THE origin of Ink belongs to an era following the invention of writing. When the development of that art had advanced beyond the age of stone inscription or clay tablet, some material for marking with the reed and the brush was necessary. It was not difficult to obtain black or colored mixtures for this purpose. With their advent, forty centuries or more ago, begins the genesis of ink.
http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/tech/printing/FortyCenturiesofInk/chap1.html
As soon as we are able to write, the process of storing such writings begins. The repository of such writings is the library. It was the greeks which fuel and spread the idea. Perhaps it is not surprsing that Aristotle founded a great private collection. Ancient geographer Strabo said Aristotle “was the first to have put together a collection of books and to have taught the kings in Egypt how to arrange a library.”
That Library was the Great Library of Alexandria. When Egypt’s King Ptolemy I (305-282bc) asked, “How many scrolls do we have?”, Aristotle’s disciple Demetrius of Phalerum was on hand to answer with the latest count. After all, it was Demetrius who suggested setting up a universal library to hold copies of all the books in the world. Ptolemy and his successors wanted to understand the people under their rule and house Latin, Buddhist, Persian, Hebrew, and Egyptian works – translated into Greek. Read from the history magazine http://www.history-magazine.com/libraries.html
