View Rare Texts From the Remnant Trust Exhibit Through May 12

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It's not too late to experience rare texts first-hand, but it will be soon. The University Libraries, the Division of Student Affairs and the School of Social Work are hosting an exhibit of rare books and materials from the Remnant Trust in Mullins Library through Monday, May 12. The Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum exhibit represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for visitors to view extremely rare materials, ranging from a cuneiform tablet dating to 2200 B.C. to the first printing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862.

Collections of this magnitude and quality are usually found deep in the archives of prestigious institutions, under lock and key and accessible only to a privileged few. However, the  Remnant Trust exists to elevate educational standards and the public’s understanding of individual liberty and human dignity through the precedent-setting, hands-on availability of the world’s great ideas in their original form. With the guiding principle that great ideas belong to everyone, the Remnant Trust offers for display a world-class collection of manuscripts and first and early edition works in original form.

The Wisdom of the Ages Athenaeum provides the public with the opportunity to view seminal works that changed the world by Aristotle, Augustine, Cicero, Copernicus, Galileo, Hippocrates, Newton, Ovid, Plato, and Virgil. The exhibit also contains a page from the first printed book, the Gutenberg Bible (1455), Queen Marie de Medici’s personal copy of Archimedes’ Opera (1675), the Articles of Confederation (1789), the Magna Carta (ca. 1350), an Egyptian scroll fragment of the Torah (ca. 1600), a Koran manuscript from the late 18th century, Shengji Ti’s The Illustrated Life of Confucius (1592), Marco Polo’s Travels (1627), Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1793), and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (1848). For more detail, see the full list of works in the exhibit.

The Remnant Trust in Winona Lake, Ind., is a place where everyone – from scholars to school-age children – can handle, read, and learn from the wisdom contained in their extensive collection of rare materials representing ideas that span over 2,500 years. Segments of the collection are loaned to universities, colleges, secondary schools, and other venues to host multidisciplinary exhibits.