There are several classes of alleged libraries, which if they have real existence must necessarily precede all others. These include the libraries of the gods, animal or plant libraries, Preadamite and Coadamite libraries and the alleged libraries of the antediluvian patriarchs. All of these may be included under the term antediluvian and the period subdivided chronologically into Adamite or Patriarchal, Preadamite, Prehuman (plant and animal libraries) and Precosmic (libraries of the gods)!
There is a considerable literature on the subject of antediluvian libraries (cf. Schmidt, Bibliothekswissenschaft, 1840, p. 67; Richardson in Library Journal, 15, 1890, pp. 40-44), but this term has been, until recently, used to include mainly libraries which were alleged to have existed from Adam to Noah. Modern explorations in comparative psychology on the one hand and comparative mythology on the other have however now brought to light many potential or alleged libraries from before Adam—not forgetting that this first ancestor of ours has quite recently been dated some sixty million years before the Christian era!
§ 6. Libraries of the gods
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.