I cataloghi della cosa

The first books 

The history of books starts with the development of writing, and the first books have begun with tablets, scrolls, and sheets of papyrus. 
It's difficult to find the first book that appeared in a historical catalogs, or commercial catalogs or lists because this ones where also books and therefore is assumed that books were previously published, difused and sold before being in any catalog. Even so, the bible is, without a doubt, the oldest book and the one that appeared the most in catalogs and commercial magazines and advertisings.



Bible

According to several websites about the history of books, the first one being written is considered to be the bible. For fun, I also asked several people which book they thought had been the first one to appear and also got the same answer. In fact, the bible is a collection of writtings of which the earliest ones were set down nearly 3500 years ago. But, if we truly want to be accurate, we should desconsider the earlier writtings- which were mere texts, with no structure of the normal book- and consider only the date of its compilation and publication which was in 400 after Christ. This is considered to be the first book to be sold, since it is known that the christian religion was prevalent, speacially in such early times. The bible was almost a mandatory book for every family and house, which meant it was easily sold and was translated after to several different languages, in order to assuredly reach the greatest amount of countries as possible. Nowadays the bible is translated into 670 languages, and is the best seller book of all times with approximately 5 billion books so far.



Egyptian Book of the Dead

The egyptians were, as we know by the pyramids and so many other amazing sculptures that this people developed since early times, a very advanced civilization. It is not with surprise that we can find that one of the oldest books to exist is egyptian. After the bible, the earliest written literature that is known dates from about 2600 before Christ, in a time defined as the early bronze age that includes writtings from all the 3rd millennium before Christ. Certain literary texts are difficult to date, such as this one, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which was recorded in the Papyrus of Ani around 1240 before Christ, but other versions of the book probably date from about the 18th century before Christ. This book was also one of the first ones to be sold and traded in those days, though is not known if it took palce in any sort of catalog or any other form of advertising that might have been used in those early times, specially due to the fact that, when the actual catalogues started to appear, the object that is the "book" itself was already a common item in people's life, since the catalog itself was a book.


Encyclopedias - Naturalis Historiae


Despite the previous two books I've talked about, and several others less relevant that were also written in early times, the encyclopedias are, for sure, the first books that were heavily sold and comercialized, and have taken part in several catalogues. Encyclopedias have now existed for more than 2000 years, and an are a reference work that provides summaries of knowledge from a particular field or discipline. They are divided into articles or entries that are often arranged alphabetically by article name and/or by thematic categories. In spite of focus on linguistic information about words, such as their meaning, pronunciation, use, and grammatical forms, encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title. The earliest encyclopedic work to have survived to modern times is the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, a Roman statesman living in the first century after Christ. He compiled a work of 37 chapters covering natural history, architecture, medicine, geography, geology, and other aspects of the world around him. He also stated that he had compiled 20,000 facts from 2000 works by over 200 authors, and added many others from his own experience. The work was published around the year 77 to 79, although Pliny probably never finished editing the work before his death in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79.
Encyclopedias have progressed from written form in antiquity, to print in modern times. Today they can also be distributed and displayed electronically, and when searching for anything online the first thing that pops up is the Wikipedia page, that is currently one of the most complete eletronic encyclopedia that we can find.