15000 BCE : Urbanization. Folks throughout the
Fertile Crescent and
Tigris-
Euphrates Valley opt out of a crushing existence of hunting, gathering and banging rocks together on the wind-swept plains. Rather, they construct a rigidly
hierarchical society in which 95-99% of the populace is tied to the land by
caste,
fealty and awe-struck fear of the supernatural.
Woo hoo!
3200 BCE : Writing seems to develop concurrently and independently among the
Sumerians,
Elamites and
Egyptians - moving from rigid cuneiform in the case of the Western nations, all the way through to
hieroglyphic representation with the Egyptians (though there was some element of syllabic writing with the Egyptian's non-
ceremonial scripts). Baked clay tablets and
styli from river reeds are the tools of choice in the
Near East.
Hammurabi establishes a written law code.
2500 BCE : The baked clay thing also helps preserve the written record from that era, insofar as everyone and their dog is out burning down cities and temples in this era, when thankfully paper hadn't been invented yet. For places like the Temple
Archive of Ebla in
Syria, for example, around this time it seems the best thing you could do for the written tradition was to set fire to the temple it was attached to. That way all the tablets got fired, i.e. baked hard, the priests all ran away and forgot about the site, the sand swallowed the place. Old school
preservation. Over 20,000 perfectly preserved stone tablets were discovered at the Ebla site in the late 1960s, most of the tablets being occupied with omens and donations
(imagine that, in a temple!), though there is also clear evidence of scholastic research, indexing, classification and cross-referencing in the texts.
Minoan civilization takes root on
Crete.
2000 BCE : Along the
Nile,
papyrus comes into use, whereby strips of reed are laid in a crisscross weave pattern, soaked, battered, soaked again, mashed again, until it was all one pulpy mass - then it was laid out to dry. The
Egyptians felt this was about as cool a technology as one was liable to find, and promptly ceased innovating to turn their attention to more pressing matters, like expending most of the energy and resources of their society preparing for the death of a single individual.
Freedom, horrible Freedom!
1800 BCE : Early
alphabetic characters appear in tokens and shards found at
Ukarit.
1300 BCE : Israelites fleeing
Egypt begin adapting certain elements of the abstract Egyptian writing system to their own use, namely a more efficient, stream-lined and portable writing technology - which soon develops in ancient
Hebrew. The
literacy rate throughout the
Mediterranean world during the reign of
King David, c. 1000 BCE, is estimated to be 1-2 % maximum.
900 BCE : Phoenician alphabet formalized. Language
transcription and bilingual word-lists for cross-cultural
translation are first put into use. Scholars pinpoint this era as the approximate date for the composition of
The Iliad of Homer.
800 BCE : Greek alphabet begins to develop after contact with
Phoenician texts (except the vowels, which the Greeks seemed to dream up on their own). Most of these scripts seem to filter through the Greek Islands of the
Aegean Sea (known as the Cretan
Linear Scripts) which become the forerunners to the alphabetic systems of
Greek,
Aramaic and
Arabian.
721 BCE : Assyrians conquer Israelites and destroy the
Temple of Jerusalem. Evidence of private tablet collections among priests and officials in Babylon
('cause there ain't nothing like curling up with a good clay tablet according to Assurbanipal, who amasses one of the first large libraries of the era). The Library of
Ninevah is the first to codify the text of the
Enuma Elish, otherwise known as the
Epic of Gilgamesh . The City of Rome is founded.
580 BCE : The first copy of
Homer's Iliad is put into written form at the behest of
Pisistratus of
Athens - who is presumably trying to get something official in writing to kick off any number of city ceremonies he's now called upon to preside over now that he's been made
tyrant (
'The Rise of Pisistratus' :
Herodotus 1.56-68). Soon after,
Pisistratus establishes the
Tragedy Competition in Athens as part of the
Festival of Dionyssus. He even goes so far as to put out a bounty for lost lines or sections of Homer's works (just like our
XP system) so that he's sure the texts are
authoritative (sadly, most of those texts were lifted by
Xerxes and carted back to
Persia as booty about a century later). However, it should be kept in mind oral tradition, memory and verbal communication were still far more prevalent forms of knowledge exchange in most peoples' lives.
581 BCE : The Kingdom of Judah falls to
Nebuchadnezzar II of
Babylon. Beginning of
Babylonian Captivity.
530-500 BCE : Rise of the
Persian Empire.
Aeschylus born.
Pythagoras dies.
450-399 BCE : A scroll market begins to flourish among the stalls of Athens commerce, according to
Eupolis. A finishing school for letters is established for the affluent children of Athenian landowners.
Socrates (who lived during this period) is later said by
Plato to have complained in his
Apologia that "anyone can buy
Anaxagoras' works for a
drachama." This was apparently a bad thing.
Xenophon, meanwhile, writes in his
Anabasis that an entire shipment of books meant for export is lost at sea. Also in this period the first large private libraries are noted. Poetic works are now in high demand and literacy in Greece is believed in this period to have risen to near 10%. See E. G. Turner's
Athenian Books in the Fifth and Forth Centuries BC (London, 1977) or L. D. Reynold's
Scribes and Scholars (Oxford, 1991).
335 BCE : Celts invade Roman territory for the first time, are repelled, and so cross to
Ireland to settle.
335 BCE : Aristotle founds Academy at Athens.
Alexander the Great starts wreaking havoc throughout the
Mediterranean world, invading Egypt and eventually extending the Greek colonies as far present-day
Afghanistan.
323 BCE : Alexander dies abroad.
Aristotle is executed at home. The Greek Empire is divided among Alexander's generals: 1.
Ptolemy (who inherits
Egypt), 2.
Selencus (who later siezes Babylon), and 3.
Antigonus (who founds
Antioch),
Antipater and
Eumenes).
295 BCE : Demetrius Phalereus, philosopher and ruler of Athens, is driven into exile by the powerful son of Antigonus. Demetrius flees to
Alexandria, becoming a valuable advisor to Ptolemy, who has just begun to consolidate power in Egypt. Ptolemy is of course a former Greek General and considers himself a refined Athenian at heart. Therefore, the two opt to begin the construction of a
Library and Museum in Alexandria.
285 BCE : Ptolemy I 'Soter' (Savior) moves his son,
Ptolemy II 'Philadephus' in line for the throne. Ptolemy I dies soon after (283 BCE) and his son builds the Lighthouse of Alexandria on the harbor island of Pharos as a memorial.
Demetrius (who was a pupil of
Aristotle) lends all his powers to the new young king, and the two quickly set to the task of finishing the
Great Library. At first they begin to collect only materials on statesmanship and other nations, but Ptolemy II soon decrees his desire to have a copy of every book in
the known world. The standardization and translation of texts begins en masse.
Punctuation and
accentuation begin to develop.
Zenodotus writes his
Life of Homer , now lost.
274-270 BCE : War between the Syrians and Egyptians. During
Ptolemy II's reign, he dispatches agents to retrieve the collected manuscripts and teachings of
Aristotle, which had been entrusted to
Theophrastus (d.284 BCE), then were willed to
Neleus (who had been expected to become the head of Aristotle's School in Athens, only to be rebuked at the last moment). Political pressure on the outspoken
Neleus forced him into
exile and by the time Ptolemy's agents arrived, he'd grown deeply
cynical about all political motives. He sold them Aristotle's 'library' and was paid handsomely, but it was only years after the exchange that scholars in
Alexandria discovered these were just books that had been owned by Aristotle,
not written by him. All the manuscripts, lessons, dialogues and poems instead were passed onto to Neleus' sons, who later buried and forgot them. See L. Canfora's
The Vanished Library (London, 1987).
264-241 BCE : Rome vs. Carthage : Punic Wars begin.
246-221 BCE : Democratic Revival in Athens and Sparta.
Ptolemy III Euergentes orders the confiscation of books off any ships docked in the harbor of Alexandria. The books are then copied, the duplicates returned to the vessels, and the originals passed on to the
Museion. The king also took the sneaky tack by 'borrowing' the Athenian archives' copies of
Sophocles and
Euripides. He then forfeited the 15
talents of silver which Alexandria had offered as a deposit and returned copies to Athens. For notes on this entire period, see http://www.houseofptolemy.org.
196 BCE : Establishment of library at
Pergamum, or
Pergamon, by
Attalus. The library also boasts a vast botanical garden and zoological collection, while still focusing primarily on the fields of Homer, geometry and art.
Crates of Mallos becomes the chief scholar there and begins actively trying to lure writers and researchers away from Alexandria. For a time, this competition heats to the point where
Aristophanes is jailed by
Ptolemy IV for attempting to 'defect'. Book culture soon comes into vogue in among the Romans (c.168 BCE) as generals like
Aemilius Paullus and
Lucius Cornelius Sulla begin to return from conquests abroad with vast bounties of books. This trend proceeds at such pace that
Seneca writes "...what is the use of having countless books whose titles their owners can scarcely read." (
De Tranquillitate Animi, or
On the Tranquility of Mind 9. 4-7) See Lerner's
The Story of Libraries (NY: Continuum, 1999) p.32.
190 BCE : Parchment skin begins to be used in areas with plentiful livestock. Egypt begins to restrict its export of
papyrus in hope of controlling the medium. The
Septuagint is translated in Alexandria from Hebrew into Greek. The Roman armies defeat
Antiochus at Maguesia. In Alexandria,
Aristarchus completes his editions of Homer's
Iliad and
Odyssey, dividing each into 24 parts, the basis of the traditional text.
67 BCE : Cicero and
Varro push for public libraries to be built in Rome.
Syria and
Macedonia are now both Roman provinces.
48-47 BCE : The
Alexandrian War brings
Julius Caesar to Egypt. According to
Livy and
Dion Cassius, 40, 000 scrolls are accidentally destroyed on the docks of the harbor of Alexandria when Caesar orders his troops to fire the Egyptians' ships after they try to trap his own boats. However, historians mostly conclude these scrolls could have had little connection to the
Museion collection if they were sitting in warehouses, so they were most likely commercial records or books for export, not part of the
Library of Alexandria.
31 BCE : Julius Caesar has been dead five years. The battle of
Actium leaves
Octavian the supreme ruler of Rome, her first
Emperor. Egypt has become a Roman province. The first public libraries begin to be built in Rome under
Augustus (Octavian) and overseen by
Gaius Asinius Pollio, a friend of
Vergil and
Horace. The first library is raised next to the
Forum and includes a massive collection of Greek and Latin scrolls. Soon the
Portico of Octavia and
Temple of Apollo on the Palantine are under construction (the former still stands, the latter destroyed by fire in 192 AD).
Pliny founds another library in Comum.
27 BCE : All of
Greece is annexed under the power of the Roman Senate.
Caecilius Eprita establishes a public school for grammar and the literature of
Vergil,
Cicero,
Horace and
Lucan.
67 CE : Nero fiddles while Rome burns. He also frees Greece from Roman rule soon after.
100-140 CE : Papyrus has spread throughout the Mediterranean, from the Nile to Syria and Babylon. Around this time,
paper is being invented in China (though it's going to take another six centuries to reach the
Near East, and won't hit Europe until about the 12th century).
Aulus Gelius'
Attic Nights, a 20 vol. compendium of learning and history, is written around this time (most of the work survives, though the 8th and sections of the 12th vol. have not come down to us). Gelius writes of an extensive
antiquarian book trade in Rome at this time.
150-230 CE: The
codex book now begins to displace the
scroll in many places. This period also marks the apex of the power of the
Roman Empire as it extends from Syria to Egypt to Spain to Scotland. The fineries of rhetoric and oration become the cornerstones of Roman education.
Septimius Severus grants Alexandria its own Senate, though the city (and most of Egypt) soon falls under the control of
Queen Zenobia. In 270,
Aurelian sacks the city and supresses her revolt.
300 CE : Codex vellum books (as opposed to
papyrus scrolls) are now beginning to present a major problem for librarians as each must decide whether or not to
convert their collections over to the new, more '
robust' and
portable platform. The work involved in recopying the scrolls into codices means that only some materials make the costly transition. As a result, thousands of different titles we know to have existed at one point do not survive today in either manuscript or transmitted (recopied, abridged or translated) form. At the same time, as the Empire begins to contract from its borders, many educated men and women begin to gravitate towards the retreat from urban or military life offered by
monasticism, which as a movement begins to spread throughout the Roman World from Syria and Egypt.
312 CE : Diocletian legislates freedom of worship for Christians, while at the same time
Saint Gregory of
Nazianzus writes extensively on the prejudice of Christian writers against the great pagan poets. The process of canonization and a set curriculum is now reinforced strictly throughout the Empire (or what remains of the Empire at this point).
364 CE : Saint Basil writes his treatise
For the Young on How They Might Derive Profit from Hellenic Literature after newly converted Emperor
Justian bans the study of pagan authors. Contemporary writers in this period indicate there may have been as many as 28 public libraries operating in Rome at this time. However,
Jovian is said to have ordered a library in
Antioch (assembled in
Julian's honor) destroyed during the same period. See C.A. Forbes in
Transactions of the American Philological Association : 67, 1936, p. 114-125, or W. Speyer's
Büchervemichtung und Zenser des Geistes bei Heiden, Juden und Christen (Suttgart, 1981).
c. 380 CE : Saint Augustine of Hippo writes
The City of God. The
Vatican becomes the center of the
Roman Catholic faith as it slowly absorbs the dress, mannerisms and infrastructure of the decaying
Roman Empire. The
Ambrosian Iliad and the
Vatican Vergil, some of the earliest examples of
manuscript illumination, are written during this period in Rome or Southern Italy. Finally, the first version of the
Vulgate Bible is compiled by
Saint Jerome.
Theophilus of Alexandria and his Christian community riot in the streets, destroying the
Serapeum and other pagan sites.
410 CE : The Sack Of Rome by
Alaric the Goth. Split of the Roman Empire into East and West. The process of Christianizing the influx of Germanic tribes is already well underway as the Roman noble classes withdraw from civic life almost entirely to live in their rural villas around Italy. Roman schools in
Antioch,
Beirut and
Gaza are closed as the effective borders of the Empire begin to recede and even Britain is abandoned by the Roman Legions.
Hypatia is lynched by a Christian mob on the steps of the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Augustine publishes his
Confessions.
432 CE : Saint Patrick, an Irish peasant taken as a slave boy to England by Roman legionnaires (and there known as Patricus) returns to
Ireland a literate and Christian priest. Death of
Saint Augustine.
493 CE : Theodoric the Ostrogoth brings to peace to Italy by making peace between the Romans and Gothic tribes. Private collections and senatorial libraries now make up by far the largest collections of books in the realm as all public institutions, including libraries, continue to drastically decline. Interest in
higher education as a component of
public life also begins to wane. The
Iconoclast Controversy begins to spread through the Eastern Empire, forbidding all graven images and leading to the exile of many scholars.
529 CE : Emperor Justinian closes the Academy of Athens. The
Dark Ages officially begin.
Classical Sources :
Aristea : Letters, 9- 10, 187-294; Epiphanius, De mensurius et ponderibus; Galen, XVII. I; Pliny, Naturalis historica, XXX, 4; Seneca, Suasoriae, I, 10; Dion Cassius, LXXVII, 7: Photius, Bibliotheca, 265 : p461b, 31; John of Lydia, De Mensibus, I, 28.