Libraries in the Ancient World Review

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(More customer reviews)There were libraries before there were books. A fascinating survey, _Libraries in the Ancient World_ (Yale University Press) by Lionel Casson, explains how the libraries were similar and different from our own, and how they managed without printing and without books as we know them. The similarities are reassuring and often delightful. We suspect there were Egyptian libraries, but we have never found one, because there are no masses of papyrus documents; such collections may have been lost in fires. The Sumerians, however, had written records were in cuneiform letters, pressed into clay. Some of the collections of these tablets offered the privilege of borrowing, and librarians then seem to have been bothered by two of the same problems that beset librarians now, theft and damage. Tablets bore warnings or curses calling upon the services of the local gods: "Whoever removes the tablet... may Ashur and Ninlil, angered and grim, cast him down, erase his name, his seed, in the land", "He who carries it off, may Adad and Shala carry him off!", and "Who rubs out the text, Marduk will look upon him with anger."
It was the Greeks who instituted libraries with aims similar to our own, shelves full of books on a wide range of subjects, available to readers who could come in and consult them. There was a demand for books, and by the fourth century BCE, bookselling was a flourishing industry. The booksellers probably employed scribes to turn out copies of works. There were no such things as royalties or author's rights. Rome conquered all, but Greece held intellectual sway over the Romans, who continued the library tradition. Roman libraries had bookshelves of a particular type set into the walls, and archeologists can spot the tell-tale imprint of the bookshelves and thereby identify a chamber as a library. Independent public libraries faded as the libraries became incorporated, surprisingly, into other structures, the baths. Here they served as part of a recreational and cultural center. Casson ends his story with the codex and the great monastic libraries. The codex is very much like a modern book, not a scroll, but a mass of pages sewn together with covers (perhaps of wood). It was less bulky (both sides of the paper being used) and could be held in one hand, with the other hand taking notes. It took a long time for the scrolls to die out, except among the Christians who used codices for their scriptures, possibly because of the pagan association to scrolls.
Casson, a Professor Emeritus of Classics, has gathered together an important tale not just of libraries but of reading and publishing. It is the first full study of libraries in the ancient world. If you love libraries and books, this is a fine book for learning about their earliest foundations.

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