Gordana Stokić Simončić
Univerzitet u Beogradu
Filološki fakultet – Katedra za bibliotekarstvo i informatiku
gordana.stokic.simoncic@gmail.com

No. 28 (May 2016), p. 35-42

Near East: The Cradle of Libraries

Summary

The paper gives a brief overview of systems and materials for writing used by people of the ancient Near East, as the basis for more detailed presentation of the most important achievements in organizing and managing collections of written documents – antecedents of modern archives and libraries. Archaeological excavations, language studying and textological analyses of materials found on the territory of the former Sumerian cities, the Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian and Hittite empires and the Eblaite, Ugaritic and Phoenician settlements, done in the 19th and 20th centuries, have greatly enriched the history of libraries. There were certain attempts to efficiently organize the written materials back at the end of the third millennium BC. Scope of scribal activity, along with diversity and usage of texts, have led to the appearance of inventories, rudimentary catalogues and classification according to professional fields, practice of using catchwords and colophons in manuscripts... All the libraries of the ancient Near East, known nowadays, were rulers’ libraries (whether they were built in imperial palaces or temples of gods), with the exception of those in Ugarit that belonged to the supreme priests or high court officials. The oldest library, reliably known of, was on the territory of Syria, formed in the Royal Palace of Ebla and destroyed in the fire in 2250 BC. However, the biggest and probably the most developed library originated in this cultural circle, was the royal library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal from the 7th century BC. The oldest tablet considered to be the library catalogue, dates from around 2000 BC, and was found in the ruins of the Sumerian city of Nippur; the first known founder of a library is the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I (12th century BC) – which, all together, testifies to the age of libraries, but also to their rootedness in the cultural models of certain nations.

Keywords:

libraries, archives, ancient history, Near East, Nineveh, Library of Ashurbanipal, Ebla, royal collections, organizing, cuneiform, clay tablets, catchword, colophon

Submitted: 5th January 2016
Accepted for publication: 14th January 2016.

Near East: The Cradle of Libraries by Gordana Stokić Simončić is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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