Book ID: CBB946327734

Libraries before Alexandria: Ancient Near Eastern Traditions (2020)

unapi

Ryholt, Kim (Editor)
Barjamovic, Gojko (Editor)


Oxford University Press


Publication Date: 2020
Physical Details: 512
Language: English

The creation of the Library of Alexandria is widely regarded as one of the great achievements in the history of humankind - a giant endeavour to amass all known literature and scholarly texts in one central location, so as to preserve it and make it available for the public. In turn, thisevent has been viewed as a historical turning point that separates the ancient world from classical antiquity. Standard works on the library continue to present the idea behind the institution as novel and, at least implicitly, as a product of Greek thought. Yet, although the scale of the collection in Alexandria seems to have been unprecedented, the notion of creating central repositories of knowledge, while perhaps new to Greek tradition, was age-old in the Near East where the building was erected. Here the existence of libraries can be traced backanother two millennia, from the twenty-seventh century BCE to the third century CE, and so the creation of the Library in Alexandria was not so much the beginning of an intellectual adventure as the impressive culmination of a very long tradition.This volume presents the first comprehensive study of these ancient libraries across the 'Cradle of Civilization' and traces their institutional and scholarly roots back to the early cities and states and the advent of writing itself. Leading specialists in the intellectual history of eachindividual period and region covered in the volume present and discuss the enormous textual and archaeological material available on the early collections, offering a uniquely readable account intended for a broad audience of the libraries in Egypt and Western Asia as centres of knowledge prior tothe famous Library of Alexandria.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB946327734/

Similar Citations

Book Elise K. Burton; (2021)
Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (/isis/citation/CBB019954667/)

Book Beatrice Gruendler; (2020)
The Rise of the Arabic Book (/isis/citation/CBB436918062/)

Book Florence Bretelle-Establet; Marie Gaille; Mehrnaz Katouzian-Safadi; (2019)
Making Sense of Health, Disease, and the Environment in Cross-Cultural History: The Arabic-Islamic World, China, Europe, and North America (/isis/citation/CBB064731069/)

Book al-Hassan, Ahmad Y.; Iskandar, Albert Zaki; Ahmad, Maqbul; (2001)
The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture: Science and Technology in Islam, Part II (/isis/citation/CBB001000126/)

Book Jo Marchant; (2021)
The Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars (/isis/citation/CBB619761498/)

Book Guosheng Wu; (2016)
什么是科学 (What Is Science?) (/isis/citation/CBB276434112/)

Book al-Hassan, Ahmad Y.; Iskandar, Albert Zaki; Ahmad, Maqbul; (2001)
The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture: Science and Technology in Islam, Part I (/isis/citation/CBB000203441/)

Book Andrey Korotayev; David LePoire; (2020)
The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures: A Big History Perspective (/isis/citation/CBB667019996/)

Book Prakash, Gyan; (1999)
Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (/isis/citation/CBB000110706/)

Article Jørgensen, Jon Ploug; (2014)
The Taming of the Aristoi---An Ancient Greek Civilizing Process? (/isis/citation/CBB001420223/)

Book Barry Allen; (2020)
Empiricisms: Experience and Experiment from Antiquity to the Anthropocene (/isis/citation/CBB760356523/)

Book Godin Benoit; (2017)
L'innovation sous tension: Histoire d'un concept (/isis/citation/CBB955126135/)

Book Francesca Rochberg; (2017)
Before Nature: Cuneiform Knowledge and the History of Science (/isis/citation/CBB810227243/)

Book Xiaoyuan Jiang; (2021)
Chinese Astrology and Astronomy: An Outside History (/isis/citation/CBB319339923/)

Book Bowman, Alan K; Wilson, Andrew; (2013)
The Roman Agricultural Economy: Organization, Investment, and Production (/isis/citation/CBB001422265/)

Book Buchwald, Jed Z.; Feingold, Mordechai; (2013)
Newton and the Origin of Civilization (/isis/citation/CBB001252909/)

Authors & Contributors
Iskandar, Albert Zaki
al-Hassan, Ahmad Y.
Ahmad, Maqbul
Wenan, Chen
Korotayev, Andrey
LePoire, David
Concepts
Science and civilization
Science, general histories
Arab/Islamic world, civilization and culture
Intellectual history
Technology, general histories
Islam
Time Periods
Ancient
20th century
18th century
Medieval
21st century
19th century
Places
Levant and Near East
China
North Africa
Mesopotamia
Middle and Near East
Mediterranean region
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment