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9:20
Transcript
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According to a medieval legend, the library of
Alexandria was destroyed on the orders of the
0:06
Caliph Omar. There were so many books, the story
goes, that the only way to dispose of them was to
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use them as fuel in the city’s 4,000 bathhouses.
So into the furnaces they went, day after day,
0:21
week after week, the wit and wisdom of a
thousand years going up in smoke, and bits of
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blackened books raining on the weary rooftops of
Alexandria. It took six months to burn them all.
0:36
This never actually happened. Even if the
Caliph had wanted to destroy Alexandria’s books,
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he would have found few to burn. By his time,
the library had already vanished, and was already
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shrouded in mystery. That mystery endures.
The library’s site has never been discovered,
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0:56
and is unlikely to ever emerge from
its concrete tomb beneath the modern
1:00
metropolis. Many of the questions that surround
it can never be answered. But in this video,
1:07
I hope to at least contextualize the
significance of the Library’s loss.
1:13
The Library of Alexandria was established
around 300 BC by Ptolemy I. Ptolemy,
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once a companion of Alexander the Great,
had established himself as king of Egypt,
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with the bustling seaside metropolis of
Alexandria as his capital. By collecting texts
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and intellectuals, Ptolemy hoped to
burnish the reputation of his kingdom
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and capital throughout the Greek world. To
those ends, he offered generous stipends
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to any famous scholar who would join his
court, and began aggressively acquiring books.
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Ptolemy’s library was part of Museion, a sort
of proto-university that stood beside the royal
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1:52
palace. The Museion seems to have consisted
of a courtyard surrounded by shady stoas and
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lecture halls, and included a dining room
where the resident scholars took meals. The
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storerooms and reading rooms of the library were
apparently attached to the main Museion complex.
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Ptolemy’s son and grandson expanded the library,
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sending scholars and agents to scour the
markets of the Greek world for new purchases.
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Their bibliomania was so intense, supposedly,
that ships arriving in Alexandria were compelled
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to surrender all books on board for copying. The
library soon swelled to gargantuan proportions.
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Some ancient authors claimed that it contained
700,000 books – books, in this context, meaning
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papyrus scrolls. We don’t know the actual number,
but it’s generally assumed that it was far lower.
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Those inclined to minimize
the size of the library,
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however, should keep in mind that some ancient
scholars were extremely prolific. For example,
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the Alexandrian scholar Didymus, nicknamed
“bronze-guts” for his inhuman work ethic,
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reportedly produced nearly 4,000
books over the course of his lifetime.
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The scholars who worked in the library under the
early Ptolemies became famous throughout the Greek
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world. It was here that the circumference of the
Earth was first calculated, that the standard
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texts of the Homeric poems were established, and –
appropriately – that the first library catalog was
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devised. Like tenured academics in every era, the
scholars of the library also spent a great deal of
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time and energy attacking one another over points
of pedantry, a habit that earned the Museion
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the nickname “birdcage of the Muses.”
The great library declined under the later
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Ptolemies, who had less money and less inclination
to spend that money on squabbling scholars. But it
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was in 48 BC, and at the hands of Julius Caesar,
that the library suffered its first disaster.
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Caesar, fresh from his victory over Pompey, had
become involved in a civil war that pitted the
4:01
famous Cleopatra against her brother, Ptolemy
XIII. When Ptolemy’s forces tried to seize a
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fleet moored Alexandria’s harbor, Caesar ordered
the ships burnt to keep them out of enemy hands.
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Unfortunately, the fire spread from the
docks to the adjacent palace quarter.
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According to some ancient authors,
the flames destroyed the library.
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Others authors claim that only a
portion of the collection was destroyed.
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It’s sometimes theorized that the books destroyed
were not in the main library, but in harbor
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warehouses. It seems most likely, however, that
at least part of the library really was destroyed.
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Only a few years later, Mark Antony is said to
have given Cleopatra 200,000 books from Pergamum.
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A gift of this magnitude would only make sense
if the Alexandria library had been depleted.
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The Library continued to operate
during the Roman imperial era.
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Though no longer a hotbed of original research,
it seems to have remained accessible to scholars,
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and was apparently subsidized by the Roman
administration. During the third and fourth
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centuries AD, however, Alexandria experienced a
massacre, an invasion, a civil war, and a tsunami,
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any or all of which might have destroyed the
library. By the end of the fourth century,
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if not sooner, the palace quarter, in which the
main library was located, was mostly abandoned.
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Ptolemy II had established a branch of
the library, accessible to the public,
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in the marble porticoes surrounding the Temple of
Serapis. But in 391, amidst savage street warfare
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between Christian and pagan mobs, the temple was
demolished. The stoas that sheltered the library
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were not destroyed, and would in fact survive
until the Middle Ages. But since we hear nothing
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more about the books, it’s often assumed that
they were damaged or dispersed at this time.
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We don’t know, in short, exactly when the great
library in the palace and the branch library in
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the Serapeum were destroyed. But there
is no clear evidence for large libraries
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after the fourth century; and by the time of
the Arab Conquest, the library of Alexandria
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was probably no more than a distant memory.
Disasters must have destroyed many of the books.
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But the greatest culprit was probably simple
decay. The library of Alexandria was dependent on
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sustained elite patronage and investment – first
from the Ptolemies, and eventually, it seems,
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from the Roman administration. When this patronage
dried up, and when the texts ceased to be cared
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for and recopied, the scrolls of the library
simply rotted away in Alexandria’s humid air.
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So: how much was lost with the Library of
Alexandria, and how significant were these losses?
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At the risk of making an obvious
point, the Library of Alexandria
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was not the only library in the classical world.
There were hundreds of others, some very large.
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Only the most obscure works in the Library of
Alexandria were not represented by other copies
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elsewhere. It’s only because the Library of
Alexandria’s decline was symptomatic of the
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broader decline of classical culture – because,
in other words, all the ancient world’s libraries
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fell into decay at the same time – that
so many works were lost in late antiquity.
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It’s sometimes said that the destruction of
the Library of Alexandria set civilization back
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by centuries. This is a wild exaggeration. The
scrolls in the library did not contain the bases,
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as is sometimes claimed, for great advances in
science and technology. Although there certainly
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many works of mathematics and physics in
the library, the most important of these
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were widely disseminated elsewhere.
What perished with the library were,
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overwhelmingly, lesser-known works of literature
and philosophy, commentaries and monographs,
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all the residue and introspection of an
extremely sophisticated literary culture.
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These works would be a treasure beyond price
for scholars of the classics, but they were
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not the stuff of a foreclosed modernity.
Before we close, I’d like to talk briefly
8:43
about this video’s sponsor, Blinkist. Blinkist is
an app that provides text and audio summaries of
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If you enjoyed this video, please consider
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Every donation helps me to continue making
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history. You might also be interested in my book,
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Thanks for watching.
— end of transcript —
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