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CHAPTER II - GENERAL VIEW OF THE LIBRARIES OF THE ANCIENTS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2011

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Summary

‥The testimonies of Antiquity and such as pass oraculously amongst us, were not, if we consider them, always so exact as to examine the doctrine they delivered. For some (and those the acutest of them) have left unto us many things of falsity controllable, not only by critical and collective reason, but by common observation. Other authors write often dubiously, …extenuating their affirmations with aiunt, ferunt, fortasse…. Others by hearsay, taking upon trust most they have delivered.”–

Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, B. I. c. 6

The so-called “Library of Osymandyas” until very lately most of its fame to the often-quoted passage of Diodorus Siculus which records its expressive inscription. But recent explorers in that wonderful field of monumental history which it is now the fashion to term “Egyptology,” have given it new interest by identifying the well-known palace-temple near Thebes (designated by Champollion and by Wilkinson the “Rameseium,” but more popularly known as the “Memnonium”), with the Library described by Diodorus as “The Dispensary of the Mind.”

In the elaborate plan of the “Memnonium” given by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, and of which I here subjoin a copy, he points out the two inner chambers (a, b) as having, one or other of them, contained this “Sacred Library.”

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Chapter
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Memoirs of Libraries
Including a Handbook of Library Economy
, pp. 12 - 31
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010
First published in: 1859

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