Ancient Libraries

I am going to try to answer the title question in two parts, in successive columns of this series. First, by saying what a modern library was in other “modern” times. That is for part one, today. The more challenging part will come next week. First of all, the modernity of the past is defined, in significant part, by the technologies of the bygone day, just as is the case today. So, the earliest known, Babylonian libraries were collections of clay tablets. In ancient Mesopotamia, inscribed clay tablets were “the main and permanent medium of communication and of transmission of thought for nearly three thousand years” (D. Diringer, “The Book Before Printing: Ancient, Medieval and Oriental” (1982)). Imagine that; relative stasis for three thousand years, in contrast to the rapid chang…