Posted on 08/01/2018 11:08:55 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The remains of the oldest public library in Germany, a building erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls, have been discovered in the middle of Cologne.
The walls were first uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with Cologne being one of Germany's oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying... "But what they are are kind of cupboards for the scrolls," said Dr Dirk Schmitz from the Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne. "They are very particular to libraries -- you can see the same ones in the library at Ephesus."
It is not clear how many scrolls the library would have held, but it would have been "quite huge -- maybe 20,000", said Schmitz. The building would have been slightly smaller than the famed library at Ephesus, which was built in 117 AD. He described the discovery as "really incredible -- a spectacular find".
"It dates from the middle of the second century and is at a minimum the earliest library in Germany, and perhaps in the north-west Roman provinces," he said. "Perhaps there are a lot of Roman towns that have libraries, but they haven't been excavated...
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Very cool.
I’ve never understood how almost everything ancient is under so many feet of dirt. It seems that if building on something else you would take it down to the foundations and reuse only that.
Good thing the Nazis didn’t find it, they would have just burned the books.
What are you talking about? The library was Roman, built by Romans, and located in a Roman city!
Well that sux. Here I imagined something akin to the epic of giglamesh, but written in runic. ololort
The librarian’s name was Conan the Librarian.
Their non-Roman non-Celtic contemporaries were illiterates who built wattle-and-daub huts, so, not much chance of that. The Celts had Ogham. Runic didn't come along until the Middle Ages.
Crom! ;^)
Hey, if they wanted quiet, they shouldn't have handed out the free wine.
No, there were walls.
Still anxiously awaiting the results of the recovery of the burned scrolls from Pompeii.
With any luck, they will contain more than recipes or yoga exercises.
The most recent stuff I'd seen is under the "villaofthepapyri" keyword. :^) The scrolls had been packed, apparently part of the evacuation plan, but clearly that didn't work out. Over the past 170 or so years various nitwits have tried various brute force methods of unrolling them, and destroyed most of the texts in the process, but were able to read the resulting fragments of mostly unknown texts on Epicurean philosophy, oh boy. Not even a cookbook.
The late fee for a scroll has got to be a couple million denarii by now.
Im sure they can work out a payment plan. 4 shekels a day...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.