Library: An Unquiet History

Matthew Battles, 2003, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, NY

Group Members:

Angelyn IrbyTiffany SchleyHolly Stiegel

Circa 3000 BC Library of Nippur

Code of Hammurabi clay tablet found in Nippur, now on display at the Louvre.

“The first libraries could not burn at all, for they were filled with books written in clay. The literature of Mesopotamia…ranges from poetry to prayer, from epistle to account book.”

Circa 600 BC Library at Nineveh

Ashurbanipal II

Clay tablet bearing a portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh; from Nineveh, 7th century BC

“Still more Mesopotamian libraries must lie buried in the great tells, or mounds of ruined cities, that dot the landscape of the Assyrian homeland, now Iraq; precision bombs may now be destroying libraries we don’t even know exist.”

Circa 330 BC Library at Alexandria

Ptolemy I

“If the Ptolemies had not pursued their aggressive acquisitions policy in Alexandria, confiscating books from private readers and failing to return scrolls borrowed from other repositories for copying, many of the lost works might have well survived.”

Artistic Rendering of "The Great Library of Alexandria." by O. Von Corven from Tolzmann, Don Heinrich, Alfred Hessel and Reuben Peiss. The Memory of Mankind. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2001.

Circa 200 BC Qin Dynasty

Emperor Shi Huangdi

“Purposeful book burnings are of two kinds: they may be attempts at revision . . . or in order to erase their authors and readers from history.”

The emperor She Huangdi, at the suggestion of his chancellor Li Si, instituted book burning and the persecution of intellectuals (including the burying alive of many Confucians), and a restriction on formal education for the common people.

Circa 100 BC Han Dynasty

Emperor Wu (Liu Ji)

Book Copied on Silk -- Prescriptions for Maintaining Health, Western Han dynasty (206 BCE - 9 CE). Silk, 55x 31 cm. Excavated 1973, Han Tomb III, Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan Province. Hunan Provincial Museum.

“Without a story of burned books, many more books might never have been written.”

Circa 1 ADPalatine Library

Augustus Caesar“Libraries are as much about losing the truth—satisfying the inner barbarians of princes, presidents, and pretenders—as about discovering it. The loss of libraries is often enough the product of the fear, ignorance, and greed of their supposed benefactors and protectors.”

As the Roman Empire spread by force, libraries were looted and scrolls were brought to Rome. The scrolls were stacked, usually no more than 3 or four high, and each had a tag on the end.

79Villa of PapyriHerculaneum

“The tragedy of the Villa of the Papyri is the tragedy of the library throughout history: by bringing books together in one place, cultures and kings inevitably make of them a sacrifice to time. . . But even if the last few charred characters offer up nothing new, one thing is certain: the most complete ancient library accessible to us today survived because it burned.”

The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius destroys the Roman coastal city of Herculaneum, preserving in lava the important library of papyrus scrolls in the so-called “Villa of the Papyri.” Because the library was buried in lava, most of the papyrus rolls are too fragile to be opened. An X-ray CT scanning system may allow the reading of others. This remains the only library preserved intact from Roman times.

Circa 350 Codex

Library at Nag Hammadi

“Not even the library can save its books from the obscurity of the passage of time.”

In 1945 thirteen papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local peasant near Nag Hammadi. Eleven of these were in their original leather covers.

Circa 600Vivarium

Cassiodorus

“There is no library that does not ultimately disappear, leaving a lacuna for future generations to puzzle over.”

Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus retired and formed a school and monastery at his estate in the far south of Italy. He named it the Vivarium, after the fishponds which were a "feature of its civilized lifestyle." The monastery included a purpose-built scriptorium, intended to collect, copy, and preserve texts. This was the last effort, at the very close of the Classical period, to bring Greek learning to Latin readers. Cassiodorus was not so much concerned with preserving ancient literature as with educating Christian clerics with a grounding in the traditional liberal arts which was a necessary preliminary to the interpretation and understanding of the Bible.

Circa 1000 Syriac Papyri

Moses of Nisibis

“Threatening images of invading barbarians may be a salve against the existential horror of decadence and decline…but Moses of Nisibis collected 250 manuscripts…many in Syriac… just before the invading Turks nearly destroyed the Syriac tongue along with its speakers.”

Syriac papyri are extremely rare. In the 10th c. Moses of Nisibis, Abbot at the Monastery of the Syrians, built up an extraordinary fine collection of Syriac MSS, which today forms the basis of the Vatican and British Library collections of Syriac MSS.

Circa 1200 House of Wisdom

Baghdad

“The calligraphers and illustrators of Islam made the book itself a thing of beauty, and collectors came to value the sumptuous look and feel of books as much as the writing they conveyed…Connoisseurship of the illustrated book was restricted to the highest strata of society.”

The House of Wisdom’s mission was not to simply warehouse books but to translate and disseminate knowledge from a wide variety of sources. Originally charged with translating Persian manuscripts into Arabic it soon added the translation and persevering of ancient Greek and Roman works as well as offering refuge to scholars persecuted fleeing war or persecution regardless of religion or national origin. Bayt al-Hikma-- “The house of wisdom”

Circa 1300 Vatican Library

The Vatican

“It was the appetite not of a secular prince but of the Vicar of Christ that would set the standard for library building in the Renaissance…Pope Nicholas V had the idea that ‘for the common convenience of the learned we may have a library of all books both in Latin and Greek that is worthy of the dignity of the Pope and the Apostolic See.’”

Interior of the Library of Sextus IV, as shewn (sic) in a fresco in the Ospedale di Santo Spirito, Rome

Circa 1440 Library of San Marco

Cosimo de’Medici

“Much of what comes down to us from antiquity survived because it was held in small private libraries…The needs and tastes of private readers and collectors…is that (which) determines what survives.”

Library of monastery of San Marco built by Cosimo de Medici.

Circa 1400 Aztec Calendar Rule of Itzcoatl

“Long before the fall of Rome, Plato and Aristotle both came to the conclusion that there is no political system that doesn’t suffer decline.

The one sculpture which identifies the Mexicas above all others is the Stone of the Sun.

Circa 1600 Library at Harvard

“Regardless of the library’s alleged political neutrality, its transparency, its seeming lack of roots, it contains the buried and often contradictory impulses of princes, philanthropists, and academicians who are its authors…a library is conditional, ideological and argumentative.”

Burgis view of Harvard, 1726. At the left is First Harvard Hall.

Circa 1700 Royal Library at St. James Palace

Richard Bentley, Keeper of the Royal Library

“Conflict among books is what the universal library is about. The choices are not made for the reader; the reader must do the choosing, and the books must compete for his attention.”

St. James Palace during reign of Queen Anne (1702-1707)

Circa 1800 Royal British Library

King George III

View of the King's Library Tower

Washington Irving: “When I contemplate a modern library, filled with new works, in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel disposed to sit down and weep…and reflect that in one hundred years not one of them (will) be in existence!”

Circa 1900 Melvile Dewey

Dewey Decimal System

“In the 19th century, the sheer proliferation of books in number and kind transformed the library, from temple to market, from canon to cornucopia.”

Melvil Dewey’s Decimal System

After the destruction of Louvain, one manuscript was saved by a professor who had withdrawn it and carried it with him as he fled the city before the German occupation.

“He stopped in a garden near Ghent and buried the book enclosed in a little iron safe…perhaps the last book of Louvain’s great pre-war library still rests in its iron casket, a hidden library of one.”

The burning of the University of Louvain in August 1914 was one of the most infamous events of the First World War. The Library became a propaganda symbol of the excesses of German "incendiarism."

august, 1914 Library at Louvain

May 10, 1933Nazi Germany

Crowds gather at Berlin's Opernplatz for the burning of books deemed "un-German." Berlin, Germany, May 10, 1933.

“It was in the 20th century that new ways of destroying books, and of exploiting their destruction, were tested and refined…The sudden disembodiment of the book…began with crude renewals of violence against the book in the first and second World Wars.”

Circa 1942Vilna Ghetto Library

People of Vilna needed the “narcotic” of the book in in WWII. “Reading was not only an impossible luxury but a ‘withdrawal from the surrounding conditions.’ The ghetto reader is psychologically crippled; his highest ideal is to escape. Only two things are possible: reading for the purpose of intoxication—in order to stop thinking—or the contrary—reading to ponder, to become interested in comparable fates, to make analogies…”

"The model of the biggest ghetto made on the order of the Gestapo by the Jewish masters. Among them Rokhl Sutzkever, Uma Olkenitski, Yudl Mut and Liza Daykhes (Daiches)."

From Spiritual Resistance in the Vilna Ghetto by Rachel Kostanian-Danzig of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania.

August 25, 1992Serb General Ratko Mladic’s destruction of

Bosnian National Library in Sarajevo

“Throughout Bosnia, libraries, archives, museums and cultural institutions have been targeted for destruction in an attempt to eliminate material evidence…that could remind future generations that people of different ethnic and religious traditions once shared a common heritage.”

Circa 2000 Widener Library

Harvard University“From age to age, libraries grow and change, flourish and disappear, blossom and contract.”

The divine irony that (Jorge Luis) Borges discovered while groping his way through the stacks strikes the sighted librarian just as powerfully: preserving themselves, the books elude us. And yet it’s this that inspires more books, goading us to finish them, to complete the set, to add another book to the collection.”

References

• Slide 1:http://www.folger.edu/store/sd4/mediaviewer.cfm?mediaID=514 and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bibleplaces.com/newsletter/hr/Code_of_Hammurapi,_fr_Nippur,_1790_BC,_tb041705570_gr.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bibleplaces.com/sample_newsletter2.htm&usg=__iycfR0_SpntESHd2RyFFu3ov054=&h=830&w=813&sz=149&hl=e

• Slide 2: http://www.bibleplaces.com/newsletter/hr/Code_of_Hammurapi,_fr_Nippur,_1790_BC,_tb041705570_gr.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/99/66199-004-35F19FCD.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/189673/56592/Clay-tablet-bearing-a-portion-of-the-Epic-of-Gilgamesh&usg=__43SBNLlDJrBjKp2grn

• Slide 3: http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/99/66199-004-35F19FCD.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/99/66199-004-35F19FCD.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/189673/56592/Clay-tablet-bearing-a-portion-of-the-Epic-of-Gilgamesh&usg=__43SBNLlDJrBjKp2grn

• Slide 4: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/14417/Library-of-Alexandria and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ils.unc.edu/dpr/path/alexandria/Alexandrian_Library.bmp&imgrefurl=http://www.ils.unc.edu/dpr/path/alexandria/&usg=__FBAklw6zv22j0Tx6JUI83GvkdGw=&h=1096&w=1080&sz=1157&hl=en&start=3&itbs=1&tbnid=23Lnttecqh9A

• Slide 5: http://michaelgr.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/quin-dynasty-book-burning.jpg?w=450&h=265 and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://michaelgr.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/quin-dynasty-book-burning.jpg&imgrefurl=http://michaelgr.com/2009/01/30/chinas-great-library-of-alexandria/&usg=__nVvjlB2yfNXuIV_t-m4wpn6__wo=&h=265&w=450&sz=47&hl=en&start

References

• Slide 6: http://www.chinainstitute.org/_data/global/images/gallery/103%20Book%20Copied%20on%20Silk.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.chinainstitute.org/_data/global/images/gallery/103%2520Book%2520Copied%2520on%2520Silk.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.chinainstitute.org/index.cfm%3Ffuseaction%3Dpage.viewPage%26pageID%3D785%26nodeID%3D1&usg=__OM

• Slide 7: http://nabataea.net/scrolls1.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://nabataea.net/scrolls1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://nabataea.net/TreasuryMystery.html&usg=__svOUjYMIM0HlftFWmnf3eUZYN4s=&h=236&w=402&sz=42&hl=en&start=8&itbs=1&tbnid=GKSt3zp7IUevRM:&tbnh=73&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dn

• Slide 8: http://plus.maths.org/issue14/news/papyri/papyrus.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/images/villa_of_the_papyri_papyrus.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/index.php%3Fcategory%3DLibraries%2B&usg=__IJZ5DdWCiPDKdr7OOUM7CRm3e_w=&h=481&w

• Slide 9: http://historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/images/codex_iv_nag_hammadi.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/images/codex_iv_nag_hammadi.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/index.php%3Fcategory%3DBookbinding&usg=__dsZ6TM10PHxGwj_akuKHmteZZWE=&h=379&w=440&sz=52&h

• Slide 10: • http://www.historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/images/codex_amiantinus_big.jpg and

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/images/codex_amiantinus_big.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.historyofscience.com/G2I/timeline/index.php%3Fcategory%3DManuscripts%2B%2526%2BManuscript%2BCopying&usg=__JGKtUmb8REd4_

References

• Slide 11: http://www.schoyencollection.com/papyri_files/ms1644_2.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.schoyencollection.com/papyri_files/ms1644_2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.schoyencollection.com/papyri.htm&usg=__n1fKkuClS-FXB4gajukS5rM3GkA=&h=709&w=488&sz=116&hl=en&start=1&itbs=1&tbnid=Ju7HO9SY0y3nYM:&tbnh=14

• Slide 12: http://i160.photobucket.com/albums/t172/lensman67/DJ%20Stuff/BlockRContent.gif and http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/247603

• Slide 13: http://www.ib.hu-berlin.de/~wumsta/Milkau/110-2.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ib.hu-berlin.de/~wumsta/Milkau/110-2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.acadia.org/competition-98/sites/integrus.com/html/library/time.html&usg=__O__Qi44NLy5iM22pn9mWFRlKwqU=&h=552&w=660&sz=97&hl=en&start=19&itbs=1&t

• Slide 14: http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/dafefa43c54cb4e9_landing and http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=dafefa43c54cb4e9&q=library%20of%20san%20marco%20cosimo%20de%20medici&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlibrary%2Bof%2Bsan%2Bmarco%2Bcosimo%2Bde%2Bmedici%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1

• Slide 15: http://www.mexicanbeautygiftshop.com/images/Aztec-Calendar.gif and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mexicanbeautygiftshop.com/images/Aztec-Calendar.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.mexicanbeautygiftshop.com/The%2520Aztec%2520Calendar.htm&usg=__deM0-vPQZVnpZhkvlnJRwkDT6-A=&h=488&w=563&sz=145&hl=en&start=8&itbs=1&t

references

• Slide 16: http://www.founderspatriots.org/images/harvard_1776007.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.founderspatriots.org/images/harvard_1776007.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.founderspatriots.org/articles/mass_education.htm&usg=__rtCOBJ-E5C_kaOHGwk9beFypU7E=&h=286&w=500&sz=128&hl=en&start=15&itbs=1&tbnid=Z6Ls4r

• Slide 17: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LCVZWFAEodk/Rejsk9_BX_I/AAAAAAAADDg/MyT-NTXao44/s400/g048.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16035/16035-h/images/g048.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16035/16035-h/16035-h.htm&usg=__lWsKX53QSsIGqHPzdV8d8eGvhp4=&h=600&w=506&sz=76&hl=en&start=12&itbs=1&tbnid=-wfhtdgv

• Slide 18: http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/images/earlyprint/kingslib.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/images/earlyprint/kingslib.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/images/earlyprint/large14586.html&usg=__PweoKepqN3XNSodNYCsWRveBh5c=&h=450&w=311&sz=34&hl=en&start=1&itbs=1&tbnid=H4-QRW4CG-_7

• Slide 19: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3144/2925416747_172610235b.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3144/2925416747_0af81c55c4_o.jpg&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/klara/2925416747/&usg=__GXoHDkg8Fg1Ou5JOR3Iv0ISgIwI=&h=2100&w=2800&sz=1638&hl=en&start=2&itbs=1&tbnid=G2lJbitXujDCcM:&

• Slide 20: http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:aueWlJ6TXFI_sM:http://www.imageandnarrative.be/narratology/_img/fuglister1.jpg and

• http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_EhEEqOUsuQI/SCwKnG-AwNI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/iNw1B4-V5a4/s320/036Moreau_Bibliotheque%5BII%5D.jpg and

• http://lh6.ggpht.com/_40jhWpvq6Co/SmvarYXNBhI/AAAAAAAAB_Q/_zkmJN23zeg/dromosapien_BE%20Leuven_2008_University%20Library.jpg

references• Slide 21: http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/lc/image/69/69002.jpg and

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/photo/lc/image/69/69002.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_ph.php%3Flang%3Den%26ModuleId%3D10005207%26MediaId%3D3533&usg=__6Ak3R93pJj5sRl9te76REGNo9lg=&h=368&w=486&sz=34&hl=en&st

• Slide 22: http://www.noarfamily.net/ghetto1.JPG and http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:hbil4HyoDIFRcM:http://www.deathcamps.org/occupation/pic/bigvil18.jpg and http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.noarfamily.net/ghetto1.JPG&imgrefurl=http://www.noarfamily.net/Vilnaghetto.html&usg=__BXfOD9VkRXdK4Rqk1fTERbXOUR4=&h=568&w=529&sz=322&hl=en&start=3&itbs=1&tbnid=Ro5Q4izMwbD6EM:&tbnh=134&tbnw=125&prev=/image

• Slide 23: http://www.kakarigi.net/manu/images/lib_1.gif and http://genocideinvisegrad.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/sarajevo_library.jpg?w=197&h=285 and http://www.kakarigi.net/manu/images/lib_4.gif

• Slide 24: http://www.curiousexpeditions.org/0401library_5widener_b.jpg and http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/04.28/photos/6-widener1-225.jpg