Library of Alexandria

The Museum itself has been described as the most famous scholarly center of classical antiquity, gathering scholars from all over the world. The city soon became the political capital of Egypt and a center of Hellenistic culture, featuring one of the greatest libraries of the ancient world.

The library stood at Alexandria, Egypt, within the royal palace quarter known as the Bruchion. The Temple of the Muses was a shrine complex modeled on the Lyceum of Aristotle in Athens, located within the grounds of the Royal Palace in the Bruchion, the palace quarter.

The Library of Alexandria is commonly said to have been founded around 295 BCE as part of the Alexandrian Museum. Its establishment is attributed to Ptolemy I Soter, who acted on the advice of Demetrius of Phalerum. About 295 BCE Ptolemy I charged Demetrius of Phaleron with the task of founding the library and the Mouseion.

Demetrius of Phalerum was a pupil of Aristotle and Theophrastus and ruled Athens for the Macedonian king Cassander from 317 to 307 BC before fleeing to Egypt. A member of the Peripatetic school and a former Athenian politician, he sought refuge at the court of Ptolemy I Soter around 297 BCE and became the king's adviser.

According to the Letter of Aristeas, written between c. 145 BCE, the idea for the library was suggested by Demetrius of Phalerum, though the authenticity of the letter has been challenged. The founding of the Library of Alexandria, actually two or more libraries, is obscure; it is believed that around 295 BCE Demetrius of Phalerum convinced Ptolemy I Soter to establish it.

Strabo describes the Museum as a part of the palaces, with a public walk, a place furnished with seats, and a large hall where the learned members took their common meal. The community of the Museum possessed property in common, and a priest, formerly appointed by the kings but in Strabo's day by Caesar, presided over it.

During the reign of Ptolemy II more than 100 scholars were housed within the Museum, tasked with research, lecturing, publishing, translating and copying. The sources say that "Ptolemy" provided the scholars with a library containing a huge collection of papyrus scrolls, entrusting them with the mission of exploring every field of human knowledge. The library aimed to collect "all the books in the world" with most texts in Greek, and it incorporated a full corpus of Egyptian records. Judging from the scholarly work produced in Alexandria, it seems likely that the whole corpus of Greek literature was amassed in the library.

Hellenistic poets including Theocritus, Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes resided at Alexandria, where Euclid systematized mathematical knowledge and Eratosthenes calculated the Earth's circumference. Eratosthenes compared the noon shadow at midsummer between Syene and Alexandria and gave the circumference of the Earth as 250,000 stadia. On the death of Callimachus in about 240 BC, Eratosthenes became the third librarian at Alexandria, in the library in a temple of the Muses called the Mouseion.

The first librarian of Alexandria was the scholar Zenodotus of Ephesus, appointed under Ptolemy II, during whose reign the Mouseion and an addition, the Royal Library, were constructed. The institution itself was the most famous library of classical antiquity and formed part of the research institute at Alexandria known as the Alexandrian Museum, or Mouseion — the "shrine of the Muses".

Although Callimachus of Cyrene is often cited as a librarian at Alexandria, he never held that position; he developed the library's finding system into what would now be called a "card catalog". His Pinakes — Tables of Persons Eminent in Every Branch of Learning Together with a List of Their Writings — was a comprehensive survey and catalog of extant Greek works in 120 books. Bagnall notes that this famous Pinakes, a systematic listing of genres, authors and works in 120 books, could not have held the information necessary to catalog hundreds of thousands of rolls.

The last recorded Director of the great Library was the scholar and mathematician Theon, father of Hypatia, who was murdered by a Christian mob in Alexandria in 415 CE.

Under Ptolemy III Euergetes the library's collection increased as books were taken from ships at port, copied, and the originals were then housed in the stacks. What the library retained, in such cases, was the original rather than the transcript returned to its owner.

A similar insistence on the original is reported in the case of the Athenian tragedians. Ptolemy III is said to have posted a bond of 15 talents to Athens to borrow the original manuscripts of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles, then kept the originals and sent copies back.

One of the major acquisitions for the library was the 'books of Aristotle'. Athenaeus says Ptolemy II purchased the collection for a large sum, while Strabo says it was confiscated by Sulla in 86 BCE.

Plutarch reports the charge that Antony had bestowed upon Cleopatra the libraries from Pergamum, in which there were two hundred thousand volumes. The accusation was brought by Calvisius, a companion of Caesar, among accusations regarding Antony's behaviour towards Cleopatra.

No aspect of the Library of Alexandria has proved more resistant to agreement than the question of how much it actually held. The figure most often repeated is 500,000 works, though the same tradition concedes that this may have been an exaggeration ^{5Library of Alexandria · World History Encyclopedia ↗}. A comparable estimate places the holdings at half a million documents at their peak, without clarifying whether books or papyrus scrolls are meant ^{3What happened to the Great Library at Alexandria? · World History Encyclopedia ↗}. More generally, the library is said to have contained hundreds of thousands of papyrus and vellum scrolls ^{7Eratosthenes of Cyrene · MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews ↗}. The sources themselves are surprisingly scanty, and almost nothing certain is known about the real dimensions of the collections ^{1The Ancient Library of Alexandria: A Model for Classical Scholarship in the Age of Million Book Libraries · Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University ↗}.

The ancient testimony is not merely imprecise but internally inconsistent. The figure eventually reaches 700,000 in Aulus Gellius and Marcellinus ^{1The Ancient Library of Alexandria: A Model for Classical Scholarship in the Age of Million Book Libraries · Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University ↗}. A footnote to Ammianus notes that he confuses two libraries, the Bruchion library and the Serapeum's, which contained 490,000 and 42,800 volumes respectively ^{10The Roman History, Book XXII (trans. J. C. Rolfe) · LacusCurtius, University of Chicago ↗}. The same note states that the damage done by Caesar has been greatly exaggerated ^{10The Roman History, Book XXII (trans. J. C. Rolfe) · LacusCurtius, University of Chicago ↗}.

Modern scholarship has treated these numbers with open skepticism. Bagnall argues that the ancient figures for the size of the Library, or the number of volumes lost in the Alexandrine War, do not deserve any credence ^{8Alexandria: Library of Dreams (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146) · Roger S. Bagnall, NYU Faculty Digital Archive ↗}.

The fate of the Library of Alexandria has come down to us less as a settled historical record than as a murder mystery with a number of suspects, the most popular being Julius Caesar, whose operations in 48 BCE are often blamed for setting fire to the library near the shore. Historians have charged different suspects with the destruction of the library, motivated in part by their own nationality or ideology: Gibbon blames the Christians, El-Abbadi blames Caesar, and Canfora blames the Arabs. Destruction claims cite Julius Caesar in 48 BCE, Aurelian in 272 CE, Diocletian in 297 CE, Christian zealots in 391 and 415 CE, or Muslim Arab invaders in the 7th century. The Royal Library may have been unintentionally destroyed in 48 BCE during Julius Caesar's civil war in Egypt, when a fire set to enemy ships spread to the library.

Plutarch relates that Caesar, forced to repel the enemy by using fire during the Alexandrian war, saw the fire spread from the dockyards and destroy the great library. Cassius Dio records that in the fighting at Alexandria the docks and the storehouses of grain among other buildings were burned, and also the library, whose volumes were said to be of the greatest number and excellence. An editorial note to Plutarch observes that the destruction of the Library can have been only partial.

In his book The Vanished Library, Luciano Canfora interprets the evidence from ancient writers as the destruction of manuscripts stored in warehouses near the port waiting for export, rather than the great Library itself. The same note adds that the Bruchion library was destroyed in AD 272 and the Serapeum in AD 391; it states that the damage done by Caesar has been greatly exaggerated. The library's district was destroyed in 272 CE in the war against Zenobia.

Since the Museum was certainly still operative in the Roman period, belief in a Caesarian destruction of the Library requires the uneconomical assumption that the Library was destroyed but the Museum was not. Bagnall notes that there is no ancient account of the foundation of the Library.

The Library of Alexandria did not end in a single catastrophe. Ancient and modern accounts assign its losses to several distinct episodes, and scholars believe there is enough evidence that the destruction of the two libraries occurred at different times, with the Royal Library an unfortunate casualty of war.

Later losses fell upon the district and the daughter library. The daughter library, housed in the Serapeum, likely met its end in 391 when Theodosius I ordered the demolition of pagan temples and the Serapeum was attacked by Bishop Theophilus and his followers. The destruction of 391 CE was sanctioned by Theodosius I and carried out under Bishop Theophilus, and a Christian church was built on the site.

The fate of the Museum and its scholars frames the final chapter. In 389 all pagan monuments in Alexandria, including the Museum, were destroyed; in 391 the Serapeum was destroyed. In 414 the last leader of the philosophical school, Hypatia, was lynched by a Christian mob.

• 389 CE
  Pagan monuments destroyed
  All pagan monuments in Alexandria, including the Museum, were destroyed ^{15Alexandria · Livius.org (Jona Lendering) ↗}.
• 391 CE
  The Serapeum destroyed
  The destruction was sanctioned by Theodosius I and carried out under Bishop Theophilus ^{14Library of Alexandria: The fate of the Library of Alexandria (by Mostafa El-Abbadi) · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗}; a Christian church was built on the site ^{3What happened to the Great Library at Alexandria? · World History Encyclopedia ↗}.
• 415 CE
  Hypatia lynched
  Hypatia was lynched by a Christian mob ^{15Alexandria · Livius.org (Jona Lendering) ↗}.

For centuries the main point of contention was whether the library survived until the Arab conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century; scholars now agree both libraries perished long before it. ^{14Library of Alexandria: The fate of the Library of Alexandria (by Mostafa El-Abbadi) · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗} By the 7th century, when the Muslim Arabs are said to have burned the library's collection, there is no evidence that those books, or even their buildings, still existed in Alexandria. ^{5Library of Alexandria · World History Encyclopedia ↗} In 640 CE the Arabs under General Amrou ibn el-Ass captured Alexandria after a long siege; according to the story, the conquering Arabs heard about a magnificent library and were anxious to see it. ^{3What happened to the Great Library at Alexandria? · World History Encyclopedia ↗} The story relates that the Caliph, unmoved by the collection, stated that the books would either contradict the Koran and be heresy, or agree with it and be superfluous. ^{3What happened to the Great Library at Alexandria? · World History Encyclopedia ↗}

^{11Resurrecting Alexandria · The New Yorker ↗} Most contemporary scholars agree that the ancient Library of Alexandria had ceased to exist long before the Arab conquest. ^{14Library of Alexandria: The fate of the Library of Alexandria (by Mostafa El-Abbadi) · Encyclopaedia Britannica ↗}

The precise site of the ancient Library of Alexandria cannot now be fixed; it is known only to have lain within the royal palaces of the Ptolemies near the harbour.

A second, smaller collection was housed in the Serapeum, the temple of Serapis, and is commonly called the daughter library. Founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus, it contained 42,800 rolls, probably copies of the writings shelved in the bigger library.

The idea of reviving the ancient library was first proposed in 1972 by Mostafa El-Abbadi, a professor at Alexandria University. In 1974, on a Presidential visit to Alexandria, Richard Nixon unwittingly acted as a catalyst to the library project by asking his Egyptian hosts where the ancient Library of Alexandria had stood. After UNESCO told El-Abbadi's group that it made agreements only with governments, the project was recast as the Revival of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, or the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

In 1989 UNESCO sponsored a major international competition for a building design, attracting 524 entries from 58 countries. The $200 million structure, adjacent to Alexandria University and near the location of the ancient library, was completed in 2001, and takes the form of a massive cylinder emerging from the ground at a shallow angle only about 130 feet (40 metres) from the Mediterranean Sea. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was officially opened on 16 October 2002 and was designed to house eight million volumes on seven cascading levels. It also houses a planetarium, a school of library and information science, facilities for the digital preservation of rare books and manuscripts, and a conference centre.