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Library of Alexandria

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Ancient History,
Classical History and Mythology

   The Royal Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the
   largest library in the world. It is generally thought to have been
   founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC, during the reign of
   Ptolemy II of Egypt. It was likely created after his father had built
   what would become the first part of the library complex, the temple of
   the Muses — the Musaion (from which is derived the modern English word
   museum).

   It has been reasonably established that the library, or parts of the
   collection, were destroyed by fire on a number of occasions (library
   fires were common enough and replacement of handwritten manuscripts was
   very difficult, expensive and time-consuming). To this day the details
   of the destruction (or destructions) remain a lively source of
   controversy. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was inaugurated in 2003 near
   the site of the old library.

Problems of historiography

   Although the Library of Alexandria is referred to in numerous
   contemporary sources, there is not a great deal of material directly
   describing the library itself. By the modern era the library had come
   to symbolize the entirety of knowledge in the ancient world. Important
   to this symbolism are claims about the size of the library; the
   comprehensiveness of its collection, especially regarding books that no
   longer exist; and the circumstances of its destruction. Various authors
   explicitly blame certain individuals or groups for having destroyed the
   library, and this has given rise to complex accusations of bias. It is
   quite possible that the library suffered numerous complete or partial
   destructions in its long history.

The Library as a research institution

   According to the earliest sources of information for the library, the
   pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas, the library was initially organized
   by Demetrius of Phaleron. Demetrius was a student of Aristotle.

   Initially the library was closely linked to a "museum," or research
   centre, that seems to have focused primarily on editing texts.
   Libraries were important for textual research in the ancient world,
   since the same text often existed in several different versions of
   varying quality and veracity. The editors at the library of Alexandria
   are especially well known for their work on Homeric texts. The more
   famous editors generally also held the title of head librarian, and
   included, among others,
     * Zenodotus of Ephesus (late 3rd Century BC)
     * Aristophanes of Byzantium (early 2nd Century BC)
     * Aristarchus of Samothrace (early-mid 2nd Century BC), often
       considered the most prominent Homeric scholar of antiquity.
     * Didymus (First century BC), Grammarian.

   The geographical diversity of the scholars suggests that the library
   was in fact a major centre for research and learning. In 2004, a
   Polish-Egyptian team found what they believe to be a part of the
   library while excavating in the Bruchion region. The archaeologists
   unearthed thirteen "lecture halls", each with a central podium. Zahi
   Hawass, the president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said
   that all together, the rooms uncovered so far could have seated 5000
   students; the picture thus presented is most certainly of a fairly
   massive research institution, especially for that time.

   The Library likely encompassed several buildings, with the main book
   depositories either directly attached to or located close to the oldest
   building, the Museum, and a daughter library in the younger Serapeum,
   which was also a temple dedicated to the god Serapis. It is not always
   clear in the sources whether a phrase refers to a particular building,
   or to the institution as a whole. This has served to add to the
   confusion about when and by whom the library was "destroyed." By the
   early 2nd century BC, Eumenes II of Mysia had founded a competing
   library and research centre in Pergamum.

The collection

   A story concerns how its collection grew so large: by decree of Ptolemy
   III of Egypt, all visitors to the city were required to surrender all
   books and scrolls in their possession; these writings were then swiftly
   copied by official scribes. The originals were put into the Library,
   and the copies were delivered to the previous owners. This process also
   helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city.

   The library's collection was already famous in the ancient world, and
   became even more storied in later years. It is impossible, however, to
   determine how large the collection was in any era. The collection was
   made of papyrus scrolls. Later, parchment codices (predominant as a
   writing material after 300 AD) may have been substituted for papyrus. A
   single piece of writing might occupy several scrolls, and this division
   into self-contained "books" was a major aspect of editorial work. King
   Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) is said to have set 500,000
   scrolls as an objective. Mark Antony was supposed to have given
   Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls for the Library.

   No index of the library survives, and it is not possible to know with
   certainty how large and how diverse the collection was. It is likely,
   for example, that even if the library had hundreds of thousands of
   scrolls (and thus, perhaps, tens of thousands of individual works),
   that many of these were duplicate copies or alternate versions of the
   same texts.

The destruction of the Library

   Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the
   destruction of the Library:
    1. Caesar's conquest 48 BC
    2. the attack of Aurelian in the 3rd century AD
    3. the decree of Theophilus in 391 AD, and
    4. the Muslim conquest in 642 AD or thereafter.

   Each of these has been viewed with suspicion by other scholars as an
   effort to place the blame on particular actors. Moreover, each of these
   events is historically problematic. In the first and second case, there
   is clear evidence that the library was not in fact destroyed at those
   times. The third episode has had some strong supporters, including
   Edward Gibbon, but still many dispute this. The fourth episode was not
   documented by any contemporary source, although some maintain that the
   final destruction of the Library took place at this time.

   Plutarch's Lives, written at the end of the first or beginning of the
   second century AD, describes a battle in which Caesar was forced to
   burn his own ships, which in turn set fire to the docks and then the
   Library, destroying it. This would have occurred in 48 BC, during the
   fighting between Caesar and Ptolemy XII. However, there is no
   corroborating evidence that the library was in fact destroyed at this
   time. Only 25 years later Strabo saw the library and worked in it.
   Thus, any damage sustained by this battle was probably slight.

   The library seems to have been maintained and continued in existence
   until its contents were largely lost during the taking of the city by
   the Emperor Aurelian (270–275 AD), who was suppressing a revolt. The
   smaller library located at the Serapeum survived, but part of its
   contents may have been taken to Constantinople to adorn the new capital
   in the course of the 4th century.

   In 391, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all pagan
   temples, and Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria complied with this
   request. Socrates Scholasticus provides the following account of the
   destruction of the temples in Alexandria in the fifth book of his
   Historia Ecclesiastica, written around 440:
   5th century scroll which illustrates the destruction of the Serapeum by
   Theophilus (source: Christopher Haas: Alexandria in late antiquity,
   Baltimore 1997)
   Enlarge
   5th century scroll which illustrates the destruction of the Serapeum by
   Theophilus (source: Christopher Haas: Alexandria in late antiquity,
   Baltimore 1997)


   Library of Alexandria

     At the solicitation of Theophilus bishop of Alexandria the emperor
   issued an order at this time for the demolition of the heathen temples
   in that city; commanding also that it should be put in execution under
      the direction of Theophilus. Seizing this opportunity, Theophilus
       exerted himself to the utmost to expose the pagan mysteries to
   contempt. And to begin with, he caused the Mithreum to be cleaned out,
    and exhibited to public view the tokens of its bloody mysteries. Then
     he destroyed the Serapeum, and the bloody rites of the Mithreum he
    publicly caricatured; the Serapeum also he showed full of extravagant
     superstitions, and he had the phalli of Priapus carried through the
    midst of the forum. Thus this disturbance having been terminated, the
     governor of Alexandria, and the commander-in-chief of the troops in
       Egypt, assisted Theophilus in demolishing the heathen temples.


   Library of Alexandria

   The Serapeum housed part of the Library, but it is not known how many
   books were contained in it at the time of destruction. Notably, Paulus
   Orosius admitted in the sixth book of his History against the pagans: "
   Today there exist in temples book chests which we ourselves have seen,
   and, when these temples were plundered, these, we are told, were
   emptied by our own men in our time, which, indeed, is a true
   statement." Some or all of the books may have been taken, but any books
   left in the Serapeum at the time would have been destroyed when it was
   razed to the ground.

   As for the Museum, Mostafa El-Abbadi writes in Life and Fate of the
   ancient Library of Alexandria (Paris 1992):


   Library of Alexandria

   The Mouseion, being at the same time a 'shrine of the Muses', enjoyed a
   degree of sanctity as long as other pagan temples remained unmolested.
   Synesius of Cyrene, who studied under Hypatia at the end of the fourth
   century, saw the Mouseion and described the images of the philosophers
       in it. We have no later reference to its existence in the fifth
      century. As Theon, the distinguished mathematician and father of
         Hypatia, herself a renowned scholar, was the last recorded
    scholar-member (c. 380), it is likely that the Mouseion did not long
    survive the promulgation of Theodosius' decree in 391 to destroy all
                         pagan temples in the City.


   Library of Alexandria

   The tale of the Muslim destruction of the library comes from several
   Alexandrian historians, writing several hundred years later. The legend
   has it that the caliph Umar posed to commander Amr bin al 'Ass the
   following dilemma: "Touching the books you mention, if what is written
   in them agrees with the Book of God, they are not required; if it
   disagrees, they are not desired. Destroy them therefore." The tale goes
   on to say that the books fuelled the city's bath-houses for the next
   six months. Since the 18th century, this story has been universally
   regarded as a fiction. Normally it has been put down to Chistian
   crusader propaganda, but recently some historians, including Bernard
   Lewis, have argued that although the tale is certainly false, its true
   origin may be more complex.

   Although the actual circumstances and timing of the physical
   destruction of the library remains uncertain, it is however clear that
   by the 8th century AD, the library was no longer a significant
   institution and had ceased to function in any important capacity.
   Alexandria was not a major research centre for the Islamic world.
   Moreover, if the collection had survived to the early 700s, it would
   very likely have been incorporated into the library of the Al-Azhar
   mosque (and later university) in Cairo. This collection has come down
   to the present intact, but does not include Alexandrine texts.

The Library in fiction

     * The " seaQuest DSV" episode " Treasures of the Mind" deals with the
       seaQuest discovering the library sunken deep beneath the
       Mediterranean Sea.
     * The fabled Masonic cache of treasure in the film National Treasure
       contained at least some of the scrolls from the Library of
       Alexandria.
     * In the novel Treasure by Clive Cussler, a large amount of the
       information from the library was rescued from the Roman empire and
       moved to present day Texas.
     * In the game Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, the adventurer
       heroine Lara Croft finds the Library in the level titled "The Lost
       Library".
     * A Disney comic story The Guardians of the Lost Library ( D 29380),
       by Don Rosa, features Scrooge McDuck and his nephews trying to find
       the Library, only to discover it had been converted into the Junior
       Woodchucks' guidebook.
     * The Terry Pratchett novel, Small Gods includes extensive
       descriptions of the Library of Ephebe which is a parody of the
       Library of Alexandria.
     * The Matthew Reily novel Seven Ancient Wonders mentions the Library
       of Alexandria

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