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.

Comments

Weak evidence for being public

[raymorris]

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.

Re:Weak evidence for being public

[hey!]

Books and scrolls were seriously costly back then, you wouldn’t want just anyone to walz in and start pawing them. Especially if they couldn’t.read anyway.

That is exactly what happened in Ancient Roman baths and public libraries. And the literacy rate in the Empire was about 10% overall, but likely would have been higher in the cities where people are engaged in commerce and government. Given that the population of the city of Rome at the time we're talking was 1.5 million, there would surely be hundreds of thousands of potential patrons for a public library in Rome itself.

Now ancient Cologne had about 20,000 inhabitants; if 10% of them could read that'd be 2000 potential patrons. However since the function of the city was to administer the Roman province of Germania Inferior ("Lower Germany"), I'd guess the literacy rate would be higher, accounting for a population of bureaucrats, administrators and military officers.

Re:Unluckily, the scrolls are long gone...

[nukenerd]

Ancient civilizations were smarter, everything was in the Public Domain.

I don't know how they are sure that this was a public library, but even if it was you can be pretty sure that it was not open to any member of the public.