The Royal Library of Alexandria was once the largest in the world. It is usually assumed to have been founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC during the reign of Ptolemy II of Egypt after his father had set up the temple of the Muses, the Musaeum (whence we get "Museum"). The initial organization is attributed to Demetrius Phalereus, and is estimated to have stored at its peak 400,000 to 700,000 parchment scrolls. The library's destruction remains a mystery. A new library was inaugurated in 2003, near the site of the old library.
Overview
editOne story holds that the Library was seeded with Aristotle's own private collection, through one of his students, Demetrius Phalereus. Another 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. The originals were put into the Library, and the copies were delivered to the previous owners. While encroaching on the rights of the traveler or merchant, it also helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city.
The Library's contents were likely distributed over several buildings, with the main library either located directly attached to or close to the oldest building, the Museum, and a daughter library in the younger Serapeum, also a temple dedicated to the god Serapis. Carlton Welch provides the following description of the main library based on the existing historical records:
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- A covered marble colonnade connected the Museum with an adjacent stately building, also in white marble and stone, architecturally harmonious, indeed forming an integral part of the vast pile, dedicated to learning by the wisdom of the first Ptolemy in following the advice and genius of Demetrios of Phaleron. This was the famous Library of Alexandria, the "Mother" library of the Museum, the Alexandriana, truly the foremost wonder of the ancient world. Here in ten great Halls, whose ample walls were lined with spacious armaria, numbered and titled, were housed the myriad manuscripts containing the wisdom, knowledge, and information, accumulated by the genius of the Hellenic peoples. Each of the ten Halls was assigned to a separate department of learning embracing the assumed ten divisions of Hellenic knowledge as may have been found in the Catalogue of Callimachus of Greek Literature in the Alexandrian Library, the farfamed Pinakes. The Halls were used by the scholars for general research, although there were smaller separate rooms for individuals or groups engaged in special studies.
In 2004 a Polish-Egyptian team claimed to have discovered part of the library while excavating in the Bruchion region. The archaeologists claimed to have found thirteen "lecture halls", each with a central podium. Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said that all together, the rooms uncovered so far could have seated 5000 students.
To commemorate the ancient library, the government of Egypt has built a major library and museum complex at Alexandria, called the Bibliotheca Alexandrina(website).
Destruction of the Great Library
editOne of the reasons so little is known about the Library is that it was lost centuries after its creation. All that is left of many of the volumes are tantalizing titles that hint at all the history lost from the building's destruction. Few events in ancient history are as controversial as the destruction of the Library, as the historical record is both contradictory and incomplete. Not surprisingly, the Great Library became a symbol for knowledge itself, and its destruction was attributed to those who were portrayed as ignorant barbarians, often for purely political reasons.
Much of the debate rests on a different understanding of what constituted the actual Library. Large parts of the Library were likely decentralized, so it is appropriate also to speak of the "Alexandrian libraries". Both the Serapeum, a temple and daughter library, and the Museum itself existed until about AD 400. Only if one believes the Museum to be distinct from the Great Library, an event of destruction prior to that point becomes plausible.
One account of such an event of destruction concerns Julius Caesar. During his invasion of Alexandria in 47–48 BC, Caesar set the enemy fleet in the harbor on fire. Some historians believe that this fire spread into the city and destroyed the entire library. While this interpretation is now a minority view, it is based on several ancient sources, all of which were written at least about 150 years after the destruction supposedly took place. Edward Parsons has analyzed the Caesar theory in his book The Alexandrian Library and summarizes the sources as follows:
A final summary is interesting: of the 16 writers, 10, Caesar himself, the author of the Alexandrian War, Cicero, Strabo, Livy (as far as we know), Lucan, Florus, Suetonius, Appian, and even Athenaeus apparently knew nothing of the burning of the Museum, of the Library, or of Books during Caesar's visit to Egypt; and 6 tell of the incident as follows:
1. Seneca (AD 49), the first writer to mention it (and that nearly 100 years after the alleged event), definitely says that 40,000 books were burned.
2. Plutarch (c. 117) says that the fire destroyed the great Library.
3. Aulus Gellius (123 - 169) says that during the "sack" of Alexandria 700,000 volumes were all burned.
4. Dio Cassius (155 - 235) says that storehouses containing grain and books were burned, and that these books were of great number and excellence.
5. Ammianus Marcellinus (390) says that in the "sack" of the city 70,000 volumes were burned.
6. Orosius (c. 415), the last writer, singularly confirms Seneca as to number and the thing destroyed: 40,000 books.
Of all the sources, Plutarch is the only one to refer explicitly to the destruction of the Library. Plutarch was also the first writer to refer to Caesar by name. Ammianus Marcellinus' account seems to be directly based on Aulus Gellius because the wording is almost the same.
The majority of ancient historians, even those strongly politically opposed to Caesar, give no account of the alleged massive disaster. Cecile Orru argued in "Antike Bibliotheken" (2002, edited by Wolfgang Höpfner) that Caesar could not have destroyed the Library because it was located in the royal quarter of the city, where Caesar's troops were fortified after the fire (which would not have been possible if the fire had spread to that location).
Furthermore, the Library was a very large stone building and the scrolls were stored away in armaria (and some of them put in capsules), so it is hard to see how a fire in the harbor could have affected a significant part of its contents. Lastly, modern archaeological finds have confirmed an extensive ancient water supply network which covered the major parts of the city, including, of course, the royal quarter.
The destruction of the library is attributed by some historians to a period of civil war in the late 3rd century AD -- but we know that the Museum, which was adjacent to the library, survived until the 4th century. There are also allegations dating to medieval times that claim that Caliph Omar, during an invasion in the 7th century, ordered the Library to be destroyed, but these claims are generally regarded as a Christian attack on Muslims, and include many indications of fabrication, such as the claim that the contents of the Library took six months to burn in Alexandria's public baths. The legend of Caliph Omar's destruction of the library provides the classical example of a dilemma: Omar is reported to have said that if the books of the library did not contain the teachings of the Qur'an, they were useless and should be destroyed; if the books did contain the teachings of the Qur'an, they were superfluous and should be destroyed.
Evidence for the existence of the Library after Caesar
editAs noted above, it is generally accepted that the Museum of Alexandria existed until c. AD 400, and if the Museum and the Library are considered to be largely identical or attached to one another, earlier accounts of destruction could only concern a small number of books stored elsewhere. This is consistent with the number given by Seneca, much smaller than the overall volume of books in the Library. So under this interpretation it is plausible that, for example, books stored in a warehouse near the harbor were accidentally destroyed by Caesar, and that larger numbers cited in some works have to be considered unreliable -- misinterpretations by the medieval monks who preserved these works through the Middle Ages, or deliberate forgeries.
Even if one considers the Museum and the Library to be very much separate, there is considerable evidence that the Library continued to exist after the alleged destruction. Plutarch, who claimed the Great Library was destroyed (150 years after the alleged incident), in Life of Antony describes the later transfer of the second largest library to Alexandria by Mark Antony as a gift to Cleopatra. He quotes Calvisius as claiming "that [Mark Antony] had given her the library of Pergamus, containing two hundred thousand distinct volumes", although he himself finds Calvisius' claims hard to believe. In "Einführung in die Überlieferungsgeschichte" (1994, p. 39), Egert Pöhlmann cites further expansions of the Alexandrian libraries by Caesar Augustus (in the year AD 12) and Claudius (AD 41-54). Even if the most extreme allegations against Caesar were true, this raises the question of what happened to these volumes.
The continued existence of the Library is also supported by an ancient inscription found in the early 20th century, dedicated to Tiberius Claudius Balbillus of Rome (d. AD 56). As noted in the "Handbuch der Bibliothekswissenschaft" (Georg Leyh, Wiesbaden 1955):
"We have to understand the office which Ti. Claudius Balbillus held [...], which included the title 'supra Museum et ab Alexandrina bibliotheca', to have combined the direction of the Museum with that of the united libraries, as an academy."
Athenaeus (c. AD 200) wrote in detail in the Deipnosophistai about the wealth of Ptolemy II (309-246 BC) and the type and number of his ships. When it came to the Library and Museum, he wrote: "Why should I now have to point to the books, the establishment of libraries and the collection in the Museum, when this is in every man's memory?" Given the context of his statement, and the fact that the Museum still existed at the time, it is clear that Athenaeus cannot have referred to any event of destruction -- he considered both facilities to be so famous that it was not necessary for him to describe them in detail. We must therefore conclude that at least some of the Alexandrian libraries were still in operation at the time.
Destruction of the pagan temples by Theophilus
editIn the late 4th century, persecution of pagans by Christians had reached new levels of intensity. Temples and statues were destroyed throughout the Roman Empire, pagan rituals forbidden under punishment of death, and libraries closed. In 391, Emperor Theodosius 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:
- "Demolition of the Idolatrous Temples at Alexandria, and the Consequent Conflict between the Pagans and Christians."
- "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. These were therefore razed to the ground, and the images of their gods molten into pots and other convenient utensils for the use of the Alexandrian church; for the emperor had instructed Theophilus to distribute them for the relief of the poor. All the images were accordingly broken to pieces, except one statue of the god before mentioned, which Theophilus preserved and set up in a public place; 'Lest,' said he, 'at a future time the heathens should deny that they had ever worshiped such gods.'"
The Serapeum housed part of the Library, but it is not known how many books were contained in it at the time of destruction. Notably, Paulus Orosius admitted in his History against the pagans: "[T]oday 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." Some books may have been stolen, therefore, but any books that existed in the Serapeum at the time would have been destroyed when it was razed to the ground.
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."
Conclusions
editThere is a growing consensus among historians that the Library of Alexandria likely suffered from several destructive events, but that the destruction of Alexandria's pagan temples in the late 4th century was probably the most severe and final one. The evidence for that destruction is the most definitive and secure. Caesar's invasion may well have led to the loss of some 40,000-70,000 scrolls in a warehouse adjacent to the port (as Luciano Canfora argues, they were likely copies produced by the Library intended for export), but it is unlikely to have affected the Library or Museum, given that there is ample evidence that both existed later.
Civil wars, decreasing investments in maintenance and acquisition of new scrolls and generally declining interest in non-religious pursuits likely contributed to a reduction in the body of material available in the Library, especially in the fourth century. The Serapeum was certainly destroyed by Theophilus in 391, and the Museum and Library may have fallen victim to the same campaign.
If indeed a Christian mob was responsible for the destruction of the Library, the question remains why Plutarch casually referred to the destruction of "the great library" by Caesar in his Life of Caesar. As noted in the Wikipedia article on Plutarch, Plutarch was patronized by influential Romans, including important Senators, to whom some of Plutarch's writings were dedicated. Such patrons would likely have appreciated laying the blame on the relatively populist Julius Caesar. It is also important to note that most surviving ancient works, including Plutarch, were copied throughout the Middle Ages by Christian monks. During this copying process, errors have sometimes been made, and some have argued that deliberate forgery is not out of the question, especially for politically sensitive issues. Other explanations are certainly possible, and the fate of the Library will continue to be the subject of much heated historical debate.
Other libraries of the ancient world
edit- The libraries of Ugarit, ca 1200 BC, include diplomatic archives, literary works and the earliest privately-owned libraries yet recovered.
- The library of King Ashurbanipal, in Nineveh— Considered to be "the first systematically collected library", it was rediscovered in the 19th century. While the library had been destroyed, many fragments of the ancient cuneiform_(script) tables survived, and have been reconstructed. Large portions of the Epic of Gilgamesh were among the many finds.
- The Villa of the Papyri, in Herculaneum— One of the largest private libraries of the early Roman Empire. Thought to have been destroyed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Rediscovered in 1752, the contents of the library were found to have been carbonized. Using modern techniques, the scrolls are currently being meticulously unrolled, and the writing deciphered.
- At Pergamum the Attalid kings formed the second best Hellenistic library after Alexandria, founded in emulation of the Ptolemies. When the Ptolemies stopped exporting papyrus, partly because of competitors and partly because of shortages, the Pergamenes invented a new substance to use in codices, called pergamum or parchment after the city. This was made of fine calfskin, a predecessor of vellum and paper.
- Caesarea Palaestina had a great early Christian library. Through Origen and the scholarly priest Pamphilus, the theological school of Caesarea won a reputation for having the most extensive ecclesiastical library of the time, containing more than 30,000 manuscripts: Gregory, Basil the Great, Jerome and others came to study there.
The Great Library of Alexandria
The Great Library of Alexandria is the name usually reserved for the Royal Library of the Ptolemies founded, according to later sources, by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in the middle of the third century BCE. The earliest source for the story of the library’s foundation and for its enormous size is a fictional document from Alexandria’s Jewish community, dated with difficulty to about 100BCE, called the Letter of Aristeas. The author of the letter poses as a gentile and intends to provide reassurance to the Greek-speaking Jewish community that their translation of the Bible, known as the Septuagint, was accurate and even divinely inspired. It tells the famous story about the seventy-two scholars who were summoned from Judea to effect the translation work on the instructions of the Royal Library’s first administrator, Demetrius of Phalerum. This fictional letter has the distinction of being the only ancient source we possess that unambiguously mentions the library while it certainly still existed. However, its religious polemical nature and the fact it dates from well after the events it describes, means cannot be relied upon in any way at all. However, later and more reliable sources have enabled scholars to glean some information on the library. It had a librarian whose names up until 130BCE were discovered on a much later papyrus scrap at Oxyrynchus although this does not fully reconcile with other sources. The library contained a lot of scrolls although the figures given by much later sources varying from 400,000 to 700,000 are certainly an order of magnitude to great (such a library would require 40 km of shelving!). There was also a catalogue called the Pinakes put together by the poet Callimachus. These catalogues took up 120 scrolls and listed, with biographical and critical summaries, all the works of Greek literature which Callimachus thought were important. Textual scholars also place the editing of Homer and other ancient authors in the hands of Alexandrian scholars. There the evidence ends and speculation takes over. We know nothing about the physical appearance, the location or the relationship to the other institutions of ancient Alexandria. One thing is for certain – the Great Library of Alexandria whose loss set back human development by centuries is a romantic myth. The fate of the library has generated more discussion and heat than almost any other ancient mystery. The three parties accused, Julius Caesar, an early Christian bishop called Theophilus and the Caliph Omar have enjoyed as finer group of advocates and prosecutors as any historical figure could aspire to. In fact, the accusation against Omar is not first heard until the thirteenth century and that against Theophilus until the eighteenth. The only solid source we have is Plutarch saying in his Life of Caesar in c.100CE that Caesar had accidentally burnt the library down. Even that is problematic because contemporary sources, even those opposed to Caesar are silent. What we can be certain of is that Plutarch, who was familiar with Alexandria, know the Great Library was no more. Thus the accusations against the other two suspects become moot even if we cannot rule out an earlier loss due to Ptolemy VII Psychon who launched a purge against the Greek population in the mid second century BCE, a hundred years before Caesar arrived. Omar and Theophilus can more plausibly be suspected of the loss of the library at the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria which was sacked by Christians in 356CE and more famously in 391AD. Edward Gibbon was the first to make the leap associating the second of these sackings (although interestingly, not the first) with the loss of the Serapeum library. However, none of the five near contemporary ancient sources for the 391CE sacking make mention of the library, even Eunapius, an emphatically anti-Christian one. The suspicion that the library was lost earlier is confirmed by the fact that a close reading shows it was absent during the visit of the historian Ammianus Marcellinus in the 370s. The assumption that the Serapeum had also been founded by the Ptolemies was already current in the fourth century CE, no doubt due to the lack of the actual Royal Library to hook the old stories on. However, archaeology shows that the late antique structure of the Serapeum to have been built in the second century by Roman occupiers and it is more likely that the library was installed at this date and given a legendary Ptolemaic foundation by later writers. Modern scholars have concluded in the main that the ancient sources concerning the library are too late and too garbled to be good evidence. The Great Library has become a myth and symbol, both for the lost knowledge of the ancients and the barbarity of destroying books. One lesson from the story has not been learned. We continue to leave the legacy of the future in jeopardy by insisting on keeping all our most valuable books and manuscripts in huge repositories where any disaster would lead to irreparable loss.
Josephus Jewish Antiquities 12, 2, Philo Life of Moses 5, Athenaeus Deipnosophist 5, 203
Blum Kallimachos and the Origins of Bibliography p130 quotes ‘P. Oxy 1241’. Blum also wonders if enough Greek literature ever existed to fill 500,000 scrolls.
Readers wishing to review the recent state of the evidence in detail are referred to the Introductions to The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World, Roy MacLeod (ed.) London, 2000 and Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections since Antiquity, James Raven (ed.), London, 2004. The most complete on line treatment is ‘The Foundation and Loss of the Royal and Serapeum Libraries of Alexandria’ by James Hannam, 2003 (http://www.bede.org.uk/library2.htm)
Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity (New York, 1997), pp. 288 and 161 – 3 respectively.
Rowe Discovery of the Famous Temple and Enclosure of Serapis at Alexandria, p. 62.
References
edit- Luciano Canfora: The Vanished Library. A Wonder of the Ancient World, trans. Martin Ryle. University of California Press. Berkeley, 1989 ISBN 0520072553
- Further reading: Alexander Stille: The Future of the Past chapter "The Return of the Vanished Library". New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. 246-273.
- Mostafa El-Abbadi: Life and fate of the ancient Library of Alexandria. Paris: UNESCO, 1992 (second, revised edition) ISBN 9231026321
- Uwe Jochum, "The Alexandrian Library and its aftermath" from Library History vol 15 (1999), pp 5-12.
- Paulus Orosius: The seven books of history against the pagans. Translated by Roy J. Deferrari. The Catholic University of America, Washington 1964.
- Edward Parsons: The Alexandrian Library. London, 1952. Relevant online excerpt.
External links
edit- Ellen N. Brundige: "The Library of Alexandria"
- Christian Intellectual and scholar The Venerable Bede analyzes the fall of the library and finds Christians not responsible http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm
- Researcher of Christian origins and biblical history Kenneth Humphreys analyzes the destruction of the library and, along with the renowned scholar of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon, concludes that it was the Christians' fault, specifically Bishop Theophilus. http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/hypatia.html
- Bibliotheca Alexandrina
