UPDATED: AUG 22, 2018 · ORIGINAL: NOV 17, 2016

8 Legendary Ancient Libraries

Get the facts on eight of the most magnificent libraries of the ancient world.

EVAN ANDREWS

1. The Library of Ashurbanipal

The world’s oldest known library was founded sometime in the 7th century B.C. for
the “royal contemplation” of the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal. Located in Nineveh in
modern day Iraq, the site included a trove of some 30,000 cuneiform tablets
organized according to subject matter. Most of its titles were archival documents,
religious incantations and scholarly texts, but it also housed several works of
literature including the 4,000-year-old “Epic of Gilgamesh.” The book-loving
Ashurbanipal compiled much of his library by looting works from Babylonia and the
other territories he conquered. Archaeologists later stumbled upon its ruins in the
mid-19th century, and the majority of its contents are now kept in the British Museum
in London. Interestingly, even though Ashurbanipal acquired many of his tablets
through plunder, he seems to have been particularly worried about theft. An
inscription in one of the texts warns that if anyone steals its tablets, the gods will
“cast him down” and “erase his name, his seed, in the land.”

2. The Library of Alexandria

Following Alexander the Great’s death in 323 B.C., control of Egypt fell to his former
general Ptolemy I Soter, who sought to establish a center of learning in the city of
Alexandria. The result was the Library of Alexandria, which eventually became the
intellectual jewel of the ancient world. Little is known about the site’s physical layout,
but at its peak it may have included over 500,000 papyrus scrolls containing works of
literature and texts on history, law, mathematics and science. The library and its
associated research institute attracted scholars from around the Mediterranean,
many of whom lived on site and drew government stipends while they conducted
research and copied its contents. At different times, the likes of Strabo, Euclid and
Archimedes were among the academics on site.

The great library’s demise is traditionally dated to 48 B.C., when it supposedly burned
after Julius Caesar accidentally set fire to Alexandria’s harbor during a battle against
the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy XIII. But while the blaze may have damaged the library,
most historians now believe that it continued to exist in some form for several more
centuries. Some scholars argue that it finally met its end in 270 A.D. during the reign
of the Roman emperor Aurelian, while others believe that it came even later during
the fourth century.

3. The Library of Pergamum

Constructed in the third century B.C. by members of the Attalid dynasty, the Library
of Pergamum, located in what is now Turkey, was once home to a treasure-trove of
some 200,000 scrolls. It was housed in a temple complex devoted to Athena, the
Greek goddess of wisdom, and is believed to have comprised four rooms—three for
the library’s contents and another that served as a meeting space for banquets and
academic conferences. According to the ancient chronicler Pliny the Elder, the Library
of Pergamum eventually became so famous that it was considered to be in “keen
competition” with the Library of Alexandria. Both sites sought to amass the most
complete collections of texts, and they developed rival schools of thought and
criticism. There is even a legend that Egypt’s Ptolemaic dynasty halted shipments of
papyrus to Pergamum in the hope of slowing its growth. As a result, the city may have
later become a leading production center for parchment paper.

4. The Villa of the Papyri

While it wasn’t largest library of antiquity, the so-called “Villa of the Papyri” is the only
one whose collection has survived to the present day. Its roughly 1,800 scrolls were
located in the Roman city of Herculaneum in a villa that was most likely built by Julius
Caesar’s father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus. When nearby Mount
Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., the library was buried—and exquisitely preserved—
under a 90-foot layer of volcanic material. Its blackened, carbonized scrolls weren’t
rediscovered until the 18th century, and modern researchers have since used
everything from multispectral imaging to x-rays to try to read them. Much of the
catalogue has yet to be deciphered, but studies have already revealed that the library
contains several texts by an Epicurean philosopher and poet named Philodemus.
5. The Libraries of Trajan’s Forum
Sometime around 112 A.D., the Emperor Trajan completed construction on a
sprawling, multi-use building complex in the heart of the city of Rome. This Forum
boasted plazas, markets and religious temples, but it also included one of the Roman
Empire’s most famous libraries. The site was technically two separate structures—one
for works in Latin, and one for works in Greek. The rooms sat on opposite sides of a
portico that housed Trajan’s Column, a large monument built to honor the Emperor’s
military successes. Both sections were elegantly crafted from concrete, marble and
granite, and they included large central reading chambers and two levels of
bookshelf-lined alcoves containing an estimated 20,000 scrolls. Historians are unsure
of when Trajan’s dual library ceased to exist, but it was still being mentioned in
writing as late as the fifth century A.D., which suggests that it stood for at least 300
years.

6. The Library of Celsus

There were over two-dozen major libraries in the city of Rome during the imperial era,
but the capital wasn’t the only place that housed dazzling collections of literature.
Sometime around 120 A.D., the son of the Roman consul Tiberius Julius Celsus
Polemaeanus completed a memorial library to his father in the city of Ephesus
(modern day Turkey). The building’s ornate façade still stands today and features a
marble stairway and columns as well as four statues representing Wisdom, Virtue,
Intelligence and Knowledge. Its interior, meanwhile, consisted of a rectangular
chamber and a series of small niches containing bookcases. The library may have held
some 12,000 scrolls, but it most striking feature was no doubt Celsus himself, who
was buried inside in an ornamental sarcophagus.

7. The Imperial Library of

Constantinople
Long after the Western Roman Empire had gone into decline, classical Greek and
Roman thought continued to flourish in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine
Empire. The city’s Imperial Library first came into existence in the fourth century A.D.
under Constantine the Great, but it remained relatively small until the fifth century,
when its collection grew to a staggering 120,000 scrolls and codices. The size of the
Imperial Library continued to wax and wane for the next several centuries due to
neglect and frequent fires, and it later suffered a devastating blow after a Crusader
army sacked Constantinople in 1204. Nevertheless, its scribes and scholars are now
credited with preserving countless pieces of ancient Greek and Roman literature by
making parchment copies of deteriorating papyrus scrolls.

8. The House of Wisdom

 The Iraqi city of Baghdad was once one of the world’s centers of learning and culture,
and perhaps no institution was more integral to its development that the House of
Wisdom. First established in the early ninth century A.D. during the reign of the
Abbasids, the site was centered around an enormous library stocked with Persian,
Indian and Greek manuscripts on mathematics, astronomy, science, medicine and
philosophy. The books served as a natural draw for the Middle East’s top scholars,
who flocked to the House of Wisdom to study its texts and translate them into Arabic.
Their ranks included the mathematician al-Khawarizmi, one of the fathers of algebra,
as well as the polymath thinker al-Kindi, often called “the Philosopher of the Arabs.”
The House of Wisdom stood as the Islamic world’s intellectual nerve center for several
hundred years, but it later met a grisly end in 1258, when the Mongols sacked
Baghdad. According to legend, so many books were tossed into the River Tigris that
its waters turned black from ink.

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