Library of Alexandria

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 AD) 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^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}. Mark Antony was supposed to have given Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls for the Library.

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), that many of these were duplicate copies or alternate versions of the same texts.

The Destruction of the Library

Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the destruction of the Library: Caesar's campaign in 48 BC, the attack of Aurelian in the 3rd century AD, the decree of Theophilius in 391 AD, and the Muslim conquest in 642 AD 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 and second case, there is clear evidence that the library was not in fact destroyed at those times. The third episode is often regarded as a myth, and the fourth episode is simply not documented, although some maintain that the final destruction of the Library took place at this time Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World (Yale University Press, 2001) and Luciano Canfora, The Vanished Library (University of California Press, 1989).

Plutarch's Lives describes a battle in which Caeser was forced to burn his own ships, which in turn set fire to the docks and then the Library, destroying itPlutarch, Life of Caesar 49.3.. This would have occurred in 48 BC, during the fighting between Caesar and Ptolemy XII. However, there is no corroborating evidence that the library was in fact destroyed at this time. Only 25 years later Strabo saw the library and worked in it. Thus, any damage sustained by this battle was probably slight.

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 AD), who was suppressing a revolt^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}. The smaller library located at the Serapeum survived, but part of its contents may been taken off to Constantinople to adorn the new capital in the course of the 4th century.

In 391, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all pagan temples, and Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria complied with this request]]. Gibbon, [Decline and Fall, ch. 28.]. Socrates Scholasticus provides the following account of the destruction of the temples in Alexandria in the fifth book of his Historia Ecclesiastica:

"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."

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."

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