I recently borrowed both volumes of the Duchesse D'Abrantès Madame Junot's "Memiors of Napoleon" from my grandparents' house. I was wondering when the editions I have were published, since they have these really interesting marbled covers, and with a little research I've determined that they're first edition copies from 1867. I was totally stunned by how old these two books were, especially considering their great condition! I also own a copy of John Gillies's "History of the World" from 1809, which is definitely the oldest book in my house, and it's in good condition as well. It's incredible to me that books this old can stay intact so long and then fall into the possession of someone as unqualified as me!
So I was wondering; from what eras of history do we still have a lot of surviving books? How old are the oldest books you've encountered in person? How old does a book have to be before it belongs in a museum instead of an antique store? I'm completely ignorant on the subject of historical book making and publishing, so I'd love to hear any insight.
Great response by ldcedge. I just wanted to add a couple quick things.
First of all, its hard to define the oldest "book." Are the Pyramid Texts (2400 BC), which were placed in ancient Egyptian pyramids and contain collections of various spells, able to be considered books? After all, we can write down their contents into a book and put it in a library for an Egyptologist to read. The ancient Egyptians simply lacked the means to make a proper, modern bound book. If we argue that a somewhat random collections of spells are not the same as a book in the modern sense, can we consider something like the Epic of Gilgamesh, the life story of a Sumerian king transmitted orally for centuries before being recorded on a still surviving tablet between 1300-1000 BC, a book?
In the Eastern tradition, the Yinqueshan Han Slips, dated between 140-118 BC, contain a copy of the Art of War. A copy of the Diamond Sutra, dated to 868m is considered the oldest printed book by the British Library. This copy is actually part of the Dunhuang manuscripts; the modern day project to consolidate all these documents has rendered a collection of over 500,000 pages. All of these examples technically possess the general qualifications of a book. Thus, its hard to say what book is first, it just depends on what someone defines to be a book.
I agree with ldcedge on the factors that make a book worthy of a museum rather than an antique store. I think a good generalization would be that a book is placed into a museum not for the value of its content, but for the value of the book itself to humanity. You can buy a copy of the Bible in many places, but the Gutenberg Bible, which contains more or less the same general texts as all the other Bibles, is valued because they were printed personally by Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, and only 49 copies remain. Additionally, there is an older copy of the Bible dating to the 4th century, a full one thousand years before Gutenberg. However, the exhibition of this Bible is likely to draw less interest than the Gutenberg due to the value we have assigned to the Gutenberg as people.