
Ancient public library discovered in Germany - walterbell
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/31/spectacular-ancient-public-library-discovered-in-germany
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pluma
What the article doesn't really clarify: Cologne was a Roman _colony_. The
full name was Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. "Colonia" means "colony" but
it's also the highest tier of recognition Roman cities could have. Cologne was
the Eastern-most Roman city of its kind in "Germania".

A side-effect of all of this is that you can't really dig anywhere in Cologne
without encountering some Roman artifact or ruins (unless they have already
been recovered/destroyed previously).

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zerealshadowban
Since "colonia" originally denoted _any Roman outpost_ established in
conquered territory, you can't invoke the word as a singularly significant
element of the city name.

Mainz was also part of Germania and is much further East.

The current extent of modern Köln is much wider than that of the Roman city of
20,000 people, so you'd have to dig in very specific places to find Roman
artifacts.

~~~
steiner_j
The colonia status survives in the name, that's indeed the main significance.
There were of course hundreds of coloniae. Some similar, in that the status
also gave the town its name today. E.g. Lincoln, England from "Lindum
Colonia". Not every outpost in conquered territory was a colonia though. Some
were oppida, while others were military outposts

In contrast to CCAA and Augusta Treverorum, Mogontiacum (Mainz) was not a
colonia. It was primarily a military post. The main difference is that
citizens of a colonia were in fact fully Roman with all the rights and duties.
It was also part of a different province - Germania Superior, whereas CCAA was
the centre of Germania Inferior.

Mogontiacum (Mainz) is further east than CCAA. One of it's purposes was to
secure the Limes, but there was a comfortable buffer between the Limes and the
town itself. Further north, the wilderness basically began when you crossed
the Rhine at Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten) or in fact CCAA...

You'll find the majority of Roman artifacts in an area roughly a third of the
size of medieval Cologne, which itself is basically just the very city centre
of Cologne today. However, a lot of digs were made along the roads leading out
of Cologne since these were prominent burial sites for rich Romans. These
roads follow the old layout until today...

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gooseus
They didn't mention it, but I'm assuming that no scrolls or actual library
knowledge is recoverable from the site?

Whenever I listen to history people talk about all the sources that have been
lost, I dream that someday someone will uncover an ancient time capsule under
their house and find a pristine collection of lost works that some wise person
squirreled away for future generations.

~~~
dan-robertson
If a truly large archive were found then who’s to say that it could survive
long enough to be properly studied? There are multiple sources of untouched
ancient texts today which aren’t much studied. Off the top of my head, I’ve
heard there are chests full of (roughly 1000-year-old) Arabic manuscripts
littering the Archbishop’s palace in Toledo, largely untouched due to a lack
of interest/number of scholars (and perhaps it is hard to get access). There
are also many manuscripts spread out across private basements in Timbuktu,
those have survived several threats but who’s to say they will survive more?
On the other hand we have hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets, most of
which are unread (they had the advantage that when a library burns down the
tablets are often fired instead of destroyed). It is hard to decide what is
worth prioritising before it has been read.

The one solace we can take is that modern techniques may let us read
manuscripts after they have been largely destroyed.

~~~
ASalazarMX
At least for cuneiform tablets, somewhere I read most of them are utterly
boring, mostly inventory and transactions. Maybe you could pass years sifting
through it to finally find something valuable.

~~~
peterburkimsher
Here's the cuneiform scans if you're interested:

[https://cdli.ucla.edu/?q=news/machine-assisted-
translation-c...](https://cdli.ucla.edu/?q=news/machine-assisted-translation-
cuneiform-texts)

~~~
singularity2001
That's only the announcement that they will be scanned?

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teilo
I think the whole "public" library theory is a bit off. Just because it was a
public building does not mean it was anything resembling what we would call a
public library. More likely, it was a government library, like a registrar, or
for tax documents, census data, or something similar.

~~~
sandworm101
That depends on perspective. Certainly any building that banned women would
not sound very "public" today, but within the ancient context would fit the
model. It may have been open to citizens, men, non-slaves, who could read.
That would have been a very small group. Setting aside our modern notions of
equality, that sounds like a public library to me.

~~~
teilo
Except all we know is that:

1) It was in a market area.

2) It was well built.

3) It had cubby holes that probably held scrolls.

That's all. The rest is speculation.

~~~
sandworm101
That's all we have from digging up most historical buildings. People build
careers on determining a building's use based on things like door width and
wall thickness.

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SeanLuke
Interestingly, I just visited what I believe is generally regarded to be the
first community-owned public library in the world: the Biblioteca Maletestiana
in Cesena, Italy, established 1447. It had books in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew,
all chained to their desks so that patrons couldn't walk off with them. And
the chains worked: the books are still there.

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mar77i
... how sure can they be it's not the town archive they lost to metro
construction work a couple years ago?

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rurban
Just the walls of the library, not the library itself, the papyri.

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pseingatl
Alas, no scrolls found.

