Early collections of written documents, found in the remains of ancient civilizations of the Near East, tend to resemble what we think today as archives, that is to say, the written records of government transactions. One of the earliest societies to develop collections which may be called, in our sense, libraries was Egypt. By 2000 B.C. literacy there was apparently no longer the exclusive property of a priestly class, and books with a variety of subject matters were being assembled, typically in temples and in the pharaoh’s court. Temple libraries contained, so far as we know, a large variety of literary and religious material, although in terms of the culture that distinction is mostly meaningless. Palace libraries functioned more as government archives, but with exceptions.

            Perhaps the best-known palace library was the one excavated at Tel el-Amarna, the modern name for the site of the ancient city of Akhetaton. Although the city existed only a short time as a living community, its remains have told us much about the history of the period and the nature of libraries there. The city was built around 1375 to 1350 B.C. as the new capital of the Pharaoh Akhenaton—also known as Amenhotep, or Amenhophis, IV—as a part of his radical reform of Egyptian religion and thus virtually every aspect of Egyptian culture. This attempt, as we know, did not long survive its instigator, and the city was soon abandoned.

            Akhenaton’s library contained numerous clay tablets in cuneiform writing, the lingua franca of the day, representing primarily diplomatic correspondence between Amenhotep III, Akhenaton’s father, and states subject to Egypt. However, the present bookplate, found there during excavation, indicates that other sorts of books besides the cuneiform records of diplomatic maneuverings occupied the attention of the court of Amenhotep III and his vigorous Queen Teie.

            This faience (earthenware with glaze coating and inlay) tablet bears the inscription: “The Book of the Sycamore and the Olive. The Good God, Nibma‘at-Re, given life, beloved of Ptah king of the two lands, and the King’s wife Teie, living.” Thus its use was to identify a book belonging to the royal library of Amenhotep III and Teie. Exactly how the object was employed to carry out its function is somewhat speculative, since the book it was connected with is not extant. One scholar suggests that it might have been attached to the lid of a wooden box which contained the book in question. Two small holes not visible in the photograph may have been used to attach the tablet to the box. Nor is the nature of the book itself clear: no text of that title has survived. It is not even known whether the book was Egyptian, in hieroglyphics on papyrus, or Assyrian, in cuneiform on clay tablets, but it is clearly a work of fiction, apparently some sort of tale with a moral. We can, at any rate, imagine the pharaoh and his consort taking time off from the affairs of state for the pleasure of such a tale.

            The tablet, now in the British Museum, has been described by H. R. Hall, writing in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology for 1926, as follows: “Generally speaking its preservation is remarkable: there are only a few slight chips off it, and none in the inscription. The groundglaze is rather an uneven blue; the inscription is of a deep, almost violet-tinged blue glaze, let into hieroglyphs previously incised in the ground glaze. The work was by no means ill carried out, and the object is a very fine specimen of Egyptian fayence. . . .” The tablet is 62mm by 38mm and 4.5mm thick; its text has been transcribed:

 Phillip A. Metzger

Graduate School of Library Science

The University of Texas at Austin