# The First Libraries _ Record Keeping in the Bronze Age

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 11 Oct 2026, 1 h 00 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75561056/the_first_libraries_record_keeping_in_the_bronze_age_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3



## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Five thousand years ago, a lone scribe presses a sharpened
[0:06] Speaker 1: reed into a damp clay tablet. In careful practice strokes,
[0:11] Speaker 1: he records the day's grain deliveries to the temple granary.
[0:16] Speaker 1: As the clay fills with neat rows of wedge-shaped symbols,
[0:19] Speaker 1: he sets the tablet aside to dry. One more piece
[0:24] Speaker 1: of preserved knowledge, all finished up. The job is done.
[0:31] Speaker 1: Such a scene could have unfolded five millennia ago in
[0:34] Speaker 1: ancient Mesopotamia. Long before the famed Library of Alexandria, or
[0:40] Speaker 1: the scroll-stacked libraries of Greece and Rome, Bronze Age civilizations
[0:45] Speaker 1: were pioneering the collection of knowledge. In the third and
[0:49] Speaker 1: second millennia BCE, the peoples of Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley,
[0:55] Speaker 1: the Indus Valley, and Minoan Crete had already developed writing systems.
[1:01] Speaker 1: and began to populate the world's first libraries, archives of
[1:06] Speaker 1: clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, and inscriptions that safeguarded everything from
[1:13] Speaker 1: mundane accounts to myths of creation. But these libraries were
[1:19] Speaker 1: not public institutions as we think of libraries today. They
[1:24] Speaker 1: were rather repositories of collective memory, temple collections, royal archives,
[1:30] Speaker 1: scribal workshops, where human thought was preserved for future generations.
[1:38] Speaker 1: The story of the first libraries is a journey into
[1:42] Speaker 1: the very dawn of writing itself, when humanity learned how
[1:46] Speaker 1: to make words last across time. And so today, it's
[1:52] Speaker 1: all about how Bronze Age people collected and stored knowledge.
[1:58] Speaker 1: We'll go through Sumeria Babylonia, Egypt, all the old scribal schools,
[2:06] Speaker 1: and Indus Valley merchant offices too, Minoan palace storerooms, and beyond.
[2:12] Speaker 1: And we'll see how the invention of writing, cuneiform wedges,
[2:17] Speaker 1: hieroglyphic signs, enigmatic Indus symbols, and even linear A-strokes lost
[2:24] Speaker 1: to time, enabled information to be recorded for posterity. By
[2:30] Speaker 1: the end, I think we'll appreciate how these Bronze Age
[2:33] Speaker 1: knowledge centres, certainly modest in form, yet monumental in legacy,
[2:39] Speaker 1: laid the foundation for humanity's enduring pursuit of learning. And
[2:46] Speaker 1: that's why you're here, isn't it? The pursuit of learning.
[2:50] Speaker 1: I hope so. Let me welcome you first. If you're
[2:54] Speaker 1: a newcomer, it's good to meet you. Truly. If you're
[2:57] Speaker 1: coming back, it's good to see you again. Thank you
[2:59] Speaker 1: dearly to those supporting on the Patreon and those who
[3:03] Speaker 1: took the time to check out the merch store. And
[3:06] Speaker 1: thank you in advance for clicking that subscribe button, which
[3:10] Speaker 1: is right next to the like button. Thank you. Now,
[3:16] Speaker 1: without any further ado, let's get on to the topic
[3:19] Speaker 1: for today. Nice and relaxed. We'll go really slow. So,
[3:27] Speaker 1: The roots of the first libraries lie in the invention
[3:31] Speaker 1: of writing itself. That only makes sense, doesn't it? During
[3:36] Speaker 1: the early Bronze Age, we're talking late 4th to early
[3:40] Speaker 1: 3rd millennium BCE, multiple civilizations independently developed writing systems as
[3:45] Speaker 1: a means to record information. In Mesopotamia, that is the
[3:51] Speaker 1: land between the two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, The
[3:54] Speaker 1: Sumerians invented cuneiform writing around 3400 to 3200 BC. Cuneiform
[4:02] Speaker 1: began as a pictographic marks and numerical impressions left into
[4:07] Speaker 1: clay tablets, mainly to track goods and transactions. Boring stuff,
[4:12] Speaker 1: you know. Accounting. But over time, these symbols became a
[4:18] Speaker 1: bit more abstract and even syllabic. capable of recording complex language.
[4:26] Speaker 1: Little by little, it was changing. But Mesopotamia wasn't the
[4:31] Speaker 1: only advanced civilization for that time. In ancient Egypt, a
[4:36] Speaker 1: wholly separate writing system was taking place. Hieroglyphics. They emerged
[4:42] Speaker 1: around 32 to 3000 B.C. That's 3200 to 3000 B.C.
[4:49] Speaker 1: as evidenced in the inscribed tags and pottery from the
[4:52] Speaker 1: tomb of proto-dynastic rulers. Egyptian hieroglyphs were sacred pictorial characters
[4:59] Speaker 1: used on monuments. You know the ones. But there was
[5:03] Speaker 1: also a cursive derivative called hieratic that was developed for
[5:08] Speaker 1: everyday writing on papyrus. It's not as well known, but
[5:13] Speaker 1: you'll probably recognize it if you saw it. but writing
[5:19] Speaker 1: was by no means a Mediterranean phenomenon. Far to the east,
[5:23] Speaker 1: the Indus Valley civilization, which flourished from 2500 to 1900 BC,
[5:29] Speaker 1: created an interesting script of its own. Archaeologists have uncovered
[5:34] Speaker 1: symbols of distinct Indus writing on sealed stones, pottery, and
[5:40] Speaker 1: bronze tools. These symbols, typically only a few characters long,
[5:45] Speaker 1: likely represent a writing or proto-writing system. though it remains
[5:50] Speaker 1: undeciphered to this day, at least at the time of
[5:53] Speaker 1: doing this video. It'd be a little embarrassing if they
[5:57] Speaker 1: deciphered it within the next few days, but that's okay. Well,
[6:01] Speaker 1: in the Aegean, the people of Minoan Crete developed writing
[6:05] Speaker 1: a little bit later. First, a set of pictographs, that is,
[6:10] Speaker 1: Cretan hieroglyphs around 2000 to 1700 BC, and then a
[6:16] Speaker 1: linear script in use by roughly 1800 BCE, that being
[6:20] Speaker 1: Linear A. Now, Linear A is still undeciphered, but demonstrates
[6:27] Speaker 1: that even in Bronze Age Europe, writing had taken root.
[6:32] Speaker 1: It's just a shame we don't understand it yet. By
[6:36] Speaker 1: around 2000 BCE, multiple Bronze Age civilizations were fully literate,
[6:42] Speaker 1: each using scripts tailored to their language and needs. That
[6:47] Speaker 1: is not to say that the common people were fully literate,
[6:50] Speaker 1: but the administration certainly was. Now you must remember, these
[6:56] Speaker 1: early writing systems almost universally arose for pragmatic reasons only.
[7:03] Speaker 1: No one in those early days was writing down big
[7:06] Speaker 1: stories and all the rest, at least none that we've found.
[7:11] Speaker 1: That would come a little bit later, They were chiefly
[7:14] Speaker 1: used to facilitate administration, governance and trade, record keeping, things
[7:20] Speaker 1: like this. In Mesopotamia, early cuneiform tablets were essentially tools
[7:26] Speaker 1: of the accountants. We've got tons of them, literally tons.
[7:33] Speaker 1: Lists of grain deliveries, tallies of livestock, trade inventories, things
[7:38] Speaker 1: like that. Likewise in Egypt, The earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions often
[7:44] Speaker 1: accompanied economic records or labels of royal possessions. Its practical
[7:49] Speaker 1: origin of writing meant that from the very beginning written
[7:53] Speaker 1: documents accumulated in significant numbers. Once a tablet or papyrus
[7:59] Speaker 1: had served its immediate purpose, recording a transaction or a decree,
[8:05] Speaker 1: it was often stored rather than discarded, in case it
[8:09] Speaker 1: needed to be referred to later. Thus, temples, palaces and
[8:15] Speaker 1: administrative offices gradually amassed archives of written records. By the
[8:20] Speaker 1: mid-third millennium BC, these archives had grown large enough that
[8:25] Speaker 1: we can legitimately call them the first libraries. The first
[8:31] Speaker 1: libraries were essentially archives of the earliest forms of writing,
[8:36] Speaker 1: collections of clay documents in Sumerian temple storerooms, and palaces
[8:41] Speaker 1: such as Ebla in Syria. Basically, history begins with the library,
[8:49] Speaker 1: since the preservation of written records marks the transition from prehistory,
[8:55] Speaker 1: that is, the time of no written accounts to documented history.
[9:01] Speaker 1: Each early civilization's writing system provided the foundation for storing
[9:05] Speaker 1: their knowledge, and the creation of archives naturally followed the
[9:09] Speaker 1: spread of literacy. So next, we turn to how these
[9:14] Speaker 1: early records were physically made and preserved. The ingenious techniques
[9:19] Speaker 1: Bronze Age people used to ensure their words would last.
[9:26] Speaker 1: Of course, writing in the Bronze Age was constrained and
[9:29] Speaker 1: shaped by whatever materials were available. Different civilizations adopted different
[9:34] Speaker 1: writing media, each with its own methods of preservation. and
[9:39] Speaker 1: these choices deeply influenced how their libraries developed. The two
[9:45] Speaker 1: most important writing materials of the Bronze Age were clay
[9:49] Speaker 1: and papyrus, corresponding broadly to Mesopotamia and Egypt, respectively. While
[9:55] Speaker 1: other media like stone, metal, or wood were used, but
[9:59] Speaker 1: in specific contexts, well let's have a look first at
[10:02] Speaker 1: the most I suppose the most quintessential images of the
[10:08] Speaker 1: Bronze Age those clay tablets in Mesopotamia course That was
[10:16] Speaker 1: the medium of choice for recording information. Scribes would scoop
[10:20] Speaker 1: up a lump of fine clay and flatten it into
[10:22] Speaker 1: a tablet, typically about an inch thick. While the clay
[10:27] Speaker 1: was still damp, they used a stylus, often a sharpened reed,
[10:31] Speaker 1: to press symbols into the surface, creating the wedge-shaped imprints
[10:35] Speaker 1: characteristic of cuneiform writing. These clay tablets varied in size
[10:41] Speaker 1: and shape. Some were small enough to fit in a hand,
[10:45] Speaker 1: used for simple receipts, while others were larger rectangular plaques
[10:50] Speaker 1: used for long texts or multi-column documents. Once inscribed, a
[10:57] Speaker 1: tablet could be left to dry in the sun, hardening
[11:00] Speaker 1: to a leathery firmness, or baked in a kiln for
[11:04] Speaker 1: a permanent stone-like finish. Thousands of tablets like this have
[11:10] Speaker 1: survived across the millennia, often preserved by fire Now here's
[11:16] Speaker 1: an ironic one. The destructive fires that burned cities in
[11:19] Speaker 1: antiquity frequently baked the clay tablets in archives, firing them
[11:26] Speaker 1: to a ceramic hardness that ensured their survival. For example,
[11:31] Speaker 1: when the city of Ebla was violently destroyed in 2300 BC,
[11:36] Speaker 1: the palace archives fell from their shelves and were accidentally
[11:41] Speaker 1: baked in the conflagration. preserving them for modern archaeologists. They
[11:47] Speaker 1: tried to wipe Evla from history, but ironically the attempt
[11:54] Speaker 1: basically firmed all the tablets and, well, here we are.
[12:02] Speaker 1: Very ironic. Now, clay tablets were special because they were durable,
[12:08] Speaker 1: but they were also bulky and heavy. Storing and organizing
[12:12] Speaker 1: such materials required quite a bit of ingenuity. Archaeological excavations
[12:17] Speaker 1: have revealed that tablets in Mesopotamian archives were often kept
[12:20] Speaker 1: on wooden racks or shelves, or even in large jars
[12:25] Speaker 1: and baskets. Smaller tablets could be stacked on edge, side
[12:29] Speaker 1: by side, with brief titles or labels written along the edge,
[12:34] Speaker 1: so that one could read the spines, I suppose, of
[12:38] Speaker 1: the tablets on a shelf. remarkably analogous to how modern
[12:43] Speaker 1: libraries label book spines, if you think about it. Clay
[12:47] Speaker 1: also allowed scribes to make envelope-like cases. For instance, a
[12:52] Speaker 1: contract could be written on a tablet, then wrapped in
[12:55] Speaker 1: an outer layer of clay, bearing a duplicate inscription, and sealed.
[13:02] Speaker 1: An ancient security envelope, I suppose. The physical toughness of
[13:07] Speaker 1: clay And the practice of archiving tablets in official centres
[13:11] Speaker 1: meant that Mesopotamia's earliest libraries could endure for centuries. Indeed,
[13:17] Speaker 1: clay tablets from over 4,000 years ago still legibly bear
[13:21] Speaker 1: the handwriting of a Sumerian and Babylonian scribe, even to
[13:27] Speaker 1: this day. And that's just amazing. Now on to ancient Egypt.
[13:33] Speaker 1: They weren't really using clay. They had a different medium. Papyrus.
[13:40] Speaker 1: It's a paper-like material made from the pith of a
[13:43] Speaker 1: papyrus reed, which grew abundantly along the Nile, so it
[13:47] Speaker 1: only makes sense that they use what they have. By
[13:51] Speaker 1: the early Bronze Age, as 3000 BC or around then,
[13:56] Speaker 1: Egyptians had learned to cut papyrus reeds into thin strips,
[14:01] Speaker 1: and then press and dry them into sheets, and join
[14:04] Speaker 1: the sheets into long rolls, creating flexible scrolls ideal for
[14:09] Speaker 1: writing with pen and ink. The Egyptian scribes used brushes
[14:16] Speaker 1: or reed pens dipped in carbon-based ink to write on papyrus.
[14:21] Speaker 1: They usually wrote in cursive scripts, hieratic for most of
[14:25] Speaker 1: the Bronze Age, later demotic, rather than in the more
[14:30] Speaker 1: formal hieroglyphs when using papyrus. Papyrus scrolls had significant advantages.
[14:37] Speaker 1: They were light, portable, and could contain much more text
[14:41] Speaker 1: than a single clay tablet. The scroll could be rolled
[14:44] Speaker 1: up and tied, with a small tag or ink label
[14:48] Speaker 1: identifying its contents. This portability likely contributed to a broader
[14:54] Speaker 1: dissemination of writing in Egypt. One scholar notes that switching
[14:58] Speaker 1: from clay to papyrus helped spur a great increase in
[15:01] Speaker 1: writing in later periods, and it's hard to argue with that.
[15:06] Speaker 1: It certainly a lot easier to transport them. Paper weighs
[15:10] Speaker 1: a bit less than the clay tablets. But it wasn't
[15:16] Speaker 1: all good news. Papyrus was also perishable. Unlike the clay
[15:21] Speaker 1: tablets that could literally survive the burning ruins of the city,
[15:27] Speaker 1: Papyrus was highly vulnerable, not just to fire, but moisture.
[15:32] Speaker 1: And more importantly, as we sit here thousands of years later,
[15:36] Speaker 1: it was vulnerable to time. Most Bronze Age papyri have
[15:42] Speaker 1: come down to us as preserved only thanks to Egypt's
[15:46] Speaker 1: dry climate and protective conditions of tombs and sealed jars.
[15:50] Speaker 1: For instance, famous Egyptian texts like the Ebers papyrus, a
[15:55] Speaker 1: medical text from around 1550 BC, and the Westgar papyrus
[16:00] Speaker 1: containing royal tales, survived by being buried or hidden. Countless
[16:06] Speaker 1: others must have crumbled to the dust. So how did
[16:12] Speaker 1: Egyptians store their papyrus documents? Archaeological and textual clues indicate
[16:18] Speaker 1: that they used wooden chests, clay jars, and shelving niches
[16:23] Speaker 1: in a temple or palace archive. In the city of Amano,
[16:27] Speaker 1: around 14th century BC, a storage chamber of the documents
[16:32] Speaker 1: of pharaohs was discovered. with the remains of papyrus and labels,
[16:37] Speaker 1: suggesting that bundles of scrolls were actually kept there. And
[16:42] Speaker 1: then there's the tomb paintings that show scribes carrying scroll
[16:46] Speaker 1: cases or boxes, indicating that important documents could be tied
[16:51] Speaker 1: up with cords and placed in decorated chests. One vivid
[16:56] Speaker 1: image is from the tomb of an 18th dynasty official,
[16:59] Speaker 1: which depicts scribes recording the harvest. Nearby, Spare scrolls or
[17:04] Speaker 1: writing equipment are stored in a wooden box. Thus, while
[17:08] Speaker 1: Mesopotamia's libraries were rooms full of clay tablets, Egypt's were
[17:14] Speaker 1: more likely to be cupboards of scrolls within temple scriptoria
[17:18] Speaker 1: or offices, carefully maintained by archivist priests. The fragility of
[17:25] Speaker 1: papyrus meant Egyptian archives required careful protection from the humidity
[17:30] Speaker 1: and insects. Occasionally, scrolls might be recopied onto new by Pyrrhus,
[17:36] Speaker 1: if the old ones had decayed. Other material also played
[17:43] Speaker 1: roles in Bronze Age information. In the Indus Valley, many
[17:48] Speaker 1: inscriptions were carved on small steertite seals, that's a soft stone,
[17:53] Speaker 1: that could be impressed onto clay for marking goods. These seals,
[17:57] Speaker 1: typically about the size of a postage stamp, often have
[18:01] Speaker 1: drilled holes, indicating they might be worn or kept on strings,
[18:06] Speaker 1: perhaps an official's personal seal, combining identification with a bit
[18:11] Speaker 1: of text. The Indus people may have also written on
[18:16] Speaker 1: perishable materials, wood planks or palm leaves, but no such
[18:21] Speaker 1: documents have survived. In Minoan Crete, aside from clay tablets,
[18:26] Speaker 1: some inscriptions appear on metal goblets and stone vases. and
[18:30] Speaker 1: the intriguing Phaistos disk, a fired clay disk stamped with pictograms,
[18:36] Speaker 1: suggests experimentation with different formats. Additionally, both Egypt and Mesopotamia
[18:42] Speaker 1: sometimes used ostraca, broken pottery shards or limestone flakes as
[18:48] Speaker 1: a cheap writing surface for notes and school exercises. For
[18:54] Speaker 1: permanent records like royal decrees and commemorations, stone stelae were employed.
[19:00] Speaker 1: The best example I can give you of this is
[19:02] Speaker 1: probably Hammurabi's Law Code. That was a diorite still, inscribed
[19:08] Speaker 1: around 1750 BC. There are a few others, but this
[19:11] Speaker 1: is the most recognisable. These stone inscriptions are not really
[19:16] Speaker 1: libraries in themselves, but they often existed alongside the archives.
[19:22] Speaker 1: And sometimes, copies of the same text would be kept
[19:25] Speaker 1: on clay or papyrus in an archive. All to be told,
[19:31] Speaker 1: Bronze Age civilization demonstrated impressive ingenuity in exploiting the available
[19:37] Speaker 1: materials to store their knowledge. Whether incising damp clay, painting
[19:42] Speaker 1: ink on reed paper, or carving symbols into stone, they
[19:48] Speaker 1: developed pretty robust techniques. And the techniques in turn influenced
[19:53] Speaker 1: the form of early libraries. Mesopotamia's archives looked like rooms
[19:58] Speaker 1: of baked tablet stacks, while Egypt's looked like collections of
[20:02] Speaker 1: scrolls and seals all stuffed into little holes, each tailored
[20:07] Speaker 1: to the medium of memory. But enough about the tablets.
[20:16] Speaker 1: Who were the people behind the first libraries? Well, in
[20:21] Speaker 1: every Bronze Age civilization, a specialized class of literate individuals emerged. Scribes.
[20:29] Speaker 1: They became the primary creators, organizers, and guardians of written knowledge.
[20:35] Speaker 1: They were essentially the human backbone of the early libraries,
[20:39] Speaker 1: responsible for recording information and transmitting it across generations. By
[20:44] Speaker 1: virtue of their education and role, they often became scholars
[20:48] Speaker 1: in their own right, studying and copying older texts, and
[20:52] Speaker 1: contributing to a growing intellectual tradition. In ancient Mesopotamia, scribes
[21:00] Speaker 1: were highly esteemed professionals. It was a good job, but
[21:06] Speaker 1: becoming a scribe, that required an extensive education. In Sumer,
[21:12] Speaker 1: by the early dynastic period, around 2500 BC, formal scribal
[21:17] Speaker 1: schools existed. The Sumerians even had a word for such school, eduba,
[21:24] Speaker 1: meaning house of tablets. Isn't that interesting? At the eduba,
[21:30] Speaker 1: students scribed typically young men from good families. And by
[21:34] Speaker 1: good families, I mean families who had enough money to
[21:37] Speaker 1: send them to the schools. though occasionally women and even
[21:41] Speaker 1: enslaved students could be trained. They spent years mastering the
[21:47] Speaker 1: art of writing on clay. They started by moulding their
[21:50] Speaker 1: own practice tablets and learning to press consistent wedge shapes.
[21:55] Speaker 1: The curriculum then advanced through copying lists of signs, vocabulary,
[22:00] Speaker 1: proverbs and model documents. One ancient Mesopotamian school text, known
[22:06] Speaker 1: simply as School Days, which I think is funny, is
[22:11] Speaker 1: a fictionalised dialogue in which a student describes his daily
[22:15] Speaker 1: routine of memorising and reciting lessons, and even recounts being
[22:20] Speaker 1: caned by his teacher for poor work, only to win
[22:23] Speaker 1: back the teacher's favour with gifts and a well-copied tablet.
[22:29] Speaker 1: It's interesting, and a little bit humorous, I think, written
[22:34] Speaker 1: by a scribe about his daily scribal life, but it
[22:39] Speaker 1: also gives us a sense that the scribes were self-aware
[22:42] Speaker 1: that they were a kind of distinct social group. By
[22:47] Speaker 1: learning to write, they became employable in temples, palaces, and
[22:52] Speaker 1: merchant offices throughout Mesopotamia. Initially, their tasks were utilitarian, keeping
[22:58] Speaker 1: ledgers and accounts, but over time, scribes also took on
[23:02] Speaker 1: the copying of literature. the drafting of letters, the recording
[23:05] Speaker 1: of legal codes and the compilation of lexical and scientific knowledge.
[23:10] Speaker 1: Many Mesopotamian scribes were bilingual, or at least trained in
[23:14] Speaker 1: the archaic languages. For example, first millennium Babylonian scribes had
[23:21] Speaker 1: to learn the extinct Sumerian language to read and copy
[23:25] Speaker 1: the old texts. As the custodians of written heritage, Scribes
[23:31] Speaker 1: often apprehended colophons to tablets, short notations, rather, at the
[23:39] Speaker 1: end of a text, stating who copied it, and sometimes
[23:43] Speaker 1: where it was stored. These colophons are signatures of the
[23:48] Speaker 1: Bronze Age librarians. Some even include proud little boasts or
[23:53] Speaker 1: prayers to the gods to protect the tablet. In one
[23:56] Speaker 1: case we have her. late Bronze Age Mesopotamian scribe named Amenadu.
[24:03] Speaker 1: He left his name on a literary tablet, adding that
[24:06] Speaker 1: whoever steals or damages it will incur the wrath of
[24:09] Speaker 1: the gods. An early example of a librarian's caution against
[24:15] Speaker 1: book theft, I suppose. Now what about Egypt? Well, they
[24:20] Speaker 1: too were profoundly shaped by scribes. Ancient Egyptian scribes formed
[24:25] Speaker 1: an elite class, They were the bureaucrats, record-keepers, and intellectuals
[24:31] Speaker 1: of their society. Training to be a scribe in Egypt, well,
[24:35] Speaker 1: that began, typically in youth, often with the confines of
[24:40] Speaker 1: a temple or royal administrative office. Because Egyptian writing had
[24:45] Speaker 1: complex hieroglyphic forms, students learned the simplified hieratic for daily use.
[24:52] Speaker 1: Mastery of writing and reading opened the door to comfortable employment.
[24:57] Speaker 1: and Egyptian texts consistently praise the profession of the scribe
[25:02] Speaker 1: as one of great honour. A famous Middle Kingdom text
[25:07] Speaker 1: known as the Satire of the Trains, which I have
[25:11] Speaker 1: done a full reading on, it's in the Egypt playlist,
[25:14] Speaker 1: is a didactic work that extols scribe's life above all
[25:19] Speaker 1: other occupations. In this text, a father tells his son, quote, Behold,
[25:26] Speaker 1: there is nothing that surpasses writings. I shall make you
[25:29] Speaker 1: love books more than your mother. It is indeed greater
[25:33] Speaker 1: than any office. There is nothing like it on earth. Well,
[25:38] Speaker 1: it seems kind of exaggerated for effect, but it reflects
[25:42] Speaker 1: a kind of social reality that scribes were valued because
[25:46] Speaker 1: all administration and culture depended on their skills. Egyptian scribes
[25:52] Speaker 1: wrote letters for officials, drafted tax records, kept annals of kings,
[25:58] Speaker 1: composed literary works, and copied religious texts. Many high officials,
[26:04] Speaker 1: even some pharaohs, started their careers as scribes. Within the temples,
[26:11] Speaker 1: there was a special scriptoria, known as the Houses of Life.
[26:16] Speaker 1: In Egyptian, they call it Per Ankh, which served as
[26:19] Speaker 1: centers of learning and writing. Scribes attached to a house
[26:24] Speaker 1: of life not only copied existing texts, for example, endlessly
[26:27] Speaker 1: reproducing chapters of the Book of the Dead to be
[26:30] Speaker 1: placed in tombs, but also edited and composed works of medicine, astronomy, theology,
[26:38] Speaker 1: and ritual. They were effectively the librarians of those temple libraries.
[26:45] Speaker 1: An inscription from one such institution lists titles like Chief
[26:49] Speaker 1: of the House of Life, and even pairs of a
[26:53] Speaker 1: scribe of the House of Life with a chief physician,
[26:57] Speaker 1: indicating that scholarly knowledge, medical and otherwise, was curated there
[27:01] Speaker 1: by scribes. So Egyptian scribes, just like their Mesopotamian counterparts,
[27:08] Speaker 1: used catalogues and classification systems. In later periods, a library
[27:13] Speaker 1: catalogued papyrus from Edfruit Temple lists scrolls by their first
[27:18] Speaker 1: lines and counts, a precursor to the library catalogues. While
[27:23] Speaker 1: no catalogue texts survive from the Bronze Age proper, the
[27:27] Speaker 1: scale of organisation implied by houses of life and storage
[27:30] Speaker 1: chambers suggests that the Bronze Age Egyptian scribes were already
[27:35] Speaker 1: managing collections systematically. And now to the Indus Valley. Well,
[27:43] Speaker 1: because we cannot yet read their writing, we have no
[27:47] Speaker 1: recorded names or personal accounts of their scribes. But, We
[27:53] Speaker 1: can infer that a class of specialists was responsible for
[27:57] Speaker 1: carving the minute, standardized symbols on Indus seals and tablets.
[28:04] Speaker 1: The consistency of the symbols across a vast area hints
[28:07] Speaker 1: at training in a shared social scribal culture. The fact
[28:13] Speaker 1: that Indus inscriptions have been found on crafted luxury items
[28:18] Speaker 1: suggests that literate artisans were indeed respected. Perhaps they were
[28:22] Speaker 1: merchant scribes who managed to trade records, or priests who
[28:27] Speaker 1: inscribed tokens for ritual or identification purposes. The Indus cities,
[28:33] Speaker 1: with their sophisticated urban planning and trade networks, undoubtedly required record-keeping.
[28:40] Speaker 1: One fascinating clue to their approach to written knowledge is
[28:43] Speaker 1: their Dholavira signboard. At City of Dholavira, archaeologists found ten
[28:50] Speaker 1: large alphabetic signs made of gypsum that had once been
[28:54] Speaker 1: prominently mounted above the city's gate. Now this find, essentially
[28:59] Speaker 1: a Bronze Age billboard, shows that the Indus script was
[29:03] Speaker 1: not just used on personal seals, you see, but could
[29:06] Speaker 1: appear in public displays. While, admittedly, we don't know what
[29:12] Speaker 1: it actually said, the existence of a signboard, hence that
[29:17] Speaker 1: Indus scribes, might have also kept records for public or
[29:21] Speaker 1: communal use. The Indus Valley may not have had the
[29:25] Speaker 1: libraries in the Mesopotamian sense. No archives of hundreds of
[29:29] Speaker 1: tablets have been found there, at least not yet. But
[29:32] Speaker 1: it's possible that they stored important documents on organic materials
[29:36] Speaker 1: that decayed. Now, if that is the case, the scribes
[29:41] Speaker 1: of Melua as the Mesopotamians called the Indus region have
[29:46] Speaker 1: left behind a tantalizing mystery a literate civilization whose books
[29:52] Speaker 1: are lost to time awaiting the day that we can
[29:56] Speaker 1: decode the few inscriptions that remain On Minoan Crete and
[30:03] Speaker 1: in Mycenaean Greece, scribes were likewise central to administration and
[30:07] Speaker 1: knowledge preservation. In the palace centres of Greece, Knossos, Phaistos, Zakros, etc.,
[30:15] Speaker 1: and later on mainland Greece, Mycenae, Pelos, and Thebes, scribes
[30:20] Speaker 1: kept meticulous records on clay tablets using Linea A and
[30:25] Speaker 1: later Linea B. Minoan scribes writing in Linear A recorded
[30:31] Speaker 1: primarily economic and administrative information. Excavations at sites like Knossos
[30:38] Speaker 1: and Hyatriada have uncovered rooms that once stored dozens or
[30:42] Speaker 1: even hundreds of clay tablets, and that indicates a centralized archive.
[30:48] Speaker 1: When the Mycenaeans took over Crete and adopted writing, they
[30:52] Speaker 1: continued the scribal tradition. The Linear B archives of Knossos
[30:57] Speaker 1: 14th century BC, and Pelos in the 13th century, show
[31:02] Speaker 1: a highly standardized bureaucratic system. Scribes wrote in a jargon-heavy
[31:07] Speaker 1: administrative language, using many standardized abbreviations and logograms for commodities,
[31:14] Speaker 1: a clear sign of established scribal training. And they also
[31:19] Speaker 1: used a form of cataloguing. Tablets are often found with
[31:23] Speaker 1: summary tablets that delay tally subtotals from many records, pointing
[31:29] Speaker 1: to an internal filing system. Analysis does suggest that Minoan
[31:34] Speaker 1: and Mycenaean scribes not only kept archives, but also issued
[31:38] Speaker 1: and filed transactional documents, effectively acting as accountants and record managers.
[31:47] Speaker 1: These Aegean scribes ensured that the wealth and resources of
[31:50] Speaker 1: the kingdom, and even religious offerings to gods, were documented.
[31:56] Speaker 1: Across all these cultures, scribes often doubled as scholars, librarians,
[32:01] Speaker 1: and even scientists. They accumulated knowledge, and then had the
[32:06] Speaker 1: responsibility to pass it on. In Mesopotamia, for example, advanced
[32:11] Speaker 1: scribes compiled lexical lists, essentially encyclopedias and dictionaries of their time,
[32:18] Speaker 1: containing lists of words, plants, animals, professions, and more, in
[32:23] Speaker 1: multiple languages at that, They also copied and studied omens,
[32:29] Speaker 1: star observations and mathematical tablets. In Egypt, scribes produced wisdom literature,
[32:36] Speaker 1: guides to ethics and good conduct, along with technical manuals
[32:42] Speaker 1: like medical papyri and mathematical texts. A scribe's reputation rested
[32:51] Speaker 1: on both accuracy and erudition. A symbolical scribe might be
[32:56] Speaker 1: expected to know administrative procedures, religious ritual texts, legal formulas,
[33:01] Speaker 1: and even classic stories. Many scribes serve the gods of writing,
[33:07] Speaker 1: Nabu in Mesopotamia, Toth or Seshat in Egypt. They often
[33:13] Speaker 1: invoke these deities in colophons or prayers, symbolically linking their
[33:18] Speaker 1: work to a divine mission of knowledge preservation. It is
[33:22] Speaker 1: no exaggeration. to say that the first libraries existed in
[33:26] Speaker 1: the minds and hands of these scribes, for without their
[33:29] Speaker 1: skill and care, the physical archives would have been nothing
[33:34] Speaker 1: but unmarked clay and blank sheets of papyrus. So what
[33:42] Speaker 1: exactly did these libraries hold? What kind of information? Well,
[33:50] Speaker 1: there's a stereotype of a library as a place of literature.
[33:55] Speaker 1: But the earliest libraries, despite what we've discussed in general
[33:58] Speaker 1: about general record-keeping, accounting and all that, they're actually quite
[34:03] Speaker 1: diverse in their content. Everything a civilization deemed worth writing down, basically.
[34:10] Speaker 1: This included the prosaic alongside the poetic, the bureaucratic alongside
[34:15] Speaker 1: the spiritual. Surviving tablets and texts from Bronze Age archives
[34:20] Speaker 1: reveal a pretty rich tapestry of human concern. all the
[34:24] Speaker 1: way from cosmology down to crop yields. So here are
[34:28] Speaker 1: some of the main categories that were in the early libraries.
[34:32] Speaker 1: Of course, by volume, the greatest portion is consisted of
[34:35] Speaker 1: routine administrative documents, accounting ledgers, tax records, census lists, and
[34:41] Speaker 1: labor rosters that kept the economy running even in ancient times.
[34:47] Speaker 1: For instance, tablets from the Royal Archive of Ebla, which
[34:50] Speaker 1: we have discussed. include inventories of textiles and metals, tribute
[34:55] Speaker 1: lists from vassal towns, and disbursement records for bread and
[34:59] Speaker 1: beer rations. In Egypt, papyri record the output of state workshops,
[35:07] Speaker 1: the collection of grain and taxes, and the distribution of
[35:09] Speaker 1: food to temple staff. Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece, as mentioned,
[35:15] Speaker 1: left behind clay tablets that almost entirely document palace administration.
[35:22] Speaker 1: Pretty dry accounts, I know, but they were the backbone
[35:25] Speaker 1: of the first libraries because they needed to be stored
[35:27] Speaker 1: for reference. Next we have legal and government documents. The
[35:35] Speaker 1: archives also held laws, edicts, treaties and correspondence related to governance.
[35:41] Speaker 1: Mesopotamia has yielded some of the earliest known law collections.
[35:46] Speaker 1: While the famous Code of Hammurabi is carved on stone...
[35:50] Speaker 1: Copies of laws and legal verdicts were also kept on
[35:53] Speaker 1: clay tablets in city archives. In Hittite Anatolia, in the
[35:57] Speaker 1: later Bronze Age, the archives of Hattusa, their capital, preserved
[36:02] Speaker 1: treaties between the Hittite kings and the other states, showing
[36:06] Speaker 1: libraries as political record rooms safeguarding important agreements. The palaces
[36:12] Speaker 1: of ancient Egypt, they would similarly house decrees. sometimes duplicated
[36:18] Speaker 1: on stilly for public display, but also kept on papyrus
[36:21] Speaker 1: for internal record. Now religion, that was central to Bronze
[36:28] Speaker 1: Age life too, and many early libraries were associated with
[36:32] Speaker 1: the temples. Thus a significant portion of their content was
[36:36] Speaker 1: religious in nature. In Mesopotamia, temple and palace libraries contained
[36:42] Speaker 1: numerous tablets of hymns to gods, rituals for festivals and
[36:47] Speaker 1: omen texts used for divination. Mesopotamian libraries also had creation
[36:53] Speaker 1: myths and epics, such as the Enuma Elish and the
[36:58] Speaker 1: Epic of Gilgamesh, I'm sure you've heard of. I've done
[37:01] Speaker 1: a full reading of that if you're interested. In Egypt,
[37:06] Speaker 1: temple libraries, houses of life, kept ritual scrolls prescribing on
[37:11] Speaker 1: how to perform ceremonies as well as medical and magical texts.
[37:15] Speaker 1: On Minoan Crete, while Linear A is unreadable, certain inscriptions
[37:20] Speaker 1: on libation tables and ceremonial objects suggest written liturgy. Overall,
[37:28] Speaker 1: preserving religious knowledge to maintain the favour of gods and
[37:31] Speaker 1: proper ritual continuity was a primary function of early libraries.
[37:37] Speaker 1: But even in these very early collections, we find works
[37:41] Speaker 1: that go beyond the practical and enter the realm of literature. Stories, epics, wisdom,
[37:47] Speaker 1: and so forth. Mesopotamia provides the clearest evidence. By the
[37:53] Speaker 1: old Babylonian period, 1900 to 1600 BCE, scribes were copying
[37:59] Speaker 1: Sumerian poems and epics. The Epic of Gilgamesh existed in
[38:04] Speaker 1: various versions, and many libraries contained copies of it. In Egypt,
[38:11] Speaker 1: texts like the story of Sinuay and the instruction of
[38:14] Speaker 1: Tahotep were preserved because scribes kept copying them, often as
[38:21] Speaker 1: school exercises. Ugarit in Syria yielded tablets of myths and legends,
[38:29] Speaker 1: including the epic Girta and the Ibal cycle, found in
[38:34] Speaker 1: private house libraries. Literature in early libraries often served both
[38:40] Speaker 1: cultural and educational purposes. Though science was not a separate
[38:48] Speaker 1: category in ancient times, early libraries did hold proto-scientific texts.
[38:54] Speaker 1: This included medical manuals, astronomical observations, mathematical tables, and reference works.
[39:02] Speaker 1: Mesopotamian tablets often compiled lists of medical symptoms and treatments.
[39:07] Speaker 1: Early libraries also held omen literature blending empirical observation with divination.
[39:14] Speaker 1: In Egypt, texts like the Qahun Papyrus detail medical practices,
[39:19] Speaker 1: and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus shows geometry problems. Lexical lists
[39:26] Speaker 1: and dictionaries are another form of technical literature, such as Ebelite, Sumerian,
[39:31] Speaker 1: bilingual dictionaries that were found at Elba. Ebla, rather. So
[39:38] Speaker 1: from these categories we can certainly see that the first
[39:41] Speaker 1: libraries were pretty comprehensive archives of human activity and thought.
[39:47] Speaker 1: They contained the cumulative knowledge practical, spiritual, cultural, everything that
[39:54] Speaker 1: the Bronze Age societies had amassed. Thanks to ancient librarians
[39:58] Speaker 1: and scribes, we at least have portions of these surviving.
[40:03] Speaker 1: It allows us to read millennia-old stories and state documents,
[40:08] Speaker 1: even in our current day. That's pretty special, don't you think? So, Mesopotamia.
[40:20] Speaker 1: Like I said, it's the quintessential Bronze Age topic. It's
[40:25] Speaker 1: often called the cradle of libraries, too, you know, yielding
[40:29] Speaker 1: the earliest known archival collections. And believe me, there are
[40:34] Speaker 1: tons and tons of those tablets still sitting there in
[40:38] Speaker 1: storage in some museum, just waiting to be translated. We
[40:44] Speaker 1: know so many that we just can't keep up. and
[40:48] Speaker 1: that's just the ones that we've managed to pull out
[40:50] Speaker 1: of the ground. Who knows how many more are still
[40:53] Speaker 1: out there? We might discover another epic of Gilgamesh. Who knows?
[41:00] Speaker 1: But one of the oldest libraries yet discovered comes from
[41:04] Speaker 1: the ancient city of Eblu in northern Syria that we
[41:06] Speaker 1: talked about. They excavated it back in the 1970s, and
[41:11] Speaker 1: they found a room containing yet this. over 14,000 clay tablets,
[41:19] Speaker 1: dated to around 2400 B.C. These tablets were originally arranged
[41:25] Speaker 1: on shelves by subject matter. Although the wooden shelves burned
[41:29] Speaker 1: and collapsed, researchers could reconstruct the original order and find spots. Well,
[41:38] Speaker 1: Ebler's archive demonstrates that by the mid-third millennium B.C., A
[41:43] Speaker 1: royal court certainly saw it fit to collect and organize
[41:46] Speaker 1: knowledge for administrative efficiency and posterity. But further south, other
[41:52] Speaker 1: early libraries took shape in temple complexes. Nippur, Mari, and
[41:58] Speaker 1: other cities housed tablets that recorded everything from letters between
[42:02] Speaker 1: kings to religious hymns. Over time, the idea of collecting
[42:06] Speaker 1: texts grew. By the late Bronze Age, Mesopotamian statues— States rather,
[42:13] Speaker 1: like Babylonia and Assyria, revered the old knowledge, and scribes
[42:19] Speaker 1: copied ancient works onto new tablets. This tradition culminated, in
[42:24] Speaker 1: the Iron Age at least, with King Ashurbanipal's vast library
[42:28] Speaker 1: at Nineveh, which contained tens of thousands of tablets organized
[42:33] Speaker 1: by subject. Although Ashurbanipal lived later, his library built on
[42:39] Speaker 1: earlier Bronze Age practices preserving works like the Epic of
[42:42] Speaker 1: Gilgamesh and Omen series. In ancient Egypt, libraries took a
[42:48] Speaker 1: bit of a different path, closely linked to religious and
[42:51] Speaker 1: monumental structures. That house of life, part of a temple complex,
[42:57] Speaker 1: was dedicated to writing, storing texts, and teaching. Such houses
[43:03] Speaker 1: of life were attested from the Old Kingdom onward, They
[43:07] Speaker 1: housed ritual manuals, medical texts, hymns and scholarly treatises. The
[43:12] Speaker 1: Ramesseum papyri, for example, included literary stories, medical prescriptions and
[43:18] Speaker 1: magical texts, possibly from a house of life cache. Pharaohs
[43:25] Speaker 1: also maintained state archives for administrative documents. The discovery of
[43:30] Speaker 1: the Amarna letters, a cache of around 300 cuneiform tablets
[43:35] Speaker 1: in Egypt, reveals that foreign correspondence was carefully archived. We
[43:41] Speaker 1: can imagine that domestic administration relied on papyrus scrolls stored
[43:46] Speaker 1: in palace libraries. Unfortunately, few of them survive. Scribes held
[43:53] Speaker 1: prestigious positions, and their copying of classic tales and religious
[43:57] Speaker 1: texts over centuries ensured that these works endured at least
[44:01] Speaker 1: the best they could. The House of Life was regarded
[44:05] Speaker 1: as a sacred place and its collections were sometimes subject
[44:09] Speaker 1: to secrecy. And that's just another way that the Egyptians
[44:15] Speaker 1: expressed their reverence for written knowledge. Well, the Indus Valley
[44:21] Speaker 1: remains a bit of a mystery in this story, I'm afraid.
[44:25] Speaker 1: While undoubtedly literate, they left behind thousands of inscribed seals
[44:29] Speaker 1: and objects. We have no excavated archive rooms containing texts,
[44:35] Speaker 1: nor do we understand the script. Many scholars believe that
[44:38] Speaker 1: they wrote on perishable materials that have not survived. Indus
[44:42] Speaker 1: inscriptions are typically brief, suggesting a system for labeling or
[44:47] Speaker 1: short notations. The lack of decipherment means we cannot identify
[44:52] Speaker 1: a scribal class or a library structure, yet their urban
[44:56] Speaker 1: sophistication and standardized seals certainly imply that some form of
[45:01] Speaker 1: record-keeping existed. The aforementioned Dolavira's signboard shows that writing also
[45:08] Speaker 1: appeared in a public context. There, libraries remain a mystery,
[45:15] Speaker 1: exemplifying how historical record can vanish when scripts and media
[45:20] Speaker 1: do not survive. And as for Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece,
[45:26] Speaker 1: they provide some of the earliest evidence of libraries in Europe.
[45:31] Speaker 1: They used that Linear A script for administrative tablets found
[45:34] Speaker 1: in the palace archives at Knossos, Zakros, and Phaistos. Later,
[45:40] Speaker 1: Mycenaeans adopted Linear B, a pretty early form of Greek,
[45:45] Speaker 1: for similar palace records at Knossos, Pelos, and other sites. Typically,
[45:49] Speaker 1: these archives contained inventories of livestock, grain, weapons, and personnel.
[45:55] Speaker 1: Those smaller in scale than Mesopotamian archives The organized storage
[46:00] Speaker 1: of clay documents in dedicated rooms shows that a library
[46:04] Speaker 1: archive tradition did exist. Many Linear V tablets, preserved by
[46:10] Speaker 1: accidental fires, ironically, reveal a well-developed bureaucracy. The mention of a, quote,
[46:18] Speaker 1: tablet keeper, an official at Pelos, suggests that a proto-librarian
[46:24] Speaker 1: role existed in Mycenaean palaces. Of course, their texts are
[46:31] Speaker 1: mostly administrative, but some hint at possible religious or even
[46:37] Speaker 1: literary content. Linear A, though, and the Indus Valley's system
[46:44] Speaker 1: of writing. Fingers crossed we'll figure that out one day.
[46:49] Speaker 1: Who knows what we'll learn about them. And so, in
[46:56] Speaker 1: the Bronze Age societies, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Egypt, Minoan Crete,
[47:05] Speaker 1: we can see that emergence of a revolutionary idea that
[47:10] Speaker 1: knowledge can be collected, stored, and transmitted beyond individual memory
[47:16] Speaker 1: or local time. These first libraries were usually extensions of
[47:21] Speaker 1: temples or commercial hubs. Yet in serving pragmatic functions, they
[47:26] Speaker 1: ultimately preserved epics, myths, medical lore, and scientific observations by
[47:33] Speaker 1: committing words to clay or papyrus and filing them systematically.
[47:39] Speaker 1: Bronze Age scribes laid the foundations for a tradition of
[47:43] Speaker 1: learning that endures to this very day. Each region contributed
[47:48] Speaker 1: a unique approach. Mesopotamia gave us that extensive tablet archive
[47:54] Speaker 1: and a scribal culture that prized copying older works. And
[47:59] Speaker 1: in Egypt, the House of Life revealed a sacred dimension
[48:03] Speaker 1: of libraries, where scrolls regarded as divine knowledge. The Indus Civilization.
[48:11] Speaker 1: That remains tantalizingly out of reach, but it reminds us
[48:15] Speaker 1: of how easily information can disappear if the medium perishes,
[48:19] Speaker 1: or if the script is lost, along with giving us
[48:23] Speaker 1: a little bit of a dream in the future, that
[48:25] Speaker 1: we might just figure it out. Meanwhile, Minoan and Mycenaean
[48:31] Speaker 1: archives on clay tablets represent Europe's first steps towards recorded language.
[48:37] Speaker 1: Together they mark the dawn of the library concept. And so,
[48:43] Speaker 1: in every case, scribes stood at the heart of the enterprise,
[48:48] Speaker 1: trained professionals who dedicated themselves to writing and organising texts,
[48:54] Speaker 1: Their skill turned ephemeral human speech into a permanent record.
[49:00] Speaker 1: And I wonder if they knew that in thousands of years,
[49:05] Speaker 1: people would be reading the very tablets that they had marked.
[49:11] Speaker 1: That's something to think about. A millennia later, we can
[49:17] Speaker 1: still read a lot of these. papyrus documents, clay documents.
[49:23] Speaker 1: It bridges a remarkable gulf of time. Thus the Bronze
[49:27] Speaker 1: Age libraries, though modest in form, were completely monumental in
[49:32] Speaker 1: their impact. They taught us that knowledge is worth collecting
[49:36] Speaker 1: and curating. setting the stage for the great library traditions
[49:40] Speaker 1: that followed in the classical and medieval worlds. The very
[49:45] Speaker 1: act of writing, saving information from tax rolls to tales
[49:50] Speaker 1: of gods and heroes, it began right there, thousands of
[49:54] Speaker 1: years ago. And we owe a debt to these ancient archivists,
[50:00] Speaker 1: who belief in preserving the written word made civilization's collective
[50:05] Speaker 1: memory possible. So pour one out for the scribes, will you?
[50:13] Speaker 1: Thank you very much for listening. Well, we sure learned
[50:18] Speaker 1: a lot. And we had fun, as we always do.
[50:22] Speaker 1: I'm going to thank the top dear supporters, both on
[50:26] Speaker 1: Patreon and YouTube. Doug, Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Amber, Susan, Cameron, Legitimus, Kerry, Charlene, Lynn, Therese, Katiana, Nicholas, Ulf, Edna,
[50:38] Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Well, if you liked it, you
[50:43] Speaker 1: better subscribe to the channel. I suppose you've got no
[50:46] Speaker 1: other choice, don't you? Somewhat obliged now, getting an hour
[51:10] Speaker 1: into the video. Do what you like. But I will
[51:15] Speaker 1: see you next time, whenever you feel like returning. Thank
[51:19] Speaker 1: you for joining me. As always, lots of love to
[51:21] Speaker 1: you all. Good night.

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