Year
Event Keyword

-500
Lao-Tze's lifetime, was said to have been archivist of the imperial LAO TZE

archives

-431
(431-352 BC) author of Anabasis and Memorabilia. XENOPHON

-295
King Ptolemy I Soter enlisted the services of the orator Demetrios ALEXANDRIA LIBARY

Phalereus, a former governor of Athens, and empowered him to

collect, if he could, all the books in the inhabited world. To support

his efforts, the king sent letters to all sovereigns and governors on

earth requesting that the furnish worked by poets and prose-

writers, rhetoricians and sophists, doctors and soothsayers,

historians, and all others too (Flavius Josephus). Agents were sent

out to scout the cities of Asia, North Africa, and Europe. Foreign

vessels calling in at Alexandria were searched routinely for scrolls

and manuscripts. Transcripts were returned in due course, but the

originals remained confiscated in the library. The story of the 47 AD

destruction of the library is only partly true. Some 40,000 of the

700,000 volumes did go up in flames.

-213
Chin Tain Shihuangti, emperor of China, issued an edict that all CHIN TAIN SHIHUANGTI

books should be destroyed (manuscripts on bamboo)

-200
before 1st C. BC Both Greeks and Romans used wax tablets, WAX TABLETS CODEX

framed and backed with wood, for note taking, orders,

correspondence, and other temporary informantion

ion. At times, two or more tablets were joined with thongs or cords,

similar to a 3-ringed binder. The Latin name for this was _codex_,

from the word for wood. Single wax tablets had been used earlier

than this in Mesopotamia, Greece, and Etruria.

-197
197-159 BC In the Middle East, near Pergamum, large herds of PERGAMUM

cattle are raised for skins to be made into what we now call

-196
The'Rosetta' stone is cut. It contains the same text in Egyptian ROSETTA STONE

hieroglyphic, Egyptian demotic, and Greek writing. It was discovered

in 1799 near the mouth of the Nile and served to break the code for

deciphering ancient Egyptian works.

-150
The first paper is made in China from macerated hemp fibers in PAPER

water suspension.

-150
150 BC - 40 AD Approximate dates of the Hebrew and Aramaic DEAD SEA SCROLLS

documents, Biblical and nonbiblical, found as scrolls sealed in

ceramic pots in caves near the Dead Sea in 1957. Some are written

on thin, whitish leather similar but not identical to parchment

-100
Nash Papyrus, oldest known biblical fragment, containing the BIBLE

Hebrew text of the ten commandments. Acquired in Egypt 1902 by

W.L.Nash and now in Cambridge University Library.

-100
Nash Papyrus, oldest known biblical fragment, containing the PAPER

Hebrew text of the ten commandments. Acquired in Egypt 1902 by

W.L.Nash and now in Cambridge University Library.

-100
Nash Papyrus, oldest known biblical fragment, containing the PAPYRUS

Hebrew text of the ten commandments. Acquired in Egypt 1902 by

W.L.Nash and now in Cambridge University Library.

-100
1st C. BC - 1st C. AD The Romans substituted skin, or membranae, CODICES

for the wood panels in codices. It is unclear just when this was

done and whether membranae was similar to Medieval parchment or

to the thin leather of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it is known that there

are no examples or records of this substitution prior to the Romans.

Later, Romans used codices to record laws and rules of

order, lending the name codes or codicils to such documents.

January 17, 2003 Page 2 of 32
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