Sackler Library

Entrance at the St John Street, Oxford

The Sackler Library ( Sacklerbibliothek ) is home to a large number of classical, art historical and archaeological work of the University of Oxford in England.

History

The library was completed in 2001 and opened on September 24 this year. It replaces the library of the Ashmolean Museum. The site is the St John Street 1, at the back of the Ashmolean Museum. The library was founded by the generous donation of Dr. Mortimer Sackler multimillionaire.

The building was designed by the architect Robert Adam and Paul Hanvey. The striking building is characterized by a central circular block. So it serves its classic purpose, since one of the outer walls is decorated by the model of a classical frieze. One of the designer specifies that the input to the Doric order temple of Apollo is based in Bassae, which was first studied by Charles Robert Cockerell and who had designed the Ashmolean Museum ..

Collections

The collection includes four collections of older libraries, especially the Ashmolean library, the Classics Lending Library, the Eastern Art Library and the History of Art Library. Some important elements of the collection are:

• Western European art since around AD 1000
• Art history
• Classical and Byzantine Art and Archaeology
• Papyrology and Greek - Roman Egypt
• Archaeology of the Middle East and cuneiform languages
• Egyptology and Coptic language
• Ancient History
• Epigraphy
• Classical Languages ​​and Literature
• Prehistoric Archaeology of Europe and North Africa
• Archaeology Roman provinces
• Archaeology of the European Middle Ages
• Theoretical and scientific archeology
• Numismatics

Together with more than 100,000 fragments from Oxyrhynchus Papyrus and the Heracles is kept in the library, a fragment of a Greek manuscript dating from the 3rd century to the deeds of Heracles.