The Library of Alexandria: A Bastion of Knowledge Lost

The Library of Alexandria: A Bastion of Knowledge Lost

by

Kyle Benjamin

November 30, 2015

Figure 1: A map of ancient Alexandria from 50 BCE to 50 CE.1

Ptolemy I Soter, c. 376 BCE—c. 283 BCE, The Library of Alexandria (Comprised of a Museum and its main library and the Serapeum—added later), 4th Century BCE.

Marble, Gold, and Bronze.

Dimensions Unknown.

Location: Alexandria, Egypt (some ruins).

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1 MacLeod et al., The Library of Alexandria, Centre of Learning in the Ancient World (New York: I.B. Taurus & Co Ltd, 2000), x.

     The Internet is quite possibly humankind’s greatest achievement. In a single day, we can read practically any book ever written (and, in fact, any book that ever could be written)2, dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, climb to the top of Mount Everest, break the sound barrier, talk to virtually anyone on the planet in real-time, and even take a look around Mars—all from the unparalleled comfort of our beds. The Internet represents the culmination of our species’ desire to catalogue our interaction with and understanding of the universe. And the technology we have developed in our quest for more knowledge never ceases to astound. There are computer chips now, perhaps no larger than a fingernail, that will hold over 100,000 books in digital format (1s and 0s)! That many books would have taken generations to accumulate 2400 years ago. But, as I learn more about our history, it appears we are uniquely adapted on this planet to be broadly creative; to document the world around us through that creativity; to have a sort of analytic impulse. And, since that time so many centuries ago, we have developed increasingly creative ways to document this experience of life. However, we’re also uniquely gullible—a veritable albatross—and will believe almost anything. So, in discussing the Library of Alexandria, I will argue that, as a whole, the institution represented a center of analysis, learning, and information sharing—the mainspring of knowledge in the ancient world at the time. But, there is a particular element of the institution, the Serapeum, that was devoted to the reverence of the Ptolemy-created god Serapis.3 And, while the idea of the Greek Mouseion was focused at the outset on adoration of the Muses, incorporating an Egyptian tradition of using religious temples as libraries into Greek intellectualism manifested in what can be described as one of the first research institutes focused predominately on knowledge expansion.4 Therefore, this work falls mostly under the analytic impulse with only a sprinkling of the believing impulse.*

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2 https://libraryofbabel.info
* The Art History class this was written for categorized the artwork studied into seven impulses. Figure 3 shows an explanation of each impulse.

     Much of what we now know about the Library of Alexandria has been developed piecemeal from various ancient writings. One of the most prominent, called The Letter of Aristeas (c180-145 BC), indicates a high probability of The Ptolemeic Mouseion Academy (Mouseion hereafter) and its Library having been built under Ptolemy II Philadelphius but commissioned by his father, Ptolemy I Soter.5 Demitrius of Phaleron, a student of Aristotle, was chosen by Soter as the first librarian; having been noted for utilizing both an Aristotelian and a Platonic model before when designing a school for Theophrastus.6 The idea behind the entire institution was heavily influenced by both Greek and Egyptian tradition—a sort of synergy of religious and intellectual pursuits. The Mouseion and its Library, thought to have been a rameseseum consisting of a palace, museum, and shrine, essentially functioned as an academic research center where scholars were encouraged to live and work by the Ptolemies who offered a number of enticing amenities.7

     The first three Ptolemies went through what can be described as a kind of bibliomania; i.e. an almost insatiable desire to own every book ever written. It is said that anyone entering Alexandria would have their books seized and copied and then have the copies returned to them; the originals, of course, being kept by the Library and translated to Greek, if necessary.8 The Library is estimated to have had between 400,000 and 700,000 texts and roughly 40,000 of those

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3 MacLeod et al., The Library of Alexandria, Centre of Learning in the Ancient World, 5.
4 Heather Phillips, “The Great Library of Alexandria?,” Library Philosophy and Practice, August, 2010: 2.
5 Heather Phillips, “The Great Library of Alexandria?,” Library Philosophy and Practice, August, 2010: 2.
6 MacLeod et al., The Library of Alexandria, Centre of Learning in the Ancient World, 3.
7 Heather Phillips, “The Great Library of Alexandria?,” Library Philosophy and Practice, August, 2010: 3.
8 Heather Phillips, “The Great Library of Alexandria?,” Library Philosophy and Practice, August, 2010: 4.

scrolls were held in a “daughter” library inside the Serapeum.9 Saying that these people were interested in mapping and documenting the physical and social worlds is an understatement.

     Historian P.M. Fraser proposes that according to Strabo, a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian: “The Mouseion is part of the royal quarter and it has a cloister and an arcade and a large house in which is provided the common meal of the men of learning who share the Mouseion.”10 Statements made by both Rufinas of Aquileia and Aphthonius suggest a grammatical argument that can be made about their descriptions of the Serapeum being past tense, meaning they both had likely been to the site before 391 AD but wrote the descriptions after its destruction that year—part of Rufinus’ cursory description of the Serapeum being:

                    On the upper level there extended habitations in which temple staff and those whom they called hagneuontes, meaning those who are pure, normally resided.... In the middle of the entire area, there was the sanctuary distinguished by its precious columns, in it was a statue of Serapis, so large that its right hand touched one wall and its left, the other. That monster was said to have been made of all kinds of metal and wood. The interior walls of the sanctuary were believed to have been covered first with gold plate, overlaid with silver and finally with bronze, the last as a protection for the more precious metals.11

          Other than the scarce statements mentioned, very little is known about the physical structure of the Mouseion itself since none of it survived into the 21st century. The only ruins

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9 Heather Phillips, “The Great Library of Alexandria?,” Library Philosophy and Practice, August, 2010: 4.
10 El-Abbadi et al., What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria? (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2008), 53.
11 El-Abbadi et al., What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria?, 90-91.

existing today are those of the Serapeum (see Figure 2). As with practically any ancient situation, centuries since have heard many stories of the unfortunate destruction of this most wondrous place. There was even an elaborate story popularized in the West by a professor at Oxford named Edward Pococke in 1663 about how an Arab general once ordered the destruction of all of the books.12 This story has been, among a few others, debunked as a myth with no clear intention. Nevertheless, while no number is absolutely certain, anywhere from 40,000 to 400,000 books are thought to have been burned in 48 BC in a last-ditch military effort by Julius Caesar that caused fires to rapidly spread through Alexandria.13 And there are so many varied, unconfirmed stories of how the Mouseion and its Library were destroyed that offering the details of all of them here would be time-consuming and ultimately futile. I will say that the Serapeum is generally thought to have been destroyed in 391 AD by Theophilus.14 In any case, it can surely be remarked that an unbelievable amount of information and history was lost.

     Humans are unparalleled in our ability to create—at least on this planet. But if there is one thing that we are even better at, it would have to be destroying all of the things that we’ve created and even some of the things that we didn’t. The Great Library of Ancient Alexandria stands (no pun intended) as a testament to our tentative veneration of knowledge. Even after centuries of experimentation, cataloguing, and advancing our understanding of the world through some of the greatest thinkers in history, our penchant for unbridled arrogance and hostility eventually reduced another marvel of the ages to dirt: a bastion of knowledge lost. One might ask, to what end? Did we learn from it? We’ve reached, what I consider, the most pivotal point in humankind’s history. Access to information is not only light-speed, but quite literally at the tips of our fingers now, we

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12 El-Abbadi et al., What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria?, 213.
13 MacLeod et al., The Library of Alexandria, Centre of Learning in the Ancient World, 70. 
14 El-Abbadi et al., What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria?, 89.

produce enough to provide food, clothing, and housing to every human on the planet, we’ve walked on the moon, and we have learned more about ourselves and the universe in the past 60 years than in all of humankind’s history combined. Yet, tens of thousands die every day due to hunger and other poverty-related issues while we throw millions of tons of good food away annually, some people’s closets could clothe entire communities, we have enough vacant homes in the United States for every homeless person here to get more than one, we don’t even look up at the moon anymore because we’re too glued to our cell phones to be bothered with the likes of “outside”, and we still have people arguing from debunked positions with misrepresented or blatantly false information despite the ability to settle such arguments with a five-second Google search. So, what did we learn from it? Apparently nothing—we’re even more destructive than ever before. And, with all of its hopes and glorious possibilities of being the ultimate bastion of knowledge in the 21st century, we have successfully turned the Internet into the only thing we seem to be capable of producing with our greatest achievements: dirt.

Bibliography

El-Abbadi, Mostafa, William J. Cherf, Dimitar Y. Dimitrov, Maria Dzielska, Jean-Yves
          Empereur, Fayza M. Haikal, Georges Leroux, et al., What Happened to the Ancient
          Library of Alexandria? (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2008).


MacLeod, Roy, Robert Barnes, Wendy Brazil, J.R. Green, Patricia Cannon Johnson, Samuel
          N.C. Lieu, D.T. Potts, R.G. Tanner, John Vallance, and J.O. Ward. The Library of Alexandria,               
          Centre of Learning in the Ancient World. New York: I.B. Taurus & Co Ltd, 2000.

Phillips, Heather. “The Great Library of Alexandria?,” Library Philosophy and Practice, August, 2010: 2-4.

Figure 2: The remains of the Serapeum in Alexandria, Egypt. Taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alexandria_-_Pompey%27s_Pillar_- _view_of_ruins.JPG

Figure 3: Artwork explored in the Art History course I took was done so in relation to at least one of these impulses.