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Ancient Public Library Discovered In Germany (theguardian.com)
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of the oldest public library in Cologne, Germany, "a building erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls," reports The Guardian. From the report: The walls were first uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with Cologne being one of Germany's oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying.
"It took us some time to match up the parallels -- we could see the niches were too small to bear statues inside. But what they are are kind of cupboards for the scrolls," said Dr Dirk Schmitz from the Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne. "They are very particular to libraries -- you can see the same ones in the library at Ephesus." It is not clear how many scrolls the library would have held, but it would have been "quite huge -- maybe 20,000," said Schmitz.
"It took us some time to match up the parallels -- we could see the niches were too small to bear statues inside. But what they are are kind of cupboards for the scrolls," said Dr Dirk Schmitz from the Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne. "They are very particular to libraries -- you can see the same ones in the library at Ephesus." It is not clear how many scrolls the library would have held, but it would have been "quite huge -- maybe 20,000," said Schmitz.
... probably had to be taken away due to copyright claims of some imperial Roman mega-corporations.
Ancient libraries were very often (nearly always?) private. They would either serve a particular institution, such as a government body, or some were only open to members who paid the high membership fees (compare a country club). For example, the vast majority of the holdings of Library of Congress aren't available of the public.
The article indicates they think it was a public library because it was located near the center of town, next.to a church, and there were public buildings nearby. Again, the Library of Congress is at the center of Washington, near public buildings, across the street from the capitol, the Supreme Court building, and a church. It's not a public library.
Unless the statues were really small too.
Pshaw! So -called "experts".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because a building certainly isn't that weird to find, scrolls are much more interesting.
Globalists: "None of this matters anyway, you're not going to be hearing about it from us. We have plans to remove all books from your curriculum and make your children get an education by watching gamers on youtube."
...they found the world's longest overdue library scroll.
It is wonderful to see that your indoctrination is still progressing at a steady pace.
kudoz to you.
It must be really quite awful to have no higher calling in life than to spew nonsense so vile that you're afraid even to put a pseudonym to it, much less your name.
I feel sorry for you—in much the same way that I felt sorry for that rattlesnake that got into the patio last year, moments before I blew its head off with a shotgun.
Reading Westerns again, eh. What floor of the Peabody, MA public library do they shelve the westerns on, priss?
spew nonsense so vile that you're afraid even to put a pseudonym to it, much less your name.
Vile? Just for satirising the EU? You need to lighten up, and the GP is not the only one not to put down a pseudonym.
VICTOIRE A NOUS!
I think you need a little bit of being killed in an European war of yore to gain some perspective. On the bright side, war builds character! I mean, someone would write your name on a plaque alongside thousands of other names or something, so you'd at the very least become a character afterwards, even if kinda blurred while a tourist glanced over it in between your war and theirs. But, hey! At least your genes would carry on in the form as the child of a prostitute or the child of the raped wife of a fallen Enemy, so there's that too!
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Public library is very VERY misleading. Only an under educated person today would not be aware of how society worked 1.800-1.900 years ago let alone that documents would be public. First, 2,000 years ago only the top 1% even knew how to read. Second, those that could read were either royalty, their court, or the church, of which the later was the greatest number.
Do you see "public" in any of that? Third, during this time period the church controlled all access to scripture. The Bible was only allowed to be read by clergy and should any one outside of the church try to read or interpret the Bible they would face excommunication. Excommunication was nearly always a death sentence as no one would be allowed to associate with the excommunicated person AND the church gave permission to execute those that were excommunicated as it was not a sin to kill them.
It is interesting to hear of these finds the article is lacking with any details that make it even an interesting read. Well, unless you think that begging for donations is your thing.
So far as I know the modern idea of the public library is something developed in the America's at the suggestion Benjamin Franklin ( if his autobiography is to be believed).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_library
There idea of a public library doesn't make much sense in a society where the literacy rate is under 10% and the cost of a books of hundreds or thousands of dollars each ( how long does it take to copy a 100 page book well, by hand with a quill pen on very expensive paper). So far as I know you had to be known in some way to be given entry into ancient library and they didn't let the books leave most of the time.
Time to revive the years old NRK video of Medieval HelpDesk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
And none of them returned for 2000 years?
Call the library cop!
The latest fragrance from 4711.
"...founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia."
Colonia Agrippina. (Or, to be exact, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium.) But calling it "Colonia" would be a lot like calling Los Angeles "Los."
blah blah public libraries are socialism blah blah
Are you sure that's not just because the English is old (Early Modern, roughly same period as Shakespeare)? I've read both the KJV and other translations all the way through, and while there are certainly places where the KJV is not only older English, but also just strange, as well as places where the translation is not so good (mostly Old Testament, maybe especially Psalms), it's not all that bad if you can deal with the thee's and thou's.