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

Re:So, what of the scrolls?

[Jzanu]

Early Christians did intentionally destroy Pagan writings, including Greek and Roman science, and even went so far as to rape and murder the academic Hypatia for the sake of their internal gossip. They created only limited religious writing. All science from the Greeks and Romans was preserved exclusively by the Arab civilization. I say this as a Catholic, so don't imagine some offense. It is just that history and reality are different than you know.

Re:Weak evidence for being public

[CrimsonAvenger]

Pretty much the only book people would see in The West during the dark ages, was the bible.

If you weren't a priest then, the only books you'd see were the account books of your business. Yes, businesses kept account ledgers then. Some of the oldest writings we've found have been invoices...

Re:Weak evidence for being public

[azcoyote]

There was even a time, when owning a bible was forbidden...

Proof? It's easy to repeat these claims, but actual history is far more complex. I don't know of any law ever actually being against owning a Bible. Moreover, Catharism was not persecuted for its use of the Bible, but rather for its attitude against the Bible; like Marcion and the Manichees before, they saw the Godof the Old Testament as evil. Thus the movement had very little to do with the Bible, and was fueled more by other ascetic, philosophical, and mystical influences.

Owning a Bible was not illegal, but it was nearly impossible for the poor and uneducated masses prior to the printing press. Nobles may own Bibles. In many cases, however, even the book read at Mass was not a whole Bible, but merely a lectionary, which contained the readings of the days but not the entire content of the Bible. This allowed for better mass production.

It's very easy to ascribe sinister motives to everything, but the people of the middle ages were pretty much the same as us, and economic explanations are often enough to understand the situation. Reading the Bible was not prohibited, but it was assumed that the Bible had to be read according to Church tradition, and so people also read it alongside commentaries and under guidance. Nobles may be privileged to own books--and not just the Bible, but other books as well--but the average peasant simply did not have the money. The price of books was high because of a lack of supply to meet demand. Books were hand-copied word by word.

Re:So, what of the scrolls?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you honestly think that most knowledge was preserved by monks in the middle ages, particularly in latin manuscripts, then you are really, *really*, *REALLY* uneducated on this topic. My college studies included far more medieval and ancient history than is common for students (I attended multiple universities and took every history course for medieval and older that I could).

Certainly *some* knowledge was preserved by monks. Even useful things from time to time.

But there was not "complete destruction of civil institutions" as you say. Much used to be made of the "fall of Rome" but that overplaying went out of style decades ago. One observation I recall was that the "dark ages" were only "dark" because of a paucity of written records -- but that there were actually plenty of records and as research continued what was "dark" continually shrank.

Around five to ten years ago I did an extensive survey of 500 AD to 1000 AD in Europe (that quickly focused on the latter part of the period) that found some interesting things, like Charlemagne's public school (not just for the aristocracy, but noble children rubbing shoulders with commoners). Or that the lot of the serfs was made worse by the eradication of the iron plow share in favor of roman-style agriculture. We know lots of things about the time period, largely because there was *not* complete destruction of civil institutions.

But throughout that time period the vast majority of regional knowledge preservation, much less adding to the store, was the result of muslims. I realize that doesn't make for good material in christian-centric teaching, but it doesn't change reality.

In that line, there was a public school "history" text that went after muslims for legally limiting the number of wives to four and completely glossed over Charlemagne's wives and concubines (just counting wives he had more than four) -- all within a span of two pages.

None of this makes christians bad and muslims good, but people who are intent on either the former or the latter misrepresent and omit significant facts.

Re:So, what of the scrolls?

[angel'o'sphere]

but I cannot think of a single instance where the documentary evidence explicitly states that Christians are destroying pagan texts.
You mean in Europe ...
In Mexico christians destroyed 99.99999% of all Mayan texts, your amount of 9's might vary.
Only one single catholic priest collected some/them and that is basically what is left in our days from Mayan writings.