And the earliest recorded collection of books in the
world, though perhaps not the first that existed, was that of the
Egyptian king Ramses I.--B. C. 1400, near Thebes, which Diodorus Siculus
says bore the inscription "Dispensary of the soul." Thus early were books
regarded as remedial agents of great force and virtue.

But before the library of Ramses the Egyptian king, there existed in
Babylonia collections of books, written not on parchment, nor on the more
perishable papyrus, but on clay. Whole poems, fables, laws, and hymns of
the gods have been found, stamped in small characters upon baked bricks.
These clay tablets or books were arranged in numerical order, and the
library at Agane, which existed about 2000 B. C. even had a catalogue, in
which each piece of literature was numbered, so that readers had only to
write down the number of the tablet wanted, and the librarian would hand
it over. Two of these curious poems in clay have been found intact, one
on the deluge, the other on the descent of Istar into Hades.

The next ancient library in point of time yet known to us was gathered in
Asia by an Assyrian King, and this collection has actually come down to
us, _in propria persona_. Buried beneath the earth for centuries, the
archaeologist Layard discovered in 1850 at Nineveh, an extensive
collection of tablets or tiles of clay, covered with cuneiform
characters, and representing some ten thousand distinct works or
documents. The Assyrian monarch Sardanapalus, a great patron of letters,
was the collector of this primitive and curious library of clay. He
flourished about 1650 B. C.

In Greece, where a copious and magnificent literature had grown up
centuries before Christ, Pisistratus collected a library at Athens, and
died B. C. 527. When Xerxes captured Athens, this collection, which
represents the earliest record of a library dedicated to the public, was
carried off to Persia, but restored two centuries later. The renowned
philosopher Aristotle gathered one of the largest Greek libraries, about
350 B. C. said to have embraced about 1400 volumes, or rather, rolls.
Plato called Aristotle's residence "the house of the reader." This
library, also, was carried off to Scepsis, and later by the victorious
Sulla to Rome. History shows that the Greek collections were the earliest
"travelling libraries" on record, though they went as the spoils of war,
and not to spread abroad learning by the arts of peace.

Rome having