"Great Library" redirects here. For the library of Quebec in Montreal, seeGrande Bibliothèque.
Library of Alexandria
Nineteenth-century artistic rendering of the Library of Alexandria by the German artist O. Von Corven, based partially on the archaeological evidence available at that time[1]
Estimates vary; somewhere between 40,000 and 400,000scrolls,[6] perhaps equivalent to roughly 100,000 books[7]
Other information
Employees
Estimated to have employed over 100 scholars at its height[8][9]
TheLibrary of Alexandria inAlexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significantlibraries of the ancient world. Thelibrary was part of a larger research institution called theMouseion, which was dedicated to theMuses, the nine goddesses of the arts.[10] The idea of a universal library in Alexandria may have been proposed byDemetrius of Phalerum, an exiled Athenian statesman living in Alexandria, toPtolemy I Soter, who may have established plans for the library, but the library itself was probably not built until the reign of his sonPtolemy II Philadelphus. The library quickly acquired manypapyrusscrolls, owing largely to the Ptolemaic kings' aggressive and well-funded policies for procuring texts.[3] It is unknown precisely how many scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height.
The influence of the Library declined gradually over the course of several centuries. This decline began with the purging of intellectuals from Alexandria in 145 BC during the reign ofPtolemy VIII Physcon, which resulted in Aristarchus of Samothrace, the head librarian, resigning and exiling himself toCyprus. Many other scholars, includingDionysius Thrax andApollodorus of Athens, fled to other cities, where they continued teaching and conducting scholarship. The Library, or part of its collection, was accidentally burned byJulius Caesar duringhis civil war in 48 BC, but it is unclear how much was actually destroyed and it seems to have either survived or been rebuilt shortly thereafter. The geographerStrabo mentions having visited the Mouseion in around 20 BC, and the prodigious scholarly output ofDidymus Chalcenterus in Alexandria from this period indicates that he had access to at least some of the Library's resources.
The Library dwindled during theRoman period, from a lack of funding and support. Its membership appears to have ceased by the 260s AD. Between 270 and 275 AD, Alexandria saw aPalmyrene invasion and an imperial counterattack that probably destroyed whatever remained of the Library, if it still existed. The daughter library in the Serapeum may have survived after the main Library's destruction. The Serapeum, mainly used as a gathering place forNeoplatonist philosophers following the teachings ofIamblichus, was vandalized and demolished in 391 AD under a decree issued by bishopTheophilus of Alexandria.
The Library of Alexandria was not the first library of its kind.[3][11] A long tradition of libraries existed in both Greece and in theancient Near East.[12][3] The earliest recorded archive of written materials comes from the ancientSumerian city-state ofUruk in around 3400 BC, when writing had only just begun to develop.[13] Scholarly curation of literary texts began in around 2500 BC.[13] The later kingdoms and empires of the ancient Near East had long traditions of book collecting.[14][3] The ancientHittites andAssyrians had massive archives containing records written in many different languages.[14] The most famous library of the ancient Near East was theLibrary of Ashurbanipal inNineveh, founded in the seventh century BC by the Assyrian kingAshurbanipal (ruled 668–c. 627 BC).[13][3] A large library also existed inBabylon during the reign ofNebuchadnezzar II (c. 605–c. 562 BC).[14] In Greece, the Athenian tyrantPisistratus was said to have founded the first major public library in the sixth century BC.[15] It was out of this mixed heritage of both Greek and Near Eastern book collections that the idea for the Library of Alexandria may have been born through Alexander.[16][3]
Following the death ofAlexander the Great in 323 BC, there was a power grab for his empire among his top-ranking officers. The empire was divided into three: theAntigonid dynasty controlled Greece; theSeleucid dynasty, who had their capitals atAntioch andSeleucia, controlled large areas of Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia; and thePtolemaic dynasty controlled Egypt with Alexandria as its capital.[17] The Macedonian kings who succeeded Alexander the Great as rulers of the Near East wanted to promote Hellenistic culture and learning throughout the known world.[18] These rulers, therefore, had a vested interest in collecting and compiling information from both the Greeks and the far more ancient kingdoms of the Near East.[18] Libraries enhanced a city's prestige, attracted scholars, and provided practical assistance in ruling and governing the kingdom.[4][19] Eventually, for these reasons, every major Hellenistic urban center would have a royal library.[4][20] The Library of Alexandria, however, was unprecedented because of the scope and scale of the Ptolemies' ambitions;[4][21] unlike their predecessors and contemporaries, the Ptolemies wanted to produce a repository of all knowledge.[4][5] To support this endeavor, they were well positioned as Egypt was the ideal habitat for thepapyrus plant, which provided an abundant supply of materials needed to amass their knowledge repository.[22]
Modern scholars agree that, while it is possible that Ptolemy I, who was a historian and author[27] of an account of Alexander's campaign, may have laid the groundwork for the Library, it probably did not come into being as a physical institution until the reign of Ptolemy II.[24] By that time, Demetrius of Phalerum had fallen out of favor with the Ptolemaic court. He probably would not, therefore, have had any role in establishing the Library as an institution.[2]Stephen V. Tracy, however, argues that it is highly probable that Demetrius played an important role in collecting at least some of the earliest texts that would later become part of the Library's collection.[2] In around 295 BC, Demetrius may have acquired early texts of the writings of Aristotle andTheophrastus, which he would have been uniquely positioned to do since he was a distinguished member of thePeripatetic school.[28]
The Library was built in the Brucheion (Royal Quarter) as part of theMouseion.[29][a] Its main purpose was to show off the wealth of Egypt, with research as a lesser goal,[23] but its contents were used to aid the ruler of Egypt.[31] The exact layout of the library is not known, but ancient sources describe the Library of Alexandria as comprising a collection of scrolls, Greek columns, aperipatos walk, a room for shared dining, a reading room, meeting rooms, gardens, and lecture halls, creating a model for the modern universitycampus.[32] A hall contained shelves for the collections of papyrus scrolls known asbibliothekai (βιβλιοθῆκαι). According to popular description, an inscription above the shelves read: "The place of the cure of the soul."[33]
Map of ancient Alexandria. The Mouseion was located in the royal Broucheion quarter (listed on this map as "Bruchium") in the central part of the city near the Great Harbor ("Portus Magnus" on the map).[34]
The Ptolemaic rulers intended the Library to be a collection of all knowledge[31] and they worked to expand the Library's collections through an aggressive and well-funded policy of book purchasing.[35] They dispatched royal agents with large amounts of money and ordered them to purchase and collect as many texts as they possibly could, about any subject and by any author.[35] Older copies of texts were favored over newer ones, since it was assumed that older copies had undergone less copying and that they were therefore more likely to more closely resemble what the original author had written.[35] This program involved trips to the book fairs ofRhodes andAthens.[36] According to the Greek medical writerGalen, under the decree of Ptolemy II, any books found on ships that came into port were taken to the library, where they were copied by official scribes.[37][3][38][8][19] The original texts were kept in the library, and the copies delivered to the owners.[37][9][8][19] The Library particularly focused on acquiring manuscripts of the Homeric poems, which were the foundation of Greek education and revered above all other poems.[39] The Library therefore acquired many different manuscripts of these poems, tagging each copy with a label to indicate where it had come from.[39]
In addition to collecting works from the past, the Mouseion which housed the Library also served as home to a host of international scholars, poets, philosophers, and researchers, who, according to the first-century BC Greek geographerStrabo, were provided with a large salary, free food and lodging, and exemption from taxes.[40][41][42] They had a large, circular dining hall with a high domed ceiling in which they ate meals communally.[42] There were also numerous classrooms, where the scholars were expected to at least occasionally teach students.[42] Ptolemy II Philadelphus is said to have had a keen interest in zoology, so it has been speculated that the Mouseion may have even had a zoo for exotic animals.[42] According to classical scholarLionel Casson, the idea was that if the scholars were completely freed from all the burdens of everyday life they would be able to devote more time to research and intellectual pursuits.[35] Strabo called the group of scholars who lived at the Mouseion aσύνοδος (synodos, "community").[42] As early as 283 BC, they may have numbered between thirty and fifty learned men.[42]
The Library of Alexandria was not affiliated with any particular philosophical school; consequently, scholars who studied there had considerable academic freedom.[9] They were, however, subject to the authority of the king.[9] One likely apocryphal story is told of a poet namedSotades who wrote an obscene epigram making fun of Ptolemy II for marrying his sisterArsinoe II.[9] Ptolemy II is said to have jailed him and, after he escaped and was caught again, sealed him in a lead jar and dropped him into the sea.[9] As a religious center, the Mouseion was directed by a priest of the Muses known as anepistates, who was appointed by the king in the same manner as the priests who managed the variousEgyptian temples.[43] The Library itself was directed by a scholar who served ashead librarian, as well as tutor to the king's son.[42][44][45][46]
The first recorded head librarian wasZenodotus of Ephesus (livedc. 325 – c. 270 BC).[3][45][46] Zenodotus' main work was devoted to the establishment of canonical texts for the Homeric poems and the early Greek lyric poets.[45][46] Most of what is known about him comes from later commentaries that mention his preferred readings of particular passages.[45] Zenodotus is known to have written a glossary of rare and unusual words, which was organized inalphabetical order, making him the first person known to have employed alphabetical order as a method of organization.[46] Since the collection at the Library of Alexandria seems to have been organized in alphabetical order by the first letter of the author's name from very early, Casson concludes that it is highly probable that Zenodotus was the one who organized it in this way.[46] Zenodotus' system of alphabetization, however, only used the first letter of the word[46] and it was not until the second century AD that anyone is known to have applied the same method of alphabetization to the remaining letters of the word.[46]
Meanwhile, the scholar and poetCallimachus compiled thePinakes, a 120-book catalogue of various authors and all their known works.[3][45][44][9] ThePinakes has not survived, but enough references to it and fragments of it have survived to allow scholars to reconstruct its basic structure.[47] ThePinakes was divided into multiple sections, each containing entries for writers of a particular genre of literature.[9][47] The most basic division was between writers of poetry and prose, with each section divided into smaller subsections.[47] Each section listed authors in alphabetical order.[48] Each entry included the author's name, father's name, place of birth, and other brief biographical information, sometimes including nicknames by which that author was known, followed by a complete list of all that author's known works.[48] The entries for prolific authors such asAeschylus,Euripides,Sophocles, andTheophrastus must have been extremely long, spanning multiple columns of text.[48] Although Callimachus did his most famous work at the Library of Alexandria, he never held the position of head librarian there.[44][9] Callimachus' pupilHermippus of Smyrna wrote biographies,Philostephanus of Cyrene studied geography, andIstros (who may have also been from Cyrene) studied Attic antiquities.[49] In addition to the Great Library, many other smaller libraries also began to spring up all around the city of Alexandria.[9]
According to legend, the Syracusan inventorArchimedes invented theArchimedes' screw, a pump for transporting water, while studying at the Library of Alexandria.[50]
According to legend, during the librarianship of Apollonius, the mathematician and inventorArchimedes (livedc. 287 –c. 212 BC) came to visit the Library of Alexandria.[50] During his time in Egypt, Archimedes is said to have observed the rise and fall of theNile, leading him to invent theArchimedes' screw, which can be used to transport water from low-lying bodies into irrigation ditches.[50] Archimedes later returned to Syracuse, where he continued making new inventions.[50]
According to two late and largely unreliable biographies, Apollonius was forced to resign from his position as head librarian and moved to the island of Rhodes (after which he takes his name) on account of the hostile reception he received in Alexandria to the first draft of hisArgonautica.[52] It is more likely that Apollonius' resignation was on account of Ptolemy III Euergetes' ascension to the throne in 246 BC.[51]
The third head librarian,Eratosthenes of Cyrene (livedc. 280–c. 194 BC), is best known today for his scientific works, but he was also a literary scholar.[44][53][50] Eratosthenes' most important work was his treatiseGeographika, which was originally in three volumes.[54] The work itself has not survived, but many fragments of it are preserved through quotation in the writings of the later geographerStrabo.[54] Eratosthenes was the first scholar to apply mathematics to geography and map-making[55] and, in his treatiseConcerning the Measurement of the Earth, he calculated the circumference of the earth and was only off by less than a few hundred kilometers.[55][50][56] Eratosthenes also produced a map of the entire known world, which incorporated information taken from sources held in the Library, including accounts ofAlexander the Great's campaigns in India and reports written by members of Ptolemaic elephant-hunting expeditions along the coast ofEast Africa.[56]
Eratosthenes was the first person to advance geography towards becoming a scientific discipline.[57] Eratosthenes believed that the setting of the Homeric poems was purely imaginary and argued that the purpose of poetry was "to capture the soul", rather than to give a historically accurate account of actual events.[54] Strabo quotes him as having sarcastically commented, "a man might find the places of Odysseus' wanderings if the day were to come when he would find the leatherworker who stitched the goatskin of the winds."[54] Meanwhile, scholars at the Library of Alexandria displayed interest in other scientific subjects.[58][59]Bacchius of Tanagra, a contemporary of Eratosthenes, edited and commented on the medical writings of theHippocratic Corpus.[58] The doctorsHerophilus (livedc. 335–c. 280 BC) andErasistratus (c. 304–c. 250 BC) studiedhuman anatomy, but their studies were hindered by protests against thedissection of human corpses, which was seen as immoral.[60]
According to Galen, around this time, Ptolemy III requested permission from the Athenians to borrow the original manuscripts ofAeschylus,Sophocles, andEuripides, for which the Athenians demanded the enormous amount of fifteentalents (1,000 lb; 450 kg) of a precious metal as guarantee that he would return them.[61][42][5][62] Ptolemy III had expensive copies of the plays made on the highest quality papyrus and sent the Athenians the copies, keeping the original manuscripts for the library[3] and telling the Athenians they could keep the talents.[61][42][5][62] This story may also be construed to show the power of Alexandria over Athens during thePtolemaic dynasty. This detail arises from the fact that Alexandria was a man-made bidirectional port between the mainland and thePharos island, welcoming trade from the East and West, and soon found itself to be an international hub for trade, the leading producer of papyrus and, soon enough, books.[63] As the Library expanded, it ran out of space to house the scrolls in its collection, so, during the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes, it opened a satellite collection in theSerapeum of Alexandria, a temple to the Greco-Egyptian godSerapis located near the royal palace.[9][35][8]
Present-day ruins of theSerapeum of Alexandria, where the Library of Alexandria moved part of its collection after it ran out of storage space in the main building[9]
Aristophanes of Byzantium (livedc. 257–c. 180 BC) became the fourth head librarian sometime around 200 BC.[64] According to a legend recorded by the Roman writerVitruvius, Aristophanes was one of seven judges appointed for a poetry competition hosted by Ptolemy III Euergetes.[64][65] All six of the other judges favored one competitor, but Aristophanes favored the one whom the audience had liked the least.[64][66] Aristophanes declared that all of the poets except for the one he had chosen had committed plagiarism and were therefore disqualified.[64][66] The king demanded that he prove this, so he retrieved the texts that the authors had plagiarized from the Library, locating them by memory.[64][66] On account of his impressive memory and diligence, Ptolemy III appointed him as head librarian.[66]
The librarianship of Aristophanes of Byzantium is widely considered to have opened a more mature phase of scholarship in the Library of Alexandria's history.[45][67][60] During this phase,literary criticism reached its peak[45][67] and came to dominate the Library's scholarly output.[68] Aristophanes of Byzantium edited poetic texts and introduced the division of poems into separate lines on the page, since they had previously been written out just like prose.[69] He also invented the system ofGreek diacritics,[70][60] wrote important works onlexicography,[45] and introduced a series of signs for textual criticism.[71] He wrote introductions to many plays, some of which have survived in partially rewritten forms.[45]
The fifth head librarian was an obscure individual namedApollonius Eidographus, who is known by the epithet "the classifier of forms" (Ancient Greek:ὁ εἰδογράφος).[45][72] One late lexicographical source explains this epithet as referring to the classification of poetry on the basis of musical forms.[72]
During the early second century BC, several scholars at the Library of Alexandria studied works on medicine.[58] Zeuxis the Empiricist is credited with having written commentaries on the Hippocratic Corpus,[58] and he actively worked to procure medical writings for the Library's collection.[58] A scholar named Ptolemy Epithetes wrote a treatise on wounds in the Homeric poems, a subject straddling the line between traditional philology and medicine.[58] However, it was also during the early second century BC that the political power of Ptolemaic Egypt began to decline.[73] After theBattle of Raphia in 217 BC, Ptolemaic power became increasingly unstable.[73] There were uprisings among segments of the Egyptian population and, in the first half of the second century BC, connection withUpper Egypt became largely disrupted.[73] Ptolemaic rulers also began to emphasize the Egyptian aspect of their nation over the Greek aspect.[73] Consequently, many Greek scholars began to leave Alexandria for safer countries with more generous patronages.[45][73]
Aristarchus of Samothrace (livedc. 216–c. 145 BC) was the sixth head librarian.[45] He earned a reputation as the greatest of all ancient scholars of Homeric poetry and produced not only texts of classic poems and works of prose, but fullhypomnemata, or long, free-standing commentaries, on them.[45] These commentaries would typically cite a passage of a classical text, explain its meaning, define any unusual words used in it, and comment on whether the words in the passage were really those used by the original author or if they were later interpolations added by scribes.[74] He made many contributions to a variety of studies, but particularly the study of the Homeric poems,[45] and his editorial opinions are widely quoted by ancient authors as authoritative.[45] A portion of one of Aristarchus' commentaries on theHistories ofHerodotus has survived in a papyrus fragment.[45][74] In 145 BC, however, Aristarchus became caught up in a dynastic struggle in which he supportedPtolemy VII Neos Philopator as the ruler of Egypt.[75] Ptolemy VII was murdered and succeeded byPtolemy VIII Physcon, who immediately set about punishing all those who had supported his predecessor, forcing Aristarchus to flee Egypt and take refuge on the island ofCyprus, where he died shortly after.[75][45] Ptolemy VIII expelled all foreign scholars from Alexandria, forcing them to disperse across the Eastern Mediterranean.[45][73]
Ptolemy VIII Physcon's expulsion of the scholars from Alexandria brought about a shift in the history of Hellenistic scholarship.[76] The scholars who had studied at the Library of Alexandria and their students continued to conduct research and write treatises, but most of them no longer did so in association with the Library.[76] Due to this, the Library of Alexandria began to decline in respect and prestige.[3] Adiaspora of Alexandrian scholarship occurred, in which scholars of the Library dispersed first into the eastern Mediterranean and then into the world of the western Mediterranean as well.[76] Former scholars and their disciples took their scholarly energies elsewhere. For example, Aristarchus' studentDionysius Thrax (c. 170 – c. 90 BC) established a school on the Greek island of Rhodes.[77][78] He also wrote thefirst book on Greek grammar, a succinct guide to speaking and writing clearly and effectively[78] – a book that remained the primary grammar textbook for Greek schoolboys until as late as the twelfth century AD.[78] Another one of Aristarchus' pupils,Apollodorus of Athens (c. 180 – c. 110 BC), went to Alexandria's greatest rival, Pergamum, where he taught and conducted research.[77] This scholarly diaspora prompted the historianMenecles of Barca to sarcastically comment that Alexandria had become the teacher of all Greeks and barbarians alike.[79]
Meanwhile, in Alexandria, from the middle of the second century BC onwards, Ptolemaic rule in Egypt grew less stable than it had been previously.[80] Confronted with growing social unrest and other major political and economic problems, the later Ptolemies did not devote as much attention towards the Library and the Mouseion as their predecessors had, continuing the decline that had begun under Ptolemy VIII Physcon.[80][3] The status of both the Library and the head librarian diminished.[80] Several of the later Ptolemies used the position of head librarian as a mere political plum to reward their most devoted supporters.[80] Ptolemy VIII appointed a man named Cydas, one of his palace guards, as head librarian[81][80] andPtolemy IX Soter II (ruled 88–81 BC) is said to have given the position to a political supporter.[80] Eventually, the position of head librarian lost so much of its former prestige that even contemporary authors ceased to take interest in recording the terms of office for individual head librarians.[81]
A shift in Greek scholarship at large occurred around the beginning of the first century BC.[77][82] By this time, all major classical poetic texts had finally been standardized and extensive commentaries had already been produced on the writings of all the major literary authors of theGreek Classical Era.[77] Consequently, there was little original work left for scholars to do with these texts.[77] Many scholars began producing syntheses and reworkings of the commentaries of the Alexandrian scholars of previous centuries, at the expense of their own originalities.[77][82][b] Other scholars branched out and began writing commentaries on the poetic works of postclassical authors, including Alexandrian poets such as Callimachus and Apollonius of Rhodes.[77] Meanwhile, Alexandrian scholarship was probably introduced toRome in the first century BC byTyrannion of Amisus (c. 100 – c. 25 BC), a student of Dionysius Thrax.[77]
Julius Caesar burned his ships during theSiege of Alexandria in 48 BC.[8] Ancient writers said the fire spread and destroyed part of the Library's collections;[8] the Library seems to have partially survived or been quickly rebuilt.[8]
Furthermore, Plutarch records in hisLife of Mark Antony that in the years leading up to theBattle of Actium in 33 BC,Mark Antony was rumored to have given Cleopatra all 200,000 scrolls in the Library of Pergamum.[87][81] Plutarch himself notes that his source for this anecdote was sometimes unreliable and it is possible that the story may be nothing more than propaganda intended to show that Mark Antony was loyal to Cleopatra and Egypt rather than to Rome.[87] Casson, however, argues that even if the story was made up, it would not have been believable unless the Library still existed.[87] Edward J. Watts argues that Mark Antony's gift may have been intended to replenish the Library's collection after the damage to it caused by Caesar's fire roughly a decade and a half prior.[81]
Further evidence for the Library's survival after 48 BC comes from the fact that the most notable producer of composite commentaries during the late first century BC and early first century AD was a scholar who worked in Alexandria namedDidymus Chalcenterus, whose epithetΧαλκέντερος (Chalkénteros) means "bronze guts".[90][87] Didymus is said to have produced somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 books, making him the most prolific known writer in all of antiquity.[90][82] He was also given the nicknameβιβλιολάθης (Biblioláthēs), meaning "book-forgetter" because it was said that even he could not remember all the books he had written.[90][91] Parts of some of Didymus' commentaries have been preserved in the forms of later extracts and these remains are modern scholars' most important sources of information about the critical works of the earlier scholars at the Library of Alexandria.[90] Lionel Casson states that Didymus' prodigious output "would have been impossible without at least a good part of the resources of the library at his disposal".[87]
This Latin inscription regardingTiberius Claudius Balbilus of Rome (d. c. AD 79) mentions the"ALEXANDRINA BYBLIOTHECE" (line eight).
Very little is known about the Library of Alexandria during the time of the RomanPrincipate (27 BC – 284 AD).[81] The emperorClaudius (ruled 41–54 AD) is recorded to have built an extension to the Library,[92] but it seems that the Library of Alexandria's general fortunes followed those of the city of Alexandria itself.[93] After Alexandria came under Roman rule, the city's status and, consequently that of its famous Library, gradually diminished.[3][93] While the Mouseion still existed, membership was granted not on the basis of scholarly achievement, but rather on the basis of distinction in government, the military, or even in athletics.[80]
The same was evidently the case even for the position of head librarian;[80] the only known head librarian from the Roman Period was a man namedTiberius Claudius Balbilus, who lived in the middle of the first century AD and was a politician, administrator, and military officer with no record of substantial scholarly achievements.[80] Members of the Mouseion were no longer required to teach, conduct research, or even live in Alexandria.[94] The Greek writerPhilostratus records that the emperorHadrian (ruled 117–138 AD) appointed the ethnographer Dionysius of Miletus and the sophistPolemon of Laodicea as members of the Mouseion, even though neither of these men is known to have ever spent any significant amount of time in Alexandria.[94]
As the reputation of Alexandrian scholarship declined, the reputations of other libraries across the Mediterranean world improved, diminishing the Library of Alexandria's former status as the most prominent.[93] Other libraries also sprang up within the city of Alexandria itself[81] and the scrolls from the Great Library may have been used to stock some of these smaller libraries.[81] TheCaesareum and the Claudianum in Alexandria are both known to have had major libraries by the end of the first century AD.[81] The Serapeum, originally the "daughter library" of the Great Library, probably expanded during this period as well, according to classical historian Edward J. Watts.[95]
By the second century AD, the Roman Empire grew less dependent on grain from Alexandria and the city's prominence declined further.[93] The Romans during this period also had less interest in Alexandrian scholarship, causing the Library's reputation to continue to decline as well.[93] The scholars who worked and studied at the Library of Alexandria during the time of the Roman Empire were less well known than the ones who had studied there during the Ptolemaic Period.[93] Eventually, the word "Alexandrian" itself came to be synonymous with the editing of texts, correction of textual errors, and writing of commentaries synthesized from those of earlier scholars—in other words, taking on connotations of pedantry, monotony, and lack of originality.[93] Mention of both the Great Library of Alexandria and the Mouseion that housed it disappear after the middle of the third century AD.[96] The last known references to scholars being members of the Mouseion date to the 260s.[96]
In 272 AD, the emperorAurelian fought to recapture the city of Alexandria from the forces of thePalmyrene queenZenobia.[96][80][3] During the course of the fighting, Aurelian's forces destroyed the Broucheion quarter of the city in which the main library was located.[96][80][3] If the Mouseion and Library still existed at this time, they were almost certainly destroyed or damaged during the attack.[96][80] If they did survive the attack, whatever was left of them would have been further damaged or destroyed during the emperorDiocletian's siege of Alexandria in 297, when the Brouchion quarter was again destroyed.[96]
In 642 AD, Alexandria wascaptured by an Arab army under the command ofAmr ibn al-As. Several later Arabic sources describe the library's destruction by the order ofCaliph Umar.[97] The earliest wasal-Qifti who described the story in a biographical dictionaryHistory of Learned Men, written before 1248.[98]Bar-Hebraeus, writing in the thirteenth century, quotes Umar as saying to Yaḥyā al-Naḥwī (John Philoponus): "If those books are in agreement with theQuran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them." So, Ibn al Qifti recounts, the general ordered that the books be burned to fuel the fires that heated Alexandria's city baths. It is said that they were enough to provide heating for six months.[99]
Later scholars, beginning with FatherEusèbe Renaudot in his 1713 translation of theHistory of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, are skeptical of these stories, given the amount of time that had passed before they were recorded and the political motivations of the various authors.[100][101][102]Roy MacLeod, for example, points out that the story first appeared 500 years after the event, that John Philoponus was almost certainly dead by the time of the conquest of Egypt and that both the Great Library of Alexandria and the Mouseion were likely long gone by then.[103] According to Diana Delia, "Omar's rejection of pagan and Christian wisdom may have been devised and exploited by conservative authorities as a moral exemplum for Muslims to follow in later, uncertain times, when the devotion of the faithful was once again tested by proximity to nonbelievers".[104] The historianBernard Lewis suggests the myth came into existence during the reign ofSaladin in order to justify the SunniAyyubids' breaking up of the ShiaFatimid collections and library at public auction.[105]
The Serapeum is often called the "Daughter Library"[107] of Alexandria. For much of the late fourth century AD it was probably the largest collection of books in the city of Alexandria.[108] In the 370s and 380s, the Serapeum was still a major pilgrimage site for pagans.[109] It remained a fully functioning temple, and had classrooms for philosophers to teach in.[109] It naturally tended to attract followers ofIamblicheanNeoplatonism.[109] Most of these philosophers were primarily interested intheurgy, the study of cultic rituals and esoteric religious practices.[109] The Neoplatonist philosopherDamascius (livedc. 458 – after 538) records that a man named Olympus came fromCilicia to teach at the Serapeum, where he enthusiastically taught his students the rules of traditional divine worship and ancient religious practices.[110] He enjoined his students to worship the old gods in traditional ways, and he may have even taught them theurgy.[111]
Scattered references indicate that, sometime in the fourth century, an institution known as the "Mouseion" may have been reestablished at a different location somewhere in Alexandria.[96] Nothing, however, is known about the characteristics of this organization.[96] It may have possessed some bibliographic resources, but whatever they may have been, they were clearly not comparable to those of its predecessor.[112]
Under the Christian rule of Roman emperorTheodosius I, pagan rituals were outlawed, and pagan temples were destroyed. In 391 AD, the bishop of Alexandria, Theophilus, supervised the destruction of an oldMithraeum.[111] They gave some of the cult objects toTheophilus,[111] who had them paraded through the streets so that they could be mocked and ridiculed.[111] The pagans of Alexandria were incensed by this act of desecration, especially the teachers of Neoplatonic philosophy and theurgy at the Serapeum.[111] The teachers at the Serapeum took up arms and led their students and other followers in aguerrilla attack on the Christian population of Alexandria, killing many of them before being forced to retreat.[111] In retaliation, the Christians vandalized and demolished the Serapeum,[113][114] although some parts of thecolonnade were still standing as late as the twelfth century.[113] Whether an actual library still existed at this point, and if so how extensive it was, is not recorded. Jonathan Theodore has stated that by 391/392 AD there was "no remaining "Great Library" in the sense of the iconic vast, priceless collection".[114] Only Orosius explicitly mentions the destruction of books or scrolls; sources probably written after the Serapeum's destruction speak of its collection of literature in the past tense.[115][116] On the other hand, a recent article identifies the literary evidence suggesting that the original Ptolemaic library collection was moved to the Serapeum by the end of the second century AD and that a library is attested there until the Serapeum was destroyed along with the books it contained.[117]
TheSuda, a tenth-centuryByzantine encyclopedia, calls the mathematicianTheon of Alexandria (c. AD 335–c. 405) a "man of the Mouseion".[119] According to classical historian Edward J. Watts, however, Theon was probably the head of a school called the "Mouseion", which was named in emulation of theHellenistic Mouseion that had once included the Library of Alexandria, but which had little other connection to it.[119] Theon's school was exclusive, highly prestigious, and doctrinally conservative.[120] Theon does not seem to have had any connections to the militant Iamblichean Neoplatonists who taught in the Serapeum.[113] Instead, he seems to have rejected the teachings of Iamblichus[120] and may have taken pride in teaching a pure,Plotinian Neoplatonism.[120] In around 400 AD, Theon's daughterHypatia (born c. 350–370; died 415 AD) succeeded him as the head of his school.[121] Like her father, she rejected the teachings of Iamblichus and instead embraced the original Neoplatonism formulated by Plotinus.[120]
Theophilus, the bishop involved in the destruction of the Serapeum, tolerated Hypatia's school and even encouraged two of her students to become bishops in territory under his authority.[122] Hypatia was extremely popular with the people of Alexandria[123] and exerted profound political influence.[123] Theophilus respected Alexandria's political structures and raised no objection to the close ties Hypatia established with Roman prefects.[122] Hypatia was later implicated in a political feud betweenOrestes, theRoman prefect of Alexandria, andCyril of Alexandria, Theophilus' successor as bishop.[124][125] Rumors spread accusing her of preventing Orestes from reconciling with Cyril[124][126] and, in March of 415 AD, she was murdered by a mob of Christians, led by alector named Peter.[124][127] She had no successor and her school collapsed after her death.[128]
Nonetheless, Hypatia was not the last pagan in Alexandria, nor was she the last Neoplatonist philosopher.[129][130] Neoplatonism and paganism both survived in Alexandria and throughout the eastern Mediterranean for centuries after her death.[129][130] British EgyptologistCharlotte Booth notes that many new academic lecture halls were built in Alexandria at Kom el-Dikka shortly after Hypatia's death, indicating that philosophy was clearly still taught in Alexandrian schools.[131] The late fifth-century writersZacharias Scholasticus andAeneas of Gaza both speak of the "Mouseion" as occupying some kind of a physical space.[96] Archaeologists have identified lecture halls dating to around this time period, located near, but not on, the site of the Ptolemaic Mouseion, which may be the "Mouseion" to which these writers refer.[96]
It is not possible to determine the collection's size in any era with certainty.Papyrus scrolls constituted the collection, and althoughcodices were used after 300 BC, the Alexandrian Library is never documented as having switched toparchment, perhaps because of its strong links to the papyrus trade. The Library of Alexandria in fact was indirectly causal in the creation of writing on parchment, as the Egyptians refused to export papyrus to their competitor in theLibrary of Pergamum. Consequently, the Library of Pergamum developed parchment as its own writing material.[132]
A single piece of writing might occupy several scrolls, and this division into self-contained "books" was a major aspect of editorial work. KingPtolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) is said to have set 500,000 scrolls as an objective for the library.[133] The library's index,Callimachus'Pinakes, has only survived in the form of a few fragments, and it is not possible to know with certainty how large and how diverse the collection may have been. At its height, the library was said to possess nearly half a million scrolls, and, although historians debate the precise number, the highest estimates claim 900,000 scrolls[3] while the most conservative estimates are as low as 40,000,[6][3] which is still an enormous collection that required vast storage space.[134]
As a research institution, the library filled its stacks with new works in mathematics, astronomy, physics, natural sciences, and other subjects. Its empirical standards were applied in one of the first and certainly strongest homes for serioustextual criticism. As the same text often existed in several different versions, comparative textual criticism was crucial for ensuring their veracity. Once ascertained, canonical copies would then be made for scholars, royalty, and wealthy bibliophiles all over the world, this commerce bringing income to the library.[40]
The Library of Alexandria was one of the largest and most prestigious libraries of the ancient world, but it was far from the only one.[7][135][136] By the end of the Hellenistic Period, almost every city in the Eastern Mediterranean had a public library and so did many medium-sized towns.[7][4] During the Roman Period, the number of libraries only proliferated.[137] By the fourth century AD, there were at least two dozen public libraries in the city of Rome alone.[137] As the Library of Alexandria declined, centers of academic excellence arose in various other capital cities. It is possible most of the material from the Library of Alexandria survived, by way of theImperial Library of Constantinople, theAcademy of Gondishapur, and theHouse of Wisdom. This material may then have been preserved by theReconquista, which led to the formation ofEuropean universities and therecompilation of ancient texts from formerly scattered fragments.[138]
In late antiquity, as the Roman Empire became Christianized, Christian libraries modeled directly on the Library of Alexandria and other great libraries of earlier pagan times began to be founded all across the Greek-speaking eastern part of the empire.[137] Among the largest and most prominent of these libraries were theTheological Library of Caesarea Maritima, the Library of Jerusalem, and a Christian library in Alexandria.[137] These libraries held both pagan and Christian writings side-by-side[137] and Christian scholars applied to the Christian scriptures the same philological techniques that the scholars of the Library of Alexandria had used for analyzing the Greek classics.[137] Nonetheless, the study of pagan authors remained secondary to the study of the Christian scriptures until theRenaissance.[137]
The survival of ancient texts owes a great deal to the fact that they were exhaustingly copied and recopied. At first, they were copied by professional scribes during the Roman period.[1][139] Mediaeval Muslim scholars also played a crucial role in preserving and translating the knowledge of the ancient world.[140] TheGraeco-Arabic translation movement translated a significant number of ancient texts into Arabic, keeping the texts intact and preserving them.[141] Later, they were translated and re-introduced to Europe.[141] This movement began in earnest under theAbbasid Caliphate where it played a significant role in theIslamic Golden Age. The translation movement encompassed scholars of various religions in the Abbasid empire. For example, under the patronage of Caliphal-Ma'mun, a Christian scholar and translator namedHunayn ibn Ishaq completed major translation projects of Aristotle, Hypocrates, and Galen[141] so that they remained accessible to scholars. These translations were translated into Latin and re-introduced to Europe.[141] These texts were copied by monks duringMiddle Ages andRenaissance, making them more easily available to European scholars once more.[1][139]
The idea of reviving the ancient Library of Alexandria in the modern era was first proposed in 1974, after Lotfy Dowidar was president of theUniversity of Alexandria.[142] In May 1986, Egypt requested the executive board ofUNESCO to allow the international organization to conduct a feasibility study for the project.[142] This marked the beginning of UNESCO and the international community's involvement in trying to bring the project to fruition.[142] Starting in 1988, UNESCO and theUNDP worked to support the international architectural competition to design the Library.[142] Egypt devoted four hectares of land for the building of the Library and established the National High Commission for the Library of Alexandria.[143] Egyptian presidentHosni Mubarak took a personal interest in the project, which greatly contributed to its advancement.[144] An international architectural competition took place in 1989 with Norwegian architectural firmSnøhetta winning the competition.[145] Completed in 2002, theBibliotheca Alexandrina now functions as a modern library and cultural center, commemorating the original Library of Alexandria.[146] In line with the mission of the Great Library of Alexandria, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina also houses theInternational School of Information Science, a school for students preparing for highly specialized post-graduate degrees, whose goal is to train professional staff for libraries in Egypt and across the Middle East.[147]
^"Mouseion" means "House of Muses", whence the term "museum".[30]
^This shift paralleled a similar, concurrent trend in philosophy, in which many philosophers were beginning to synthesize the views of earlier philosophers rather than coming up with original ideas of their own.[82]
^De Sacy,Relation de l'Egypte par Abd al-Latif, Paris, 1810.Translated by Roger Pearse.Archived 11 May 2011 at theWayback Machine. "Above the column of the pillars is a dome supported by this column. I think this building was the portico where Aristotle taught, and after him his disciples; and that this was the academy that Alexander built when he built this city, and where was placed the library which Amr ibn-Alas burned, with the permission of Omar."
^Samir Khalil."L'utilisation d'al-Qifṭī par la Chronique arabe d'Ibn al-'Ibrī († 1286)". In Samir Khalil Samir, ed.Actes du IIe symposium syro-arabicum (Sayyidat al-Bīr, septembre 1998). Études arabes chrétiennes, = Parole de l'Orient 28 (2003) 551–598. An English translation of the passage in Al-Qifti by Emily Cottrell of Leiden University is acceptableat the Roger Pearse blog.Archived 11 May 2011 at theWayback Machine
^Ed. Pococke, p. 181, translation on p. 114.Translated by Roger Pearse.Archived 15 September 2010 at theWayback Machine.Latin:Quod ad libros quorum mentionem fecisti: si in illis contineatur, quod cum libro Dei conveniat, in libro Dei [est] quod sufficiat absque illo; quod si in illis fuerit quod libro Dei repugnet, neutiquam est eo [nobis] opus, jube igitur e medio tolli. Jussit ergo Amrus Ebno'lAs dispergi eos per balnea Alexandriae, atque illis calefaciendis comburi; ita spatio semestri consumpti sunt. Audi quid factum fuerit et mirare.
^E. Gibbon,Decline and Fall, chapter 51: "It would be endless to enumerate the moderns who have wondered and believed, but I may distinguish with honour the rational scepticism of Renaudot, (Hist. Alex. Patriarch, p. 170: ) 'historia ... habet aliquid ut απιστον ut Arabibus familiare est.' However Butler says: 'Renaudot thinks the story has an element of untrustworthiness: Gibbon discusses it rather briefly and disbelieves it.'" (ch. 25, p. 401)
^Lewis, Bernard; Lloyd-Jones, Hugh (27 September 1990)."The Vanished Library by Bernard Lewis".The New York Review of Books.Archived from the original on 16 November 2006. Retrieved26 November 2006.
^Trumble & MacIntyre Marshall 2003, p. 51. "Today most scholars have discredited the story of the destruction of the Library by the Muslims."
^MacLeod 2000, p. 71. "The story first appears 500 years after the Arab conquest of Alexandria. John the Grammarian appears to be John Philoponus, who must have been dead by the time of the conquest. It seems, as shown above, that both of the Alexandrian libraries were destroyed by the end of the fourth century, and there is no mention of any library surviving at Alexandria in the Christian literature of the centuries following that date. It is also suspicious that Omar is recorded to have made the same remark about books found by the Arab during their conquest of Iran."
^Diana, Delia (December 1992). "From Romance to Rhetoric: The Alexandrian Library in Classical and Islamic Traditions".The American Historical Review.97 (5):1449–1467.doi:10.2307/2165947.JSTOR2165947.
^Bernard Lewis (2008). Mostafa El-Abbadi and Omnia Mounir Fathallah, eds.What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria. Leiden: Brill. pp. 213–217
^El-Abbadi, Mostafa (1990),The Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria (2nd, illustrated ed.), Unesco/UNDP, pp. 159, 160,ISBN978-92-3-102632-4
^Murray, S.A. (2009).The Library: An illustrated history. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, p. 14
^Tarn, W.W. (1928). "Ptolemy II".The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 14(3/4), 246–260. The Byzantine writerTzetzes gives a similar figure in his essayOn Comedy.
Montana, Fausto (2015),"Hellenistic Scholarship", in Montanari, Franco; Matthaios, Stephanos; Rengakos, Antonios (eds.),Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship, vol. 1, Leiden, The Netherlands and Boston, Massachusetts: Koninklijke Brill, pp. 60–183,ISBN978-90-04-28192-9
Nelles, Paul (2010), "Libraries", inGrafton, Anthony;Most, Glenn W.; Settis, Salvatore (eds.),The Classical Tradition, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, pp. 532–536,ISBN978-0-674-03572-0
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Tocatlian, Jacques (September 1991), "Bibliotheca Alexandrina – Reviving a legacy of the past for a brighter common future",International Library Review,23 (3), Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Elsevier:255–269,doi:10.1016/0020-7837(91)90034-W
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