The Rise and the Fall of the Library of Alexandria

Artist's impression of the main hall of the Museum of Alexandria. The wall portraits show Alexander the Great (left) and Serapis (right). Source: Carl Sagan's Cosmos television program (1980)

The Library of Alexandria's Contribution to the Landmarks of History as a Research Institution

For over six centuries the Ancient Library of Alexandria provided an epicentre for learning and acquisiton of knowledge. It was the place where many scholars found the inspiration to establish the foundations of Science and push the boundaries of intellect. It was at this place that;

• Aristarchus, the first to state that the Earth revolves around the Sun, a full 1800 years before Copernicus.



• Eratosthenes proved that the Earth was spherical and calculated its circumference with amazing accuracy, 1700 years before Columbus sailed on his epic voyage.



• Callimachus, the poet, described the scrolls in the Library organized by subject and author, becoming the Father of Library Science.



• Euclid wrote his elements of geometry, the basic text studied in schools all over the world to this day.



• Herophilus identified the brain as the controlling organ of the body and launched a new era of medicine.



• The Septuagint, the first translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, was created.



• Manetho chronicled the pharaohs and organized our history into the dynasties we use to this day.
  

Destruction of the Library

No single disaster destroyed the library and its collections but a series of mishaps put an end to the greates library of the ancient world. Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria:

In 48 B. C. E during Julius Caesar’s Alexandrian war, a fire destroyed 400,000 rolls in the Royal Library. It is also in legend that an Arab general “Amr ibn-al Aas” invaded Egypt in the 7th Century. He destroyed all the books in the Alexandrian Library collection that disagreed with the Koran. It is said that four thousand bath houses in Alexandria were heated for six months with the great library as fuel.
Also, neglect is as sure a destroyer of libraries as arson. It is indeterminable how many of the rolls of the library were eaten by mice, rotted by damp or stolen during the course of time

It is also quite likely that even if the Museum was destroyed with the main library the outlying "daughter" library at the Temple of Serapis continued on. Many writers seem to equate the Library of Alexandria with the Library of Serapis although technically they were in two different parts of the city. The tragedy of course is not the uncertainty of knowing who to blame for the Library's destruction but that so much of ancient history, literature and learning was lost forever.