The oldest of all alleged libraries are the libraries of the gods.
Almost all the great god families, Indian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Scandinavian, had their own book-collections, so it is said. According to several religions there were book-collections before the creation of man; the Talmud has it that there was one before the creation of the world, the Vedas say that collections existed before even the Creator created himself, and the Koran maintains that such a collection co-existed from eternity with the uncreated God. It is obviously idle to try to trace libraries back farther than this.
Brahma, Odin, Thoth, and substantially all the creator gods who are described in terms of knowledge or words, are each sometimes in effect looked on by the mythologists as himself an incarnate library and sometimes even the books of which he is composed are specified.
On the other hand, by many all creation was looked on as a library. To the ancient Babylonians the stars of heaven were themselves books in which could be read the secrets of heaven and earth and the destiny of mankind. The whole firmament was thus a library of celestial tablets—tablets of destiny or tablets of wisdom from the “house of wisdom”, which was before creation, or carried upon the breast of the world ruler. “The Zodiac forms the Book of Revelation proper ... the fixed stars ... the commentary on the margin” (cf. Jeremias. Art. Book of Life, in: Hastings ERE.)
This belief, developed into the so-called science of astrology, had a prodigious influence even on the political history of mankind through its effect on the decisions and acts of kings. The conviction that the will of the gods as to future events was here written down, stored up and might be read, was at times the controlling factor in the shaping of human events.
Two of the most famous libraries of the gods are those of Brahma and of Odin. The books of Thoth, equally or more famous, belong to a somewhat different class. Brahma’s library contained or was the Vedas—themselves in fact a large collection of various works. These were, it is alleged, preserved in the memory of the omniscient Brahma and at the beginning of this present age they were, in the modern language of an ancient Sanskrit writer, Kalkuka Bhatta “drawn out”. Attention has been called to the fact that this library was represented as a classified library with notation founded on the points of the compass!
“From the eastern mouth of Brahma ... issued ... the rich verses.... From his southern mouth ... the yajash verses.... From the western mouth ... the saman verses and the metics.... From the northern mouth of Vedas (Brahma) was manifested the entire Atharvana” (Muir. 3:12). This library was, it should be noticed, quite up to date in having the special collections kept in separate rooms with separate exits. It was also, it appears, not a mere reference library but books were issued for outside use.
Brahma’s library was represented in various other forms e.g., as the milk of the cow goddess or the juice of the Soma plant, and in the same way Odin’s collection of words or knowledge is represented in various forms e.g., as the milk of the goat Heidrun, the water of the fountain of memory, the apples of Iduna, which were the fruit of the tree of knowledge and the blood of the wise Kvaser.
That which best identifies the mead, which is the source of the immortality of the gods themselves and without which they languish and die, with books, is the story of Kvaser. Kvaser was the wisest of all the gods (Fooling of Gylfe 54). The dwarfs put him to death and gave out that he had drowned himself in his own wisdom, but in fact they slew him for this wisdom, which was his blood. This was drawn off into a kettle called OdrÖrer (“that which moves the mind”) and mixed with honey was most carefully kept in jars. Drinking out of these jars makes an ordinary man “a poet and man of knowledge” but the mead is most jealously kept to renew the life of gods and poets (Brage’s talk 3 sq.) and grudged to mortals. Once Odin, hard pressed in flight, let fall a few drops of this essence of knowledge, and this scanty supply eagerly caught up by mortals produced the rabble of bad poets.
This collection of jar-fulls of knowledge was an obvious library and recalls the fact that almost all the mythologers represent books or knowledge as food or drink, kept in jars. It is not wholly excluded that this great series of myths came from the earliest practice of keeping clay tablets or papyrus rolls in clay jars, precisely similar to the jars in which wine, oil and grain were kept in some treasure houses. But however that may be the soma of India, the haoma of Persia, as well as the Scandinavian mead and the ambrosia and nectar of classical times, were all looked on as concrete knowledge and as such the food and drink of the spiritual or immortal life—a very reasonable philosophy.
These libraries of the gods should not be confused with real collections of books of alleged superhuman authorship like the books of the Old Testament, which are not claimed by any to have been written before 1200 or 1500 B.C., or the collections of actual oracles delivered at Delphis, Dodona or other shrines, or even with the forged oracles of Greece, or the apocryphal Jewish and Christian books. All these were actual historical book collections and the question whether authorship was really superhuman or not is indifferent at this point which has to do with the libraries which the gods are alleged to have had for themselves before man was.
