Library of Alexandria
The Library of Alexandria was the great royal library of Ptolemaic Egypt. This page separates evidence from popular myth about its destruction.
Established The library was founded in the early third century BCE under the first Ptolemies and became a centre of scholarship; its scholars included Eratosthenes and Aristarchus of Samothrace.[1] Scholarly debate Plutarch says a fire set during Julius Caesar's war in Alexandria (48 BCE) destroyed "the great library"; ancient sources disagree on what burned (books in warehouses or the library itself), and scholarly activity in Alexandria continued afterwards.[2] Established The Serapeum, a temple that had held a daughter collection, was destroyed in 391 CE.[3] Speculation The story that the Caliph Umar ordered the books burned after the Arab conquest (642 CE) first appears in thirteenth-century sources, more than 500 years later; most historians, beginning with Edward Gibbon, reject it.[4] Scholarly debate Many historians now think the library declined gradually through loss of royal funding and repeated conflict rather than in one catastrophic fire.[5]
References
- ↑ Roger S. Bagnall, "Alexandria: Library of Dreams", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146 (2002). Cited only.
- ↑ Plutarch, Life of Caesar (c. 100 CE). 49; trans. B. Perrin, Loeb (1919); public domain.
- ↑ Bagnall (2002). Cited only.
- ↑ Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789). ch. 51; public domain.
- ↑ Bagnall (2002). Cited only.
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