What are clay books? Where was the famous library of clay books?

It is not for nothing that they say that the greatest value for today is information. Having the right information, a person can do anything. Our ancestors knew about this. The clay books, created thousands of years ago, prove that they tried to fix all the more or less valuable on them.

By the way, what are clay books? If you do not know the answer to this question, we suggest you read this article. In it you will find answers to all your questions from this area.

Historical reference

To date, scientists believe that the most ancient human civilization, which reached unprecedented for its time of heyday, was Mesopotamia. It was born approximately seven thousand years before Christ in a surprisingly well-chosen place, in the valley of the confluence of the great rivers Tigris and Euphrates. It was this land inhabited by amazing and mysterious Sumerians, who themselves called themselves "the people of the Blackheads."

Information breakthrough

The Sumerians are known as the oldest astronomers. It is astronomers, not astrologers, which allows us to consider them the most ancient scientists of our world. Their outstanding invention was cuneiform writing. This is a system of writing, the signs in which resemble the usual dashes, wedges. Due to this their alphabet system also received its unusual name.

In those ages, the only available material for writing was clay. Of course, something could be written on the skin. But! Firstly, the skin made out is not cheap even by today's standards. Secondly, people were perfectly aware that the leather scroll would not survive the fire, the invasion of rodents or the rainy season. The tax collectors, usurers, doctors were especially worried about this ... In a word, all those people whose work directly depended on the safety of the information they received. But what are clay books? Of course, there is much less data on their surface ...

Technical information

In fact, these are burned clay tablets, on the surface of which scribes put information before they even put the soft blank into the furnace. Modern bricks, on the surface of which there are hallmarks of the manufacturer, in fact - the same "books".

The first "media" of this type were created four thousand years before the beginning of our era. The form and size of these "books" were very different. There were flat, convex, oval and square "books" ... One of them was the size of an ordinary notebook, but the diagonal of others was more than 45 centimeters! That's what clay books are.

How were these books created?

The technology was simple, even very much: first the scribe placed the prepared and formed workpiece on a firm and level surface, and then, armed with a pointed wand, began to squeeze out on the plate the symbols of the cuneiform alphabet. The ancient scribe held his "pen" in approximately the same way as today we hold a pencil in our hand. Look at the children who are playing, trying to write something in the sandbox: in fact they are likened to ancient masters.

To ensure the smoothness and parallelity of the symbols applied to the clay, before the start of the work the tablet was often marked with the help of a tightly stretched thread. Quite often the scribe filled not only both sides of the book, but even managed to inflict information on its ends. Ancient "office employees" burned the finished document in the oven. However, quite often unimportant "papers" were simply dried in the sun. If for some reason the clerk did not manage to finish his work in one go, he wrapped the workpiece in a wet rag.

How did people navigate in a variety of tablets?

The Sumerian cuneiform was not a compact type of letter. Naturally, tens, if not hundreds, of tablets made of clay left to create a small collection of decrees, a list of goods or something like that. How was the "content" of such books arranged? After all, an intuitive search was not then !?

The average Sumerian book actually consisted of dozens of burned tablets. From the situation came out simply - under the last character on the page was placed a deep cross-line, and under it were written the number of the book in which the continuation of this text is. The names were often formed from their first words. Does not it remind you of the option of saving the default document in the same Microsoft Word?

So we found out what clay books are. And where was all this wealth of the Ancient World kept? As at the present time, libraries existed for these purposes. So the profession of a librarian is one of the most ancient and respected in the world.

Ancient libraries

All this is extremely important ... But where was the library of clay books? The one that was the first in human history?

In the distant already in 1841 the capital of France was shaken by a telegraphic message from Arabia: "I believe that I have discovered the oldest structures. Perhaps they can be attributed to the time of Nineveh's heyday. " The person who sent the message was Paul-Emil Bott. He was instructed by the Asian Society of France to open the biblical Nineveh. Oddly enough, he was able to do it, and the first library of clay books was once again available to mankind.

In just a few hours all the major newspapers of that time were full of sensational headlines, reporting the greatest archaeological discovery. And for such an excitement there were all grounds: after all, but until that day official science had no data, which at least somehow would have departed from the times of the ancient Egyptian pyramids. Among the finds of Bott there was also a library of clay books. The city of Nineveh not only proved its reality, but also enriched mankind with valuable information that was contained on the "pages" of unique clay tablets.

Library of Assyria

In 1852, one of the greatest archaeologists of his time, Henry Austin Layard, also surprised the whole world with a unique discovery. He was able to unearth the palace of the last Tsar Assyria Ashurbanipal, who contemporaries called respectfully the House of Instructions and Councils. It was there that the greatest intellectual value of those times was the great library of clay books that the kings of Assyria had collected throughout their reign.

The historical paradox: almost three decades, valuable written monuments of long gone centuries were lying in the basements of the British Museum. And only after the first steps were taken in deciphering the writing of ancient peoples, historians have finally realized how valuable (yes, there, priceless!) The treasure purposely collects dust in the vaults ... Since then, the systematic decoding of all the books found began.

The great achievements of Ashurbanipal

More than three millennia separate us from the moment when the last king of militant people dictated to his unknown scribe words, which have reached our time from the very depths of centuries. He says that he commanded the embossing of letters, works of verbal art, which his predecessors had not studied or read. The tsar noted how proud he was of his ability to read and to divide the library into sections by his order.

By the way, what was the organization of the library of clay books? In principle, it was not much different from the modern one. Of course, there were no subdivisions according to genres, but books were sorted out in the same way for authors, countries, etc. All written sources were placed on huge shelves. The library was run by caretakers. This is where the library of clay books was located, which was first discovered by modern civilization.

It must be said that not much has been saved from it. Most of the books by that time were broken up into individual shards, so the decoding is still going on.

The Great Book Depository

It must be said that the name of Ashurbanipal has not been in vain for millennia. The fact is that the tsar showed himself to be a rare talented organizer, intelligent politician and a man who really was interested in culture and science. It seems that at that time difficult for Assyria, another sovereign would hardly have found the time for such an occupation.

He made a truly titanic effort to ensure that in his state appeared the best at that time library of clay books. The city of Nineveh became the scientific and cultural center not only of Assyria, but of all the then existing countries. He issued a special decree according to which hundreds of scribes began to travel around the country, searching for all available samples of verbal art. Finding such, they copied them exactly and sent to the capital for storage. Here's how the library of clay books in Nineveh received its priceless book fund.

This included accurate copies of texts that had been written in Egypt and Assyria itself, in Babylon and Akkad. When the library was discovered by Bott, there were about 20,000 tiles left in it. Modern scientists who analyzed the surviving data are deeply distressed: most likely, initially there were at least 100,000 texts in the storages of this repository! Alas, all of them are surely lost to our civilization forever. The famous library of clay books proved powerless before the overwhelming power of time.

The most valuable specimens from the ancient storage

Soon it became clear that the Assyrians and Babylonians knew mathematics well. Already two millennia before the beginning of our era, their scientists were able to solve very complex geometric problems. In principle, the famous Hanging Gardens of Semiramis without such calculations would not be possible to create, so that scientists only confirmed themselves in their conjectures.

Where great value represented works on astronomy. Many of them were written almost a millennium before the time of Ashurbanipal. The value of these books is that it was easy for them to track the development of astronomical science from ancient times. It turned out that the ziggurats, which are sung by many modern science fiction writers, were the first observatories in the world. From year to year the priests led from them observations of the movement of celestial bodies, accumulating priceless knowledge. They were put in the clay books with the greatest trepidation, photos of which are in the article.

Ancient calendars

According to the information that scientists received from ancient books, the inhabitants of Assyria and Babylon knew how to predict lunar and solar eclipses, perfectly knew the orbits of all celestial bodies, which could be seen with the naked eye. Planets from the stars in those distant times they also have learned to distinguish. Many tables with calculations of interstellar distances have been preserved. Surprisingly, many of them are quite accurate. This is not so long ago, even a well-known Kazakh writer Suleimenov wrote. "Clay Book", his last work, tells just about those ancient times.

Based on centuries of observations of the Moon and the Sun, the priests compiled their calendar. It was incredibly valuable for those times, as it allowed to find out the time of the beginning of sowing and harvesting of crops. Not surprisingly, the astronomers of Assyria and Babylon enjoyed such respect and honor in the Ancient World.

Geographical knowledge of the ancients

Historians were very interested in the ancient "geographical atlases", also found among the surviving books. Although the maps were very primitive, it was quite possible to learn the outlines of lands from Egypt to Urartu. The Assyrians found even the most real guides to geography, which indicated the names of countries, their capitals, the names of rivers and large geographical areas. However, they knew very little about the structure of the surrounding world, mostly guided by fantastic theories.

So, clay first books on geography considered our world as the center of everything. However, virtually the same thoughts were among scientists of the Middle Ages, so there is nothing to be surprised at.

Medical industry

Even better, it was evident from the surviving medical treatises. The civilizations of the Assyrians and the Babylonians still believed that diseases were caused solely by evil spirits. The books cited a lot of spells to expel the latter. Historians have found even the opinion of an authoritative healer of those times who reported on the need to mold out of clay the image of that demon who is tormenting the patient's body. After that, the doll was strongly advised to destroy.

Strangely enough, but under such conditions, surgery has reached striking heights. So, medical books on clay tablets are considered even very difficult (including by modern standards) cavitary operations. However, the Assyrians did not reach such heights in everything: thus, in the works of physicians of that period, the heart was seen as a "storehouse of the soul", and people generally suspected nothing of the role of the brain.