Royal Library Of Alexandria History Essay

olympian Library Of Alexandria History EssayThe Alexandria Library was the largest and close complete library of antiquity and certainly the superior before the invention of printing. Only fragments and minor comments in ancient authorities be extant in current cartridge holders. However, the history of the Alexandria Library Library remains of fundamental importance in the intellectual history of the classical world as it is thought to contain the best-kept collection of classical literature.1With the help of historians and theorists as intimately as texts and historiographies, it is possible to retrace the founding, patronage, and operations of the Library relate estimates nearly(predicate) number of scrolls housed in the Library and examine legends of its ultimate demise. The purpose of this essay is to review and synthe size of it the current knowledge of this approximately famous Library and reconsider its place in classical intellectual history.Alexandria, Egypt Cros sroads of CultureScholars at the Center of Hellenic Studies at Kings College, London, view Alexandria of Ptolemaic Egypt as a urban center that was multi-cultural from its beginnings and a focal point for international trade and cultural development.2Situated between Africa and Europe, the see place of all races and creeds, Alexandria was the center of learning in the ancient world. It was a city of Greeks, Macedonians, Egyptians and Jews with the latter group making up about a troika of the population. During the height of its power, Alexandria was said to get hold of most abundant and helpful resources and be a nursing m early(a) to men of every nation.3The Creation and Patronage of the Royal Library of the PtolemiesAfter the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, his empire was divided into three parts with the Ptolemies dominating Egypt. Under the rule of the Ptolemies, Alexandria housed a Greco-Macedonian lawcourt ruling an Egyptian kingdom. Green explains that the Ptol emaic dynasty ran Egypt as a private estate and at a profit which supported scholarship, mercenaries, exhibitions, etc.The Museum and its library played a fundamental role in nearifying the rule of the Macedonian-Greek dynasty over Egypt.4The Library and its community of scholars flourished during the Hellenistic era of the Ptolemies. It has been thought to survive by dint of the Roman Empire, merely this decision is a source of debate among scholars.Historian John Marlowe describes how the Library at Alexandria emerged during the period roughly contemporary with Platos Academy, Aristotles lyceum, Zenos Stoa and the school of Epicurus. Aristotles school in Athens, the Lyceum, had a enshrine of the Muses and a library and promoted a universal c at a timept of studies.5The Ptolemies envisioned Alexandria as a meeting place where scholars of the earth should extend the scientific horizons of man, suggestive of the Lyceum itself. Based on research from historian Edward Parsons, th e foundation of the Museum-Library is attributed to Ptolemy Soter and/or his son Ptolemy II. The foundation and continuing support of the Museum and Library owed a lot to the pioneering work that Aristotle, and, to a lesser extent, Platos Academy, had already undertaken.6The Alexandria Museum ( synagogue of the Muses) was a gathering of scholars from all over the world. A Museum (Mouseion) was a shrine or center dedicated to the Muses and often associated with literary studies. The Muses been connected with thinkers and philosophers at least as early as the time of Pythagoras. correspond to Green, by the time of Aristotle a Museum embodied the features of an intellectual community including cult center, residence buildings, harsh meals, library holdings and research, and surrounding cloisters and garden. Timon of Philus, lampoonist, wrote of Ptolemys Alexandrian think tank In the polyglot land of Egypt many now find pasturage as endowed scribblers, infinitely quarreling in the M uses bird cage.For the first three generations of Ptolemies, at least, relations with the Alexandrians were good. This, then, was the atmosphere in which Ptolemaic scholars, poets, and scientists operated.7History of the Royal Library OperationsInformation about how the library was run is subject to speculation. According to Parsons, scholars do non have a great deal of information about where and how the papyrus scrolls were stored the dimensions of the collections what role the other library, the Serapeum library, had in Alexandrian cultural life. Even the information about the demise of the library refers to a space of six centuries, from the age of Caesar to the age of the prophet Muhammad.8It is presumable the first Ptolemies acquired and stored papyrus scrolls in the Museum. In order to manage this huge and increasing collection of texts, scholars devised a way to classify and order them according to dissimilar criteria, the most significant evidence for which is represent ed by the work of Callimachus of Cyrene, who was a leading figure not only in the history of the library of Alexandria, but also in the tradition of Greek scholarship.Historian Roger Bagnall has described that despite volumes of scholarship, some(prenominal) the historical evidence and archaeological remnant of the Library and Museum at Alexandria ar rather scantThe disparity between, on the one hand, the grandeur and importance ofthis library, both in its reality in antiquity and in its image both ancientand modern, and, on the other, our nearly total ignorance about it, hasbeen unbearable. No one, least of all modern scholars, has been able toaccept our lack of knowledge about a phenomenon that embodies so manyhuman aspirations. In consequence, a whole literature of wishful thinkinghas grown up, in which scholars redden, I fear, the most rigorous havecast aside the time-tested methods that normally constrain credulity, inorder to be able to avoid confessing defeat.9The posit ion of Demetrius (ca. 384-348) of Phaleron is more secure, as he was a prominent figure in the foundation of the Museum and Library. Aristeas, writing 100 long time after the librarys inception, records that Ptolemy I handed assigned Demetrius the job of gathering books and scrolls, as well as letting him supervise a massive effort to translate other cultures works into Greek.10Demetrius recommended that Ptolemy gather materials on ruling in the style of Platos philosopher-kings. An estimated 30-50 scholars were probably permanently housed at the Museum, funded by the empurpled family, and later by public money.11Demetrius had been a pupil of Aristotle and Theophrastos at Aristotles Lyceum. The practice of getting the best scholars or poets to ready the crown prince was something that Ptolemy had had occasion to observe in Macedonia, where the young Alexander had been taught by Aristotle himself. It became a common practice for the Librarian also to serve as royal tutor Apolloniu s and Aristarchus certainly did so.Parsons describes Demetrius as an orator and philosopher who dyed his hair blond and rouged his cheeks and anointed his person with Eastern salves. He ruled Athens for ten twelvemonths with moderation and without disaster is an achievement. His critical judgments of ancient texts were much admired.12Green describes the responsibility that Demetrius had to the Library which included a strong sense that the literary heritage of old and classical Greece was in danger of being lost through indifference and neglect.13Looking at the subsequent history of the transmission of texts, the fear seems well justified.According to Green, the scholars who staffed the Library saw their mission as the rescue of past Greek literature, and set themselves to obtain copies of every known work. Royal purchasers combed the book marts of the Aegean and Asia Minor, the best of which were located in Athens and Rhodes. It was inevitable that numerous forgeries began to circ ulate. With such an influx of material, the Librarians first study task was to organize accessions and cataloging.14In about 25 BCE Vitruvius writes about how Aristophanes of Byzantium earned the job of librarian after memorizing most of the Librarys contents15.Parsons describes how the Ptolemies and their agents ransacked the Hellenic, Mediterranean and Asian cities for literary manuscripts and records. At the port of Alexandria, vessels were searched and books that were found were confiscated with copies make for their rightful owners.16These rolls, known as the salvaged material, were not (says Galen) delivered directly to the Library, but consigned in the first instance to warehouses, where they were stored in heaps a description.17Based on sources from Ellis, Ptolemy collar wrote a letter to all the worlds sovereigns asking to borrow their books.18Legend has it that when Athens lent Ptolemy the texts of Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, he had them copied, returned the cop ies, and kept the originals. Another of the Librarians responsibilities was the establishment of sound texts purged of scribal errors made during the process of transmission.19The librarians were reputed to include some of the great figures of ancient scholarship. Bevan refers to the first recorded librarian in Alexandria as Zenodotus of Ephesus, holding that post until 245 B.C.E. His successor Callimachus of Cyrene, may have been Alexandrias most famous librarian, created a subject catalog in 120,000 scrolls of the Librarys holdings.20The Greek alphabet with less than thirty symbols was learned by almost everyone. An improvement took place in handwriting and developed a more elegant, flowing script, which made both for easier copying and quicker, and more comfortable reading.21According to Marlowe, librarian Eratosthenes (275-194 B.C.E) amassed a catalog of 44 constellations complete with background myths, as well as a list of 475 fixed stars. Eratosthenes, drawing on Egyptian and Near Eastern observations, deduced the length of the year to 365 1/4 days and was the first to suggest the idea of adding a leap day every four-spot years.22The last recorded librarian was Aristarchus of Samothrace, the astronomer, who took up the position in 180 B.C.E. during dynastic struggles between deuce Ptolemies. From that time onward no librarians are mentioned by name in any historical record.Marlowe maintains that the Museum excelled at producing great geometers by assembling the geometric principles of earlier Greek mathematicians, and had access to Babylonian and Egyptian knowledge of geometry.23Archimedes was one of the early Alexandria scholars to apply theories of communicate to mechanical devices. Among his discoveries were the lever and as an extension of the same principle the Archimedes screw, a hand-cranked device for lifting water.24In the blurb ascorbic acid C.E., Galen drew upon Alexandrias vast researches and his own investigations to stack up fifteen bo oks on anatomy and the art of medicine.25Herophilus, both collected and compiled the Hippocratic corpus at Alexandria. There has been some conflict about the fate of Aristotles books, once thought to be at the core of the collection, may have been carried off to Rome by Sulla26.Size and Scale of the Library at AlexandriaAlexandrian scholars were provided with a library containing a huge collection of papyrus scrolls and entrusted them to explore every field of human knowledge. The Library may have been reserved for scholars of the Museum just as many modern research libraries are closed to people not affiliated to a scientific or academic institution.In concomitant to the great Library, located in the Bruchion district of Alexandria, there was a smaller library, called a sister or daughter library that still existed at the time of Caesar and was situated inside the temple of Serapis.27The manuscripts gathered by Demetrius and his successors were bundles of writings forming high pi les in the Museum warehouse. Mixed rolls must have contained many duplicates. Parsons reports that there were 532,800 rolls, of which 132,800 angiotensin-converting enzyme rolls were considered premier finds. The sister library may have contained 42,800 rolls, probably copies of the writings shelved in the bigger library. The brittle and frail paper of Egypt was fragile media indeed on which to confide the precious knowledge and wisdom of the ages. They were subject to damage by fire, water, rodents, and worms.28Johnson describes the physical stacks which consisted of pigeonholes or racks for the scrolls, some of which were wrapped in linen or leather jackets. From Roman times manuscripts were written in codex (book) form, and were often stored in wooden chests called armaria.29According to Bevan, Callimachus cataloged 400,000 mixed scrolls of multiple chapters and 90,000 unmixed scrolls.30Bagnall has studied the size of the Alexandrian library, and he concludes that either more t han ninety percent of classical authors are not even quoted in the surviving Greek literature, or that the Ptolemies acquired a dozen copies of everything, or some combination of these un credibly hypotheses.31Seneca quotes Livy that over the 40,000 volumes were housed in grain depots near the Alexandria harbor, which were supposedly incinerated when Julius Caesar torched the fleet of Cleopatras brother and rival monarch.32However, Hannam indicates this would likely be the number of papyrus scrolls and many of these were needed to make up an entire book. He believes that Senecas figure of 40,000 is more reasonable and still makes the Royal Library much larger than any of the later classical or medieval libraries.33Using Gellius as a source, the figure reaches 700,000 books. It is clear that ancient figures vary by all-encompassing margins.34The higher numbers have been accepted by many modern scholars, in spite of the fact that lacking modern inventory systems, ancient librarians, even if they cared to, scarcely had the time or means to count their collections.35How the Royal Library was destroyedIn 48 BCE, Caesar was pursuing Pompey into Egypt when he was cut off by an Egyptian fleet at Alexandria. Outnumbered and in enemy territory, Caesar ordered the ships in the harbor to be set on fire. The fire spread and burned round off part of the city where the great Library stood. The earliest account of the destruction of the Library in The Civil Wars by Julius Caesar who states he had to set the fleet in the harbor on fire for his own safety and that some ports arsenals also went up in flames. Plutarch, writing his Life of Caesar at the end of the first century CE, refers that the renowned library was burnt down by the fire Caesar.36Aulus Gellius, a second century author, included in his Attic Nights a brief going about libraries where the destruction of the Royal Library is mentioned as taking place by accident during the Romans first war against Alexandria w hen auxiliary soldiers started a fire.37In a later book The Alexandrine War 1, Caesar does not mention setting fire to Alexandria but does state that the city was made of stone and would not burn.38Some scholars argue that Alexandria burns as well as any city and perhaps Caesar was attempting to hide his actions.39Cicero is silent on a fire in Alexandria in his Philippics.40.The second story of the Librarys destruction is more popular, thanks primarily to Gibbons The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Theophilus was Patriarch of Alexandria from 385 to 412 CE. During his reign the Temple of Serapis was converted into a Christian Church, and it is likely that many documents were destroyed then. Legend has it that Hypatia, a fifth-century scholar and mathematician of Alexandria, was dragged from her chariot by a mob of monks who burned her upon the remnants of the old Library.41One of the most famous legends about the Great Library is that of it being burnt down on the instructions of the Caliph Omar after Alexandria had been captured by the Arabs. However, Edward Gibbon reports this is not true.42In 640 CE the Moslems took the city of Alexandria although this story is attributed to a Christian who spent a great deal of time writing about Moslem atrocities without much historical documentation.Unfortunately most of the writers from Plutarch (who apparently blamed Caesar) to Edward Gibbons (blamed Christians) to Bishop Gregory (who was particularly anti-Moslem, blamed Omar) may be biased. It is possible that the collection ebbed and flowed as some documents were destroyed and others were added. For instance, Mark Antony was supposed to have inclined Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls for the Library long after Julius Caesar is accused of burning it.It is likely that even if the Museum was destroyed with the main library, the outlying daughter library at the Temple of Serapis continued on. Many writers seem to equate the Library of Alexandria with the Library of Se rapis although technically they were in two different parts of the city.43Historian Canfora is skeptical and her interpretation is that Plutarchs portrayal is an interpolation44. Hannam interprets Plutarch as merely reporting a list of slanders against Antony made others.45Hannam maintains that the Royal Library of Alexandria was not standing during the Christian era. It is his theory that a major(ip) library was founded at the Serapeum during its rebuilding in the second century CE and that this library became confused in the minds of various writers with the Royal Library of the Ptolemies that had disappeared over two centuries before. The Serapeum ceased to be when a Christian mob tore it down to the foundations under the leadership of the orthodox patriarch Theophilus after he had received word from the emperor moth Theodosius. The year this happened is generally fixed to AD391 and it is one of the best attested events in late antiquity. The Serapeum library was probably founde d as an adornment to the new Roman temple. Although there are no details as to its size, it would have been quite large enough to be confused with the earlier Royal Library.46The Library is often portrayed as the repository of all ancient wisdom and that its loss meant that science would progress at a much slower pace. Hannam believes the truth of the matter is that the Library was an important institution in the history but that its destruction in the first century BCE did not spell the end of ancient scholarship. In fact, Alexandria remained the Mediterraneans intellectual bully for seven centuries afterwards due to the library in the Serapeum and patronage of Roman Emperors. Hannam goes on to explain that in the final analysis, the Arab invasion ended the story of the Alexandria library. A that point, the cultural inheritance from the ancient world would be preserved in Constantinople and Baghdad.47Historian Luciano Canfora explains that placing the Librarys disappearance in the first century B.C.E., as opposed to four centuries later or even later at the end of the seventh century, necessarily alters our perception of the quality of the Greek literature that has come down to us. Canfora recounts the major theories the catastrophe is blamed either on Julius Caesar (48/47 B.C.E.) or on the fanaticism of the Arabs who conquered Alexandria in 642 A.D. Canfora supports the latter theory because the flow translations from Greek flowing through Egypt came to a halt at the end of the seventh century.Roger Bagnalls theory is that the disappearance of the Library is the result of the end of the impetus and interest that brought it into being and of the lack of the variety show of sustained management and maintenance that would have seen it through successive transitions in the physical media by means of which the texts could have been transmitted. The library of Alexandria began to disappear when the community of scholars for which it had been created was garbled up or when, as Bagnall says, the generative impetus of the first centuries ended.ConclusionsRepeatedly rebuilt, modified, and burned, the few facts that can be determined about the Librarys long history guide its semi-legendary status. Delia has underlined the literary and romantic character of these traditions, which are not more reliable, from a historical point of view, than the novel.48The central place of the Alexandrian library in western sandwich cultural memory derives from a combination of several factors the foundation project the connection between the library and the Museum the capability of the Alexandrian library to generate knowledge, and not only to accumulate it its destruction, a symbol of countless similar tragedies. Each of these elements concerns the present and future of our civilization, no less than its ancient roots.