Library of Alexandria

**edyzmedieval** · 04-13-2006, 15:42

We all know the greatness of the library of Alexandria. It was founded after Alexander the Great death, by one of his generals, Ptolemy I who founded the Greek dynasty of Egypt, the Ptolemeic dynasty.

It contained thousands of scrolls containg invaluable information, priceless works of art and even Alexander's corpse, which was encased. It might have even contained works which could gave us information on the remote cultures and civilisations of the Mediteraneean, including Atlantis.

So, what really happened with it? Did it really burn down,on the reign of Theodosius the Great?
Or was it saved and hidden somewhere?

Please discuss. It's one of my favourite subjects.

**Duke Malcolm** · 04-13-2006, 16:47

I thought what really happened was a mighty mystery...

**Craterus** · 04-13-2006, 18:27

Alexander's corpse? I thought that after Ptolemy had it stolen from Seleucus, he buried it in an unknown location close to the city?

EDIT: And didn't the Romans burn all the books to heat their baths?

**Vladimir** · 04-13-2006, 19:10

Strange. I thought an earthquake threw it into the sea.

**edyzmedieval** · 04-13-2006, 20:01

So many accounts of it...This leads us to a mystery.

What did it actually contain? Works from whom?

**Craterus** · 04-13-2006, 21:13

Originally Posted by Vladimir

Strange. I thought an earthquake threw it into the sea.

That was the lighthouse of Alexandria. Or it may have been the Colossus of Rhodes.

Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

What did it actually contain? Works from whom?

I think there were a lot of documents that could shed some light on some on history's mysteries. Probably quite a few sources that would be very useful to scholars and historians today.

**Alexanderofmacedon** · 04-14-2006, 00:45

Originally Posted by Craterus

Alexander's corpse? I thought that after Ptolemy had it stolen from Seleucus, he buried it in an unknown location close to the city?

EDIT: And didn't the Romans burn all the books to heat their baths?

I don't think Ptolemy buried it. He mumified it like did the rest of the Egyptian people.

**Craterus** · 04-14-2006, 00:48

Yeah sorry, wrong choice of language...

Caesar cried at Alexander's tomb, so I think we can establish that his body wasn't "housed", for lack of a better word, in the Library.

**Kraxis** · 04-14-2006, 00:54

Yup... Alexander had his own 'little' mausolaeum (sp?).

There is a map of Alexandria from around 1200AD whre there is a building in the city that has the legend "Domus Alexandri Magni" just next to the big mosque. But that area is pretty paved over by now... likely the Mamlukes didn't care much for Alexander.

Btw, I thought the library burnt down when Caesar set fire to the Ptlomaic fleet.

**Aenlic** · 04-14-2006, 01:45

Plutarch is the source of the claim that Julius Caesar did it. But this is in some dispute as Marc Anthony supposedly made a gift of scrolls for the library to Cleopatra, which would have been after Julius. Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, asked for and received permission from emperor Theodosius I to destroy all of the pagan temples in Alexandria. Among those would have been buildings which also housed portions of the library. This is the theory put forward by Edward Gibbon in the "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" anyway. Another source says that the boks which survived Theophilus' destruction were later destroyed at the order of Caliph Omar. Prior to Julius Caesar, there was a major fire in the library concurrent with the insurrections in Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy VIII.

There's a very nice article about the issues on The Straight Dope. They attempt to at least delineate those legends about the library's destruction which are more credible than others (they call the story about Caliph Omar apocryphal, at best) ; and they list the series of fires which taken as a whole may have led to the legendary single "fire" and destruction of the Library.

**Geoffrey S** · 04-14-2006, 10:53

Very interesting article Aenlic, it's an excellent summary of the various theories.

Originally Posted by Straight Dope article

Whom do we blame for the destruction of the library? We like Matthew Battles' summary. He notes that scrolls (like books) erode and fall apart over time, and we're dealing with five or six centuries. If an old scroll were crumbling, a scribe would have to make a new copy by hand. Battles writes:

Before the flames, before theft and censorship, the fate of books is bound up in the constant shuffling and transformation. Though Alexandria's libraries were universal in scope, their librarians faced hard choices. Manuscript scrolls were costly and time-consuming to produce, and the scribes' precious labor could not often be lavished on minor texts. Naturally, only the major works were copied in any great quantity. The rest--the secondary, the extra-canonical, and the apocryphal--dropped out of view.

Battles suggests that the destruction of the library wasn't due to a single great fire, but on account of "moldering slowly through the centuries as people grew indifferent and even hostile to their contents."

He concludes: "What happened to the books of Alexandria? Many, many centuries happened to them--too many for their inevitable dispersal and disappearance to be staved off, no matter whose mobs rioted in the streets, no matter which emperors set fires."

To me, this sounds most likely. Scrolls are fragile things, and as Hellenic and Roman culture stagnated little effort would have been put into preserving the many scrolls; at best, major works would survive.

The numerous fires throughout the centuries probably didn't help, but I find it unlikely that they ever totally destroyed the library, particularly considering the fact that various authors mention the library or are known to have worked there even after the various fires.