Library of Alexandria

Inscription regarding Tiberius Claudius Balbilus of Rome (d. 56 AD) which confirms that the Library of Alexandria must have existed in some form in the first century AD.

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. The Library was likely created after his father had built what would become the first part of the Library complex, the temple of the Muses — the Museion, Greek Μουσείον (from which the modern English word museum is derived).

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 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.

Library as a research institution

The Ancient Library of Alexandria

According to the earliest source of information, 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 center, 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 Chalcenterus (first century BC), Grammarian.

The geographical diversity of the scholars suggests that the Library was in fact a major center 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 center in Pergamum.

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. Sometimes the copies were so precise that the originals were put into the Library, and the copies were delivered to the unsuspecting previous owners. This process also helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city. The Ptolemies also purchased additional materials from throughout the Mediterranean area, including from Rhodes and Athens.

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) 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 as a wedding gift. These scrolls were taken from the great Library of Pergamum, impoverishing its collection. Carl Sagan, in his series Cosmos, states that the Library contained nearly one million scrolls, though other experts have estimated a smaller number. 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), many of these were duplicate copies or alternate versions of the same texts.

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;
3. The decree of Theophilus in 391;
4. The Muslim conquest in 642 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 case, there is clear evidence that the Library was not in fact destroyed at that time. The third episode is attested by no ancient authors, and was more or less "deduced" by Edward Gibbon from a single vague sentence written by Paul Orosius that did not refer to the Serapeum at all. 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.

Caesar's conquest 48 BC

Plutarch's Lives, written at the end of the first or beginning of the second century, 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 XIII; Ammianus Marcellinus may be an independent witness to this fact (see below). Only 25 years later Strabo saw the Library and worked in it; however, Plutarch also explains this. During Marcus Antonius' rule of the eastern part of the Empire, he plundered the second largest library in the world (that at Pergamon)and presented the collection as a gift to Kleopatra as a replacement for the loss of the original Museum library.

Attack of Aurelian, 3rd century

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), who was suppressing a revolt by Queen Zenobia of Palmyra. 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. However, Ammianus Marcellinus, writing around 378 AD seems to speak of the library in the Serapeum temple as a thing of the past, and he states that many of the Serapeum library's volumes were burnt when Caesar sacked Alexandria. As he says in Book 22.16.12-13:

"Besides this there are many lofty temples, and especially one to Serapis, which, although no words can adequately describe it, we may yet say, from its splendid halls supported by pillars, and its beautiful statues and other embellishments, is so superbly decorated, that next to the Capitol, of which the ever-venerable Rome boasts, the whole world has nothing worthier of admiration. In it were libraries of inestimable value; and the concurrent testimony of ancient records affirm that 70,000 volumes, which had been collected by the anxious care of the Ptolemies, were burnt in the Alexandrian war when the city was sacked in the time of Caesar the Dictator."

5th century scroll which illustrates the destruction of the Serapeum by Theophilus

While Ammianus Marcellinus may be simply reiterating Plutarch's tradition about Caesar's destruction of the library, it is possible that his statement reflects his own empirical knowledge that the Serapeum library collection had either been seriously depleted or was no longer in existence in his own day.

Decree of Theophilus in 391

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:

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.

The Serapeum once housed part of the Library, but it is not known how many, if any, books were contained in it at the time of destruction. Notably, the passage by Socrates Scholasticus, unlike that of Ammianus Marcellinus, makes no clear reference to a library or library contents being destroyed, only to religious objects being destroyed. The pagan author Eunapius of Sardis witnessed the demolition, and though he detested Christians, and was a scholar, his account of the Serapeum's destruction makes no mention of any library. In short, there is simply no evidence whatsoever to support the contention that Christians destroyed the Library. 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." But Orosius is not here discussing the Serapeum, nor is it clear who "our own men" are (the phrase may mean no more than "men of our time," since we know from contemporary sources that pagans also occasionally plundered temples).

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

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.

John Julius Norwich's "Byzantium: The Early Centuries" places the destruction of the library's collection during the anti-Arian riots in Alexandria that transpired after the imperial decree of 391 (p314).

Carl Sagan alleges in his book and series Cosmos that the Serapeum may have been destroyed at the same time as the murder of the Greek philosopher Hypatia by a Christian mob in 415 (or soon thereafter), but this popularized 'factoid' is no doubt is own misunderstanding.

Muslim conquest in 642

Several historians told varying accounts of a Muslim army led by Amr ibn al 'Ass sacking the city in 645, and that the commander asked the caliph Umar what to do with the library, and received the response "...if what is written in them agrees with the Koran, they are not required; if it disagrees, they are not desired. Destroy them therefore.", and thus burned the books to heat bathwater for the soldiers. However the legend has been dismissed by some as later invention of Christian crusaders eager to justify the "barbarism" of Muslim armies.. While the first Western account of the supposed event was in Edward Pococke's 1663 century translation of History of the Dynasties, it was dismissed as a hoax or propaganda as early as 1713 by Fr. Eusèbe Renaudot, and other later scholars agreed, including Alfred J. Butler, Victor Chauvin, Paul Casanova and Eugenio Griffini. Recently, in 1990, Bernard Lewis, argued that the original account is true.

Conclusion

Although the actual circumstances and timing of the physical destruction of the Library remain uncertain, it is however clear that by the 8th century, the Library was no longer a significant institution and had ceased to function in any important capacity. Alexandria was not a major research center 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.

See also

• Bibliotheca Alexandrina

References

• Alexander Stille: The Future of the Past (chapter: "The Return of the Vanished Library"). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. 246-273.
• Uwe Jochum, "The Alexandrian Library and its aftermath" from Library History vol), pp 5-12.
• Edward Parsons: The Alexandrian Library. London, 1952. Relevant online excerpt.
• Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (chapter: "Destruction of Paganism", "The temple of Serapis at Alexandria" and "Its final destruction, A.D. 389" subchapters)
• Ellen Brundige: The Decline of the Library and Museum of Alexandria, December 10, 1991
• Canfora, Luciano (trans. Martin Ryle) (1989). The Vanished Library. A Wonder of the Ancient World. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• El-Abbadi, Mostafa (1992). Life and fate of the ancient Library of Alexandria (2nd edition ed.). Paris: UNESCO. ISBN. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Macleod, Roy, editor (2nd ed.). The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World. London and New york: I.B. Tauris. ISBN. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: year (link)
• Orosius, Paulus (trans. Roy J. Deferrari) (1964). The seven books of history against the pagans. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America. (No ISBN). {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
• Macleod, Roy, editor (2nd ed.). The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World. I. B. Tauris. ISBN. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help); Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: year (link)

External links

• Ellen N. Brundige: The Library of Alexandria
• History Magazine: The Great Library
• James Hannam: The Mysterious Fate of the Great Library of Alexandria
• Kenneth Humphreys: Murder of Hypatia, End of Classic Scholarship in Egypt
• The Straight Dope What happened to the great Library of Alexandria?

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