The Pinakes divided texts by genre and subsection, ordered authors alphabetically, offered potted biographies and lists of their other works, included titles and opening words, and provided estimates of the extent of each individual work by number of lines.
Callimachus changed forever how we engage with writing. Massive works were reduced to basic ciphers, signposts inviting a scholar to read on, or move on. All of a sudden, books were defined by their catalogue entries, translated into a new grammar of genres, titles and line-counts—the universal language of the index.
If some were dismayed by the implications—in particular by the subjectivity inherent in the summarizing process—without the Pinakes , the library would have been unusable.
For the first time, scholars could access information on a huge range of diverse subjects, and consult, process and synthesize data all at once. The results were sensational. As early as BC, the geographer and mathematician, Eratosthenes of Cyrene was proposing not only that the earth was round—in an age when almost all believed it was flat, with an edge off which the unwary could drop—but had also calculated its circumference and diameter the former to within miles of its actual size, the latter to within 50 miles.
He was also able to conclude that all the oceans were connected, and was the first man in history to suggest the possibility of circumnavigating the globe. But scholarship at Alexandria was not confined to exploring the extent and properties of our own world.
Men like Timocharis, Hipparchus, Aristyllus and Claudius Ptolemaeus created maps of constellations and catalogued thousands of stars. Nearly two millennia before Copernicus, Aristarchus of Samos put forward the theory that the sun was the center of the universe, and that the earth and all the other planets in the solar system revolved around it in a circle.
In the early third century BC, the mathematical genius Euclid wrote the Elements at Alexandria , a series of proofs and axioms drawn together in a single, logical treatise. It was the founding work of mathematics and geometry, the definitive reference book enabling every future scholar to apply universal theories to myriad practical applications. As a result, engineering and physics flourished in the city. But the many great advances were not confined to endless rolls of parchment and lines of shelving.
Over time, this feverish spirit of discovery and invention spilled out of the halls of learning to transform the city itself. Alexandria became the setting for awe-inspiring wonders. Operated by running water, mechanical birds sang and whistled from the tops of trees and fountains. Using compressed air, statues would blow trumpets, raise wineskins to their lips, or shoot arrows.
Temple doors would open and close automatically, controlled by the lighting and extinguishing of fires. These devices came from the mind of Hero, a native of Alexandria in the first century AD, and one of the most prolific innovators of the ancient world. In his construction of a short play performed by automata, controlled by weights winding ropes and strings back and forth around an axle, he is credited with building the very first programmable robot.
A sphere held above a heated, water-filled cauldron was made to revolve perpetually under the power of pressurized steam. Hero intended this as a simple amusement, an intriguing toy that proved a theory. Looking back now, the imagination is sent reeling by the possibilities. Imagination, of course, is almost all that we have left. At some point in ancient history, we know that the library and its priceless contents were destroyed, most likely burned to ashes.
A vast tract of the collective memory and accomplishments of classical human civilization and culture was wiped out. What we do not know, at least for certain, is who was responsible. Historians ever since have told and retold the story as a persistent, haunting and unprecedented narrative of loss. At the same time, they have pored over the fragmentary evidence in their search for a culprit, embarking on a politically charged manhunt to find and prosecute whoever consigned the library to its terrible fate.
When he had arrived in the city several weeks earlier, he had been presented by the local authorities with the signet ring and severed head of his great rival, Pompey. Caesar wept at the sight of the ring, and was too distraught even to look at the head. Pompey and Caesar, the two great Titans of Rome, had fought out a vast and sprawling civil war that would ultimately see their Republic transformed into an Empire.
The murder, it seemed, was an attempt by the Alexandrians to demonstrate their allegiance to Caesar. Battle-weary and exhausted, and with sailing impossible due to the prevailing winds, Caesar decided to land his troops in the harbor and take up temporary residence in the royal palace. He marched with his legionnaires through the streets, carrying at the head of their procession a fasces— a bundle of rods containing an axe—signifying the military might and authority of Rome.
The gesture backfired, quite spectacularly. Roman soldiers were attacked and killed in the streets by angry mobs, and soon Caesar and his men found themselves holed up in the palace, their small fleet blockaded in the harbor, and the city besieged by an army of 20, men belonging to the teenage King Ptolemy XIII. Egypt, it transpired, was undergoing a civil war of its own. Caesar had inadvertently found himself at the center of an ongoing and bloody battle for succession.
And things were about to get even more complicated. Her name was Cleopatra. It is believed that the entire literary corpus of Ancient Greece was kept at the library, together with works by Aristotle, Sophocles, and Euripides, among others.
The Egyptian books were books about the traditions and history of Ancient Egypt. To this day, the Septuagint remains a crucial text in critical Bible studies. The original library branch was located at the royal palace at Alexandria, near the harbor.
It is believed that this fire spread to the library and completely destroyed it. It was estimated by one eminent ancient historian that the original bulk of historical writings in ancient Greece amounted to something like forty times what has survived.
If so, our estimate would run to an original body of 10, to 15, rolls. This may be too low, but is it likely that it is too low by a factor of thirty or forty, and that only one word in 1, or 2, has survived?
Roger S. Traditionally the Alexandrian Library is thought to have been based upon the library of Aristotle. By tradition it is also believed, without concrete evidence, that the much of the collection of rolls was acquired by order of Ptolemy III , who supposedly required all visitors to Alexandria to surrender rolls in their possession. These writings were then copied by official scribes, the originals were put into the Library, and the copies were delivered to the previous owners.
The Alexandrian Library was associated with a school and a museum. Scholars at Alexandria were responsible for the editing and standardization for many earlier Greek texts. After this there was mass havoc as Christians retaliated against both the Jews and the Pagans - one of which was Hypatia. The story varies slightly depending upon who tells it but she was taken by the Christians, dragged through the streets and murdered.
Some regard the death of Hypatia as the final destruction of the Library. Others blame Theophilus for destroying the last of the scrolls when he razed the Temple of Serapis prior to making it a Christian church. Still others have confused both incidents and blamed Theophilus for simultaneously murdering Hypatia and destroying the Library though it is obvious Theophilus died sometime prior to Hypatia.
The final individual to get blamed for the destruction is the Moslem Caliph Omar. In AD the Moslems took the city of Alexandria. Upon learning of "a great library containing all the knowledge of the world" the conquering general supposedly asked Caliph Omar for instructions. The Caliph has been quoted as saying of the Library's holdings, "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.
Even then it was said to have taken six months to burn all the documents. But these details, from the Caliph's quote to the incredulous six months it supposedly took to burn all the books, weren't written down until years after the fact.
So who did burn the Library of Alexandria? Unfortunately most of the writers from Plutarch who apparently blamed Caesar to Edward Gibbons a staunch atheist or deist who liked very much to blame Christians and blamed Theophilus to Bishop Gregory who was particularly anti-Moslem, blamed Omar all had an axe to grind and consequently must be seen as biased.
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