ground. As early as the 4th millennium BC, the Sumerians created a network of irrigation canals. For lack of stone, they learned to make sickles, pots, plates, jugs from clay. There was no tree on their land - they began to build huts and cattle pens from reeds held together with clay.
Centuries passed. The Sumerians invented the potter's wheel, the wheel, the plow, the seeder, the sailing boat - magnificent milestones on the path of man. They learned how to build arches, make castings from copper and bronze. Finally, they created writing, the famous cuneiform, which spread throughout the Mesopotamia. The same clay served as the material for writing!
Sumer was famous for its populous cities. In Ur, which at one time was the capital of Sumer, there were up to 200 thousand inhabitants. Dozens of ships - from Syria, Egypt, India - moored here. Clay tablets recovered during excavations of the cities of ancient Sumer told us about how they lived, worked, what people ate in those distant times. In the religious center of Sumer - Nippur, several thousand tablets were found. They were housed in sixty-two rooms!
Another cult center was Ur, which was studied for many years by the archaeologist L. Woolley. Cuneiform tables and there were a great many. For almost four millennia, more than 20 thousand tablets have lain in the land of the city of L. Agash. They were systematized and divided into parts by content; it was already a real library.
The “booty” in ancient Shuruppak turned out to be impressive.
There, near the modern village of Fara, around which vast swamps stretch, ancient texts of Sumerian cuneiform were found. A real treasure, which is rightfully considered a library. This treasure made it possible to publish the List of Archaic Cuneiform Signs.
How such documents were kept can be judged from the finds in Uruk. Here the tablets were stacked in willow baskets. Each basket was tied up, a form was attached to it, a label with inscriptions. Here are some of them: "Documents relating to the garden", "Sending of workers", "Reed basket with documents relating to the weaver's workshop". To characterize the documents, we present two texts. One reads: "Bronze vessels received from Dadagi, Ur-Shara weighed them." Another: "Forty-five slave girls were sent for one day to carry reeds to repair the ship and to deliver beams for the palace."
These are the documents of the royal-temple households. But the Sumerians also left works on mathematics, history, literary works, works on agriculture (the calendar of the farmer and the classification of plants were found). Ancient maps have also come down to us. On one is a plan of the city of Nippur: the exact dimensions of the city are given, the location of the walls, gates, and most important buildings is noted.
Mathematicians were good at proving theorems. On one of the plates, for example, the proof of the similarity of triangles is stated, on the other - a theorem known in science as Euclid's theorem. Already in the II millennium BC, Mesopotamian scientists proved the Pythagorean theorem.
And the famous code of Hammurabi, which later influenced the Roman code of Justinian, began in Sumer.
In Nippur, among many others, a tablet with a list of recipes was found. It is quite large: 9.5 by 16 centimeters, 145 lines of text fit on it. For the preparation of medicines, the Sumerian physician used products of plant, animal and mineral origin. Most of the medicines plant origin: they were made from mustard, willow, fir, pine. Medicines were diluted with beer, wine, vegetable oil. A curious detail - the document completely lacks any magic spells.
Many tablets of the ancient Sumerians have now been deciphered, containing records of myths, proverbs and sayings. It turned out, for example, that the Sumerian collections of proverbs and sayings are several centuries older than the Egyptian ones known to us - they were written down more than three and a half millennia ago. Here are some examples of folk wisdom:
A well-dressed person is welcome everywhere;
Dodged a wild bull
Came across a wild cow;
If the country is poorly armed,
The enemy will always stand at the gate.
Sumerian fables about animals also have a venerable age. In any case, they were composed and written down more than a thousand years earlier than the Aesops. But it was Aesop that the Greeks and Romans considered the founder of this genre.
According to the cuneiform tablets that have been preserved in ancient libraries, we can judge that already at that distant time people were glorifying their land, their fields: “O Sumer, the great land among all the lands of the universe, flooded with unfading light. Your heart is deep and unknown. May your barns be numerous, may your cows multiply, may your sheepfolds be numerous, may your sheep be numberless.
The Sumerians composed the first hymn to labor, and the first in the history of mankind love elegy: “Husband, dear to my heart, your beauty is great, sweet like honey. Leo dear to my heart. Your beauty is great, sweet like honey.
They also own the oldest funeral song: “Let your life path will not fade from memory, may your name be called in the days to come."
But the greatest thing that Sumerian culture has created is the poem about Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, oppresses his people, but then, having made friendship with the wild man Enkidu, performs unprecedented feats. After the death of Enkidu, Gilgamesh vainly seeks immortality. The poem is a true hymn to man, his aspirations and daring. It clearly expresses interest in the heroic personality, and the hero himself boldly enters the fight against the unjust order established by God. The first songs of the poem originated and were recorded in Sumer. Here are its first lines (translated by the Soviet Assyrologist V.K. Shileiko):
About the one who saw everything to the end of the world,
About the one who penetrated everything, comprehended everything.
He read all the scriptures together,
The depth of wisdom of all book readers.
I saw the hidden, I knew the secret,
And he brought news of the days before the flood.
He walked a long way, but got tired and returned.
And wrote on the stone all his work.
This means that even then there were many books, even then the "book readers" possessed wisdom, - there were also people who could read "all the writings."
Discoveries followed one after another. And each of them is the result of tremendous work, the result of ingenuity and skill. The fact that some texts have come down to us in later (Babylonian) copies, the fact that they are poorly preserved, is not the worst thing. Many of the works were separated. Great art, for example, was required to restore from the many fragments of cuneiform tablets literary monument"House of Fish" Parts of the poem ended up in three museums around the world: the beginning - in Istanbul, the middle - in London, the ending - in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, the text of this poem was restored, translated and commented on. It gives a description - and a very poetic one - of many fish.
Here is what is said about the slope. This fish has:
The head is a hoe, the teeth are a comb,
Her bones are branches of fir,
Her thin tail is the scourge of the fisherman.
All sorts of teachings, disputes and disputes were widespread in Sumer. Scientists of our time have managed to restore from the available tablets and fragments the teaching, conditionally called the “Farmer’s Calendar.” The first line of the “Calendar” reads: “During it, the farmer taught his son.” Further advice on how to get good harvests. They cover all types field work: from soil irrigation to harvesting. The entire teaching consists of 107 lines.
For reference Agriculture you need to know exactly when to start sowing. And the priests of Sumer developed one of ancient calendars- lunar. Gradually, the lunar calendar began to turn into a lunisolar one: the months were counted by the moon, and the year by the sun.
Of the surviving texts of many disputes, we mention the “Dispute between the Hoe and the Plow”, which describes in detail what the Plow and the Hoe are doing. The text ends with these words: "In the dispute between the Hoe and the Plow, the Hoe wins."
Of course, cult and liturgical literature was kept in the libraries: hymns to the gods and legends about them, prayers, spells, penitential psalms, divination, predictions. The most interesting in the literary sense are the penitential psalms, reflecting human sorrows and sufferings with genuine lyricism.
The German musicologist K. Sachs became interested in a clay tablet, which dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. In addition to the text of the Sumerian legend "On the Creation of Man", cuneiform signs were found on it, which are considered a musical record. According to the scientist, a melody for a harp was recorded here, the game on which accompanied the reading of the legend.
Without the Sumerian libraries, we would know much less about the life, production, beliefs of the ancient peoples who inhabited
Mesopotamia. “All these books of that time,” notes scientist S. Kramer, “needed to be somehow stored, grouped and kept in proper order. Obviously, teachers and scribes adhered to some kind of system in this "library" business. It can be assumed in advance that, to facilitate this work, lists of literary works were already compiled, grouped according to certain criteria. It may seem surprising, but the directories were also found and deciphered.
The researcher holds a clay tablet in his hands. At one time, it was discovered during excavations of one of the cities of Sumer and sent to the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. It is small in size (six and a half centimeters long and about three and a half wide) and fits freely in the palm of your hand. Cuneiform characters fill both sides of the tablet. Each of them is divided into two columns. In addition, every ten lines of text are separated by a horizontal bar.
“Some unknown poem,” thought the scientist, although the short lines and these horizontal lines were very embarrassing. He read the lines over and over again, but no coherent text came out. Reading and rereading the phrases, he was more and more amazed at their similarity with the first lines of works known to him. Then a guess flashed through, which, upon careful examination, was confirmed: it was a catalog! ancient scribe in the smallest hand he put on the tablet the names (and they, as you know, were given according to the first line of the text) of sixty-two literary works. Twenty-four of them have come down to us. Soon the second catalog was deciphered in the Louvre.
Both lists have preserved for us the names of 87 literary works. Among them: the myth "The Creation of the Hoe", the teaching "In time it is a tiller", individual songs from the poem about Gilgamesh, the poem "Man, the perfection of the gods".
The exact purpose of these two directories is still unknown. Maybe the scribe made a list before hiding the tablets with texts in the vault, or maybe, on the contrary, placing them on the shelves in the “House of Tablets”. It is not clear what caused the sequence of works in the list, etc.
So far, we know very little about the libraries of Sumer, but far from all the tablets have been read. New researchers of the culture of this ancient civilization will probably discover new catalogs and new information about the book depositories of that time.
Cuneiform, invented by the Sumerians, spread widely throughout the countries of the Middle East and Asia Minor. In many cities, collections of clay tablets have been found, which give an idea of the nature of books, and the methods of their storage, and the increase in the fund of the oldest libraries in the world.
There is no need to enumerate all these book depositories, let us dwell only on two more, perhaps the most remarkable.
Genuine gem ancient era rightly consider the library of the king of Assyria - Ashurbanipal, who wrote about himself: “I, Ashurbanipal, comprehended the wisdom of Nabu, all the art of scribes, learned the knowledge of all the masters, how many there are, learned to shoot from a bow, ride a horse and a chariot, hold the reins. .. And learned the craft of the wise Adap, comprehended hidden secrets art of writing, I read about heavenly and earthly buildings and meditated on them. I attended the meetings of scribes. I solved complex problems with multiplication and division that are not immediately clear.
These words are inscribed, indeed, by Ashurbanipal's hand on two clay tablets. This king assembled a large library in his capital, Nineveh, two and a half thousand years ago. He collected it in the truest sense of the word: he sent it to different cities Mesopotamia of its representatives, experienced scribes who sought out ancient books and made copies of them. Many of them had a postscript that confirmed the accuracy of the copy: "According to the ancient original, written off and reconciled." Some of the tablets were very ancient, with erased signs, then the scribe left a note: “erased”, “I don’t know”.
The fate of Nineveh - the capital of Assyria - is known. Under the onslaught of the combined troops of Babylonia and Media, she fell. The city was completely destroyed: “The cavalry rushes, swords sparkle, spears shine; many killed. Nineveh was plundered, devastated and devastated, ”wrote ancient historian. The fire that raged for many days after that completed the destruction, and the sands of the desert covered the remaining ruins.
In the middle of the last century, Nineveh was excavated by the English archaeologist O. Layard. Majestic palaces, huge temples, well-thought-out planning - everything spoke of high culture people. Archaeologists delved into the ruins of the burnt palace. Here are two small rooms. Their floor is covered with a thick layer (half a meter!) of broken bricks. The scientist raises a rectangular tile - on it one can see wedge-shaped letters. The second, third, fourth - all the tiles are filled with even small lines.
However, Layard opened only part of the library; most of the books were kept elsewhere. The excavations of Nineveh were continued by Layard's former assistant, O. Rassam, who discovered another magnificent palace with the Lion's Hall. So it was called because its walls were decorated with sculptural scenes of the royal hunt for lions. Here, in the Lion Hall, the bulk of the library was located. The fire partially damaged the book collection - the tablets collapsed into the basement and lay there for 25 centuries.
Despite the formidable warning inscribed on one of the tablets: “Whoever dares to carry away these tablets ... let him punish Ashur and Belit with his anger, and the name of him and his heirs will forever be forgotten in this country”, the clay tablets were carefully packed in boxes and sent to London.
The processing of this book treasure required a lot of work. After all, all the tablets were mixed, many were broken into several pieces; it was necessary to read it all, decipher it, establish the names and geographical names. Giant work! And it was done by scientists from different countries.
It turned out that the most diverse literature in several languages (including Sumerian) was stored here. results astronomical observations and medical treatises, grammar books and annals of the Assyrian kings, religious books and myths. O high development The literature of this people is evidenced by "a plaintive song to calm the heart." It conveys the feeling of deep sorrow of a person who has experienced great grief, conscious of his loneliness.
The significance of Ashurbanipal's library is that it is, in essence, a genuine treasury of the cultural achievements of the peoples of the Ancient East. Suffice it to say that the Assyrian librarians copied and preserved for us the most outstanding work of the literature of Mesopotamia, one of the greatest epics of world literature - the legend of Gilgamesh.
The very discovery of the epic, or rather, a small part of it, just one tablet, caused a sensation in scientific world. The honor of discovery belongs to J. Smith, minister british museum, in the past - to the engraver.
With excitement he studied the cuneiform tablets brought from Nineveh. Here he is reading an important document - the history of the reign of Ashurbanipal. From it it became known how he collected his library.
And here is another plate, not solid, part of it is broken off. The scientist reads the lines about global flood: “Listen, wall, listen! You man of Shuruppak, build yourself a ship, abandon your possessions and save your life! Take a pair of all living creatures with you on the ship. Subsequently, it turned out that this was the eleventh tablet (out of twelve) from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The library at Nineveh was well maintained, and the book storage system certainly helped to restore and read the scattered works.
Each book had a "library stamp": "The Palace of Ashurbanipal, the king of kings, the king of the country Ashur, to whom the god Nabu and the goddess Gaslista granted sensitive ears and keen eyes to look for the creations of the writers of my kingdom."
The library had a catalog. The tile indicated the name of the work (by its first line), as well as the room and shelf on which it was stored. And a label was attached to the shelf - the size of a little finger - with the name of the branch of knowledge.
Tablets of one book were stored in a separate wooden box. So that the pages would not get mixed up, a serial number was put on them, and the initial words of the work were repeated at the top of each plate. The book about the creation of the world began with the words: "Before that which is above was not yet called heaven." On each of the tablets of this book is written: "First that which is above." The epic of Gilgamesh began with the line "About the one who saw everything." And this line was repeated at the top of each of the 12 tablets.
Thus, through the efforts of many scientists, one of the most noteworthy libraries of antiquity was extracted from the depths of centuries. And not only extracted, but also read, translated and commented on. The catalog of this library was published in five volumes in the last century in London.
It so happened that history did not retain information about great power, which at one time was a formidable rival of Egypt itself. Greek and Roman historians have already forgotten about it. And when, at the end of the last century, Oxford professor A. Says gave a lecture about this power, he was simply called a dreamer and inventor. And he, on the basis of some inscriptions and notes of travelers, argued that in the territory of present-day Turkey and northern Syria lived a great and mighty people - the Hittites. In 1903, his book, The Hittites, or the History of a Forgotten People, was published. And soon the discovery of the scientist was irrefutably proven.
The history of the state of the Hittites was helped to reveal cuneiform tablets from the library discovered by the German scientist G. Winkler. It was he who, in 1907, found during excavations in Bogazkoy (145 kilometers from Ankara) more than 10 thousand clay tablets. A careful study of these tablets, drawn up on Babylonian, gave rise to confidence - the expedition is on the ground ancient capital"Hetty rulers". Particular excitement was caused by a tablet with a letter from Pharaoh Ramesses II to the Hittite king. It dealt with a treaty between the Egyptians and the Hittites.
Whole baskets of tablets were brought to Winkler. Without unbending, from morning to evening, he read documents about the life of the Hittites, their history, life, and their kings and wars, cities.
One of the participants in the excavations of that time writes that he saw “in the eleventh compartment of a large temple, neatly folded rows of obliquely well-preserved clay tablets. Their position at the time of discovery can only be explained by the assumption that they were stored in the archive, which was originally located directly above this basement warehouse, and slipped down during the fire. And even then it became clear that this was the biggest find after the library of Ashurbanipal. But that was not all: a quarter of a century later, more than 6,000 cuneiform documents were recovered from the ruins.
Two and a half thousand years have passed since the Hittites ceased to exist. However, thanks to cultural monuments, the Hittites came to life for modern humanity. The world learned about the existence and culture of the Hittite state - powerful state equal to Egypt and Babylon. It occupied all of Asia Minor to Syria and existed for seven centuries. At one time, the Hittites conquered Babylon and razed it (to intimidate other peoples!) To the ground, broke the power of Mittani, subjugated Ugarit, a major trading center on the Mediterranean Sea. The country waged successful wars with Egypt.
But not all the signs spoke. The scientist was able to read only those of them that were written in the Babylonian language.
The language of other cuneiforms was unfamiliar to him. The beginning of the decoding of the Hittite language was laid by the Czech scientist B. Grozny. It wasn't easy. Grozny himself said: “I read and reread the inscription perhaps two hundred or three hundred times, trying to find that Achilles heel, that point of Archimedes, which, however weak it may be, could serve me its service.
Deciphering the Hittite script made it possible to read the second part of the library. The bulk of the cuneiform tablets contains religious texts - rituals, hymns, prayers, descriptions of the gods, descriptions of religious holidays, texts of oracles. Astrological monuments adjoin them by their nature.
From the Babylonians, the Hittites borrowed rich literature on mathematics (and the “Chaldean wise men” already had formulas for calculating the areas of a triangle, rectangle, circle, for determining the volume of a cube, cone, etc. They knew how to raise to a power and left tablets with square and cube roots ).
The Hittites had many labors in law; the code they created was provided with numerous comments, a kind of manual for judges.
From historical literature The Annals of Mursilis are instructive. The author of the annals - King Mursilis - proved himself to be an outstanding writer. Events in the annals are strictly divided by years, and the presentation is built according to a certain scheme. Another king - Hattusilis - left a document that can be called an autobiography. This is one of the first autobiographies in world literature.
The prayer of one of the kings (Mursilis II), written in the form of a letter to the gods during the plague, is distinguished by the brightness of the presentation. Of particular interest is the story of Mursilis about how he lost the power of speech. This is the first story in the history of culture about a speech disorder. In general, the Hittites reached a high poetic level in their prayers.
Naturally, the question arises: “If the kings wrote like that, then how did the poets write?” Almost all poetic works, as a rule, were written on wooden boards, which, alas, burned down in a fire. But what remains is perfection. For example, here is an ancient poem in honor of the sun god:
The solar god of heaven, humanity's shepherd.
You emerge from the sea, from the sea - the son of heaven, and rush up to heaven.
Sun god of heaven, my lord!
born human and wild beast in the mountains, a dog, and a pig, and an insect in the field - you give everyone what is given to them by right!
From day to day...
A fragment from a great epic about the struggle of the gods for power has come down to us. We also know the name of the author - Killas, he lived half a millennium before Homer.
The Hittites had a peculiar genre - short stories, called "records of oversights and stupidities." These are the first critical works. They contain laconic portrait sketches of dishonest officials, judges-bureaucrats. There is also a story about a commander who cares only about compiling victorious reports to the king, and not about real victory.
The Bogazgey collection of cuneiform tablets also included fragments of the Gilgamesh epic.
This essay did not aim to tell in detail about the content of the clay books of the library, books that reflect: law and law, religion and medicine, the deeds of kings and the customs of the people, ritual texts and myths.
Here I would like to emphasize one curious detail: many books of the Hittites have authors. Along with the names of the compilers of mythological, ritual, magical texts, we also know the name of the author big textbook about caring for horses - Kikkuli from the country of Mittani. This ancient "horse breeding manual" contains 1000 lines of text. He is over 3400 years old.
Hittite librarians and archivists created the science of book preservation. The cuneiform texts of the catalogs of the library, which was also an archive, have been preserved. The catalog also contained indications of lost documents. Labels were used for individual works. All this speaks of the order that was maintained in the storage of clay books.
Hattusas - the so-called capital of the Hittites - was completely destroyed by fire in the XIII century BC. Fire-resistant clay tablets have been preserved, but most of the archive, which consisted of wooden tablets, has been lost forever...
Sumer, Assyria, Hittites. Clay tablet. Cuneiform badges. Antiquity. Thanks to clay books, we became aware of the wisdom of the ancient peoples who lived at the dawn of civilization.
The emergence of libraries as repositories of written monuments dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. When excavating the old cities of the states of the Ancient East - Assyria, Babylonia, Urartu - archaeologists find special rooms for storing books, and sometimes the books themselves. However, the written monuments of those times can be called "books" rather conditionally: they were clay shards, papyrus or parchment scrolls.
Libraries have served science, education and culture for many centuries. The first information about the existence of libraries dates back to the heyday of the culture of the peoples of Mesopotamia, who were on the territory modern Iraq, by the time of the existence of the state of Sumer. The oldest texts date back to around 3000 BC. The most ancient texts of Mesopotamia are written in the Sumerian language. The first libraries arose as collections of various kinds of state, economic and other documents. These institutions served as libraries and archives.
The next stage in the development of libraries is the palace libraries or libraries of rulers. the most ancient from among those that have survived to this day, it is considered a library owned by the king Hittite kingdom- Hattusilis III (1283 - 1260 BC). At the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists discovered about 11 thousand cuneiform tablets here, indicating that this library contained official documents (royal messages and appeals), chronicles, and ritual texts. Unlike the Sumerian tablets, these "books" bear the name of the author, his address and title, and even the name of the scribe. There is reason to believe that there was also a catalog compiled by the names of the authors. A feature of the Hittite tablets is the authorship of literary and scientific works. Hittite librarians and archivists created the science of book preservation. The cuneiform texts of the catalogs of the Hittite library have been preserved, in which there were notes about the lost documents. Labels were used for individual works. All this testifies to the order that was maintained by the librarians in the storage of clay books.
The largest and most famous of the libraries of the Ancient World - library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal(668-631 BC). In this cuneiform library, which included the richest collection of Babylonian literature, according to various estimates, from ten to thirty thousand clay books were kept, each of which had a cuneiform stamp: "The Palace of the King of Kings." Ashurbanipal's library had a universal character. The fund contained lists of kings, royal messages, lists of countries, rivers, mountains, commercial materials, works on mathematics, astronomy, medicine, dictionaries and works on grammar. Religious texts were kept in a separate room.
There is information about the "disclosure" of the library fund. Special tiles indicated the name of the work (by its first line), the room where it was located, and the shelf on which it was stored. Clay tablets were used for writing. "Books"-tablets were kept in special clay jugs. On each shelf there was a clay "label", the size of a little finger, with the name of a particular branch of knowledge.
A letter, a book were highly revered in Egypt, libraries were considered the focus of wisdom. The Egyptians had a god of the moon and wisdom - Thoth, who also patronized scribes; the goddess Seshat is the patroness of libraries; god of knowledge Sia. The profession of a scribe was very honorable, not without reason noble nobles and officials loved to be portrayed in the pose of a writer, with a scroll in their hands. There is evidence that indirectly indicates that people who perform the duties of librarians (although they were not professional librarians in modern understanding), were also honored: on the banks of the Nile, the tombs of two librarians, a father and a son, who served under Pharaoh Ramses (about 1200 BC) were discovered. This suggests that in ancient Egypt the position of librarian, like many other government positions, was hereditary.
From the second half of the XIV century BC. in ancient Egypt, there were libraries at the temples serving the priests. These libraries were called the "house of the book" (or "God's house of the book") and the "house of life". The first concept, which was used until the beginning of the Ptolemaic era, referred to the temple libraries. The position of the custodian of the library (“house of life”) was state-owned and was inherited, since it could only be occupied by those admitted to the possession of “higher knowledge”.
One of the most famous temple libraries was that of the Ramesseum Temple, founded around 1300 BC. pharaoh Ramses II (c. 1290 - 1224 BC). At the entrance to the library of Ramses there was an inscription - "Pharmacy for the soul." The doors and walls of the library depicted gods patronizing writing, knowledge, and libraries. The book depository contained religious works, prophecies, fairy tales, stories, medical treatises, didactic teachings, and works on mathematics.
In Egypt, papyrus was used for writing. Books from it were kept in boxes and tubular vessels. Many papyri have survived to this day, but no complete libraries have been preserved, since papyrus is a less resistant material than clay. With the advent of papyrus, there were more and more scribes-librarians. Thus, the libraries of the Ancient World performed the function of collecting and storing documents, and the librarians of that time were both scribes, collectors, and custodians of documents. The archival beginning is expressed in the fact that the documents were available only in a single copy. These documents were copied, as evidenced by the name of the scribe; the work was long and expensive. Documents were systematized, catalogs also existed in libraries. In addition, the libraries of the Ancient World did not fulfill the function of providing access to the library's funds; they could be used by a very limited circle of "initiates". In terms of service, the library of the Ancient World provided access to the funds of a very limited circle of users: in the Ancient East - the ruler himself and his entourage, in Ancient Egypt - priests and narrow circle dedicated.
During the period of antiquity in ancient Greece, the word "library" appears from Greek words biblion (book) and theke (repository). antique library can be considered both as a public (for readers of a certain circle), and as an institution serving science. The foundation of the first major library in ancient Greece dates back to the 4th century BC. and associated with the name of Aristotle (384 - 323 BC). He owned a unique library of about 40,000 scrolls. One of his most famous students, Alexander the Great, took part in the creation of this library.
Libraries of antiquity become, in a certain sense, publicly available, though only for certain sections of society. They also begin to play the role of scriptoria - institutions that not only made copies of documents, but also had the obligation to provide copies that guarantee the authenticity of the texts. At the same time, libraries appeared, in a meaning close to the modern one.
The richest and most famous book collection of antiquity was the Library of Alexandria of the Ptolemaic kings, founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC. the king of Egypt, Ptolemy I Soter (323 - 283 BC). The Library of Alexandria was the richest and most complete library of that time. The main task library was a collection of all Greek literature and translations of works of other peoples into Greek language, and very different - from the works of Greek tragedians to cookbooks.
Imagine what kind of erudition (and physical endurance!) You had to have to serve the eighth wonder of the world - the Library of Alexandria, which consisted of more than 700,000 scrolls of handwritten books! But only a few people worked there. They had to be in literally generalists, since in the Alexandrian Library, in addition to the book depository and reading rooms, there were also an observatory, a zoological and medical museum - their maintenance was also the responsibility of librarians.
The largest scientists headed the Library of Alexandria: Erastosthenes, Zenodotus, Aristarchus of Samos and others. The Library of Alexandria developed rules for the classification and inventory of funds. One of the leaders of the library, Callimachus, compiled a huge bibliographic dictionary “Tables and descriptions of teachers (or poets) through the ages and from antiquity”. Although only small fragments of 120 volumes have come down to us, the frequent references to the "Tables ..." in ancient Greek documents make it possible to judge the content and significance of the work done. Describing books, Callimachus gave the opening words of each work, and then reported all the information he knew about the author. The library had a staff of copyists who copied books. The catalog of the library compiled by Callimachus was regularly updated. The Library of Alexandria became the largest cultural and scientific center of the ancient world. Readers came to work on the scrolls and receive copies of works of interest from many parts of the Hellenic world.
The work of librarians was characterized by a clear specialization - they kept records of new acquisitions, worked with the fund, and were engaged in ensuring the safety of books (a unique system ensuring the safety of the library fund; first of all, it was protected from moisture). The librarians had assistants whose duties included accounting for new manuscripts, parsing and reviewing manuscripts, and copying texts. There were people who kept order, for the protection of manuscripts from moths and dampness.
In accordance with the classification system, scientific literature was divided into five sections: "History", "Rhetoric", "Philosophy", "Medicine", "Legislation". A special section was also allocated - "Miscellaneous". Within each section, the books were arranged by author's name, attached short biography the author and a list of his works. Next to the title of each work were the first few words of the text, the number of scrolls, and the number of lines in each scroll.
The work in the library was clearly organized: the servants kept a clear record of new arrivals, worked with the fund, were engaged in ensuring the safety of the fund, classification and inventory. The fund was divided into main and double; the doublets were stored in another building on the other side of the capital.
