BIBLICAL LIBRARIES
in Assyrian, Egyptian, Hebrew and other Semitic collections. This may come out at the same point with "counting-house" for the word for book in Hebrew is of close kin to numbering and the earliest books were probably counting records—at least the earliest known kinds of records, quipu, abacus, and notched stick are chiefly number records. "House" meant anything which contained anything, as house of ink==inkstand. It applied, therefore, to chest, room or whole building.
Very close to the house of books is the "bookcase, the commonest word for library since it came into common use in the Greek form bibliotheke. The "case" in English and "capsa," the common word for small book box in Latin from which the English "case" is derived, are just the "house" of books idea i.e. that which contains the books. The Greek idea comes out at the same point but by way of the idea of putting things away
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