The great libraries of the ancient world served as archives for empires, sanctuaries for sacred writings, and depositories of literature and chronicles.
Anatolia[edit]
- Hattusa (1900 B.C. - 1190 B.C.) (Modern Bogazkoy)
- This archive constituted the largest collection of Hittite texts discovered.[1][verification needed]
- Library of Pergamum (197 B.C. - 159 B.C.) (Modern Bergama)
- The Attalid kings formed the second best Hellenistic library after Alexandria, founded in emulation of the Ptolemies. When the Ptolemies stopped exporting papyrus, partly because of competitors and partly because of shortages, the Pergamenes invented a new substance to use in codices, called parchment, or pergamum after the city. This was made of fine calfskin, a predecessor of vellum and paper. The library had collected over 200,000 volumes and the reason why the library was so successful was because of Pergamum's hegemony which was a purveyor of scholarship.[2]
- Library of Celsus (135 A.D.) (Located within the city of Ephesus)
- This library was part of the triumvirate of libraries in the Mediterranean which included the aforementioned Library of Pergamum and the great Library of Alexandria listed below. The library was actually a tomb and a shrine for the deceased Gaius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus for whom the library is named.[3] 12,000 volumes were collected at this library which were deposited in several cabinets along the wall.[3]
- The Imperial Library of Constantinople, (330 AD)
- The library was established by Constantius II who was the son of the first Christian emperor Constantine. Constantius requested that the rolls of papyrus should be copied onto parchment or vellum in order that they would be preserved.[4] It is known that several documents from the Library of Alexandria were spared incineration and secured here at the library.[4] Some assessments place the collection at just over 100,000 volumes which included papyrus scrolls and codices bound in parchment.[4]
Egypt[edit]
- The Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt, fl. 3rd century BC (c. 295 BC).
- Founded by Ptolemy, this library was said to have amassed an estimated 400,000 manuscripts and was considered the leading intellectual metropolis of the Hellenistic world.[2] The Serapeum in Alexandria served as an extension of the library.
- Nag Hammadi Library (Upper Egypt)
- The Nag Hammadi Library consists of no fewer than thirteen codices comprising fifty texts all which concern the Gnostic movement.[5]
India[edit]
- The great seats of learning in the ancient Indian subcontinent, namely Takshasila (6th to 5th century BC in modern day Pakistan), Nalanda(founded in 427 and considered "one of the first great universities in recorded history."[6]), Vikramshila (8th century), Kanchipuram and other universities, also maintained vast libraries of palm leaf manuscripts on various subjects, ranging from theology to astronomy. In 1193, the NalandaUniversity complex was sacked by Turkic Muslim invaders under Bakhtiyar Khilji; this event is seen as a milestone in the decline of Buddhism in India.
Iran[edit]
- The Academy of Gundishapur in western Iran, established during the Persian Sassanid Empire in the 3rd through 6th centuries.
- The breadth of this institution was enormous and included a university, teaching hospital, and a library filled with over 400,000 titles.[7] The academy was the epitome of the Sassanid Empire with its faculty highly proficient in the conventions of Zoroastrianism and ancient Persian as well as classical Indian scholarship.[7]
Iraq[edit]
- The Library of Ashurbanipal (established 668–627 BC), in Nineveh (near modern Mosul, Iraq)
- Long considered to be the first systematically collected library, was rediscovered in the 19th century. While the library had been destroyed, many fragments of the ancient cuneiform tablets survived, and have been reconstructed. Large portions of the Epic of Gilgamesh were among the many finds.[8][9][10]
- Nippur temple library (2500 B.C.)
- The earliest version of the Great Flood was discovered here.[11]
- Nuzi (Modern Yorgan Tepe) (1500 B.C.)
- This archive consisted of over 6,000 tablets written primarily in Babylonian cuneiform, however a select few were composed in the indigenousHurrian language.[12]
- The House of Wisdom (Baghdad) (9th-13th centuries)
- An Abbasid-era library and Arabic translation institute in Baghdad, Iraq. 8th century–1258. The academy was expressed by not only the library, but a celestial observatory.[13] There is a dearth of information on this institution and the majority of knowledge about it comes from the accounts of the Muslim scholar and bibliographer Ibn al-Nadim.[13]
Israel[edit]
- The Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima, a late 3rd century AD establishment located in present-day Israel, was a great early Christian library. Through Origen of Alexandria and the scholarly priest Pamphilus of Caesarea, the school won a reputation for having the most extensive ecclesiastical library of the time, containing more than 30,000 manuscripts: Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, Jerome and others came to study there.[14]
Italy[edit]
- Libraries of the Forum, consisted of separate libraries founded in the time of Augustus near the Roman Forum that contained both Greek andLatin texts, separately housed, as was the conventional practice. There were libraries in the Porticus Octaviae near the Theatre of Marcellus, in the temple of Apollo Palatinus, and in the Bibliotheca Ulpia in the Forum of Trajan.
- Atrium Liberatatis public library of Asinius Pollio[15]
- The Villa of the Papyri, in Herculaneum, Italy
- The only library known to have survived from classical antiquity. This villa's large private collection may have once belonged to Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus in the 1st century BC. Buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed the town in 79 AD, it was rediscovered in 1752, around 1800 carbonized scrolls were found in the villa's top story. Using modern techniques such as multi-spectral imaging, previously illegible or invisible sections on scrolls that have been unrolled are now being deciphered. It is possible that more scrolls remain to be found in the lower, unexcavated levels of the villa.[16]
Syria[edit]
- Ebla (2500 B.C. - 2250 B.C.)
- Constitute the oldest organized library yet discovered: see Ebla tablets.[17]
- Ugarit (Modern Ras Shamra) (1200 B.C.)
- Several thousand texts consisting of diplomatic archives, census records, literary works and the earliest privately owned libraries yet recovered.[18]Even though the tablets were written in several different languages, the most important aspect of the library were the 1400 texts written in a previously unknown tongue called Ugaritic.[18]
- Tell Leilan (Northeast Syria) (1900 B.C.)
- This archive housed over a thousand clay tablets [19]
- Mari (Modern Tell Hariri) (1900 B.C.)
- The archive held approximately 15,000 tablets which included works on litigation, letters, foreign negotiations, literary, and theological works [20]
- Sufiya Mosque Library, Grand Umayyad Mosque (Aleppo) (12th Century)
- More than 10,000 volumes were housed in this library which were entrusted to the mosque by Prince Sayf al-Dawla.[21]