‘Houses of Books’, ‘Houses of Life’: libraries past, present & future

Jo inside the new Great Library of Alexandria (© Dr.Amr Aboulfath)

This month Immortal Egypt has been busy in and around the North, once more enjoying the company of the inspirational ‘Northern Ladies’ who lunch to raise funds for multiple charities. And with some of them also volunteering at Halifax’s Old Library to keep it open to the public, our recent talk tailored to their wonderful book-filled venue once again brought home just how crucial libraries are to so many people, not just today but in ancient Egypt, home to the world’s most famous library in Alexandria of course.

Jo at the Northern Ladies’ Chatsworth House event with (L-R) the Countess of Burlington, Elizabeth Peacock & Steph Ingham (© Northern Ladies); Jo in the new Great Library (© Dr.Amr Aboulfath)

Yet a full three millennia before this Great Library was created, the Egyptians had already begun to develop their hieroglyphic script by c.3250 BC then the earliest form of paper, a word derived from its papyrus reed construction material. And soon in great demand across the ancient world, Egypt traded its papyrus via the Phoenician port of Byblos, whose name is now immortalised in all words ‘biblio’, from Bible to bibliophile. 

Then as text and papyrus came together to form the basis of Egypt’s emerging bureaucracy including the all-important tax records (!), the oldest surviving papyrus documents found as recently as 2013 are ships’ logbooks written over 4,500 years ago during the reign of pharaoh Khufu c.2570 BC. They document the transportation of the limestone used to build his tomb, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and with specific works relating to architecture consulted when building such monuments, there were also those dealing with medicine, mathematics, astronomy, art, literature etc., and of course religion, all of which required proper storage.

And so we start to find purpose-built libraries referred to as per-medjat (‘house of books’), with the libraries within temples therefore known as per-medjat-netjer (‘house of divine books’) in which the ‘scribes of the divine book’ were also known as ‘lector priests’. These same temple libraries worked alongside the ‘House of Life’ (‘per ankh’), a place “where cultural knowledge was created, used and preserved” (https://repository.uwtsd.ac.uk/id/eprint/567/1/Libraries,%20Pharaonic%20Egypt.pdf; see also Ancient Egypt - the House of Life) - literally kept alive - and variously described as a ‘scribal school’, ‘scriptorium’ or even ‘university’. 

As the domain of ibis-headed Thoth, known as ‘the One amidst the House of Life’ and ‘Lord of Writings in the House of Books’, his encyclopaedic ‘Book of Thoth’ was listed among his 36,524 other divine works, with Thoth also revered as the deity who passed literacy on to humans. Yet the invention of writing itself was credited to his female counterpart Seshat, ‘Lady of the House of Books’, whose very name means ‘scribe’. 

Ibis-headed Thoth (© BM) and goddess Seshat (© J.Bodsworth) both writing with reed pens

And despite claims that literacy was somehow exclusive to male members of the monarchy, bureaucracy and clergy, some women could read and write too (see: https://www.academia.edu/70845797/Evidence_for_Female_Literacy_from_Theban_Tombs_of_the_New_Kingdom), from female prime minister Nebet c.2290 BC and treasury official Tjat c.1900 BC to women directly referred to as ‘scribe’ such as Irtyru c.650 BC and Queen Nefertari c.1250 BC, who like other royal women not only engaged in her own correspondence but stands before Thoth in her tomb scenes, declaring “behold, I am a scribe!” (2 minutes 40 into https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p025p05s).

Jo with Queen Nefertari & her writing kit in front of Thoth c.1250 BC (© BBC)

Of course this all depended on one’s ability to afford an education, and since less than 1% of Egypt’s ancient population were literate, the prestigious role of ‘Master of the Secrets of the House of Life’ was an authentically exclusive title for those who understood the complexities of hieroglyphic symbols few others could actually read. And with literate individuals said to be ‘outstanding in learning like Thoth, having understood the annals like the one who wrote them, having seen the writings of the House of Life’, Seshat likewise was the 'Lady of writings, Foremost of the House of Life', with fellow divine librarians Isis and Nephthys both hailed 'Mistress of the House of Life' and composite feline deity Sekhmet-Bastet ‘Mistress of the House of Books’ (inevitably conjuring up a timeless image of a cat curled up amidst a pile of books).

Yet of course there were no books standing vertically on shelves, since the ancient libraries featured wooden storage boxes containing the ‘books’ which took the form of rolls of papyrus or occasionally leather as a more durable and prestigious material. So the royal victories of warrior pharaoh Tuthmosis III were described as being “established on a roll of leather in the temple of Amun”, much like the 40 leather rolls on which Egypt’s laws were written out and some of Egypt’s key religious texts, inscriptions at the temple of Dendera revealing its foundation document had been copied from a leather roll discovered in the palace of Pyramid Age pharaoh Pepi I who’d reigned over 2,000 years earlier! https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199655359.003.0010

Papyrus ‘books’ (© i-stock) & wooden storage box c.1880 BC of the type used to store them (© BM)

For it’s clear that libraries did already exist at this time. Although usually constructed from the standard domestic building material mudbrick so surviving far less well than stone-built structures, the largest collection of papyrus documents from the entire Old Kingdom were found in the mudbrick storerooms of royal funerary temples at Abusir c.2465-2450 BC. Originally housed in long-gone wooden boxes, what are now precious scraps of papyrus reveal amazing details about temple admin, from the clergy’s duty rosters and inventories of ritual equipment to offering lists, the earliest-known health and safety records and a reference to a certain Kakai-ankh who may be the world’s oldest-known librarian. 

Papyrus fragment from King Neferirkare’s funerary temple archive at Abusir (© BM)

With the survival of Kakai-ankh’s domain directly connected to Abusir’s remote location at the dry desert edge perfect for preservation, so too further collections at nearby Sakkara, from business papers found in the niches of a mudbrick storeroom in a reused part of the Step Pyramid complex to a temple library within King Pepi I’s reused pyramid complex, where numerous seals from the original document boxes were found along with well-used copies of Pyramid Text spells and rituals complete with signs of patching up. 

And with the largest collection of Middle Kingdom documents once again discovered at yet another remote pyramid complex, this time at Lahun (aka Kahun), many again dealt with the day-to-day running of the royal funerary cult, in this case for King Sesostris II (c.1897-1878 BC). Yet other documents found here are pretty mind-blowing, not only a mathematical work dealing with fractions and how to calculate the volume of a cylindrical granary but Egypt’s only surviving veterinary tract, featuring such sage advice as prescribing for a bull suffering from ‘cold fever’. Most astonishing of all is the world’s oldest gynaecological text, diagnosing the mysteries of the wandering womb, how to prevent morning sickness, tests to indicate fertility, pregnancy and the sex of the unborn child, plus recipes for contraceptives made from sour milk and crocodile dung (!), so well used the worn out papyrus had been patched up in places (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/med/birthpapyrus.html). 

Gynaecological papyrus from Lahun c.1825 BC © Petrie Museum

This same Lahun haul also included a hymn book containing songs of praise to be sung during a royal visit of King Sesostris III to his father’s Lahun burial site. And with the Middle Kingdom’s increasing taste for literature reflected in a trio of classic works ‘The Story of Sinuhe’, ‘Tale of the Eloquent Peasant’ and the ‘Dialogue of a Man with his Soul’, all three were found in the 1830s in a burial on Thebes’ West Bank. Dated to c.1800 BC and part of a ‘tomb library’, so too another collection possibly from Thebes’ Dra Abu el-Naga tombs and featuring the self-help guide ‘The Teachings of Kagemni’, a philosophical work much like ‘The Teaching of Ptahhotep’ (recently published as ‘The Oldest Book in the World’). Rather more of an adventure there was also the ‘Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor’, ancient Egypt’s version of Robinson Crusoe complete with giant talking snake (love him!), this only known complete version written out by a certain Ameny who signed himself ‘the scribe with clever fingers’ in what is claimed as ‘the world’s oldest surviving signature on a papyrus’ by the Guiness Book of Records (https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-autograph).

New translation of ‘the Oldest Book in the World’ by Bill Manley & the talking snake with the shipwrecked sailor (© T.Ellis) 

But the most extensive Middle Kingdom tomb library c.1700 BC was found beneath the later Ramesseum temple, where some 24 papyrus rolls still lay inside their original storage box with jackal god Anubis painted on its lid. Again including the stories of both Sinuhe and the Eloquent Peasant alongside hymns to the crocodile god Sobek and a wordlist compendium, gynaecological texts and ritual incantations were accompanied by ivory wands, a long bronze snake wand wrapped in human hair and a masked female figurine holding a pair of these same snake wands. So while this is often described as the library of a priest or magician’s kit, it may also have been a midwife’s equipment box with the tools and texts of her trade.

Sobek Hymn (© BM) & female figurine found together in Thebes c.1700 BC (© Manchester Museum)

Certainly such reference works played a vital role and no more so than for the monarchs wishing to do things literally ‘by the book’. So when King Neferhotep I was planning to create new temple statues c.1740 BC, he apparently declared that “my heart wishes to see the primeval writings…. Open for me the Great Inventory”, as he and his entourage entered the House of Books in which “his Majesty was opening the writings with his officials”, stating his intention to “fashion the gods like that which my Majesty has seen in the writings”. And with such ancient records consulted by subsequent pharaohs, Amenhotep III certainly did this when planning his jubilee festival of 1360 BC, sending his courtiers to check the relevant sources so that royal steward Kheruef was able to state that “it was his majesty who did this in accordance with the writings of old. Past generations of people since the time of the ancestors had never celebrated such jubilee rites”. 

Amenhotep III & fan (© Immortal Egypt) with Jo’s book discussing his palace library on p.128

And of course Amenhotep III had his own royal library, the ‘per-medjat-netjer-per-aa’ (‘the house of divine books of the palace’) located within his sprawling palace of Malkata, literally ‘the place where things are picked up’. And since this includes the earliest known bookplates, this set of small glazed ceramic plaques had been used to label the papyrus storage boxes via small holes at their top edge to accommodate attachment cords. Featuring Amenhotep’s name in a cartouche, in one case twinned with that of his great queen Tiye, the blue book plate (below) also refers to the ‘book of the sycamore and moringa trees’ while the fragment of another (below right) refers to the ‘book of the sycamore tree and dom palm’, either hinting at a royal interest in horticulture or perhaps some of the same poetic dialogue between ‘talking trees’ found in New Kingdom love poems.

Amenhotep III’s book plates (L-R: © Louvre, BM & Yale Art Gallery)

And with evidence for another royal library at the couple’s northern palace at Gurob - “perhaps the closest one gets to the physical remains of a palace library in New Kingdom Egypt” (https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199655359.003.0007) - papyri found there in 1889-1890 not only included official records and letters but hymns to the Nile and other literary works. Certainly Gurob was the place where the widowed Tiye later resided as she also did with son Akhenaten and his family at Amarna, where once again there’s evidence for a library and aforementioned Per-Ankh House of Life. For when the site was excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society between 1928-1931, ‘per-ankh’ was stamped into its individual mudbricks, creating a structure some 15 × 15m described by excavator John Pendlebury as resembling most “the rooms of a don in an Oxford or Cambridge college”. Well situated in central Amarna close to the ‘King’s House’ palace and Small Aten Temple beside Amarna’s main administration centre, so too the adjacent ‘Place of the documents of Pharaoh’ which once contained the foreign correspondence of Akhenaten and his father Amenhotep III to their neighbours - aka ‘the Amarna Letters’.

The House of Life at Amarna with the ‘per ankh’ hieroglyphs stamped on its bricks (© Egypt Exploration Society)

With another ‘Place of the documents of Pharaoh’ located at the port of Piramesse, its damp Delta location means nothing remains of its mudbrick structure although it was captured for posterity in the tomb scenes of Tjay, scribe of royal dispatches under King Merneptah c.1210 BC. Portraying Tjay centre-stage within its columned halls surrounded by busy scribes at work, a chapel to Thoth on the far right housed a statue of the god in his baboon form while small rooms at either side labelled the ‘Place of Writings’ contain multiple chests of papyrus rolls.

Merenptah’s ‘Place of the documents of Pharaohʼ at Piramesse in the Theban tomb of Tjay (TT.23) (after Borchardt 1907 in https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199655359.003.0007)

And with the scene’s location in Tjay’s tomb down in Thebes, the physical remains of a temple library and House of Life (aka ‘Egypt’s oldest-known school building’) lay close by within the Ramesseum funerary temple of King Ramses II (1279-1213 BC). As father to both Merenptah and his brother Khaemwese, it seems Khaemwese was very much the bookworm of the family, remembered for the next thousand years as an antiquarian who actively sought out ancient books, spending his time “turning over the stelae of the scribes of the House of Life to read the writings that were upon them”, as featured in our BBC article at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/death_sakkara_gallery_04.shtml

Khaemwese c.1250 BC with Ramesseum seen from nearby Deir el-Medina (both © Immortal Egypt)

And just like Khaemwese’s own reputation, the Ramesseum library was remembered for over a thousand years with the site in active use for several centuries after Ramses II’s death as the place where workers from the nearby village of Deir el-Medina received their payment rations (as featured in our Kha and Merit series 22 minutes into https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=637360233093370). And with Deir el-Medina home to the atypically highly literate workforce who created the Valley of the Kings’ royal tombs, this not only included our good friend the foreman and architect Kha whose most impressive funerary papyrus measured an astonishing 14 metres (as we recreate 5 minutes into: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=638244926338234), but later resident Kenhirkhopshef. 

Kenhirkhopshef & part of his library in his own hand c.1200 BC (both © BM) 

As a scribe working as the ‘Accountant of the Project for the King's Tomb’ under Ramses II and Merenptah and continuing his career until c.1194 BC, Kenhirkhopshef supervised the tomb builders working in the Valley of the Kings, where a small shaded niche near Merenptah’s tomb (KV.8) still bears the inscription ‘sitting-place of the scribe Kenhirkhopshef’. And quite likely reading on the job, he was an avid collector and copier of books, his ‘bold and highly cursive handwriting instantly recognizable’, and the creator of a most impressive private library. Containing philosophical works including the Instructions of Ani and the Teachings of Khety aka the ‘Satire of Trades’ written from a smug scribe’s perspective ridiculing the horrors of manual labour, there was a partial king list and history book about the Battle of Kadesh which Ramses II fought against the Hittites some half a century earlier. There was also a book of dream interpretation, spells against scorpions, stories of the gods namely ‘The Tale of Isis and Ra’ and the only known complete copies of ‘The Contending of Horus and Seth’ and the ‘Tale of Truth and Falsehood’. And together with yet more hymns to the Nile flood and 17 love songs were numerous prescriptions and incantations for good health and even aphrodisiacs, maybe connected to the fact that Kenhirkhopshef’s wife Naunakhte was at least 40 years his junior.

And when the old guy finally ‘went West’ and his library was inherited by Naunakhte and her new husband, their 8 children(!) later added their own paperwork to the collection, including Naunakhte’s will in which she left most of her worldly goods to her favourite child. Yet it must be said they seem little interested in the library they’d inherited. Reusing some as scrap paper before placing it all in a little-used mudbrick chamber, the ancient equivalent of the attic or garage perhaps, there it suffered water damage in a rare storm, a letter c.1100 BC reporting: “Now as far as the books onto which the sky rained, you brought them out and found that they had not become erased. I told you I will untie them again. You brought them down below and we deposited [them] in the tomb chamber of my forefather Amennakht”. And when eventually discovered in 1928 within the Deir el-Medina tombs, some of the papyri did indeed show traces of water damage, with sand still stuck to the backs from when they’d been laid out to dry over 2000 years earlier.

Part of Naunakhte’s will c.1150 BC (© Ashmolean) with map of Deir el-Medina showing findspot of Kenhirkhopshef’s library in its tombs (https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199655359.003.0007)

Yet southern Thebes was not the only place to have private libraries from the Ramesside era, with several collections of works dated c.1200 BC all acquired in the 1820s within the Saqqara tombs adjoining Egypt’s ancient capital Memphis. Containing more hymns to the Nile flood and the Satire of Trades, there was also the surprisingly moving ‘Teaching of King Amenemhat I’, part fatherly advice, part ghost story, together with the only known copies of the 'Tale of the Two Brothers' and the ‘Quarrel between Seqenenra and Apophis’ plus a very handy 'Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days' (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/writing/library/ram.html) among numerous other works. 

And with the north also home to the great temples of Memphis and Heliopolis with their own legendary libraries dating back to c.3000 BC, some of their ancient tomes needed careful handling. So the ancient priestly manual ‘The Book of the Temple’ originating in Heliopolis had to be ‘copied anew in order to preserve it in the House of the Book’ by ‘skilled prince’ Hordjedef, a son of King Khufu. And when later Pharaoh Shabaka was undertaking restoration projects around Memphis’ temple of creator god Ptah c.722 BC, this extended into the temple library, whose key papyrus the ‘Story of Creation’ had been damaged by insects. For as we are told, “this writing was copied out anew by his majesty in the temple of his father Ptah for his majesty found it to be a work of the ancestors which was worm-eaten and could not be understood from start to finish”, its new format a great slab of black basalt now known as the ‘Shabaka Stone’ surviving into the present (despite its later use as a millstone) and now displayed in the British Museum. 

The Memphis Creation Story preserved on the Shabaka Stone (© BM)

Then not too far south of Memphis at el-Hibeh, yet another library dates to c.950 BC when el-Hibeh was on the border between the 21st dynasty kings at Tanis in the north and the southern clergy based down in Thebes. Here some 2,000 papyrus fragments found inside a large ceramic vessel not only included priestly letters and oracular decrees but the best-preserved example of ‘the Onamasticon of Amenemope’, with Amenemope himself a ‘scribe of the divine books in the House of Life’ who claims to have compiled his wordlist compendium to ‘teach the ignorant, to learn everything that exists’. And there was also the only known copy of the ‘Misadventures of Wenamun’, a Theban priest sent abroad to the aforementioned port of Byblos to source cedar wood at a time Egypt’s power was on the wane so former vassals giving the unfortunate Wenamun a somewhat hostile reception.

Yet as Egypt’s elite continued to amass knowledge through their ‘books’, still in the form of papyrus rolls like those acquired by Djedmontuiufankh c.840 BC, this scribe, treasury overseer and priest of Amun-Re at Karnak was clearly a keen genealogist whose could trace his lineage back an impressive 9 generations. His library also included manuals on building and carpentry as well as the usual rituals and hymns likely originating in Karnak’s temple library before ‘passing into private hands’ when he acquired them (so perhaps the world’s longest overdue library books?).

Ram-headed Khnum (© Ashmolean) & his temple library atop Elephantine Island (© Rehlat)

And this same combination of esoteric and practical featured in the temple library of the ram-headed god Khnum on the Aswan island of Elephantine. Again stored in tall pots rather than wooden boxes, the original texts from the C.7th-C.3rd BC had been reduced to tens of thousands of fragments of rodent bedding, which ongoing study reveals to be rituals and hymns to Khnum as great creator along with astronomical texts, another book of dream interpretation plus notes on the Opening the Mouth ceremony as performed on both the deceased and sacred statues. There were also medical works, a handy list of minerals, an artist’s manual and fragments of such literary favourites as the Satire of Trades and Contendings of Horus and Seth.

Of similar date and range is another collection acquired by American Charles Wilbour, findspot unknown until detective work by Egyptologist Kim Ryholt tracked down Wilbour’s letters stating he’d acquired ‘a mess of costly papyrus’ in Luxor on 21st January 1886 (https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199655359.003.0010). Made up of at least a dozen papyrus rolls and ‘approximately 100,000 fragments acquired at the same time’, they were all donated to Brooklyn Museum in 1947, since when long-term studies have revealed many magico-medical texts, from a useful work identifying species of snake and how to treat their venom to a gazetteer of myths relating to the cities and provinces of the Delta. One text ‘clearly written in Thebes’ even preserves the precise date 4th October 651 BC during the reign of Saite Pharaoh Psammetichus I (664–610 BC), whose name repeatedly appears in one of the ‘protection of pharaoh’ ritual texts. 

And with such protective texts increasingly needed at a time Egypt was under increasing threat from the Persian Empire, it eventually terminated Egypt’s Saite dynasty in 525 BC amidst the destruction of key sites and the seizing of temple libraries. So later Persian king Darius who ruled Egypt in absentia appointed Egyptian official Wedjahorresnet “to establish the House of Life after being ruined” and he did “as His Majesty had commanded me; I founded them with all their men of books”.

Allowing Egypt’s distinctive culture to continue during 2 centuries of intermittent Persian occupation, this in turn was terminated in 332 BC with the arrival of Greek superman Alexander the Great, his patronage for all things Egypt continuing with his Ptolemaic successors. And starting as they meant to go on, one of the first acts of the first Ptolemy was to retrieve the sacred books and statues the Persians had taken away. Indeed, the Ptolemies spent fortunes preserving and enhancing Egyptian culture, with so much of what we know about Egypt’s epic past thanks to its new Greek rulers who wisely allowed both cultures and their respective languages to run parallel and combine when needed. 

Rosetta Stone preserving bilingual Egyptian & Greek decree of Ptolemy V, 196 BC (© BM)

Issuing their royal decrees as bilingual inscriptions, these generally began with the formulaic phrase: 'on this day a decree: the temple overseers and priests, the priests who enter into the holy place to adorn the gods together with the scribes of god's books and the scribes of the House of Life and the other pure-priests who come from the two sacred halves of Upper and Lower Egypt', the 'scribes of the House of Life' referred to in the Greek translation as ‘hierogrammateis’, 'sacred writing scribes' https://academic.oup.com/book/36471 And not only did the Ptolemies’ bilingual decree on a certain Rosetta Stone allow the modern world to finally understand the lost meaning of hieroglyphs, but the temples in which such decrees were set up were largely rebuilt by the Ptolemies who are responsible for most of the temples standing in Egypt today. 

With the most completely preserved example created for the falcon god Horus at Edfu as a veritable monument to pharaonic kingship which even then stretched back three millennia, joint pharaohs Ptolemy III and Berenike II replaced an earlier temple on the site. And with its scenes and inscriptions created by ‘the great artists of the House of Life' under the later Ptolemy VIII, these acknowledge goddess Seshat as 'Lady of plans, Lady of writings, Foremost of the House of Life'.

Edfu Temple with library indicated at https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199655359.003.0010, its library doorway replicated at Bolton Museum (© Immortal Egypt)

As for Edfu’s ‘House of Books’ where the texts used in daily rituals were kept for easy access, this was built directly into the temple’s eastern wall “deep within the temple enclosure, behind several gates that would be shut and sealed, but even the room itself was once protected by a door that could be secured” https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199655359.003.0010. And with this monumental doorway replicated in Bolton Museum, a large scribe’s palette carved across the door lintel clearly denotes the room’s function while at either side of the doorway the great sun god Ra receives pharaoh on the right and on the left the great sage Imhotep, architect of Egypt’s first pyramid for which he was later deified. Then passing through into the library itself, its internal wall inscriptions clearly identify it as ‘'the house of books of Horus, equipped with the Powers of Horus-Ra', while accompanying scenes show Horus receiving ‘numerous book chests containing great books and rolls of pure leather’ direct from King Ptolemy VIII himself. 

And with these same chests once housed within the chamber’s wall niches, surrounding inscriptions create a giant library catalogue of books long-gone, naming the ‘Book of Conducting the Cult’, ‘Knowing all the Inventories of the Secret Forms of the God’, ‘Knowing the Periodic Return of the Stars’, ‘Book of Driving Back the Demons and Repelling the Crocodile’, ‘Book of the Magical Protection of the King in his Palace’ and ‘Formula for Repelling the Evil Eye’. There would also be the scripts used by the actors and ‘master of ceremonies’ when performing the ancient myth of Horus and Seth as a musical drama by Edfu’s sacred lake, plus the rather more mundane ‘Book of Temple Regulations’ and ‘Rota of Temple Guards’.

Philae Temple (© Immortal Egypt)

But Edfu was only one of numerous temples the Ptolemies rebuilt throughout Egypt. At Philae’s beautiful Temple of Isis, inscriptions within its House of Books in the temple forecourt claim that “Every papyrus is there, which the entire House of Life encompasses in its entirety, upon rolls of pure leather, and all royal decrees that come from Memphis”. And with a single niche for the book chests flanked by images of goddesses Seshat, Tefnut and Maat shown giving the scribe’s palette to Thoth, he also appears below the niche in his baboon form, busily writing away. Likewise in the ruined temple to the local war god Montu at el-Tod, where seven remaining stone blocks are still inscribed with extensive book catalogues from the library once located at the temple’s rear, libraries were also part of the temples of Medamud and el-Kab despite their disappearance beyond foundation level.

And while temple libraries thrived under the Ptolemies, so too private collections like the ritual-heavy library of Karnak priest Sminis. Helpfully dating one of his books to 305 BC, Sminis loved his modest library so much he was buried with it, leaving a note that a favourite work should be put “within the coffin of pine wood in which I will be placed. Let the papyrus be inserted within my mummy wrappings. Signed Sminis”. Even leaving a stark warning to anyone “who displaces this papyrus roll in order that he might remove it from my possession, their corpses will not be interred…. their names will not be remembered anywhere on earth, and they will not behold the rays of the solar disc”, Ryholt has pointed out that these papyri were excavated by Scottish antiquarian Alexander Rhind (1833–63) who “did die at the age of just thirty, soon after the acquisition of the papyri” (https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199655359.003.0010). 

Rather less esoteric were the libraries and archives owned by officials of the time, most famously the C.3rd BC archive of finance minister Zenon revealing how the Greek Ptolemies so effectively administered and monetised their adopted homeland. And yet they are of course best known for the creation of the most famous library in human history - the legendary Library of Alexandria. 

Reconstruction of the Great Library of Alexandria (© ancient-origins)

Like its modern successor located on the sea edge in their coastal capital, the Great Library was established by Ptolemy I as a place where scholars funded by the state translated into Greek every book they could find, from the great works of the Greek playwrights to Hebrew scriptures and of course the millennia of knowledge housed in Egypt’s temple libraries. For as described as early as 1615 by Yorkshire’s own great scholar George Sandys of York, the Ptolemies “caused the philosophy of the Egyptians (before alone peculiar to the priests) to be divulged in Greek for the benefit of students”. 

And as this well-funded work continued apace with each Ptolemaic ruler, some 500,000 scrolls of history, philosophy, medicine, law, poetry and miscellaneous material representing pretty much all the knowledge of the ancient world was now held under the Ptolemies’ sole control. And also sourcing works from the book markets of Athens and Rhodes, they even put in a loan request for the original scripts of the great dramatists of Athens so the originals could be copied in Alexandria, forfeiting their enormous deposit by sending back the copies and keeping the priceless originals! And when rivals in Pergamon tried to follow their example by creating their own royal library, the Ptolemies banned the export of Egyptian papyrus to foil their plan, forcing their rivals to invent parchment (‘pergamenon’) as a means of sustaining the race for the knowledge which has always brought power. 

And no more so than in the case of Cleopatra VII. Like all Ptolemaic royals receiving a superb education within the Great Library and its associated educational institute, Cleopatra herself was remembered by Egypt’s own historians as ‘the virtuous scholar’, whose everyday Greek was supplemented by her knowledge of 8 other languages including Syrian, Hebrew, Parthian, Arabic and Ethiopian, her additional understanding of Egyptian unique among the Ptolemies, and adding to the likelihood that her as yet unknown mother was most likely a member of the Egyptian elite.

Hollywood’s version of ‘virtuous scholar’ Cleopatra in her library © 20th Century Fox

Sharing her dynasty’s passion for learning, the ever-increasing numbers of works sourced from abroad were usually unloaded into Alexandria’s dockside warehouses prior to their transfer to the Great library. And it seems to have been these warehouses which were accidentally burned down during the civil war of 48 BC in which Cleopatra defeated her younger brother Ptolemy XIII with help from her new ally Roman general Julius Caesar, often but quite wrongly blamed for destroying the Great Library itself. Indeed, at Caesar’s death in 44 BC and Cleopatra’s subsequent marriage to his deputy Mark Antony, one of the many gifts Antony gave his new wife were the 200,000 parchment scrolls making up the Library of Pergamon! 

And certainly Cleopatra was able to draw on the accumulated knowledge within the Great Library to find a means to end her own life should she be defeated and taken prisoner by her Roman enemies. As the ancient sources reveal, she “was busied in making a collection of all varieties of poisonous drugs and in order to see which of them were the least painful”, her knowledge of toxicology and chemistry providing a form of cobra venom as the perfect means of escape into the afterlife in August 30 BC when the Romans were closing in.

Tax document ending ‘Let it be so!’ written in Cleopatra’s own hand © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 

As they ransacked the whole of Egypt for anything of value, from the contents of the tombs of the high priests of Memphis to Cleopatra’s palace in Alexandria, the papyrus documents in the royal archives were either destroyed or torn up and later recycled as cartonnage, a kind of papier mâché used to make mummy masks and coffins. And when the original papyrus was extracted from cartonnage found in burials at Abusir el-Melek in 1904, one proved to be a tax document issued on 23rd February 33 BC to one of Mark Antony’s officers. Ending with the royal command ‘make it so!’, these few words in black ink on papyrus are believed to be the very handwriting of Cleopatra herself, so perhaps the closest we are ever likely to get to the legend herself. 

More about the libraries of ancient Egypt (and beyond) can be found in the excellent ‘Libraries before Alexandria: Ancient Near Eastern Traditions’ (eds. K.Ryholt & Barjamovic); the wonderful Northern Ladies can be found at: https://www.northernladies.co.uk/ and staying in the north our travelling exhibition ‘Resurrecting Ancient Egypt: a Monumental Yorkshire Journey’ is about to open at Beverley’s Treasure House Museum & Library on 10th December until 10th May 2025.