Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation

Chelyabinsk State Academy of Culture and Arts

Faculty of Documentary Communications

T.D. Rubanova

HISTORY OF LIBRARY BUSINESS

Ancient world

Middle Ages

Age of Enlightenment

Admitted by educational institutions of higher educational institutions of the Russian Federation in education

in the field of folk art,

socio-cultural activities and information resources

as a teaching aid

by specialty 052700

"Library and information activities"

Chelyabinsk

Rubanova T.D. History of librarianship: The Ancient World – The Middle Ages – The Age of Enlightenment: Textbook. allowance/ChGAKI. – Chelyabinsk, 2003. – 112 p.

ISBN 5-94839-047-0

The textbook is intended for full-time and part-time students of the Faculty of Documentary Communications studying the course “History of Librarianship.” The textbook covers the development of librarianship in foreign countries and in Russia in the following historical periods: the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Age of Enlightenment.

Published by decision of the editorial and publishing council of ChGAKI

Introduction

The subject of the history of librarianship is the development of the library social institution in time and space. According to this interpretation, the subject of study of this scientific discipline is the history of individual library institutions, the historical dynamics of the library social institution, and the development of library ideas.

The history of librarianship is closely connected with the cycle of historical sciences (domestic history, history of foreign countries), with general professional disciplines - book science and library science.

The history of librarianship as an academic discipline traditionally occupies an important place in the training of future library workers. It is known that lectures on the history of librarianship were given to students of the library school at Columbia University in Albany - the world's first special educational institution, organized by M. Dewey in 1887. Students of the People's University were also introduced to the basics of historical and library knowledge. A.L. Shanyavsky, organized in Moscow in 1913.

The course “History of Librarianship” occupies a special place in the preparation of future library workers from the point of view of educational opportunities, since it contains a consolidating principle between social and special disciplines, forms the ability for in-depth historical analysis of the phenomena of library theory and practice, and a professional worldview.

The objectives of the academic discipline are to give future specialists an idea of ​​the main stages and features of the development of librarianship in different countries, to reveal the patterns and dynamics of this development, to identify the continuity of professional traditions, to show the importance of historical experience for improving the modern theory and practice of domestic librarianship.

According to the State educational standard for specialty 052700 “Library and information activities”, the course is included in the general professional block of disciplines (federal component).

Studying the course “History of Librarianship” has its own difficulties: a large volume of factual material, a high dispersion of publications on the course, uneven coverage in the literature of certain aspects of the course, the presence of distortions and currently outdated ideological assessments in many sources.

Until recently, students had two main course textbooks at their disposal: Abramov K.I. “History of librarianship in the USSR” (M., 1980) and Talalakina O.I. “History of librarianship abroad” (Moscow, 1982). Having played a significant role in students’ mastery of the academic discipline, they are now significantly outdated. In recent years, new publications on the history of librarianship have appeared. This is an educational and methodological manual for students, teachers and practicing librarians K.I. Abramov “History of librarianship in Russia” in 2 parts. (M., 2000-2001) and monograph by B.F. Volodin “World History of Libraries” (St. Petersburg, 2002). Unfortunately, due to their low circulation, these publications are often not available to students, so most students studying the History of Librarianship course still use textbooks published in the early 1980s.

The textbook offered to the attention of readers covers the following sections of the history of librarianship: The Ancient World, the Middle Ages, the Age of Enlightenment. Within each historical era, material is presented on the development of domestic and foreign libraries. The content of each topic can be expanded by students by studying additional literature given in the lists for each historical period. The textbook ends with a list of topics for students’ independent work and approximate topics of coursework for the course “History of Librarianship.”

LIBRARIES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

Libraries of the Ancient East

The emergence of libraries as repositories of written monuments dates back to the 3rd millennium BC. When excavating 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 that time can be called “books” very conditionally: they were clay shards, scrolls of papyrus or parchment.

The oldest libraries known to us today existed in the region of Southern Mesopotamia - Sumer. It is believed that Sumer was the cradle of Eurasian civilization and from there, apparently, comes “everything in the world.” The Sumerians were a highly developed civilization: they created a network of irrigation canals, invented the potter's wheel, wheel, plow, sailing boat, and knew how to make castings from copper and bronze. The main natural resource of this area was clay: they used it to build houses, make dishes, lamps and coffins. Even man, according to ancient Sumerian myth, was created from clay. Therefore, it is natural that clay tablets became the material carriers of written signs here. Most of them were small in size - approximately 5 x 5 cm. The characters of the text printed on them sometimes turn out to be so small that they have to be read with a magnifying glass. On a damp clay tablet, with a thin reed rod, which had the shape of a small triangle on the cut, signs consisting of vertical, horizontal and oblique wedges were applied (hence the name of the writing system - cuneiform). The tablets were then fired for strength.

In the second half of the 3rd millennium BC, Sumerian literature was represented by a variety of genres. These were epic tales in verse, hymns to the gods, teachings, fables, proverbs, and sayings. Science also developed among the Sumerians: among the deciphered tablets there are works on agriculture (a landowner's calendar and plant classification were found), mathematics, history, and geography (ancient Sumerian maps have reached us). Sometimes tablets were used for business records.

There were a great many clay tablets. Thus, during excavations of the cult center of Sumer - Ur - more than 20 thousand tablets were found. In another religious center - Nippur - several thousand tablets were also found, located in sixty-two rooms.

All this testifies not only to the presence and spread of writing, but also to attempts to collect and preserve written monuments. Naturally, the source material (clay) and the abundance of tablets required solving the issues of their storage and organization. Cuneiform tablets were stored in willow baskets, each of which was tied and provided with a label with an inscription (for example: “Documents relating to the garden”, “Reed basket with documents relating to the weaver’s workshop”).

As for the organization of the signs, there was clearly some kind of system. Scientist S. Kramer suggests that to facilitate the placement and search of the necessary materials, lists of literary works were compiled, grouped according to certain characteristics. This assumption is confirmed by ancient catalogs found during excavations and subsequently deciphered (one of them is currently kept in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, the other in the Louvre).

The tablet, measuring 6.5 x 3.5 cm, is entirely covered with cuneiform icons on both sides. Each side is divided into two columns. In addition, every 10 lines of text are separated by a horizontal line. When deciphering, it was determined that this was not a coherent text, but the names of 62 literary works, of which 24 have reached us.

And yet the purpose of this inventory is not known exactly, just as the principle of arrangement of the names of works in the list is unknown.

So far we know very little about the libraries of Sumer, but perhaps further archaeological excavations and deciphering of tablets will help us eventually dispel the fog of the prehistoric past.

Sumerian cuneiform script spread widely throughout the countries of the Middle East and Asia Minor. During the heyday of ancient Babylonian culture, the Sumerian cuneiform became an international writing system.

Of all the famous libraries of the Ancient East, the Nineveh Library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (YII century BC) deserves special attention. This king was apparently a great lover of books and knowledge. He 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 a bow, ride a horse and chariot, hold the reins..., comprehended the hidden secrets of the art of writing. I have read and pondered about the structures of heaven and earth... I have attended meetings of scribes... I have solved difficult problems involving multiplication and division that are not immediately understandable...”

Ashurbanipal collected a large library in the capital of his state, Nineveh, which was a true pearl of the ancient era. The king sent his representatives, experienced scribes, to different cities of Mesopotamia, who looked for ancient books and made copies of them. Many of them therefore have a postscript at the end of the text: “Copied and verified according to the ancient original.” In total, over 100 thousand clay tablets were collected. Among them were texts on a variety of branches of knowledge in several languages ​​(not only Sumerian): medical treatises and grammatical reference books, books of religious content and myths, chronicles of Assyrian kings and records of astronomical observations.

The library occupied special, luxuriously decorated premises of two palaces of Ashurbanipal, one of which was called “House of guidance and advice.”

The Nineveh library was kept in exemplary order. Each book had its own “library stamp”: “The palace of Ashurbanipal, king of kings, king of the country of Ashur, to whom the god Nabu and the goddess Gaslista bestowed sensitive ears and keen eyes to search for the works of the writers of my kingdom.”

The signs were placed in a systematic order. Books on astronomy, grammar and religion, customs and laws, etc. were highlighted. Each work was stored in a separate box or clay chest. The catalogs indicated the title of the work (on the first line), as well as the room and shelf on which it was stored. A faience label (the size of a little finger) with the name of the branch of knowledge was attached to the shelf.

The fate of the library of Ashurbanipal is sad: it was destroyed after the fall of Nineveh under the onslaught of the troops of Babylon and Media.

We know a lot about the Nineveh Library thanks to the excavations of the English archaeologist O. Layard in the middle of the 19th century. Then, despite the dire warning inscribed on one of the signs: “Whoever dares to carry away these tables... let Ashur and Belit punish with his wrath, and his name and his heirs will forever be consigned to oblivion in this country”, - the remains of the Nineveh Library (about 20 thousand tablets) were transported to London and have since been kept in the British Museum. And their discoverer, the archaeologist Layard, by the way, died suddenly shortly after his discovery.

The catalog of the Nineveh Library was published in London at the end of the 19th century.

The other largest archaeological find after the library of Ashurbanipal was the library of the Hittites. Few of us can say what kind of people they were, but at one time the powerful Hittite kingdom rightfully competed with Egypt, the Hittites conquered Babylon and razed it to the ground to intimidate other nations. But it just so happened that history has preserved very little information about this power. It is not for nothing that Oxford professor A. Sayce, who rediscovered the Hittite kingdom to the world, called his book “The Hittites, or the History of a Forgotten People” (1903).

The Hittite state was located in the territory of modern Turkey and northern Syria and existed for about 700 years. The Hittites flourished in the 19th-13th centuries BC.

More than 10 thousand clay tablets discovered by the German scientist G. Winkler (1907) made it possible to gain some insight into the Hittite kingdom, its culture and libraries. The bulk of the tablets are religious texts (rituals, prayers, hymns), but works on mathematics, history, numerous commentaries on the code of laws, various poetic works, short original stories called “records of oversights and stupidities.”

Hittite librarians and archivists created the science of storing books. Cuneiform texts of the Hittite library catalogs have been preserved, in which there were notes about lost documents. Labels for individual works were used. All this testifies to the order that was maintained in the storage of clay books.

Although Sumerian cuneiform had an international character, not all peoples of the Ancient East adopted it. At the time when the clay cuneiform book began to spread widely, another deeply developed writing system already existed in the East - the Egyptian one. A curious monument of Egyptian writing has survived to this day - “Teaching...”– peculiar “satire on crafts.” Among other professions that cause the author's ridicule, we find the profession of a courier. When he goes abroad, he says “Teaching...”,- he has “a brick in your belt.” Researchers interpret this expression as a reference to the heavy load of clay tablets containing diplomatic documents, that is, the Egyptians disdained writing on clay tablets. It was in Egypt that, for the first time in human history, the most convenient writing material in many respects was invented - papyrus*. Word "papyrus" began to mean paper in many European languages ​​(compare: German - papier, French - papier, English - paper). Papyrus became the main writing material of antiquity.

The center of all official Egyptian life was the temple. Church and state in Egypt were united, and the country had a theocratic form of government. It is no coincidence that much of ancient Egyptian literature was religious literature. These were collections of hymns, prayers, descriptions of religious rituals, collections of magical formulas, etc. But even if the books were of purely scientific content - such as works on geometry, astronomy, medicine - they were still under the jurisdiction of the priests, and most It was temple libraries that were widespread.

Writing and books were highly revered in Egypt, and libraries were considered the center of wisdom. The Egyptians had a god of the moon and wisdom - Thoth, who also patronized the scribes; goddess Seshat - patroness of libraries; god of knowledge Sia.

The profession of a scribe was very honorable; it was not for nothing that noble nobles and officials loved to be depicted in the pose of a writer, with a scroll in their hands. There is evidence that indirectly indicates that people performing the duties of librarians (although these were not professional librarians in the modern sense) were also surrounded by honor: on the banks of the Nile, the tombs of two librarians were discovered - father and son, who served under Pharaoh Ramses (about 1200 BC). This suggests that in ancient Egypt the position of librarian, like many other government positions, was hereditary.

Only a few ancient Egyptian libraries have survived to this day. The book depository of Pharaoh Ramses II, founded in 1300 BC, is known. e. near the capital of Egypt - Thebes. On the library portal it was written “Pharmacy for the soul.” On the door and walls of the library, gods were depicted as patrons of writing, knowledge, and libraries. The book depository contained religious works, prophecies, stories, fairy tales, medical treatises, didactic teachings, and works on mathematics.

Only ruins remain of another ancient Egyptian library at Karnak, which was known as "House of Books" Still standing is the library building in Edfu, which is known as “House of Papyrus”, but none of the manuscripts stored in it survived. However, thanks to the catalog carved on one of the walls of this building, it is known that the library's holdings in “House of Papyrus” contained works on government, magic and what at that time was considered medicine and science: for example, how to resist the god of darkness and strife, how to protect yourself from crocodiles and snakes, etc.

Papyrus scrolls in Egyptian libraries were stored in boxes, in clay jars or special cases, which were placed in wall niches.

Many libraries in Ancient Egypt were places of learning, with the best works serving as teaching material. By the way, student scrolls preserved for us some works, the texts of which were later lost.

In addition to palace and temple libraries, there were also private libraries in Ancient Egypt. During excavations (1895) of one of the tombs dating back to the XIII Dynasty, the remains of one of the oldest private libraries in the world were found. 20 papyri were discovered here, including both religious and secular texts.

Information about ancient Egyptian libraries is scarce, since papyrus is a fragile material even under the most favorable storage conditions; and therefore we know more about the libraries of Babylon and Assyria, where they wrote on clay.

The highly developed civilization of Ancient Egypt had a strong influence on the culture of the peoples around it. Therefore, it is natural that, along with other achievements and cultural conquests of Egypt, they borrowed from it the form of a papyrus book-scroll. The ancient Greeks were among the first to do this, from whom the ancient Romans, and then the rest of the peoples of Europe, adopted the culture of books.

The history of librarianship keeps many secrets, some of which are gradually becoming the subject of study by scientists. In April 1948, magazines, newspapers and radio reported the discovery of ancient manuscripts. From reports it became known that in the spring of 1947, Bedouins of the semi-nomadic Taamire tribe discovered a treasure of manuscripts in one of the caves on the northwestern coast of the Dead Sea. These were leather scrolls covered in Hebrew script, which were later found to be over two thousand years old. The subsequent searches and archaeological excavations led to the discovery of new caches of manuscripts in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. Currently, about 40,000 fragments of various sizes have been found, including small and minute scraps and shreds, representing the remains of about six hundred books. For the first time, the soil of Palestine opened its repositories of ancient manuscripts to science. This discovery went down in the history of science under the name “Qumran manuscripts.”

The Qumran manuscripts are the remains of a once extensive library. As it turned out, they belonged to a previously unknown Jewish sect that lived in the Judean Desert from the 2nd century BC. e. before 68 AD e. and what is now called the Qumran community. The books of the Qumran community that have come down to us are diverse: these were handwritten works on leather, parchment, papyrus and inscriptions on copper tablets, compiled in eight languages ​​and dialects: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic and others. According to the content of the manuscript, they can be divided into the following groups: biblical (canonical) texts, apocryphal texts, commentaries on Old Testament books and documents related directly to the Qumran community (Charter of the community, hymns and prayers of thanksgiving, business and economic documents). Nothing is known about the structure of the Qumran library itself and the organization of its work, but the study of the Dead Sea manuscripts is still ongoing.

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Libraries of antiquity Completed by students of class 2 “B” “Books are compressed time” Marietta Shaginyan

Introduction In ancient history, there are many large libraries known that were collected by the rulers of the great ancient states in order to preserve the most valuable information from the knowledge accumulated by previous civilizations for the benefit of future generations. However, the vast majority of books from these archives are now considered irretrievably lost.

What is a library? A library is a cultural, educational and scientific auxiliary institution that organizes the public use of printed works. Libraries systematically collect, store, promote and issue printed works to readers, as well as information and bibliographic work.

The library of Pharaoh Ramses 11 is considered one of the most ancient. It was above its entrance, trimmed in gold, that the inscription “Pharmacy for the Soul” was carved. Founded around 1300 BC. near the city of Thebes, she kept papyrus books in boxes, clay jars, and later in wall niches. They were used by pharaohs, priests, scribes, and officials. They were inaccessible to the common population.

The first libraries appeared in the first millennium BC in the ancient East. According to history, the very first library is considered to be a collection of clay tablets dating back to approximately 2500 BC. BC, discovered in the temple of the Babylonian city of Nippur (present-day Iraq). This collection of books was located in 70 huge rooms and consisted of up to 60 thousand clay tablets, on which texts containing information about religious events (for example, the tale of the Great Flood), lyrics to deities, legends and myths about the emergence of civilization, were recognized. various fables, sayings and proverbs. Each of the books had labels with inscriptions about the content: “Healing”, “History”, “Statistics”, “Cultivation of plants”, “Description of the area” and others.

Library found during excavations in the city of Nippur

Nineveh Fireproof Library The city of Nineveh was still known from the Bible, and was discovered only in 1846 by G. Layard, an English lawyer who accidentally found several tablets from the Nineveh Library. Visitors were greeted by the inscription: “The palace of Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria, to whom the great gods gave ears to hear, and open eyes to see, which represents the essence of government. This wedge-shaped letter I wrote on the tiles, I numbered them, I put them in order, I placed them in my palace for the instruction of my subjects."

The library of Nineveh contained on the clay pages of its books everything that was rich in the cultures of Sumer and Akkad. The Books of Clay told the world that the wise mathematicians of Babylon did not limit themselves to four arithmetic operations. They calculated percentages, knew how to measure the area of ​​various geometric shapes, they had their own multiplication table, they knew squaring and extracting square roots. The modern seven-day week was also born in Mesopotamia, where the foundation of modern astronomy concepts about the structure and development of celestial bodies was laid. 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. The library also had a catalog in which the title, number of lines, and the branch of knowledge to which the book belonged were recorded. Finding the right book was not difficult: a small clay tag with the name of the department was attached to each shelf - just like in modern libraries.

Library of Nineveh

In ancient Greece, the first public library was founded in Heraclea by the tyrant Clearchus (IV century BC).

The largest and most famous library of antiquity, the Alexandrian library, was founded in the 111th century BC.

Libraries of Ancient Rus' The first library in Rus' was founded in the city of Kyiv in 1037 by the Kyiv prince Yaroslav the Wise. Books for the library were also bought from other countries. The prince placed some of these books in the Church of St. Sophia, founding the first library. The first library in Rus', created in this way in the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, grew and was enriched with book treasures in subsequent years.

Library of the Church of St. Pieters (Netherlands)

Library of the monastery in Waldsassen (Germany)

British Museum Library (London)

Conclusion Libraries began to be created by the kings of the ancient kingdoms. Legends tell of stunning libraries of the Ancient World, such as the library of the Assyrian Kingdom, the Babylonian Kingdom, the Library of Thebes in Ancient Egypt, the Ancient Greek and Roman Libraries, and the famous Library of Alexandria. Every city has its own library and every country has its own State National Library. And no matter in what form books exist - on papyri or CD-roms - their repositories - libraries - have always been, are and will be needed by humanity!

The Library of Alexandria recently reopened. The project to resurrect it has been implemented for about 20 years and all this time was sponsored by UNESCO and the governments of many countries. The library occupies an 11-story building. But the main goal of the project is the creation of an international electronic library. We can hope that very soon people from different parts of the planet will be able to visit the oldest library in the world using the Internet.

The Pergamon Library was created by King Eumenes II in the 2nd century. BC The building was located in the central square of the city. The books were housed in four large halls. In the center of the main hall, on a marble pedestal, stood a statue of Athena, one and a half human height. The niches for the scrolls in the book depository were lined with cedar, as it was believed that it protected the manuscripts from insects. The staff included scribes, translators, and there was a catalogue.

The Pergamon Library was second only to the Library of Alexandria in terms of the size of its collection, which amounted to 200 thousand copies. Its largest part was made up of medical treatises Pergamon was considered the center of medicine. Once the Pergamon Library bought the works of Aristotle, giving for them exactly as much gold as the manuscripts weighed. Fearing rivalry, Egyptian rulers forbade the export of papyrus to Pergamon. Then the Pergamians invented their own writing material. It was parchment - the skin of kids and lambs, beaten, wiped and smoothed in a special way. Scrolls were not glued together from parchment, but notebooks were folded and sewn into books. It was much more expensive than papyrus, but stronger; in addition, parchment could be made everywhere, but papyrus could only be made in Egypt. Therefore, in the Middle Ages, when exports from Egypt stopped, all of Europe switched to parchment. But in ancient times papyrus reigned supreme, and the Library of Pergamon was never able to catch up with the Library of Alexandria.

The history of the Pergamon Library ended in 43 BC. , when Pergamum was already a province of Rome. Mark Antony donated most of the library to the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, and the scrolls ended up in the Alexandria Library. Today Pergamon (Peregamon) is located in Turkey and the ruins of the library are among the tourist sites.

In the 1st century BC troops of the Roman Empire capture Greece and a number of Hellenistic states. During military campaigns, books were taken as trophies. Dozens of book copying workshops are opening in Rome; In bookstores you can buy works by authors from all countries of the ancient world. The first rich private libraries appeared. Julius Caesar, who captured Alexandria, decided to take the famous Library of Alexandria to Rome, where he was going to open a public library on its basis. However, in 44 BC. Caesar was killed, and the books prepared for shipment to Rome were burned. Caesar's plan was implemented in 39 BC. orator, politician, historian and writer, friend of Horace and Virgil Asinius Pollio. He opened a public library in Rome, on the Aventine Hill, in the Temple of Liberty. It was the world's first public library. The Romans greeted the innovation with delight, poets composed hymns in honor of the library and its founder, “who made the works of the human mind into the public domain.” In the following years, libraries in Rome were founded by Augustus, Trajan, and other emperors.

By the 4th century. AD There were at least 30 public libraries in Rome. They were located in covered galleries of large marble buildings, in palaces, in temples or near temples, as well as in thermal baths and public baths. Library architecture and the doctrine of organizing the work of libraries are developing. In accordance with the ideas of the famous architect Vitruvius, their windows faced east, so that in the morning there would be a lot of light in the halls; the Romans preferred the morning hours for studies. In addition, this was a better way to protect papyrus scrolls from dampness that penetrated the windows during frequent southern and western winds. The halls, rectangular or semicircular, were decorated with statues of gods, busts and portraits of great people. But all the decorations were placed in deep niches, the floor was made of dark marble, the ceilings were without gilding so that nothing would irritate the reader’s eye. Wardrobes stood along the walls or in the middle of the hall. The shelves in the cabinets were divided by vertical partitions into slots for manuscripts, which were stored horizontally in a systematic manner.

Readers of ancient Roman libraries - poets, scientists, officials, noble and wealthy citizens - could take manuscripts home. Libraries had catalogs. Compilation manuals were compiled: “On the acquisition and selection of books”, “Which books are worthy of acquisition”. In Rome there were also special libraries containing manuscripts on one branch of knowledge (for example, grammatical treatises).

Library, translated from Greek – “biblio” - book, “teka” - repository, that is, “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 humanity, repositories of the treasures of civilization.

The library is an 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 take care of it. But think about it, until recently the book was the only means of transmitting knowledge from generation to generation. As soon as people invented writing, it became possible to collect and accumulate knowledge.

The entire history of the human mind is connected with books and libraries. This is not a calm story at all! 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 precious thing. Today's library seems to be the epitome of peace, quiet and order.

As at all times, she serves people. It is interesting that 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 the 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 to 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 to 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 a cuneiform library there, 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 the temples and from the houses of noble and educated Assyrians.

The tablets remained 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, and also the number of the “sheet”. The books were placed in strict order, there were catalogs - lists indicating the names of the books and the number of lines in each tablet. It is noteworthy that this library had a thematic catalogue. All her books were divided into topics: history, law, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, legends and myths. The catalog reflected the title of the work. As well as the room and shelf where one should look for the desired sign. About 30 thousand clay books were kept there, each of which had a cuneiform stamp on it: “Palace of Ashurbanipal, King of the Universe, King of Assyria.” The Library of Nineveh is the most famous ancient library.

Ancient Greece, or Hellas, was famous for its scientists and philosophers who created schools and academies with libraries. The first public library was founded by the tyrant Clearchus in Heraclea. The largest private library was considered to be the collection of the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle. Aristotle's library in Lyca, in the Athens region, where the great ancient philosopher gave his lectures, contained tens of thousands of scrolls. After the death of the scientist, his library became part of the Museion, the Temple of the Muses. During excavations at Geherculaneum, the library of the poet Philodemus was discovered, which contained 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 the arts and founded the famous Museion (following the example of the Athenian one). It was a huge ensemble: a university with classrooms and living quarters, an observatory, a botanical garden, a zoo and a famous library of papyrus scrolls. Ptolemy II expanded the Library of Alexandria, sending his people to all corners of the world to obtain the most valuable works.

Under Ptolemy II, the patron saint of scientists and poets, the Museion and the Library of Alexandria reached their greatest prosperity. The son of Ptolemy II, Ptolemy III, issued a decree according to which anyone arriving in the harbor was obliged to give up 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's collection 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 was rivaled by the Library of Pergamon, which was created in the second century BC and contained about 200 thousand papyrus and parchment manuscripts. The Pergamon Library was second only to the Library of Alexandria in terms of the size of its collection. Most of it consisted of medical treatises - Pergamon 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 Pergamon is located in Turkey, and the ruins of the library are among the tourist sites.

The first Roman public library was created according to Greek models by Sesonius Pollio. Later, libraries arose in the Roman Empire, established by the emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Trajan, and Byzantine rulers. The earliest Christian libraries arose in large Episcopal churches.

In 1037, the Kiev prince Yaroslav the Wise (about 980 - 1054) founded the first library in Kievan Rus. She was in the Kiev St. Sophia Cathedral. It was the most complete collection of written monuments of Ancient Rus' - the Gospel, books of prophets, lives of saints. Important government documents were also kept here. 500 volumes - not many European libraries could boast of such a collection at that time. It is unknown where the library of Yaroslav the Wise disappeared: perhaps it perished during a great fire in 1124 or was destroyed in 1240 during the defeat of Kyiv by the troops of the 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 dungeons of the Kremlin. Foreigners who saw the book collection said that there were, among other things, very rare books. After the death of the king, his library became a legend, as it disappeared without a trace. The mystery of the library has haunted historians and archaeologists for centuries. To this day, the search for the library has not been successful.

Since the time when the first libraries arose, their custodians have been concerned that books do not go missing. The book sign has long served this purpose. Nowadays it is called bookplate.

The first public library in Russia was the Public Library in St. Petersburg. It was founded in 1795. It was allowed to be visited by “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 - Lenin Library). It contains about 40 million publications. Currently, microfiche, microfilms, transparencies, audio and video cassettes are becoming more and more widespread and included in the collection of libraries, 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, where you can just go and read a few pages about something interesting or leaf through a magazine that you have no longer been able to subscribe to or buy.

And there are probably also personal (home) libraries in every family, at least the kind that Conan Doyle wrote about: “Let your bookshelf be poor, let it decorate your home. Close the door of the room from the inside... You have left everything low, everything vulgar behind. Here, waiting for you, your silent friends stand in rows. Look around their formation. Choose the one that is closest to your soul now. Now all that remains is to reach out to him and go with him to the land of dreams.”

Eternal companions: writers about books, reading, bibliophilia / Comp. A. Blum. - M: Book, 1983. - 223 p.

School 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- No. 2 – p.44-45

“Books are compressed time.”

Marietta Shaginyan.

To Art. Ancient libraries

I began to study the mystery of disappeared ancient libraries after I came across numerous facts of the mysterious disappearance of information from many books by ancient authors that I read.

In principle, reading books by ancient authors is reminiscent of some kind of science fiction detective story. Expecting on the next page a description of the revelation of some secret or riddle described by the author, you are suddenly disappointed to discover that the narrative is interrupted and the author is reporting on other events that have little connection with the previous information.

At first it was annoying and seemed random. But when trying to find traces of this information in other sources, the same thing was discovered, as if someone had deliberately removed this information from all sources.

To Art. Ancient libraries

And only later did it become clear that this was a deliberate, systematic and long-term action associated with a censorship ban on certain knowledge. And these gaps, oddly enough, concerned the secrets of global catastrophes on Earth, the most terrible events in the history of mankind.

The paradox was precisely that, by all logic, this information should have been preserved most carefully and reverently, for the benefit of future generations.

Even later, the realization came that, unfortunately, it was precisely this information that shed light on the natural scientific reasons for the emergence of modern world creeds, and that is why they were so carefully removed from world history.

To Art. Ancient libraries

And this was the reason not only for the removal of information from individual books, but also the reason for the tragic death of giant libraries of antiquity, storing entire layers of the history of human civilizations. And all this is only to ensure that the monopoly on this knowledge belongs only to a small layer of society.

This is what I would like to talk about, carefully avoiding accusations against anyone, remembering that “the past can never be predictable” and “not a single person can consider himself happy until his death.”

In ancient history, there are many large libraries known that were collected by the rulers of the great ancient states in order to preserve the most valuable information from the knowledge accumulated by previous civilizations for the benefit of future generations. However, the vast majority of books from these archives are now considered irretrievably lost.

Tel Amarna tablet

To clarify the fate of these books, we have to make a short review of the fate of the most famous book depositories, only here and there providing it with our own commentary.

Our story should begin with the famous Tel Amarna archive, accidentally discovered by local fellahs during predatory excavations in the village of Tel Amarna, which spontaneously arose on the site of the new capital of Egypt, built by Akhenaten, as the center of his new religion, the city of Akhetaten.

However, numerous boxes discovered in a stone underground book depository, filled to the brim with clay tablets with hieroglyphic signs, contained only economic records and correspondence of the princes of Western Asia with the rulers of Egypt in the period between 1400-1360. BC

It can be assumed that after the death of Amenhotep the Fourth (Akhenaton), when his name was crossed out from the official history of Egypt and erased from all inscriptions, his archive also underwent a thorough revision and tablets that had already been rejected by the priests and did not contain any information about his new religion have reached us. based on the events of the Cretan cataclysm.

Akhenaten

The most interesting thing is that later, attempts were made repeatedly to revive the elements of his solar religion, modifying them in relation to their needs.

Here, for example, is what Josephus writes about the Essene religion: “Before sunrise they abstain from all ordinary speech; they then turn to the sun with well-known ancient prayers, as if asking for its rise.” And here is the testimony of Philo of Alexandria about them: in the morning “they stand up, turning and turning their gaze to the east, and as soon as they see the rising sun, they stretch out their hands to the sky and pray for prosperity, truth and insight.”(On Contemplation of Life, 89). And here is an excerpt from a letter from the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, to Emperor Trajan about the investigation into the guilt of early Christians: “They claimed that their whole guilt or error was that on the appointed day they gathered before dawn, chanting, taking turns, Christ as God and swore an oath to not commit crimes, but to refrain from theft, robbery, adultery, breaking one’s word, and refusing to issue a power of attorney.”

Meanwhile, I have already written about the fact that the “Aha area”, on which Pharaoh Akhenaten built his capital, is still an object of worship for Muslims, one of the most numerous and revered religions in the modern world.

Therefore, from the point of view of past centuries, it is completely unreasonable to consider Pharaoh Akhenaten a heretic.

Ashurbanipal

Among the ancient collections of cuneiform clay tablets collected in huge libraries, the Hittite archive of clay tablets (the modern village of Boghazkey) should be noted, as well as the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (669 - 633 BC) in Nineveh.

It consisted of up to 20,000 tablets, and was located in the gigantic palace of his grandfather Sennacherib.

Even more impressive is the Nippur (modern village of Khuffar) library of clay tablets, numbering up to 60,000 clay tablets stored in 70 large rooms, among which were discovered tale of the flood.

Unfortunately, despite the huge number of surviving tablets, they have all suffered significantly from time and people. But it was they who served as the prototype for the creation of huge collections of books.

And the history of the largest collections of books begins for us with the famous Library of Alexandria, which we will talk about in more detail.