Part 653

"We must speak of the manner in which the tablet was formed. Fine clay was selected, kneaded, and moulded into the shape of the required tablet. One side was flat, and the other rounded. The writing was then inscribed on both sides, holes were pricked in the clay, and then it was baked. The holes allowed the steam which was generated during the process of baking to escape. It is thought that the clay used in some of the tablets was not only well kneaded, but ground in some kind of mill, for the texture of the clay is as fine as some of our best modern pottery. The wedges appear to have been impressed by a square headed instrument."

_E. A. W. Budge, Babylonian Life and History, p. 105._

{2001}

Assurbanipal, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, was the greatest and most celebrated of Assyrian monarchs. He was the principal patron of Assyrian literature, and the greater part of the grand library at Nineveh was written during his reign."

_G. Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, chapter 18._

"Assurbanipal is fond of old books, particularly of the old sacred works. He collects the scattered specimens from the chief cities of his empire, and even employs scribes in Chaldea, Ourouk, Barsippa, and Babylon to copy for him the tablets deposited in the temples. His principal library is at Nineveh, in the palace which he built for himself upon the banks of the Tigris, and which he has just finished decorating. It contains more than thirty thousand tablets, methodically classified and arranged in several rooms, with detailed catalogues for convenient reference. Many of the works are continued from tablet to tablet and form a series, each bearing the first words of the text as its title. The account of the creation, which begins with the phrase: 'Formerly, that which is above was not yet called the heaven,' was entitled: 'Formerly, that which is above, No.1;' 'Formerly, that which is above, No.2;' and so on to the end. Assurbanipal is not less proud of his love of letters than of his political activity, and he is anxious that posterity should know how much he has done for literature. His name is inscribed upon every work in his library, ancient and modern. 'The palace of Assurbanipal, king of legions, king of multitudes, king of Assyria, to whom the god Nebo and the goddess Tasmetu have granted attentive ears and open eyes to discover the writings of the scribes of my kingdom, whom the kings my predecessors, have employed. In my respect for Nebo, the god of intelligence, I have collected these tablets; I have had them copied, I have marked them with my name, and I have deposited them in my palace.' The library at Dur-Sarginu, although not so rich as the one in Nineveh, is still fairly well supplied."

_G. Maspéro, Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, chapter 16._

Collections of inscribed tablets had been made by Tiglath-Pileser II., king of Assyria, B. C. 745, who had copied some historical inscriptions of his predecessors. Sargon, the founder of the dynasty to which Assur-bani-pal belonged, B. C. 722, had increased this library by adding a collection of astrological and similar texts, and Sennacherib, B. C. 705, had composed copies of the Assyrian canon, short histories, and miscellaneous inscriptions, to add to the collection. Sennacherib also moved the library from Calah, its original seat, to Nineveh, the capital. Esarhaddon, B. C. 681, added numerous historical and mythological texts. All the inscriptions of the former kings were, however, nothing compared to those written during the reign of Assur-bani-pal. Thousands of inscribed tablets from all places, and on every variety of subject, were collected, and copied, and stored in the library of the palace at Nineveh during his reign; and by his statements they appear to have been intended for the inspection of the people, and to spread learning among the Assyrians. Among these tablets one class consisted of historical texts, some the histories of the former kings of Assyria, and others copies of royal inscriptions from various other places. Similar to these were the copies of treaties, despatches, and orders from the king to his generals and ministers, a large number of which formed part of the library. There was a large collection of letters of all sorts, from despatches to the king on the one hand, down to private notes on the other. Geography found a place among the sciences, and was represented by lists of countries, towns, rivers, and mountains, notices of the position, products, and character of districts, &c., &c. There were tables giving accounts of the law and legal decisions, and tablets with contracts, loans, deeds of sale and barter, &c. There were lists of tribute and taxes, accounts of property in the various cities, forming some approach to a census and general account of the empire. One large and important section of the library was devoted to legends of various sorts, many of which were borrowed from other countries. Among these were the legends of the hero Izdubar, perhaps the Nimrod of the Bible. One of these legends gives the Chaldean account of the flood, others of this description give various fables and stories of evil spirits. The mythological part of the library embraced lists of the gods, their titles, attributes, temples, &c., hymns in praise of various deities, prayers to be used by different classes of men to different gods, and under various circumstances, as during eclipses or calamities, on setting out for a campaign, &c., &e. Astronomy was represented by various tablets and works on the appearance and motions of the heavens, and the various celestial phenomena. Astrology was closely connected with Astronomy, and formed a numerous class of subjects and inscriptions. An interesting division was formed by the works on natural history; these consisted of lists of animals, birds, reptiles, trees, grasses, stones, &c., &c., arranged in classes, according to their character and affinities as then understood, lists of minerals and their uses, lists of foods, &c., &c. Mathematics and arithmetic were found, including square and cube root, the working out of problems, &c., &c. Much of the learning on these tablets was borrowed from the Chaldeans and the people of Babylon, and had originally been written in a different language and style of writing, hence it was necessary to have translations and explanations of many of these; and in order to make their meaning clear, grammars, dictionaries, and lexicons were prepared, embracing the principal features of the two languages involved, and enabling the Assyrians to study the older inscriptions. Such are some of the principal features of the grand Assyrian library, which Assur-bani-pal established at Nineveh, and which probably numbered over 10,000 clay documents."

_George Smith, Ancient History from the Monuments: Assyria, pages 188-191._

"It is now [1882] more than thirty years since Sir Henry Layard, passing through one of the doorways of the partially explored palace in the mound of Konyunjik, guarded by sculptured fish gods, stood for the first time in the double chambers containing a large portion of the remains of the immense library collected by Assurbannipal, King of Nineveh. … Since that time, with but slight intermissions, this treasure-house of a forgotten past has been turned over again and again, notably in the expeditions of the late Mr. George Smith, and still the supply of its cuneiform literature is not exhausted. Until last year [1881] this discovery remained unique; but the perseverance of the British Museum authorities and the patient labour of Mr. Rassam were then rewarded by the exhumation of what is apparently the library chamber of the temple or palace at Sippara, with all its 10,000 tablets, resting undisturbed, arranged in their position on the shelves, just as placed in order by the librarian twenty-five centuries ago. … {2002} From what Berosus tells us with regard to Sippara, or Pantibiblon (the town of books), the very city, one of whose libraries has just been brought to light, … it may be inferred that this was certainly one of the first towns that collected a library. … It is possible that the mound at Mugheir enshrines the oldest library of all, for here are the remains of the city of Ur (probably the Biblical Ur of the Chaldees). From this spot came the earliest known royal brick inscription, as follows:—'Urukh, King of Ur, who Bit Nanur built.' Although there are several texts from Mugheir, such as that of Dungi, son of Urukh, yet, unless by means of copies made for later libraries in Assyria, we cannot be said to know much of its library. Strange to say, however, the British Museum possesses the signet cylinder of one of the librarians of Ur, who is the earliest known person holding such an office. … Its inscription is given thus by Smith:—'Emuq-sin, the powerful hero, the King of Ur, King of the four regions; Amil Anu, the tablet-keeper, son of Gatu his servant.' … Erech, the modern Warka, is a city at which we know there must have been one or more libraries, for it was from thence Assurbannipal copied the famous Isdubar series of legends in twelve tablets, one of which contained the account of the Deluge. Hence also came the wonderful work on magic in more than one hundred tablets: for, as we have it, it is nothing more than a facsimile by Assurbannipal's scribes of a treatise which had formed part of the collection of the school of the priests at Erech. … Larsa, now named Senkereh, was the seat of a tablet collection that seems to have been largely a mathematical one; for in the remains we possess of it are tablets containing tables of squares and cube roots and others, giving the characters for fractions. There are from here also, however, fragments with lists of the gods, a portion of a geographical dictionary, lists of temples, &c. … To a library at Cutha we owe the remnants of a tablet work containing an account of the creation and the wars of the gods, and, among others, a very ancient terra-cotta tablet bearing a copy of an inscription engraved in the temple of the god Dup Lan at Cutha, by Dungi, King of Ur. The number of tablets and cylinders found by M. de Sarzec at Zirgulla show that there too the habit of committing so much to writing was as rife as in other cities of whose literary character we know more."

_The Libraries of Babylonia and Assyria (Knowledge, November 24, 1882, and March 2, 1883)._

"One of the most important results of Sir A. H. Layard's explorations at Nineveh was the discovery of the ruined library of the ancient city, now buried under the mounds of Kouyunjik. The broken clay tablets belonging to this library not only furnished the student with an immense mass of literary matter, but also with direct aids towards a knowledge of the Assyrian syllabary and language. Among the literature represented in the library of Kouyunjik were lists of characters, with their various phonetic and ideographic meanings, tables of synonymes, and catalogues of the names of plants and animals. This, however, was not all. The inventors of the cuneiform system of writing had been a people who preceded the Semites in the occupation of Babylonia, and who spoke an agglutinative language utterly different from that of their Semitic successors. These Accadians, as they are usually termed, left behind them a considerable amount of literature, which was highly prized by the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians. A large portion of the Ninevite tablets, accordingly, consists of interlinear or parallel translations from Accadian into Assyrian, as well as of reading books, dictionaries, and grammars, in which the Accadian original is placed by the side of its Assyrian equivalent."

_A. H. Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, chapter 1._

LIBRARIES: Greece.

"Pisistratus the tyrant is said to have been the first who supplied books of the liberal sciences at Athens for public use. Afterwards the Athenians themselves, with great care and pains, increased their number; but all this multitude of books, Xerxes, when he obtained possession of Athens, and burned the whole of the city except the citadel, seized and carried away to Persia. But king Seleucus, who was called Nicanor, many years afterwards, was careful that all of them should be again carried back to Athens." "That Pisistratus was the first who collected books, seems generally allowed by ancient writers. … In Greece were several famous libraries. Clearchus, who was a follower of Plato, founded a magnificent one in Heraclea. There was one in the island of Cnidos. The books of Athens were by Sylla removed to Rome. The public libraries of the Romans were filled with books, not of miscellaneous literature, but were rather political and sacred collections, consisting of what regarded their laws and the ceremonies of their religion."

_Aulus Gellius, The Attic Nights, book 6, chapter 17 (volume 2), with foot-note by W. Beloe._

"If the libraries of the Greeks at all resembled in form and dimensions those found at Pompeii, they were by no means spacious; neither, in fact, was a great deal of room necessary, as the manuscripts of the ancients stowed away much closer than our modern books, and were sometimes kept in circular boxes, of elegant form, with covers of turned wood. The volumes consisted of rolls of parchment, sometimes purple at the back, or papyrus, about twelve or fourteen inches in breadth, and as many feet long as the subject required. The pages formed a number of transverse compartments, commencing at the left, and proceeding in order to the other extremity, and the reader, holding in either hand one end of the manuscript, unrolled and rolled it up as he read. Occasionally these books were placed on shelves, in piles, with the ends outwards, adorned with golden bosses, the titles of the various treatises being written on pendant labels."

_J. A. St. John, The Hellenes, volume 2, page 84._

"The learned reader need not be reminded how wide is the difference between the ancient 'volumen,' or roll, and the 'volume' of the modern book-trade, and how much smaller the amount of literary matter which the former may represent. Any single 'book' or 'part' of a treatise would anciently have been called 'volumen,' and would reckon as such in the enumeration of a collection of books. The Iliad of Homer, which in a modern library may form but a single volume, would have counted as twenty-four 'volumina' at Alexandria. {2003} We read of authors leaving behind them works reckoned, not by volumes or tens of volumes, but by hundreds. … It will at once be understood that … the very largest assemblage of 'volumina' assigned as the total of the greatest of the ancient collections would fall far short, in its real literary contents, of the second-rate, or even third-rate collections of the present day."

_Libraries, Ancient and Modern (Edinburgh Review, January, 1874)._

LIBRARIES: Alexandria.