The Lost Wonders of the Library of Alexandria

Libraries were always an essential element in thriving cultures, as they served as places where knowledge could be both stored and created. The libraries of Babylon and Nineveh were magnificent, however none of them could compare to the great library of Alexandria. No other place was as central to this during the Hellenistic and Roman periods than the city of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile Delta. For over 700 years between the 3rd century BC and the 5th century AD, Alexandria was the intellectual heart of the Mediterranean world. Are you captivated by the enigmatic allure of ancient civilizations, the rich symbolism and the timeless beauty of their artistry? If so, we invite you to embark on an extraordinary journey by visiting the boutique store of Ancestra, where history meets elegance in a treasure trove of jewelry and home decor. Step into a world where every piece and collection has a story to tell, taking you on a voyage through the intricate designs of the Egyptians, the cosmic harmonies of the Mayans, and the spiritual depth of Hindu symbolism. But they don't stop at jewelry. Their home decor offerings are a portal to the world of aesthetics and artistic achievements. All of their items are limited in quantity, so make sure to visit ancestra.shop or just click the link in my bio so you don't miss your chance to own a piece of history. By shopping from Ancestra, you're also supporting our own channel, for which we are grateful. At the height of the Roman Empire, Rome might have been the political center, but if individuals wanted to learn about philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, geometry, physics, poetry, literature, or pretty much anything else one can think of, they went to Alexandria. And there was a thriving heart to Alexandria's culture of learning. This was the Great Library of Alexandria, which was established here in the 3rd century BC and continued to influence the city for centuries. The Library of Alexandria was founded around 285 BC. Alexandria was still a very young city then. When Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, he established many new cities. Alexandria, which was named after him, was just one of these, but it soon grew to be the greatest. From the 320s BC, people gravitated here, and it became the capital of the kingdom, which Ptolemy I Sauter, one of Alexander's leading generals, carved out for himself in Egypt after Alexander's death in 323 BC. It was during Ptolemy I's reign that a proposal for a great library, a repository for as much of the world's knowledge as could be collected together, was first proposed by Demetrius of Philarem, an Athenian politician and scholar who was in exile in Alexandria. Ptolemy I Sauter may have begun such an enterprise before his death in 283 BC, or it may have been his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who was the main driving force behind the library's establishment. We cannot be sure, but what we do know is that at some stage in the 280s BC, a great library was constructed in Alexandria, where copies of as many texts and written works as could be found were deposited as papyrus scrolls in the years that followed. This was not referred to as a library at the time, but rather as the museum, meaning a place dedicated to the muses, the goddesses of Greek religion and mythology who patronized art, literature, and culture. Thus, the library was meant to be the home of culture. Incidentally, the word museum today is At this early stage, the library occupied a clearly defined physical space within the royal corridor of the city. However, in later years it would become dispersed throughout the city. Once the library was complete, the Ptolemies began to collect all sorts of scrolls from the known world, but mainly Greek and Egyptian scrolls. Some of the greatest Greek scholars were invited from places far and wide to live and study in Alexandria. The library continued to develop as the visiting scholars contributed their own manuscripts. In addition, since Alexandria was a central hub of maritime travel, Ptolemy III instituted a policy requiring any ship that docked in the city to turn over its books. The books were copied by the library scribes and the travelers received the copy while the originals were stored in the library. The efforts to bring hundreds of thousands of books to Alexandria were also supported by book hunters specifically hired to scour the Mediterranean in search of new texts. As a result, Alexandria became an intellectual center for scholars who wanted to read previous works and develop new ideas about science, philosophy, or literature. One of the library's first visitors might well have been Euclid of Alexandria. Euclid is generally assumed to have been born around 330 BC at some unknown place in the Mediterranean world, perhaps the city of Tyre in the Levant, according to one source. He moved to Alexandria and lived and worked there as the city swelled in size under Ptolemy I Sauter and Ptolemy II in the early 3rd century. Euclid was the first great scholar associated with the library of Alexandria. In particular, his Elements was an extraordinary treatise for its time which established the basics of geometry and number theory in ways that were not surpassed until the 19th century. For this reason, Euclid is generally regarded as the father of geometry. Unfortunately, we have very little precise information about what the library might have looked like or how it was arranged in these early days. We do know that by the 270s BC, it formed a core part of the museum, other sections of which would have contained artworks. These were all housed within the royal corridor of Alexandria, effectively a vast imperial complex at the center of the city where the government was run and the royal family resided. We do have some written descriptions, however, which indicate that inside the early library, there were rows of shelves containing tens of thousands of rolls of papyrus interspersed with Greek columns. At its height, it is believed that upwards of 500,000 texts were held here. This was the central library, but it was surrounded by reading rooms, mess halls, offices, and lecture theaters for individuals to present their findings to students and visitors. Not unlike a modern-day university campus, there were many great scholars who studied here in the early days of the library. For instance, Xenodotus of Ephesus moved here in the early 3rd century BC and conducted extensive work on lyric poetry in the Homer sagas, elements of which are still known to us today through the Iliad and the Odyssey, but of which there were many more parts in classical times which have not survived. He also organized the library alphabetically and should be considered the first head librarian in the early days of the library. The poet Callimachus was also active here in the mid-3rd century BC and compiled lists of all surviving literature of different kinds, the first scholar to attempt to catalog such works. Another important head librarian was Eratosthenes, who was one of the first to deduce that the earth was round and even calculated its circumference. Eratosthenes concluded that Alexandria and Cyene were located on the same meridian, and by measuring the distance between the two cities, he calculated that the circumference of our planet was 252,000 stadia. Modern estimates equate a stadium to somewhere in between 155 and 160 meters. According to Eratosthenes' calculations, the circumference of the earth is determined to be between 39,060 kilometers and 40,320 kilometers, both of which are quite close to the actual value of 40,075 kilometers. Perhaps one of the most consequential scholars who worked in the library though was Archimedes, a brilliant mathematician and scientist from the Greek city of Syracuse in southern Italy. It was while he was studying at Alexandria in the late 3rd century BC that he invented the Archimedes screw, a pump for transporting water. Archimedes and others at Alexandria were however enjoying a golden age within the city that could not last forever. During the 2nd century BC, the library suffered during the reign of Ptolemy the 8th, Phiscon. This scion of the royal family was involved in a rivalry for power with other members of his family between the 160s BC and 120s BC. He was a literary theorist himself, but he viciously attacked the scholars who worked in and around the library of Alexandria in response to their having sided with his brother Ptolemy V Epiphanes and his sister Cleopatra II in an ongoing series of civil wars. Thus, the library was purged and its work severely obstructed in pogroms overseen by Ptolemy VIII Phiscon in the 140s and the 120s BC. This is not to suggest that the library disappeared altogether at this time. Already in the late 3rd century BC, much of the contents of the original library had been moved to the Serapium, a temple dedicated to the Greco-Egyptian gods Therapes, whose cult was extremely strong in Alexandria at the time and for years to come. Thus, the Serapium became a daughter library, or offshoot of the main library, and once the attacks on the main library under Ptolemy VIII Phiscon occurred in the middle of the 2nd century BC, the Serapium became a much more important part of an ultimately scaled-back library. This situation continued for decades to come. Alexandria continued to be the intellectual heart of the Mediterranean world, but the library was less central to that activity than it had been in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. The situation was compounded in 48 BC when the city became the focus of the Roman civil war between the forces of Julius Caesar and the followers of Pompeius Magnus and the Senate. The port of Alexandria was laid siege to that year, and a fire spread from some burning ships to the harbor, which badly damaged a wing of the library. Tens of thousands of papyrus scrolls were lost in this unintentional act of destruction. Despite these losses, there is still evidence of the library playing a vital role in scholarly activity in the Mediterranean during the early imperial period of Roman history. For instance, the Greco-Roman geographer and historian Strabo visited the library and consulted works there when he was preparing his Geographica, which was first published in 7 BC. This presented an account of the geography of the known world and its people. A near-contemporary heron of Alexandria a few years later began undertaking scientific studies which led him to develop the first steam engine called the Aeolipile. Though the idea never gained traction, and Rome did not industrialize in the way Britain did 1,800 years later following the invention of the steam engine there. Another contemporary of Strabo's who worked at the library in Alexandria was Didymus Calcinturus, a literary scholar who composed a vast array of works on Greek poetry and prose, all the way back to Homer, and also commentaries on the work of the Athenian lawgiver Solon. Ultimately, however, the most significant figure to live and work in Alexandria in the days of the Roman Empire came over a century later. Claudius Ptolemy was a geographer, astronomer, and mathematician who worked at Alexandria in the early and mid-2nd century AD. The library was going through a period of revitalization at this time as the Roman emperor Hadrian, who ruled from 117 AD to 138 AD, was a major benefactor of Greek cultural institutions during his reign. Consequently, he channeled funding to Alexandria and appointed several scholars, such as Polemon of Lodicea and Dionysus of Miletus, to positions there. By this time, it seems that the library was spread across several geographical spaces in the city, one being the original library in the royal quarter, another being the Serapion, and others, including the Caesareum and Claudianum, two temples in the city center. Thus, rather than being an individual building, we need to view the library of Alexandria throughout the days of the Roman Empire as a collection and institution which has spread across the city. It was to these disparate locations that Ptolemy doubtlessly headed when conducting research to draw up his map of the known world. A cartographic depiction that influenced geographers down to the 16th century, and also his Almagest, a work which argued that the sun and other planets orbited the earth. He was ultimately wrong in this latter analysis, but the geocentric view of the universe which he expounded dominated European views of the universe for the next 1,200 years. By Ptolemy s day, Alexandria was a haven for the Neoplatonists, and it would continue to be so for the final 250 years of the library down to the early 5th century. Neoplatonism was a revised form of the philosophical tradition originally associated with the 4th century BC Athenian philosopher Plato. It adhered to the idea of the One as a single principle of reality, as Plato had espoused. Many of its most important adherents lived in Alexandria and worked in the various repositories that made up the great library in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD. However, the library suffered a further setback in the 270s AD when the forces of the Empire of Palmyra to the east seized the city from the Romans. It was reclaimed by the emperor Aurelian in 272 AD and again in 274 AD after another revolt there. But during the seizure of the city, much of the royal quarter was destroyed, and parts of the original library, which still stood here, were probably ruined as well in the process. There were multiple events like this in late antiquity, and the library was probably hurt by the massive earthquake which hit the islands of Crete in 365 AD. This is believed to have been a magnitude of 8.5 or higher and caused massive destruction to cities like Alexandria in the coastal regions of the eastern Mediterranean. It is hard to imagine that the various buildings of the library were not damaged and text destroyed during this. Despite these setbacks, Alexandria's reputation as a center of Greco-Roman learning recovered sufficiently throughout the 4th century, for what remained of the library to become central to one final movement within Alexandria. In the mid-4th century AD, a major Greek mathematician and astronomer, Theon of Alexandria, established a school of philosophy and science here, which was centered on what remained of the great library. This tradition was continued beyond his own death around 405 AD by his daughter Hypatia. She was born around 355 AD. Hypatia of Alexandria was the most acclaimed mathematician in the world during the late 4th and early 5th centuries AD. Despite the setbacks it had suffered, Alexandria was still the foremost center of learning in the whole of the Roman Empire by this time and Hypatia followed in this tradition. She was not just a mathematician but also an astronomer and philosopher and a member of the Alexandria Museum as Theon had been. Her foremost works include commentaries on Euclid's Elements and Ptolemy's Almagest and Handy Tables. She also wrote works expanding on the geometrical work of Apollonius of Perga and the number theory or arithmetic expounded on by Diophantus of Alexandria, a 3rd century AD mathematician. Unfortunately, all of these works by Hypatia are lost as copies of them did not survive the medieval period but we know she composed them as other individuals referred to her writings within their own work. By the late 4th century, despite her being a woman, she was esteemed as the foremost mathematician in Alexandria and by extension in the whole of the known world. Her lectures in the city attracted large audiences and she had a loyal coterie of students who were working to expand on her own studies. However, Hypatia was running into political problems. She was a Neoplatonist herself as were a great many other scholars who worked in and around the library and its various repositories in Alexandria. By this time, adherents of Neoplatonism were what was increasingly known as pagans, meaning they still worshipped the old Greek and Roman gods such as Zeus or Jupiter rather than converting to Christianity. By the late 4th century AD, to be a pagan was increasingly dangerous. Throughout countries such as Egypt and Greece, gangs of Christian zealots roamed through cities and towns attacking pagan temples and attempting to destroy the statues of the old gods. They often didn t manage this but could chip pieces off of them, which explains why Roman era statues we see today in museums often have their noses or other parts of them broken. By the early 5th century AD, this anti-pagan sentiment was coursing through Alexandria under the rule of the Archbishop of Alexandria, Theopolis. In 412 AD, he ordered the destruction of the Serapion, which by this time was the foremost remaining part of the library. Despite this attack on the pagans in the city, Hypatia was unmolested as she was personally acquainted with Theopolis. However, when he died shortly afterward and was succeeded by Cyril as Archbishop of Alexandria, this toleration ended. Shortly afterward, in 415 AD, Hypatia was murdered brutally by a gang of Christian zealots. Because of her life s work and her peculiar position as a leading female mathematician at the time, Hypatia has been rightly regarded as torn in the eyes of the church. Moreover, the manner of her death has made her into a symbol of the value of intellectual endeavor in the face of the ignorant prejudice displayed by the religious zealots who brought about her death. The destruction of the Serapion by the Christians in 412 AD is often seen as the point at which the library of Alexandria ceased to exist, and indeed there is a substantial case to be made that this latest act of vandalism of Alexandria s literary repositories was a fatal blow to it. However, because of the dispersed nature of the library by the early 5th century AD, parts of the massive collection survived in other buildings throughout the city. Indeed, in the decades following Hypatia s death, there appears to have been an effort to build new lecture halls, and there were still students and philosophers working here in various capacities. Yet, ultimately, the city became a victim of the collapse of Roman rule throughout the Mediterranean world in the decades that followed, and suffered from invasions throughout the 6th and early 7th centuries before being permanently conquered by the Arabs in 641 AD. The Arab conquest of Alexandria caused another series of fires and destruction to the library. The Arabs would develop their own esteemed culture over time, but the Greco-Roman world to which the library belonged was gone, and so with it was the Library of Alexandria. The destruction of the Library of Alexandria is without a doubt a tragedy for humanity, but thankfully many important texts were disseminated to other libraries in the Mediterranean over the years, and we still have a glimpse of what was stored there. Thank you for watching. Every like and comment matters to us. If you want to see more videos like this one, please subscribe and share this video with your friends. 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