WEBVTT 00:00:01.120 --> 00:00:06.000 According to a medieval legend, the library of  Alexandria was destroyed on the orders of the 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:13.039 Caliph Omar. There were so many books, the story  goes, that the only way to dispose of them was to 00:00:13.039 --> 00:00:20.879 use them as fuel in the city’s 4,000 bathhouses.  So into the furnaces they went, day after day, 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:27.840 week after week, the wit and wisdom of a  thousand years going up in smoke, and bits of 00:00:27.839 --> 00:00:35.200 blackened books raining on the weary rooftops of  Alexandria. It took six months to burn them all. 00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:42.560 This never actually happened. Even if the  Caliph had wanted to destroy Alexandria’s books, 00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:49.520 he would have found few to burn. By his time,  the library had already vanished, and was already 00:00:49.520 --> 00:00:56.640 shrouded in mystery. That mystery endures.  The library’s site has never been discovered, 00:00:56.640 --> 00:01:00.799 and is unlikely to ever emerge from  its concrete tomb beneath the modern 00:01:00.799 --> 00:01:07.439 metropolis. Many of the questions that surround  it can never be answered. But in this video, 00:01:07.439 --> 00:01:11.840 I hope to at least contextualize the  significance of the Library’s loss. 00:01:13.359 --> 00:01:20.719 The Library of Alexandria was established  around 300 BC by Ptolemy I. Ptolemy, 00:01:20.719 --> 00:01:25.760 once a companion of Alexander the Great,  had established himself as king of Egypt, 00:01:25.760 --> 00:01:32.160 with the bustling seaside metropolis of  Alexandria as his capital. By collecting texts 00:01:32.159 --> 00:01:36.560 and intellectuals, Ptolemy hoped to  burnish the reputation of his kingdom 00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:41.120 and capital throughout the Greek world. To  those ends, he offered generous stipends 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:45.439 to any famous scholar who would join his  court, and began aggressively acquiring books. 00:01:46.879 --> 00:01:52.799 Ptolemy’s library was part of Museion, a sort  of proto-university that stood beside the royal 00:01:52.799 --> 00:01:58.399 palace. The Museion seems to have consisted  of a courtyard surrounded by shady stoas and 00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:03.920 lecture halls, and included a dining room  where the resident scholars took meals. The 00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:08.719 storerooms and reading rooms of the library were  apparently attached to the main Museion complex. 00:02:10.159 --> 00:02:13.520 Ptolemy’s son and grandson expanded the library, 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:17.920 sending scholars and agents to scour the  markets of the Greek world for new purchases. 00:02:19.039 --> 00:02:23.599 Their bibliomania was so intense, supposedly,  that ships arriving in Alexandria were compelled 00:02:23.599 --> 00:02:29.759 to surrender all books on board for copying. The  library soon swelled to gargantuan proportions. 00:02:30.800 --> 00:02:37.600 Some ancient authors claimed that it contained  700,000 books – books, in this context, meaning 00:02:37.599 --> 00:02:43.280 papyrus scrolls. We don’t know the actual number,  but it’s generally assumed that it was far lower. 00:02:44.240 --> 00:02:47.840 Those inclined to minimize  the size of the library, 00:02:47.840 --> 00:02:54.560 however, should keep in mind that some ancient  scholars were extremely prolific. For example, 00:02:54.560 --> 00:03:00.240 the Alexandrian scholar Didymus, nicknamed  “bronze-guts” for his inhuman work ethic, 00:03:00.240 --> 00:03:04.400 reportedly produced nearly 4,000  books over the course of his lifetime. 00:03:05.759 --> 00:03:10.399 The scholars who worked in the library under the  early Ptolemies became famous throughout the Greek 00:03:10.400 --> 00:03:16.719 world. It was here that the circumference of the  Earth was first calculated, that the standard 00:03:16.719 --> 00:03:22.719 texts of the Homeric poems were established, and –  appropriately – that the first library catalog was 00:03:22.719 --> 00:03:29.759 devised. Like tenured academics in every era, the  scholars of the library also spent a great deal of 00:03:29.759 --> 00:03:35.199 time and energy attacking one another over points  of pedantry, a habit that earned the Museion 00:03:35.199 --> 00:03:41.439 the nickname “birdcage of the Muses.” The great library declined under the later 00:03:41.439 --> 00:03:48.240 Ptolemies, who had less money and less inclination  to spend that money on squabbling scholars. But it 00:03:48.240 --> 00:03:54.640 was in 48 BC, and at the hands of Julius Caesar,  that the library suffered its first disaster. 00:03:55.599 --> 00:04:01.039 Caesar, fresh from his victory over Pompey, had  become involved in a civil war that pitted the 00:04:01.039 --> 00:04:06.879 famous Cleopatra against her brother, Ptolemy  XIII. When Ptolemy’s forces tried to seize a 00:04:06.879 --> 00:04:13.840 fleet moored Alexandria’s harbor, Caesar ordered  the ships burnt to keep them out of enemy hands. 00:04:14.560 --> 00:04:19.040 Unfortunately, the fire spread from the  docks to the adjacent palace quarter. 00:04:19.839 --> 00:04:23.279 According to some ancient authors,  the flames destroyed the library. 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:27.840 Others authors claim that only a  portion of the collection was destroyed. 00:04:28.800 --> 00:04:33.840 It’s sometimes theorized that the books destroyed  were not in the main library, but in harbor 00:04:33.839 --> 00:04:40.399 warehouses. It seems most likely, however, that  at least part of the library really was destroyed. 00:04:41.439 --> 00:04:47.759 Only a few years later, Mark Antony is said to  have given Cleopatra 200,000 books from Pergamum. 00:04:48.639 --> 00:04:54.000 A gift of this magnitude would only make sense  if the Alexandria library had been depleted. 00:04:55.199 --> 00:04:58.479 The Library continued to operate  during the Roman imperial era. 00:04:59.279 --> 00:05:04.319 Though no longer a hotbed of original research,  it seems to have remained accessible to scholars, 00:05:04.319 --> 00:05:09.199 and was apparently subsidized by the Roman  administration. During the third and fourth 00:05:09.199 --> 00:05:17.039 centuries AD, however, Alexandria experienced a  massacre, an invasion, a civil war, and a tsunami, 00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:22.319 any or all of which might have destroyed the  library. By the end of the fourth century, 00:05:22.319 --> 00:05:27.839 if not sooner, the palace quarter, in which the  main library was located, was mostly abandoned. 00:05:29.199 --> 00:05:33.839 Ptolemy II had established a branch of  the library, accessible to the public, 00:05:33.839 --> 00:05:41.519 in the marble porticoes surrounding the Temple of  Serapis. But in 391, amidst savage street warfare 00:05:41.519 --> 00:05:48.319 between Christian and pagan mobs, the temple was  demolished. The stoas that sheltered the library 00:05:48.319 --> 00:05:54.000 were not destroyed, and would in fact survive  until the Middle Ages. But since we hear nothing 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:58.399 more about the books, it’s often assumed that  they were damaged or dispersed at this time. 00:05:59.759 --> 00:06:04.079 We don’t know, in short, exactly when the great  library in the palace and the branch library in 00:06:04.079 --> 00:06:10.879 the Serapeum were destroyed. But there  is no clear evidence for large libraries 00:06:10.879 --> 00:06:16.480 after the fourth century; and by the time of  the Arab Conquest, the library of Alexandria 00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:21.600 was probably no more than a distant memory.  Disasters must have destroyed many of the books. 00:06:22.560 --> 00:06:29.280 But the greatest culprit was probably simple  decay. The library of Alexandria was dependent on 00:06:29.279 --> 00:06:32.165 sustained elite patronage and investment – first  from the Ptolemies, and eventually, it seems, 00:06:32.165 --> 00:06:35.519 from the Roman administration. When this patronage  dried up, and when the texts ceased to be cared 00:06:35.519 --> 00:06:41.519 for and recopied, the scrolls of the library  simply rotted away in Alexandria’s humid air. 00:06:46.346 --> 00:07:17.839 So: how much was lost with the Library of  Alexandria, and how significant were these losses? 00:07:18.959 --> 00:07:22.639 At the risk of making an obvious  point, the Library of Alexandria 00:07:22.639 --> 00:07:29.839 was not the only library in the classical world.  There were hundreds of others, some very large. 00:07:30.959 --> 00:07:36.879 Only the most obscure works in the Library of  Alexandria were not represented by other copies 00:07:36.879 --> 00:07:43.199 elsewhere. It’s only because the Library of  Alexandria’s decline was symptomatic of the 00:07:43.199 --> 00:07:49.759 broader decline of classical culture – because,  in other words, all the ancient world’s libraries 00:07:49.759 --> 00:07:54.319 fell into decay at the same time – that  so many works were lost in late antiquity. 00:07:55.519 --> 00:08:01.039 It’s sometimes said that the destruction of  the Library of Alexandria set civilization back 00:08:01.040 --> 00:08:08.800 by centuries. This is a wild exaggeration. The  scrolls in the library did not contain the bases, 00:08:08.800 --> 00:08:15.040 as is sometimes claimed, for great advances in  science and technology. Although there certainly 00:08:15.040 --> 00:08:19.920 many works of mathematics and physics in  the library, the most important of these 00:08:19.920 --> 00:08:25.360 were widely disseminated elsewhere.  What perished with the library were, 00:08:25.360 --> 00:08:31.439 overwhelmingly, lesser-known works of literature  and philosophy, commentaries and monographs, 00:08:31.439 --> 00:08:35.840 all the residue and introspection of an  extremely sophisticated literary culture. 00:08:36.960 --> 00:08:42.000 These works would be a treasure beyond price  for scholars of the classics, but they were 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:43.900 not the stuff of a foreclosed modernity. Before we close, I’d like to talk briefly 00:08:43.900 --> 00:08:44.001 about this video’s sponsor, Blinkist. Blinkist is  an app that provides text and audio summaries of 00:08:44.001 --> 00:08:44.359 thousands of nonfiction books. If you’re  interested in learning more on the go, 00:08:44.360 --> 00:08:44.447 check out the link in the description. The  first 100 people to click will get free and 00:08:44.447 --> 00:08:46.320 unlimited access to Blinkist for a week, and a  discount if they choose to buy a subscription. 00:08:46.320 --> 00:08:50.480 If you enjoyed this video, please consider  supporting toldinstone on Patreon. 00:08:51.440 --> 00:08:56.160 Every donation helps me to continue making  carefully researched videos about ancient 00:08:56.159 --> 00:09:02.639 history. You might also be interested in my book,  Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants. 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:07.840 Thanks for watching.