| 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 |