As we know from the study of ancient and modern rhetoric. The idea that if the Great Library had not been burned down by wicked Christians we’d all be living in gleaming space cities on Europa or Callisto is, therefore, a silly fantasy. a hack …. Of course, we can’t be certain that the bibliophile George helped himself to the library collection, but the circumstantial evidence makes this likely. Likewise Sagan says Archimedes worked there, but there is no clear evidence for this and what little we know of Archimedes’ life indicates he spent it in Syracuse. Do you not think that the pagan emperor Julian, who founded the library in Constantinople, would have said that George took books from the Serapeum also (let alone the entire library), if George had actually done this? 30,000 books. This is also a reason why no scholarly publication in the field ever asserted that George did away with the library in 356. Sagan’s roll call of Greek scientists who he claims worked at the Great Library makes it sound like some kind of ancient Mediterranean MIT: Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Euclid, Dionysius of Thrace, Herophilos, Archimedes, Ptolemy and so on. It’s the ransacking that is more substantially relevant here, however. Er, no. The answer lies not in the evidence about the Great Library, but in the history of its daughter library and annex in the Serapeum. Alexandria had long been known for its violent and volatile politics. The Mouseion  was, after all, one of the jewels in the crown of the Ptolemaic kingdom and it sat in the Broucheion or Royal Quarter where the Ptolemies themselves lived. a crypto-Christian, posing as an atheist …. I wasn’t aware of Oikonomopoulou and Woolf’s book, so that citation is also very useful. Furthermore, he claims “by ‘science’ you really mean theistic philosophy,” which is BULLSHIT. Ammianus seems to have visited Egypt, given he also writes elsewhere of seeing obelisks at Thebes. Close. (Plutarch, Caesar, 49). In a 2002 paper that debunks several of the myths about the Great Library (see Bagnall, “Alexandria: Library of Dreams”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. “There is general agreement that the battle of Adrianople was the most decisive in the history of the Roman Empire”. “It was a centre for the study of science and its loss set back technology by a thousand years.”. But it was his 1980 TV series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage that made him a household name. Probably not very much at all. Although it should be noted that some count Hypatia herself as the last Head Librarian. Ancient libraries in particular needed constant financial patronage from their founders and sponsors to survive. Alexandria was founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great. Concerning possible books/scrolls in translation, was the Alexandrian library even an attempt to amass “accumulated knowledge ” across ancient cultures? During his reign the Temple of Serapis was converted into a Christian Church (probably around 391 AD) and it is likely that many documents were destroyed then. After his death in 323 BCE, Alexander's Empire was left in the hands of his generals, with Ptolemy I Soter taking Egypt and making Alexandria his capital in 320 BCE. Is that your point?”. “By Serapis I conjure you tell me, for what unjust deed were you so indignant at George? That kind of library, which is still the model for many traditionally-styled libraries today, was developed much later by the Romans and the Mouseion would instead have had “a colonnade with a line-up of rooms behind …. You’ve changed “many” to “most” – they are not the same thing. I wonder if this ransacking would have just resulted in the Scrolls being moved to a different location, like maybe a Church? I am waiting to get a creationist myther on quora who is a holocaust denier . Its scholars were far more concerned with poetry, textual analysis, grammar, lexicography and rhetoric than anything we would see as “science”. Others look suspiciously precise, such as Epiphanius’ “54,800”. your effort only proves the main point; there was an important center dedicated to thinking. a pseudo-atheist shill for Christian triumphalism [and] delusionally insane.”, – Dr. Richard Carrier PhD, unemployed blogger, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, this post to the Reddit /r/badhistory group, “The Foundation and Loss of the Royal and Serapeum Libraries of Alexandria”, The Foundation and Loss of the Royal and Serapeum Libraries of Alexandria, http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/news/geelong/hundreds-protest-over-closure-of-three-geelong-library-branches/news-story/90b9f8c63e8ac986632031985b879914, “History for Atheists”! “the various contemporary statements about the Alexandria library, are spaced out over a period of 400 years. It was the way he used the history of science to explain scientific concepts that intrigued me as a teenager, though I was later to learn that Sagan was a much better scientist and presenter than he was a historian. Most modern accounts say that the Great Library of Alexandria was founded at the beginning of the third century BC when Demetrios of Phaleron, a former student of Theophrastos who in turn was the student and successor of Aristotle, went into exile in the fledgling city of Alexandria and proposed a plan for the Library to Ptolemy I Soter. “. . Erroneous ideas that are popular get plenty of upvotes, regardless of how stupid they are. some 700,000 volumes and scrolls in all.” (Kirsch, p. 278). I would therefore expect more non-Greek writings than in Greece. That last example also included a theme found in many of the other comments – that this alleged Christian destruction set back the natural course of advancing knowledge and technological progress: “Think of how entirely different the human world ever since would have been. The other technological wonder that is often invoked here is the Antikythera mechanism. I take your observations on that as a light-hearted remark. This work was written, as I said, sometime around 398 AD. Julian himself had seen many/most of these books in the 340s. Overall, the idea that there was still any library there when the temple was demolished is dubious at best and almost certainly wrong. There certainly is an account from a century later which attributes the founding of the Library to Demetrios in Ptolemy I’s reign, but there are good reasons to be suspicious of its accuracy. Obviously, the early books by Ammianus where he sets out his historical plan are lost. His successor as Pharaoh, Ptolemy I Soter, founded the Museum (also called Museum of Alexandria, Greek Mouseion, “Seat of the Muses”) or Royal Library of Alexandria in 283 BC. Lenski, Failure of Empire). This attack was retaliation for the burning of the Canadian towns of York and Niagara by American troops in 1813. The Serapeum was always a temple and was not “reconsecrated” to anything. But then a screaming mob of irrational Christian zealots puts this treasure of science and learning to the torch, thus ushering in the Dark Ages and setting back technology by one thousand years. In 48 BC, Caesar was pursuing Pompey into Egypt when he was suddenly cut off by an Egyptian fleet at Alexandria. He notes: “We must then assume, to save the ancient figures for the contents of the Library, either that more than 90 percent of classical authors are not even quoted or cited in what survives, or that the Ptolemies acquired a dozen copies of everything, or some combination of these unlikely hypotheses. Despite this, popular sources regularly repeat the huge figures given for the number of books in the library in several ancient sources, and usually opt for the ones that are the highest. Thus he informs his readers with great assurance that: “At its height the Museum contained at least half a million papyrus rolls systematically organised, labelled and shelved according to a clever new system …. The Mouseion at Alexandria was far from  the only shrine to the Muses in the ancient world, nor was it the only one with an associated centre of study. The story of the destruction of the Great Library is a positivist fairy tale, cobbled together from disparate elements and bearing almost no relationship to accurate history. Formerly a s… This is a neat story that makes a direct link between the Peripatetic school of Aristotle and the founding of the Library and establishes it as being modelled on Aristotle’s Lyceum in Athens. Some regard the death of Hypatia as the final destruction of the Library. George was eventually kicked to death by a pagan mob and his mangled corpse dragged through the city, which shows this kind of thing was not just something that happened to Hypatia in the often violent politics of Alexandria. Greatly outnumbered and in enemy territory, Caesar ordered the ships in the harbor to be set on fire. As in your blog you say he mentions the library in the past tense… (so there is some discrepancy here).”, “There ARE besides in the city temples pompous with lofty roofs, conspicuous among them the Serapeum, which, though feeble words merely belittle it, yet IS so adorned with extensive columned halls, with almost breathing statues, and a great number of other works of art, that next to the Capitolium, with which revered Rome elevates herself to eternity, the whole world beholds nothing more magnificent. You refer at one point to the royal library at Pergamon containing ca. V, Ch. This makes some sense, given that the Mouseion wasdedicated to the Muses, four of whom represented forms of verse. But we have to respect the right of people to believe for as long as they need. It’s not to be found in any other Christian nor contemporary Islamic source, nor in later Islamic jurisprudence. Credit - Heritage Images/Getty Images. A similar survey of the remains of the Great Library of Pergamon comes to an estimate of 30,000 scrolls there. It’s so annoying. Another of dozens of historical factors to consider here, is that the various contemporary statements about the Alexandria library, are spaced out over a period of 400 years. It has been estimated that at one time the Library of Alexandria held over half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India and many other nations. Like many of these positivist fables, the origin of this story seems to lie in the polemics of the eighteenth century: in this case, the main perpetrator is our old friend Edward Gibbon: “The valuable library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice. Eunapius’ account in his Lives of the Philosophers runs to 548 words in English translation. Any ransacking would definitely have resulted in the scrolls being looted rather than burned, because they were highly valuable. As mentioned above, when we can survey the archaeology of an ancient library’s ruins, some estimate can be made of its holdings. Well, honestly, we just don’t know. When the sedition had prevailed for some time, the rulers came and urged the people to remember the laws, to lay down their arms, and to give up the Serapion (Sozomen, History of the Church, VII.15). There is some debate about how literally we can take the reports that the whole Great Library was destroyed, especially given that the docks area of Alexandria were some distance from the Mouseion’s likely location. Sozomen was writing in the following century and, as a Christian, may not be reliable on the lurid details, but Socrates Scholasticus, writing a little closer to the events, confirms that many Christians were killed in the unrest. (e.g. Julian refers to the ransacking of the temple on George’s orders. For instance, Mark Antony was supposed to have given Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls for the Library long after Julius Caesar is accused of burning it. The battle of 378 is a decisive date because it marks the end of the Roman Empire. Coptic? Anyone who works in library services will tell you that the main enemy of a library’s continuation is a lack of funding. Private Collection. His analysis makes it fairly clear that these numbers, presented so uncritically by popular authors for rhetorical effect, are probable fantasies. Yet he refers to the libraries it had contained in the past tense. The first person blamed for the destruction of the Library is none other than Julius Caesar himself. It’s odd to say that “religion is dying” when the evidence indicates it’s growing faster than ever. Hero does seem to have been another exception to the rule when it comes to philosophers tinkering with gadgets and it’s possible (though far from certain) that he worked in the Mouseion. So the library would contain many non Hellenistic writings.”. A cartoon I created, largely inspired by your posts on the other sites. “It was the largest library in the ancient world, containing over 700,000 books.”. Hero’s little device was not capable of doing anything more than spinning in place and Roman technology lacked the high tensile metallurgy, the mathematics or the precision tooling that would be required to make a true steam engine. While the Great Library was never as large as some of the more fanciful accounts allege, it is clear that its holdings were large enough that at least some of them were stored outside of the Mouseion. Who Killed the Great Library of Alexandria? Caesar wrote of starting the fire in the harbor but neglected to mention the burning of the Library. In January 2014 someone posted the meme above to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science page on Facebook. (Dio Cassius, Roman History, XLII.36). But after all, that is just rhetoric. They often claim, for example, that Hero of Alexandria worked at the Great Library and that he invented the steam engine. The Julian letter is, as I’ve said, circumstantial evidence, but interesting given its proximity to the ransacking of the Serapeum by George. Daniel 12 foretells Knowledge will Increase in the End Days. I’ve seen guys who say some harsh stuff which should by all means get them punished but don’t. 97, No. You are right to mention Julian’s own open letter (in Socr.