Libraries

June 15, 2023

Sometimes it seems as if humanity lurches from disaster to disaster with brief periods of enlightenment in between. As we look back through history we learn about the so-called great conquerors. We hold up as persons of note men like Alexander, Genghis Khan, Attila, on and on. We build statues to these “great” men. Somehow the fact that their fame rests on the slaughter of untold millions of people who were just going about their lives before being butchered to serve the megalomania of a conqueror is ignored.

I was fascinated by Alexander the Great. I knew how his battles were fought, knew his history, visited Pella when it was just being excavated. I basically thought of his early death as a tragedy even while ignoring the deaths of so many to satisfy his lust for conquest.

I grew up in a school system which was so Eurocentric that civilization seemed to have begun in ancient Greece and steadily progressed to the United States. Everything else was, at best, of secondary importance.

It is only in the last few years we have begun to acknowledge the contributions made by other cultures to whatever progress humanity has achieved. Human society has made the most progress not when powerful rulers stormed across borders seeking glory and fame but when rulers glimpsed the possibility of enlightenment and welcomed the widest possible variation in thought and learning to gather under his protection.

The greatest achievements of humanity are been firmly affixed to the establishment of great libraries. The oldest known library was founded by the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal in the 7th century BCE in Nineveh. He collected some 30,000 clay tablets which gave modern historians an incredible insight into the ancient Near East including the Epic of Gilgamesh which is invaluable in helping us understand the mythological foundations of much of the knowledge passed down to us today.

One of the greatest tragedies of human history was the destruction, date uncertain, of the great Library of Alexandria which may have housed some 500,000 papyrus scrolls. Perhaps the greatest single collection of human knowledge fell victim to the human folly known as warfare.

The Imperial Library of Constantinople once housed some 120,000 scrolls before it was destroyed thanks to the insanity of a Crusader army in 1204. In spite of that tragedy, its scribes and scholars are credited with having preserved countless bits of Greek and Roman literature.

The House of Wisdom in Bagdad was the greatest center of knowledge in the world in its time until it was destroyed in 1258 by the Mongol army. Much of what became mathematics, astronomy, science, medicine, and philosophy began there. It is said the waters of the River Tigris turned black from ink because so many books were thrown into it.

There were many others which suffered similar fates. The destruction of libraries has meant an incalculable loss of wisdom.

Our libraries are places where knowledge, not conquest, is honored. They represent the very best of humanity.