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Ancient Public Library Discovered In Germany (theguardian.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the lost-and-found dept.

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.

12 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Unluckily, the scrolls are long gone... by ffkom · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... probably had to be taken away due to copyright claims of some imperial Roman mega-corporations.

    1. Re:Unluckily, the scrolls are long gone... by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 5, Informative

      Theres so much ancient knowledge and history that we will never know about because the only copies were destroyed in the burning of Alexandria, the burning of books by the first Chinese emeror, the burning of Rome, the destruction of the Aztec civilization by the conquistadors and countless other deliberate destructions of ancient libraries. The absence of copyright might not have saved them but copyright certainly wouldve hindered there being more copies of the works contained in these libraries.

      Back then there was no copyright - the problems were a) it was a lot of work copying a scroll, let alone thousands. and b) there weren't enough scrolls to write on anyway, so they had to wiped and overwrite used ones (palimpsest). Even moving type printing wasn't really enough, only after ways to mass produce cheap paper were invented, people realised that somebody else could just print the same book as you did at the same cost - but without the cost of creating/acquiring the content. That's when Copyright came into play.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    2. Re:Unluckily, the scrolls are long gone... by nukenerd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Unluckily, the scrolls are long gone... by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's a bit ironic that you claim there was no copyright in a discussion including Alexandria... Home of the first copyright law. It gave them the right to copy any book coming through their port. They kept the originals and returned the copies. Sadly, copyright law took a very different turn later.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Unluckily, the scrolls are long gone... by azcoyote · · Score: 4, Informative

      Theres so much ancient knowledge and history that we will never know about because the only copies were destroyed in .... the destruction of the Aztec civilization by the conquistadors ...

      Actually, around 1430, prior to the invasion of the conquistadors, the Mexica (Aztec) king Itzcóatl solidified his cultural rule over the people by having the existing historical texts burned (León-Portilla, Aztec Thought and Culture, 155). Because of this, Mexica history can be rather vague--even aside from the obvious difficulties of translating pictures into language without the original context. The conquistadors destroyed texts too, but what we do know about the Mexica (or more broadly, the Nahua, the peoples who spoke Nahuatl) is largely thanks to certain friars who sought to record as much as they could. Still, the Aztec civilization was not all that old, and much of the history of Mexico is hidden behind it.

      --
      Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
  2. Weak evidence for being public by raymorris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Weak evidence for being public by hey! · · Score: 5, Informative

      There were definitely libraries in ancient Rome intended to serve the masses, although they mostly date from slightly later than this (e.g. the Library of Celsus, built in 139 CE in what is now Turkey).

      One of the perqs of being a politician in Ancient Rome is that it afforded you a chance to amass a private fortune. But since you had to be rich to play that game to begin with, what did you spend that new money on? Buying popularity.

      The ultimate examples of that were what we misleadingly call Roman "baths", which by the imperial era had become a combination bath, gym, beauty salon, mall, theater, restaurant, art gallery, and library. Basically they were crammed with every entertaining thing the politician could imagine. Now, granted, wealthy Romans had baths in their home and slaves to feed and groom them, but Romans were a sociable lot; it wasn't enough to be rich, you had to be seen being rich, and generous too.

      Of course baths were so expensive in their engineering only the very richest politicians could afford to donate them to the public, which is why the great era of Roman bath-building was the imperial era. But earlier on politicians donated less grand (by Roman standards -- plenty grand by any other) public works, including public libraries. Gaius Asinius Pollio, patron of the poet Virgil and an accomplished writer himself, donated the first public library in Rome with money he looted from Iran. That was built around 39 BC.

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    2. Re:Weak evidence for being public by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

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      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    3. Re:Weak evidence for being public by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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...

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    4. Re:Weak evidence for being public by azcoyote · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
  3. Re:So, what of the scrolls? by Jzanu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:So, what of the scrolls? by Freischutz · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    Exclusively?? That is quite simply not true. While there have always been book burning morons among the Christians like in any other religion they never dominated for any length of time and were fiercely opposed by scholastically minded people within the church. Large numbers of manuscripts were copied and preserved in Christian monasteries by monks and nuns. In fact we owe a big debt to both Arab scholars and religious figures as well as their Christian counterparts for the preservation of much of the surviving ancient literature and scientific writings. In fact Arab books were translated into western languages during the middle ages, that includes the Quaran which was translated into Latin by monks as early as the 11th and 12th centuries and scientific works such as the famous medical encyclopaedias written by Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna to medieval Europeans) which became well known reference works in Europe of the Middle Ages. The worst we can accuse Christian monks, Arab religious figures and scholars of both cultures of is that they did not have the time or capacity to save everything. That being said we are still finding ancient works in monastic collections that were thought to have been lost.