Libraries, History Of
As places that preserve written evidence, libraries existed as early as the third millennium B. C. E. Those from Mesopotamia featured baked clay tablets with cuneiform writing, and those from Egypt featured papyrus rolls. Great collections from this time are still being uncovered, such as the one at Ebla in modern Syria. They tell mostly of record-keeping agencies. In the centuries just before the birth of Christ, their records also came to be viewed as religious, political, and literary texts, and as this happened, the modern library emerged. It was a place, but it was also a center of the society's thought.
The most impressive library of antiquity was in Egypt at Alexandria, the city named for Aristotle's most famous pupil, Alexander the Great. The Pinakes ("tablets") of Callimachus listed its holdings, and probably also the titles that needed to be found and added to the library, since the collection was meant to grow. This work cites texts (not mere factual information but writings that were seen as permanent, and thus stable in meaning so they could be cited, criticized, and revised) and thus it also records a literary "canon" of the important writings of civilization. The destruction of the Alexandrian library is one of the great tragedies of human history, and the suggested assailants have included Marc Antony, the early Christians, and the early Muslims.
