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The city of Alexandria was founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great, envisioned to become the centre of a great cultural empire that included Greece, Northern Africa, the Aegean islands, and portions of the Asia mainland (Nolting, 537). Alexander ordered the construction of the great Alexandrian Library, dedicated to the Muses. At its height, it is estimated to have held between 400, 000 to 700, 000 scrolls, arguably the “largest collection of wisdom” that ever existed in the ancient world (Little, 35).

Succeeding Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king Ptolemy I sought to “recreate, on the basis of literacy, a new cultural empire” (Nolting, 528). The Macedonian elite had been “reading, speaking, and writing Greek for three generations”, and he hoped to bring this norm to Egypt (MacLeon). Ptolemy I summoned Demetrius of Phaleron to establish the library as the first librarian, since he had helped Theophrastus found a school modeled after Aristotle’s Lyceum (MacLeon). The Alexandrian Library consisted of a mouseion, “a shrine to the Muses that also housed botanical gardens, a zoo, dissecting rooms and an observatory”, as well as the biblion (‘place of books’), which included the famous main library and the Serapeum, the smaller sister library dedicated to the Egyptian god Serapis (Abbott; Johnson, 34).

Ptolemy I encouraged trade, and soon “Alexandria became the greatest center of trade in the world”, importing tin from the British isles, silk from China, and many scrolls describing life in other places (Nolting, 246). Ptolemy I’s vision was to amass all the textuality known in the world, “[attempting] to contain all Greek culture, so that the Ptolemies could lay claim to cultural hegemony” (Too, 88). Ptolemy I addressed a letter sent to all “Sovereignties and Governors on Earth” requesting all of their written works to be studied, and offered handsome rewards for Attic volumes (i.e. that of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, etc.) (Nolting, 247). Upon receiving these texts, Ptolemy I would have them copied by his “army of scribes and translators”, and “the copies [were] returned to the owners while the originals were kept” (Abbot; Too, 174). This “energetic, sometimes ruthless, acquisition policy” set a precedent for the formation of a library through “methodical theft” (Abbott).

Unlike its rivals at Pergamum or Ephesus, Alexandria welcomed learned men from all over, pursuing many topics (mathematics, medicine, literature, poetry, physics, philosophy) (MacLeon). As early as 283 BCE there was a synodos (community) of 30-50 scholars who lived and worked together there. The Library “created an atmosphere and a set of intellectual resources conductive to teaching, research, discussion, and appreciation of knowledge across the disciplines” (Demas). It soon became where “the best minds gathered”, and its roster included Euclid, Herophilus, and Eratosthenes, among many others (Rodenbeck, 526).

Callimachus of Cyrene, the second director of the Library, devised the first subject catalogue in the world, which became the model for future librarianship. His pinakes was an author list arranged into major subjects (epic poetry, law, philosophy, history, etc.). “In addition to the bibliographical details concerning each work, Callimachus added bits of information concerning the author, and short excerpts or summaries of the works themselves” (Johnson, 35).

Alexandrian scholarship eventually became dominated by literary and textual criticism (Hamza, 60). This became important for establishing political power based on the legitimacy of texts, for scholars would evaluate legitimacy and decide what belonged in the library (i.e. what was worth preserving). However, “its emphasis on literary craftsmanship lent an overwhelming weight to a textual hegemony that discouraged the exploration of the ‘new’”, instead focusing on legitimizing and refining the old texts (MacLeon).

The Library became a victim of political turmoil over time, eventually meeting its demise at the hands of Rome; it was “consumed by fire ignited following street fighting when Julius Caesar captured the city in 47 BC” (Too, 38). In the fire, thousands of scrolls “collected and composed by nine generations of resident scholars and philosophers were consumed”, although Caesar appropriated some of the texts “to fill Roman libraries” (Johnson, 38). Around 300 AD, Emperor Theodosius, Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, actively “closed the temples and destroyed written documents that did not agree with his doctrines” (Nolting, 251). Finally, the library fell prey to the conquests of the Arabs in 641 AD, who left nothing remaining.
“The Library of Alexandria was the ancient world’s premier seat of learning – its eventual destruction an intellectual tragedy” (El-Abbadi, 44). The destruction “removed from scholarship a priceless inheritance of Greek, Hebrew, and probably Mesopotamian literature, and much of what was then known of ancient Egypt” (MacLeon).

Works Cited

Abbott, Alison. “New Alexandria Library: a Temple of Knowledge.” Nature: Inter-national Weekly Journal of Science 419.69 (2002): 556-580.

Demas, Sam. “From the Ashes of Alexandria: What’s Happening in the College Library?.” Council on Library and Information Resources 129 (2003). Council on Library and Information Resources. Web: 21 Feb. 2012.

El-Abbadi, Mostafa and Omnia Mounir Fathallah. “What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria?” Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2008.

Hamza, M.. “Back to the Future: Alexandria’s New World Library.” Proceedings of the ICE – Civil Engineering 150.2 (2002): 59-65.

Johnson, Elmer D. “Communication; an Introduction to the History of Writing, Printing, Books and Libraries”. New York: Scarecrow Press, 1966. 3d ed.

Little, Tom. “Egypt”. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958.

MacLeod, Roy (ed.): “The Library of Alexandra; Centre of Learning in the Ancient World”. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000: xii-196.

Nolting, Anne. “The Ancient Library of Alexandria”. New York: Cricket Press, 2000.

Rodenbeck, John. “Literary Alexandria.” The Massachusetts Review 42.4 (2002): 524-572.

Too, Yun Lee. “The Idea of the Library in the Ancient World”. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.