with its explanation. A canoe with a torch in the bow, three bucks and a
doe, the sign for a lake, and the picture of two wigwams tells the story
of a hunting expedition by torchlight on the lake from which three bucks
and a doe were brought back to the wigwam. A slightly more complex one
is given in Figure 3, which is the record of a shaman’s curing of a sick
man. A more complex one, given on page 26, with its explanation on pages
170-72, is the mnemonic song of an Ojibway medicine man.
One method of picture writing shows an action by several successive
stages of the same act. This is most commonly a picture of corresponding
gesture signs. The picture writing by successive pictures, showing
successive stages of a story, is a favorite method in the modern German
humorous illustrated papers, and has, of course, its perfect modern
counterpart in the cinematograph.
Any collection of wampum belts, birch bark, calendar skins, blankets, or
other picture writing records, is of course a picture library which has
already begun to take on the distinct character of the modern library.
§ 16. _Ideographic records_
Ideograms are the mnemonic stage of image writing. They may be
recognizable pictures but, if so, their meanings have no relation to the
picture itself. The head of an ox, for example, when it stands for an ox
is picture writing, but when it stands for divinity or for the sound “a”
it is an ideogram. All hieroglyphic and alphabetic writing is,
therefore, in a way ideographic, but we are accustomed to distinguish
phonetic writing and to leave for ideograms proper only those pictures
which appeal to eye rather than ear. Some people read even alphabetical
printed words as ideograms—the word suggests its object directly without
being translated into its sounds. Some, on the other hand, cannot read
even to themselves without thinking in sounds or even moving the lips.
Ideographic records so shade into the picture writing or the pictorial
image record on the one hand and into phonetic writing and the book form
common and appropriate to phonetic writing on the other, that it is not
easy to single out any examples of exclusive ideographic record
collections, although of course such collections are entirely
conceivable, and the earliest traces of Egyptian or Sumerian
hieroglyphics seem to suggest the stage where documents were in
ideograms of whole words, but at this stage ideogram and phonogram would
be almost indistinguishable as it would be a subjective matter as to
whether it suggested to any given individual a visual image directly or
only indirectly, through an ear picture.
§ 17. _Types of primitive libraries_
Various illustrations of the different kinds of primitive libraries,
possible or actual, have already been suggested. These may be summarized
as private record collections and tribal record collections, as
pictorial, mnemonic, and mixed, as object, image, and mixed, and as
priestly and secular. The matter may be made perhaps a little more
concrete by considering two types as to which we do not have to rely on
historical allusion, but of which we have concrete examples—votive
offering collections and libraries for the dead. With votive offering
collections are, of course, to be associated the medicine bag, amulets,
magical charm collections, and that whole class of primitive records or
symbolic objects which center in the religious head of the tribe. The
libraries for the dead, consisting as they do of objects buried with the
deceased, are essentially collections of personal records corresponding
with the modern private library. Collections of public records, not kept
with the religious collections, are well attested among primitive
people, and existed from very early times in Egypt and Babylonia, but on
the whole the inference of anthropology seems to be that up to the
neighborhood of the historical period the head of the tribe was both
priest and king, as the Czar of Russia is both Emperor and head of the
orthodox church, and religious and political collections one. The priest
king seems to have been the rule even in early historical times, and
temple and royal archives one, differentiated only as the numbers of the
nation and the complexity of the civilization grew. At all events, we
have abundant remains of temple collections of symbolic objects or
so-called “votive offerings”, including much unmistakable “writing” and
we have also a considerable number of examples of similar objects buried
with the dead, from very various localities all over the world.
The objects gathered together at shrines are commonly known as votive
offerings, but the actual uses and reasons for their collection are much
more various than is suggested by the ordinary meaning of the votive
offering, while, as a matter of fact, most of such objects are not
offerings at all, but only substitute object image records of such
offerings, or even mere symbols for offerings. A good type of this
latter class is the Chinese sacrifice which consists in writing prayers
on a piece of paper and burning the paper. But there are thousands of
illustrations in actual collections of something very close to this,
throwing most interesting light on the writing character of these
collections. The collections formed very soon after the invention of
phonetic handwriting in particular give very clean-cut illustrations of
the meaning of many classes of these temple deposits of symbolic and
mnemonic objects, and this in turn casts light on the primitive object
collections of the shaman and the tribal story teller.
To begin with, a list of the objects found in the Hopi North American
Indian shrines, as given by J. W. Fewkes, will illustrate the fact of
the varied contents of aboriginal shrines: “The temporary offerings in
shrines are prayer meal and pollen, sticks, clay effigies of small
animals, miniature bowls and vases of water, small bows and arrows,
small dolls, turquoise, shells, and other objects.” “Among the permanent
objects not offerings ... human or animal images of wood and stone,
concretionary or botryoidal stones, carved stone slabs, and fossil
shells” (Hodge).
The historical votive offering collections of Greece, Crete, Egypt, and
Babylonia extend over long periods, and the objects recovered from them
include hundreds of thousands of record objects. These include, as in
the case of the Hopi shrines, a great many objects not intended as
offerings at all. The temple treasuries, even in very early times, were
used as a sort of general safety deposit vault, the protection
consisting not only in the watchfulness of the priest but the tabu, or
curse laid upon those who should even approach the objects, and the
general belief that they were in fact under the protection of the god
who would punish theft. Such objects might be taken again by the owner,
as is shown in the case of the Greek temple treasuries, or they were
things held in trust by the priests for the benefit of widows and
orphans as was the case of the Jewish temple. Moreover, even the record
objects were by no means confined to records of the fact, the nature,
and the extent of the offerings made, although a great portion of them
were precisely for this record purpose. Increasingly, and at last very
extensively, they included records of events of war, hunting, and in
later times of the public games. They were in the Greek temples very
extensively biographical or genealogical and tended to be so
progressively. Indeed vast quantities of tablets “laid up” in the
temples had no connection with sacrifice at all but were merely records
deposited as one might deposit family manuscripts or present a printed
autobiography to a public library. The votive collection was simply a
public reference library as distinguished from political archives or
school libraries for instruction or learning.
The more strictly votive records were themselves of great variety. They
include object records, sample records, models, pictures, symbol
records, and phonetic inscription records. But, whatever the form, the
underlying idea or motive is the same, they are records of offerings
made, whether those offerings are sacrifice or thank offerings. The
treasury of the Greek temple was sometimes a separate building by itself
filled with these records. The Jewish temple had separate treasuries for
war trophies and for other votive offerings. Primarily, of course, these
treasuries were in fact intended for the actual objects—the tithe of the
first fruits, the tithe of the spoils taken in war, and the animals
intended for sacrifice, but as these were intended for consumption, the
records took their place and in later times increasingly images and even
verbal statements were used as offerings in place of real objects,
forming, so to speak, a collection of fiction or perhaps better, the
actual records of real spiritual acts performed, signifying petition,
sacrifice, thanksgiving, etc. of the worshiper. The innumerable tables
with record of cattle in the great cattle pens of the Babylonian
temples, although perhaps not to be described themselves as “votive
offerings”, actually correspond to the later practice, where the votive
offering is kept as records of offerings, and correspond very closely in
the case of war trophies, where it often happened that a part was
dedicated and the rest sold or melted down and made into valuable
objects which in turn might, in case of need, be converted into cash and
have an image or some other record substitute.
After the war trophies and perhaps before them, the most significant
class of offerings was that of the first fruits which ranged through the
whole field of human production from the fruit of mines, fields,
orchards, vineyards, hunting, fisheries, flocks, up through the trades
of fuller, potter, baker, tanner, shipwright, wash-woman, butcher, cook,
basket-maker, shoemaker, and so on up to professional men, recorders and
the first copy of literary works. When possible the offering might be
and was originally in kind, but when not, as in the case of the
physician or the recorder, it would be in the shape of money or, more
likely in the case of the physician, an image in some valuable substance
of the particular operation or disease for which fee was received (e.g.
the golden tumors which the Philistines sent to the Jewish shrine).
These were extremely common as the free-will offerings or vow payments
among those who had been healed. When money began to take the place of
barter the replacing of objects by their money value with registry of
same in the books of the temple grew with it and became the tithe-tax
still familiar in the English language and English society.
An extremely interesting library aspect of these (votive) collections is
the actual phonetically written books which were laid up. These can be
best illustrated from the Greek collections of books dedicated, but have
their precise technical equivalent in the books which Joshua, Samuel, or
Moses “laid up” before Jehovah, and indeed the technical term is
precisely that for putting a book into a library or a document into the
archives. The Greek collections included literary works, prize poems,
hymns to Dionysus, Apollo, Asclepius, etc. These may have been of a
strictly votive character, and this is true of many other works by
Pindar, Hesiod, Heraclitus, Aristomache, Aristotle, Agathias, Alcaeus,
and Solon which may perhaps be first fruits. This might also be true, of
course, of the astronomy of Eudoxus, the astronomical table of Onopides,
the calculations of Xenocrates and the log book of Hanno. But these at
least point to very varied contents of these “votive” libraries. These
examples above mentioned were on varied materials as well, including at
least lead, gold, marble, and bronze, apparently, as well as papyrus or
leather. Some of the works were in shorthand. While it is not easy to
conceive of literary works as first fruits in the earlier period of the
primitive writing and for the reason that such forms are themselves a
later development, many of the mnemonic objects preserved in primitive
collections certainly stand for prayers and hymns as well as narrative
records and in the collections of sacred liturgical objects these
represented set liturgical forms of words or dramatic procedures which
are books in quite a developed sense.
A curiously interesting suggestion which seems to throw light on the
literary meaning of votive objects is the statement by Miss Harrison
that the sacred tokens of Zeus as god of the storeroom were symbols, not
statues, and probably sacred tokens such as those carried in chests at
the sacred processions,—magic spells in short, kept in a jar for the
safeguarding of the storeroom. The farther identification of these with
the ambrosia and with Zeus himself seems to make rather clear that many
of the collections of sacred emblems are verbal documents. The relation
of this to what was before said of the keeping of books in jars is
obvious, and the fact is suggested that many of the so-called
collections of votive offerings are of this character, that is, mnemonic
objects, perhaps actual collections of verbal forms.
Libraries for the dead are most familiar and most highly developed in
the Egyptian burial customs. From a very early date various books,
generally known in their collected state now as chapters of the Book of
the Dead, were always buried with the important dead. Another famous
example of this burial of phonetic books with the dead is found in the
so-called Orphic or Petalian gold tablets, found at various points from
Asia Minor to Italy. The most interesting class, however, from our point
of view is the large quantities of quipus which have been found in the
Peruvian graves.
All these libraries should be clearly distinguished from other
collections of buried books, such as those which the Jews made of worn
and mutilated books. They are distinctly collections made for the use of
the dead. Some of them are for use during the journey to the Elysian
fields, the garden of Aalu, or the happy hunting grounds, some
apparently rather for use after reaching them. The Egyptian books are
rather clearly associated with the idea of the amulets and the other
written charms, though on a higher plane. The idea seems to have been
that the deceased should learn them by heart and recite them at various
points as passwords for admission to the various gates or to pass
various defenders of paradise. The Petalian tablets are precisely of the
same character. In the case of the quipus, and of symbolic emblems
generally, the analogy is perhaps rather to be found in the Egyptian
models of tools and servants, and the hunting weapons buried with the
North American Indians, also children’s playthings everywhere, where the
point seems to be to supply the dead with their customary instruments
for use after they have arrived in paradise.
Other objects of dress, ornament, etc., found in graves, strongly
suggest the similar collection during life, where clothing and ornament
is personal record of events or achievements in a man’s life. Probably
not all grave collections include the same elements, but it seems likely
that all three elements of personal record, guides to paradise, and
libraries for paradise, are to be recognized at one point or another.
The quipus form the clearest example, and the long history of knot
amulets suggests that they may have been intended primarily to play
precisely the same part that the various parts or chapters of the Book
of the Dead played. The equally extensive use, however, of knots for
records or reminders, as in the mnemonic fringes, allows the possibility
of the individual personal record, and there is, of course, also the
possibility that the graves in which they were found were the graves of
tribal recorders or reciters who carried with them the implements of
their trade in the same spirit that the hunting weapons were carried,
or, on the other hand, in the spirit of the suicide of a king’s servants
that they might serve him in the other world, and of the Ushabtiu
substitutes for this. These models of servants, boats, war implements,
and the like, in graves seem to be precisely analogous to the miniatures
substituted for actual objects in votive offerings.
Burial with the dead of a person’s favorite belongings has also to be
reckoned with in interpreting these collections. Sometimes all a man’s
favorite possessions were buried with him, and it not infrequently
happens in modern civilized times that a person has a favorite ornament
or possession buried with him. It was only yesterday that a man provided
for having his cremated body sunk in his favorite yacht.
§ 18. _Contents of primitive libraries_
The various kinds of documents in the several sorts of primitive writing
found in the different species of collections have been indicated under
the various headings. It is worth while however to gather these up
together a little and especially in view of the question of actual
origin.
It has been noted that collections of quipu, message sticks, fetishes,
personal ornaments, skin calendars, totems, votive objects and other
pictorial or mnemonic records in temples, graves, medicine tents,
private wigwams, etc., include, in pre-phonetic times, records of
personal exploits and events in personal history, family histories, and
tribal histories, hymns, prayers, amulets, financial accounts, and
economic records of various sorts, annual registers, contracts,
astronomical observations, etc.
All this has its bearing on the actual origin of libraries. Messrs.
Tedder and Brown in their excellent article in the latest edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica say that “the earliest use to which the
invention of inscribed or written signs was put was probably to record
important religious and political transactions”. Now as a matter of
fact, the conscious record of events and transactions selected as
important for the knowledge of posterity, or even, what was probably a
much earlier matter, for evidence of contract or practical memorandum,
represents a rather late stage in the evolution of record. It is likely
that there were many record collections before this stage was reached,
trophy, votive, etc., object records and economic records of various
sorts.
In point of fact as King remarks of the earliest Sumerian records, a
large quantity of the earliest records are land deeds, and any one who
looks over the cuneiform documents will be impressed with the fact that
an enormously large proportion of the existing documents of the early
historical period are contracts or lists of cattle or, as in the Cretan
excavation, labels, or lists of arrows and other materials laid up in
storehouses. Among Egyptian documents too, the annals of the Palermo
stone, the earliest systematic annals of Egypt, which incorporate
earlier documents from its own time (say 2700 B.C.) to six or seven
centuries farther back, are to a considerable extent filled with
memoranda of census lists of cattle taken and other lists of
possessions. It has already been noticed that among the commonest
earliest uses of notch, knot and pebble systems was use for the record
of cattle or other numerical lists of possessions.
It would be jumping at conclusions to say that the conventional sign
attached to or accompanying the pre-historic animal paintings of the
caves were numbers. They may quite likely be ownership marks. It is a
curious fact, which has recently been commented on, that these animal
paintings are of domestic animals and if so the ownership marks
themselves would be pictures of the marks actually branded upon the
animals just as such marks are still branded on cattle on the plains and
by New England farmers on their sheep. The fact that the tendency seems
to be to regard the contents of these caves as religious, and the use of
the caves as for religious purposes, suggests an analogy with votive
offerings. If the marks are in fact numbers, the combination of figure
and number suggests at once the innumerable lists of animals in the
Babylonian temple records. Ownership marks themselves are, of course,
not records of events but economic records and are very common before
the use of phonetic writing. One very large class of these is the
pottery mark which was first applied apparently by the man who made them
for himself as an ownership mark and then, as one became more skilled in
one thing and another and barter began, it passed into the trade-mark of
manufacturers which has survived in the modern trade-mark system.
It does not, of course, follow that the earliest documents were not also
religious as well as business and political, or even religious as
distinguished from the political. Actual evidence, so far as it goes,
seems to point to trophy records and votive records,—and votive records
of first fruits or other useful or valuable objects “laid up” are
economic records, but the parallel evidence as to priest king, the
evidence as to religious sanction for the protection of objects, the
hypothesis of priestly guidance in the tribal meal for fair
apportionment of spoils, etc., point to religious supervision of
economic matters. In the savage state the rule is that when food is
scanty the strong eat what they want and the weak starve—the rule of the
wolf pack. The germ of all social order is perhaps the rule that the
weak also shall share in limited food. Founded possibly in
selfishness—the will to keep the weak alive for selfish reasons, it
involves at least power of individual self-control, the considering of
remoter ends and a certain social-consciousness. The right sharing of
food supply requires a strong hand under savage conditions and every
possible sanction of authority. It was quite natural therefore that the
common meal “before God” which plays such a large part in primitive
custom should grow up—and equally natural that it should be the symbol
of peace. The priest, standing for God, divided the offering—no doubt in
the beginning the whole food supply—and perhaps “kept” the natural
relics of the feast in the way of skins and bones.
Provisionally therefore one may venture the hypothesis that the actual
beginnings of record collections were economic under religious
direction,—and are to be found in the remains of tribal feasts “before
God” although it may be fair to say that the rudiments of the matter
already existed when the strong hand of the head of the family or tribe
insisted on a fair distribution of food. Specht (p. 11) speaks of the
bones of sacrifices as “the oldest approaches to a sort of writing”, and
of course, the bones on the family plates, so to speak, were as truly
records of the parts assigned to them, so far as they went (and if their
portions had bones) as the bones of sacrifices! But then there is of
course the farther question: Did the first savage who denied himself for
the sake of one of the weak not have the religious motive, and did not
the first man who forced a tribe of his fellows to do the same, need to
use the religious sanction and invoke the fear of God as well as of his
own right arm? And then, equally of course, there is the farther
question whether the first man was a savage at all.
In the golden age before the mild and carnivorous Abel, before even his
fruitiverous and murderous older brother, before the Fall when all were
still fruit eaters and fruit eaters only, the tabu was—religious
prohibition and religious sanction. And that tabu was on the apples of
Iduna, the fruit of the tree of knowledge between good and evil, which
springs from the fountains of memory and reflection,—the golden apples
of strife which some say give immortality, some death. What is this tree
whose fruit is tangible knowledge, the food of the gods and which was in
the beginning with the first man, but a library, and what did those old
philosophizers mean by what they set down about the first man and the
way they put it? Did they mean that what is food for one is poison for
another or simply that to break tabu spells death whether it is body
food tabu or mind food tabu? Truth to tell the germ of the library is as
early as man’s mind—at least.