Top 5 Oldest Library In The World

The library act as a place for knowledge and studies that exist all over the world. It is the house for all kinds of works and other media including films, CDs, videotapes, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, maps, books, and databases.

The earliest library was built not long after the first civilization started keeping written records. One might wonder, where could the earliest library have existed in this world? The first library consists of tablets made from clay and it all started in 2500 BC.

Despite almost all the libraries on this list having been destroyed, there are still some works and pieces of these collections remain intact. Here we would like to share with you the top 5 oldest libraries in the world even though all of them have ceased to exist in the course of history. Some of them were destroyed by enemies after the place was conquered.

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5. Pergamum Library

The ancient Greek city of Pergamum(also known as Pergamon) is the center of the world's ancient culture only comparable with Alexandria and Antioch at the time. Similar to Alexandria, Pergamum is the house of a huge library and the second best in ancient Greek after the Alexandria library.

According to the writings of Plutarch, the Pergamum Library places around 200,000 book volumes. Unfortunately, there were no index or work catalogs of this library that exist to this day. So, it is hard to say how big the collections of the Pergamum Library are.

A very popular person and wife to the City's Mayor, Flava Melitene was responsible to supply books to this library. She also gifted a statue of Emperor Rom Hadrian as a present for this library. The library was established in 197 BC and is no longer in this world.

4. Alexandria Library

The Alexandria library is the biggest and most popular in the ancient world. It is situated in the city of Alexandria in ancient Egypt which happens to be the center of economy, culture, and the main intellectual of the world.

It was Alexander the Great who was believed to have founded Alexandria and got the inspiration to make his very own library after visiting the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal. He wanted to collect all the books from the regions he conquered, translate them into ancient Greeks, and kept them all in his very own library.

Despite Alexander the Great not living long to see his ambitions become a reality, Ptolemy who was one of his generals started building this library in the 3rd century. The Alexandria library is well-known for accumulating all the knowledge in the world, translating works into papyrus scrolls, and keeping them safe.

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This library grew even further until Egypt was taken over by Rome in 30BC where everyone witnessed everything being burned down to ashes and many scrolls were lost.

3. Royal Library of Ashurbanipal

Before the discovery of an older ancient library in the early 20th century, the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal was considered the first library or the oldest royal library that still lives to this day.

Despite our knowledge of the existence of the earliest library, this one, in particular, is the first of its kind for having a very systematic way of managing its materials. The library was named in conjunction with Ashurbanipal, the final king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

At the peak of his rule, Ashurbanipal built his own royal library and filled it with texts that comprises various subjects including medicine, myths, magic, science, poems, and also geography.

One of the most popular texts that mostly remain intact in the Ashurbanipal library will be the Epic Gilgamesh. This tablet was among the earliest literary work that still exists.

2. Ugarit Library

When the Ugarit archive was discovered in 1929, archeologists found more than just 1 library. Thousands of clay tablets they found revealed the existence of a royal library, temple library, and two private libraries, one of which was owned by a diplomat named Rapanu.

Both the private libraries were very unique at the time and might just be the first library ever built for personal use.

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1. Ebla Library

The Royal Library of Ebla was the oldest library in the world. This library was discovered somewhere in 1974-1976 by an Italian archeologist from the University of Rome La Sapienza.

They found around 2,000 complete tablet sizes ranging from 1 inch to more than 1 foot, 4,000 pieces of tablets, and more than 10,000 small bits of them. This text collection is the biggest discovery yet from 3BC.

Unlike other ancient archives, there has been proof showing that the tablets from the Ebla library were purposely arranged and classified accordingly. The bigger tablets were originally kept on shelves but fell off when the palace was destroyed.

Archeologists managed to rebuild the original position of the tablets and found out that they were all arranged based on objects. Not just that but the tablet is also proof of the earliest transcription of texts into foreign languages and scripts, classification, and catalogs to ease things up, as well as arrangements according to size, shape, and content.

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