10 of the Oldest Books in the World and Where to See Them
The beginnings of the book are hard to pinpoint, but between about 150 and 450 CE writing slowly moved away from scrolls and toward the codex, an early forerunner of the modern book. A print book is now generally defined as a series of folded leaves of parchment or paper that has been stitched and bound together between covers. The books below, some of which date back well over a thousand years, are among the oldest known to have survived intact to modern times—and many of them are regularly on display.
1. THE GUTENBERG BIBLE // ESTIMATED AGE: 561 YEARS OLD
The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book in the West printed with moveable type. It was created by the inventor of the modern printing press, Johann Gutenberg, in Mainz, Germany around 1455. Today only 50 copies of the Gutenberg Bible are known to survive, and of those only 21 are complete. Many libraries and institutions hold copies and often have them on display, including the British Library, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., and the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City (which owns three of them).
2. THE CODEX CALIXTINUS // ESTIMATED AGE: 866 YEARS OLD
The Codex Calixtinus was written in the mid-12th century and has been attributed to the French monk Aymeric Picaud. It consists of five books, the first four of which are religious texts. The fifth and final book is the most famous—it’s a pilgrim’s guide to a route to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain, and has been dubbed the world’s first travel guide. The guide to the “French Way,” a famous Medieval pilgrimage route from France to Santiago de Compostela, contains lots of useful advice on where to stay, which routes to take, and what food to avoid (the catfish apparently will make you sick). In 2011 this valuable book was stolen from the cathedral archives and thought lost for over a year, until it was uncovered in the garage of a disgruntled former electrician of the cathedral, along with a number of other pilfered texts and 1 million euros. Since its recovery, the Codex Calixtinus has been returned to its home at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, but this time with much-increased security measures.
3. THE UTA CODEX // ESTIMATED AGE: 991 YEARS OLD
The Uta Codex is a beautifully illuminated Bavarian Gospel lectionary that was created for Abbess Uta of Niedermünster around 1025. Due to its lavish decoration, the book is seen as one of the more important examples of 11th century Western illumination. The original ornate gold casket that houses the book also still survives, which makes it even more special. The codex is held at the Bavarian State Library in Munich, Germany.
4. ST. DUNSTAN’S CLASSBOOK // ESTIMATED AGE: 1073 YEARS OLD
St. Dunstan’s Classbook is made up of four booklets that were bound together into a book when St. Dunstan was Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey in England in the early 10th century. The book contains a remarkable hand-drawn picture of St. Dunstan himself crouched at the feet of Christ, with text in Latin reporting that it had been drawn in St. Dunstan’s own hand, which would imply a date around 943–957, when Dunstan was abbot of the abbey. The book was long held by Glastonbury Abbey, but since 1601 been part of the collection at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
5. SIDDUR, JEWISH PRAYER BOOK // ESTIMATED AGE: 1176 YEARS OLD
Scholars working for the Green Collection, one of the world’s largest collections of rare biblical artifacts, discovered a siddur (a Jewish prayer book) in 2013 dating from around 840 CE. This very early book, perhaps the oldest surviving siddur, is written on parchment in archaic Hebrew and retains its original bindings. The siddur will ultimately be part of the Green Collection Museum of the Bible, which is scheduled to open in Washington D.C. in 2017.
6. THE BOOK OF KELLS // ESTIMATED AGE: 1216 YEARS OLD
The Book of Kells, a superbly illustrated illuminated manuscript, is seen as one of Ireland’s greatest treasures. It may have been created around 800 CE at a monastery on the Scottish island of Iona, and transported to another monastery in Kells, County Meath in Ireland, after Viking raids on the monastery of Iona forced the monks to relocate. Scholars believe that it’s likely that three separate artists and four scribes worked upon the beautiful book, creating incomparable illuminated images. Since 1953, the book has been bound in four volumes, with any two on display at once at the Old Library of Trinity College in Dublin.
7. THE BENEDICTINE RULE // ESTIMATED AGE: 1316 YEARS OLD
The oldest book of English origin in the collection of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, this book was painstakingly copied out by hand from earlier versions around 700 CE by monks from the Midlands area of England. St. Benedict (c.480–c.547) is considered one of the founders of western monastic culture, having written down precepts around 540 CE that codified how Benedictine monks were to live their lives. This book is beautifully handwritten on vellum and represents the oldest surviving copy of St. Benedict’s Rule.
8. ST. CUTHBERT GOSPEL // ESTIMATED AGE: 1316 YEARS OLD
The St. Cuthbert Gospel is the oldest intact European book. Thought to have been produced in the late 7th or early 8th century, the book contains the Gospel of John written in Latin, and was produced in the northeast of England. It was buried with the body of St. Cuthbert and found in his coffin at Durham Cathedral when the coffin was opened in 1104; the book was removed for safekeeping. In 2012 the British Library raised £9 million (roughly $12 million) in order to buy the unique gospel, which can be seen in the Treasures Gallery at the British Library in London and has also been fully digitized.
9. THE LEIDEN HERBARIA // ESTIMATED AGE: 1416 YEARS OLD
A copy the Pseudo-Apuleius herbarium from around 600 CE—the oldest known Latin manuscript with botanical drawings—survives in Leiden University Library. The herbaria, a guide to plants and their medicinal uses, was originally written in Latin, possibly by a scribe living in Roman Africa, and contains many beautiful botanical illustrations. The copy in Leiden is the earliest known edition of this text and was thought to have been produced in southern Italy or France.
10. NAG HAMMADI LIBRARY // ESTIMATED AGE: 1666 YEARS OLD
In 1945 two Egyptian farmers discovered a cache of 13 ancient codices under a boulder in Upper Egypt. These very early books were bound in leather, and were written in the mid-4th century. They contained forgotten teachings from an early branch of Gnostic Christianity, in which believers looked to the spiritual, rather than the material, world. Written in the Coptic script, these religious texts reveal early Christian thought. The Nag Hammadi Library is kept at the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
SPECIAL MENTION: THE ETRUSCAN GOLD BOOK // ESTIMATED AGE: 2616 YEARS OLD
The extremely ancient Etruscan gold book does not generally count as a true book, since it is composed of single gold pages rather than folded leaves. However, it deserves an honorable mention due to its extreme age. The six pages of the “book,” found in Bulgaria, are made of pure gold, and are held together with golden rings. It was thought to have been created around 600 BCE, and contains illustrations of soldiers, a mermaid, and a harp. It can be seen at Bulgaria’s National History Museum in Sofia.
Source: mentalfloss
