Libraries in antiquity, a short overview

Talking about a library in antiquity, we automatically have – be it abstract – visions of the famous Library of Alexandria, Egypt. The library was, of course, not a Greek invention. However, they all kept legal and administrative documents. It is here that philosophers and occasional orators held lectures.

The oldest library (2500-2250 BC) was the one discovered in Ebla, Syria, containing a vast number of clay tablets. Of more recent dates were the clay tablets found at Mari (1900 BC) and Ugarit (1200 BC), both in Syria. As shown at Hattusa, Turkey, the Hittites were not behind, with some 30,000 tablets going back to 1900-1190 BC.

One of Turkey's more recently constructed libraries was The Royal Library of Antioch (today’s Antakya) founded in the third century BC under Antioch III.

Next comes the Library of Pergamon (modern Bergama), established by the Attalid kings between 197 and 159 BC. With its 200,000 volumes, it is second only to the Library of Alexandria. When the Ptolemies blocked the import of papyrus from Egypt, Pergamon started to use fine calfskin as alternative writing support, creating the first parchment or pergamum. The Library of Celsus in Ephesus was built in 135 AD and had close ties with Alexandria and Pergamon.

Aristotle founded the oldest Greek library in Athens in the fourth century BC, which contributed widely to the later collection in Alexandria. Next came the libraries of Cos and Rhodes and the Library of Hadrian in Athens, all dating from the first/second century AD.

The Library of Alexandria has not survived, and the few descriptions that reached us leave a lot to our imagination. Among the best-preserved and/or best-restored, we note the Library of Celsus in Ephesus and the Library of Hadrian in Athens, which will help us to recreate an overall image of these fascinating structures.

The Library of Celsus in Ephesus is an inevitable landmark to every tourist who walks down Curetus Street and is beckoning him from the onset. It is indeed an imposing building with a carefully reconstructed façade, yet it is consistent with the grandeur and wealth of Ephesus. The high Corinthian columns support richly decorated ceiling caissons and frame the statues of four goddesses on their high pedestal, i.e., Sofia (wisdom), Arete (virtue), Ennoia (intelligence), and Episteme (knowledge). Consul Gaius Julius Aquila built this Library around 105-107 AD for his father, a worthy present, no doubt. Initially, the inside walls were covered with colored marble, and they still vaguely show traces of the niches meant to hold the papyrus scrolls in partitioned wooden cupboards (armaria). The room is quite grand, measuring 11 x 17 meters, and reminds me of Ptolemy’s library, as shown in Oliver Stone’s movie Alexander.

Hadrian built his Library of Hadrian in Athens circa 132-134 AD as part of his ambitious plans for the city. He erected it close to the Roman Agora and served as a repository for the city’s official archives besides its books. The peristyle-shaped building measured 122 x 82 meters, and today it is still accessible through an impressive propylon with Corinthian columns of Karystos marble. One hundred columns of Phrygian marble surrounded the large courtyard, interrupted by several semi-circular seating spaces. A garden and a decorative pool once occupied the center. Today, we see the ruins of several basilicas from the 7th and 12th centuries. Opposite the entrance propylon and at the far end of the courtyard lies the library itself. It was composed of a central reading room flanked by an auditorium with curved seating resembling a theatre. Of additional interest are the remains of the small Agios Asomatos sta Skalia church dedicated to the Archangel Michael, built in between the Corinthian columns at the entrance and still showing traces of a Byzantine fresco.

With its high surrounding walls, this Library must have been awe-inspiring – an excellent example to imagine other libraries elsewhere since the remains are often too scant to prove it.

[Picture of Pergamon is from Eduscapes]

How Syria is Loosing its Precious Heritage

Looting, bombing, and overall destruction of antique sites, even those listed by UNESCO as part of our world heritage hurt me deeply. They are part of our history and part of our culture that is being lost forever – and for what!

In previous posts, I have tried to draw the world’s attention to this problem, although this will not help in any way to protect these precious treasures.

See:  Organized Looting in Syria

         The War in Syria, what will happen to its heritage?

         Loss of our Cultural Heritage in the Middle-Eastern conflicts

For those who share this sorrow with me and want to be kept updated, there is this collection of wonderful articles assembled by ASOR Syrian Heritage Initiative on their Facebook pages. Near-weekly reports are being published there providing full information and illustration of what is happening in that beaten country.

Syria is immensely rich in history going back all the way to the Bronze Age (Mari, Ebla, Qatna, and Ugarit), and was occupied by great civilizations like the Sumerians, Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, and Babylonians. It saw the rise of the Phoenicians. It suffered invasions by the Persians till Alexander the Great arrived and his empire was in turn taken over by the Seleucids. During the first century BC it became a Roman province and lived a moment of glory under its own Queen Zenobia till it declined under Byzantine expansion. Let us not forget the rise of Christianity (Aramaic) and Islam (Arabs), the repeated attacks by the Crusaders, and the conquest by the Ottoman Empire. I perfectly realize that this kind of summary is absurd for it is impossible to rush with such giant steps through so many centuries and civilizations, but at least I tried to draw a picture of the country’s unique past.

I am certain that whoever visited any of the grand sites and cities of Syria will look on with a bleeding heart and tearing eyes. The absurdity of war – still questioned after so many centuries …

Loss of our Cultural Heritage in the Middle-Eastern conflicts

The loss of Cultural Heritage due to war is simply heartbreaking and I don’t really know how to formulate my sadness, anger, frustration and despair about the damage done all over the Middle-East and in Syria in particular. I have voiced my concerns in earlier articles “Organized looting in Syria” and “The War in Syria, what will happen to its heritage”. That was resp. in August 2012 and May 2013; the situation has only deteriorated since and is still deteriorating. Syria is exceptionally rich in antiquities and cities built on sites that existed thousands of years ago, where painstaking excavations have brought to light so much unique historical evidence and yet it all seems to be blown away in the dust of war and pillage.

I was lucky enough to visit Syria before these conflicts broke out and I was stunned by the sheer number of antique sites, some going back to the dawn of our civilization, their state of conservation and the care taken in the reconstruction of their past. To name just a few of the oldest cities, there is Qatna (fourth millennium BC), Mari on the Euphrates (third millennium BC), Ebla (3rd/2nd millennium BC),  Ugarit (second millennium BC), while we should not forget that the origins of Damascus, for instance, go back to the seventh millennium BC and that of Aleppo to the fifth century BC. Many of these sites have been included in the List of World Heritage Sites established by UNESCO, yet even UNESCO is helpless in this situation.

 [Pictures of Aleppo from Friends of Asor, The Ancient Near East Today]

A recent article published in the BBC World Magazine shows several pictures “before” and “after” the recent attacks. They say more than words, certainly to whoever has lived, worked or travelled through that area. Some of these shots are not new, like the satellite images of Apamea of 2011 set against those of 2012 in which the looting holes look like craters on the moon. A similar picture shows the damage done at Dura Europos in 2014 as compared to the site still untouched in 2012. Dura Europos is one of those Roman lime-cities that kept the peace along the Euphrates, a marvellous and most intriguing place (see: “Dura Europos, last stop on the Euphrates”). Two thousand years later we cannot achieve what the Romans did.

[Pictures of Dura Europos from Friends of Asor, The Ancient Near East Today]

All over the Middle-East, antiquities are stolen and most of them end up on the black market; excavations are no longer carried out systematically by qualified archaeologists but fall in hands of illegal diggers in search of a quick buck; museums are wrecked and looted. Nobody knows how to stop this pillage and nobody knows how this all will end. It is a nightmare since most archaeological sites are exposed to vandalism and trafficking of antiquities as no one is in charge of their protection. No museum or other institution has any list of the collections hidden in the country or abroad, and there is no way to draw a list of the antiquities that have been stolen.

The concerns are now that after three years of war, Syrian archaeological heritage has reached a catastrophic phase. Reports of organised plundering in Apamea, Dura Europos, and Palmyra cannot be verified but are beyond proportion. A picture has reached us of a Neo-Assyrian statue from the region of Deir Ezzor being chopped to pieces with a sledgehammer. War is not about people, war is not about our heritage, but war destroys both. To what purpose, I wonder.

The dramatic situation is not unique to Syria, but also applies to many places in Libya (see: Still hope, though scant, for Libya’s cultural heritage), Iraq and Afghanistan where archaeological sites are destroyed forever.

It is evident that the humanitarian situation in Syria is extremely distressing and beyond description but at the same time the people’s inherited identity is being threatened with total obliteration. There is no end in view for the deadly conflicts in Syria or in the rest of the Middle-East – it seems only to be spreading like oil on water. It will take nothing less than a miracle to protect Syria’s priceless archaeology and only a combined action between the land that is being looted and the lands that purchase the looted artifacts could stop this destructive process. As to the antique sites and monuments themselves, we can only hope for the best and wait for a possible restoration after the war ends – whenever that may be.

There is a very interesting article about Syria with plain pictures published on the blog of Friends of Asor, The Ancient Near East Today. As to Iraq, please click on the site of The Gates of Nineveh for the heartbreaking bulldozer destruction of historic monuments in and around Mosul by ISIS forces.

[Picture of the sledgehammer destruction is also from Friends of Asor, The Ancient Near East Today]

Organized Looting in Syria

Syria seems to be on the verge of a civil war, by itself a most frightening and disruptive situation for all parties involved and especially for the civilians who receive the heaviest blows. Nothing has changed in this world over the centuries, unfortunately. Yet beside the human sufferings and losses, there is always the inevitable destruction of our remnants from the past. Buildings, temples, graves, theatres together with precious statues and artefacts sheltered in the museums are now under threat. Testimonies that go back hundreds and thousands of years, which have been meticulously and lovingly restored and returned to their glorious days of eons past are now succumbing to shooting, looting and other destructions.

Places with ringing names like Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are now being damaged by the ongoing internal conflicts. In Palmyra, the Syrian Army has set up a base on the hill just behind the Roman ruins and firing on them from the ancient strategic position of the citadel and there is nothing we or the UNESCO can do about it. A group that goes by the name “Syrian Archaeological Ruins in Danger” has set up a Facebook space for people to share the news and make us aware of the destruction that threatens the cultural heritage of Syria, especially since reports of actual gunfire on the ruins came through.

Looting is another problem, although not a new one but with no strict reinforcement whatsoever, it is easy to smuggle artefacts over the border to antiquities markets in Europe and the United States. Recently a memo written by the Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar addressed to the ministers of Culture and Finance as well as to the Governor of the Central Bank has leaked. Safar claims that “professional international gangs” have brought “equipment and satellite communication devices for stealing manuscripts and robbing museums, safes, and banks” (see Global Heritage Fund). Well, whether international or local communities are at fault or not, repeated looting is unfortunately a fact.

In the same article I read that security in Syria’s 25 antiquities museums is being compromised by the ongoing conflict. Provincial museums are hit the hardest as they are spread all over the country near the pertaining excavation sites. Moving their contents to safer locations seems not to be feasible in the present circumstances. I recall the remote locations along the Euphrates, Rasaffa, Halabia, Deir Ezzor, Dura Europos and most ancient Mari … All so close to the Iraqi border, still looking out over the bare desert from their lonely spot. What a mess!