The Library That Vanished, Then Rose Again | Alexandria True Story

Chapter 1The Room Beneath the Sun

On 16 October 2002, a new building was formally opened on Egypt's coast in Alexandria, standing beside the Mediterranean Sea. It is called the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Step inside and the reading room is the first thing to astonish you. At the time it was built, it was the largest reading room in the world. It covers 20,000 square metres and spreads across eleven cascading levels.

Above it rises a glass roof, 32 metres high, tilted toward the sea like a sundial. The walls are gray granite, carved with characters from 120 scripts. The Norwegian artist Jorunn Sannes designed these characters.

Yet the building is really a memorial to the ancient Library of Alexandria, once counted among the greatest libraries in the world. So what happened to the original library? Did a single fire really burn everything? And why did Egypt build it again? Let us look at the whole story.

Chapter 2A Dream Born from Alexander's Empire

The story begins in 323 BC, when Alexander the Great died. His senior officers began to fight over his vast empire, and it split into three large parts. The Antigonid dynasty held Greece, the Seleucids held Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia, and the Ptolemaic dynasty held Egypt.

Egypt fell to Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general, a close companion of Alexander, and also a historian. In the Partition of Babylon he was made satrap of Egypt. Then he took a bold step. Alexander's body was being carried toward Macedon, and Ptolemy seized it along the way. He first placed it in Memphis, and it was later moved to a new tomb in Alexandria.

He then joined the alliance formed against the regent Perdiccas. In 321 BC Perdiccas invaded Egypt, but he failed and was killed by his own officers. So Ptolemy's grip on Egypt grew firm.

Now the question was how to adorn this power. The answer was knowledge. In that age, libraries added to a city's glory and drew scholars to it. The tradition was not new. Records from around 3400 BC have been found in Uruk. Nineveh had Ashurbanipal's famous library, and Babylon also had a large one. In Greece, it is said that Pisistratus built the first big public library in the sixth century BC. The idea of Alexandria may have grown out of this shared heritage.

But the Ptolemies aimed higher than anyone. They wanted not just a library but a repository of all knowledge. And Egypt had plenty of papyrus plants, from which scrolls were made.

Chapter 3Founding the Library: History and Legend

So who founded the Library of Alexandria? Here history and legend mix, and even the sources disagree. The oldest source is the Letter of Aristeas, written between roughly 180 and 145 BC. According to it, the library was built under Ptolemy I. The letter names Demetrius of Phalerum, a scholar exiled from Athens and linked to Aristotle's circle, who is said to have organized the library. But the letter dates from much later and contains errors.

Other sources say the library was built under Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who ruled from 283 to 246 BC. Modern scholars believe Ptolemy I may have laid the foundation, but that the library became a physical institution in Ptolemy II's time. Demetrius's real role is still debated. Stephen Tracy suggests he may have played an important part in gathering the first texts, since he was a prominent member of the Peripatetic school.

The library was part of the Mouseion in the Brucheion, the royal quarter. The Mouseion was named for the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. Its exact plan is unknown. But ancient accounts mention scroll storage, columns, a walkway, a common dining room, a reading room, meeting rooms, gardens and lecture halls.

According to Strabo, the scholars there received good pay, free meals, lodging and tax exemption. They ate together in a large domed dining hall. Tradition holds that an inscription above the shelves read: "The place of healing for the soul." This appears as a popular description.

In the same period Ptolemy I began building the Pharos lighthouse, which became one of the Seven Wonders. He also promoted the cult of Serapis so that the Greek and Egyptian populations could get along. So the library's foundation was laid. But filling it required thousands of scrolls. Where did they come from? That story is just as interesting.

Chapter 4The Hunt for All the Books

The Ptolemaic kings had a very simple policy. They wanted the library to hold the books of every author on every subject. To do this they sent royal agents with large sums of money and orders to buy every text they could find. One interesting rule was that older copies were preferred over newer ones. The reasoning was logical: an older copy had probably been copied fewer times, so it would be closer to the author's original writing. The agents went as far as the book fairs of Rhodes and Athens. Scrolls were gathered everywhere and brought to Alexandria.

According to the Greek physician Galen, on Ptolemy II's order the books on ships arriving in the harbour were brought to the library. There official scribes made copies. The original was kept in the library, and the copy was returned to its owner. Homer's poems were the foundation of Greek education, so the library collected many manuscripts of them and labelled each copy with its source.

Then comes the famous story of Ptolemy III. According to Galen, he borrowed the original manuscripts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides from Athens. The Athenians asked for fifteen talents as a deposit, a very large amount of precious metal. Ptolemy had expensive copies made on the finest papyrus and sent those back. The originals stayed in the library, and the Athenians were told to keep the talents. Some see this as a sign of Alexandria's power.

So how many scrolls did the library hold? The truth is that nobody knows. Estimates range from 40,000 to 700,000. There is a tradition that Ptolemy II set a target of 500,000 scrolls. Only fragments of Callimachus's Pinakes survive, so an accurate count is impossible. When space ran short, a satellite collection was opened in the Serapeum under Ptolemy III. It is also called the daughter library.

Another rivalry was with the library of Pergamum. It is said that Egypt banned the export of papyrus so that Pergamum would lack the material for scrolls, and that parchment was invented because of this. But sources say parchment was already in use, though Pergamum certainly improved it.

Chapter 5The Golden Age of Scholars

Now let us move beyond scrolls to the people. The first recorded head librarian was Zenodotus of Ephesus, whose task was to produce standard texts of Homer. He also wrote a glossary of rare words in alphabetical order, which makes him the first known person to use alphabetical order.

Then came Callimachus. He prepared the Pinakes, a catalogue of 120 books listing authors and all their known works. Each entry gave the author's name, father's name, birthplace and brief details. Interestingly, Callimachus himself never became head librarian. The second head librarian was Apollonius of Rhodes, a student of Callimachus, who is better known today as the poet of the Argonautica. By tradition, Archimedes visited the library in his time, and is said to have invented Archimedes' screw after watching the Nile rise and fall. But that is a legend.

The third head librarian was Eratosthenes of Cyrene. He was the first to apply mathematics to geography, and he measured the circumference of the earth. His estimate was only a few hundred kilometres from the truth. Using the library's sources, he also made a map of the entire known world. Eratosthenes believed the places in Homer's stories were imaginary. In his view the aim of poetry was to captivate the soul, not to write history.

The fourth head librarian was Aristophanes of Byzantium. According to one legend, he caught a case of plagiarism through his extraordinary memory, and Ptolemy III made him head librarian. Under him literary criticism reached its peak. Before this, even poems were written like prose, and he divided poetry into separate lines. He also created the Greek diacritics system, did important work on lexicography, and introduced marks for textual criticism.

The sixth head librarian, Aristarchus of Samothrace, is considered the greatest ancient expert on Homer. He wrote not only texts but long commentaries. These explained the meaning of passages, clarified difficult words, and debated whether words belonged to the original author or to later scribes. Hero of Alexandria, who documented the first recorded steam engine, is also counted among the library's famous scholars.

But despite their freedom, scholars had to accept the king's authority. In one story, probably a tall tale, the poet Sotades mocked Ptolemy II and was punished.

Chapter 6Exile, Fire and a Slow Fade

But a golden age does not last forever. In the second century BC Ptolemaic power began to weaken, and conditions changed for Alexandria's scholars. In 145 BC Aristarchus was caught up in a dynastic quarrel. He had backed Ptolemy VII, but after his murder Ptolemy VIII Physcon took the throne. The new king began punishing his opponents. Aristarchus went to Cyprus, and Ptolemy VIII expelled foreign scholars from Alexandria.

These scholars scattered across the eastern Mediterranean. Aristarchus's student Dionysius Thrax opened a school in Rhodes and wrote the first book of Greek grammar. Another student, Apollodorus of Athens, went to the rival city of Pergamum. Menecles of Barca joked that Alexandria had become the teacher of all Greeks and barbarians. Later Ptolemies paid the library less attention. The post of head librarian became a reward, as with Cydas, who was Ptolemy VIII's palace guard.

Now we come to the event that became the most famous. In 48 BC, during Caesar's Civil War, Julius Caesar was besieged in Alexandria. His soldiers set fire to Egyptian ships to clear the harbour. It is said the fire spread to nearby parts of the city. Seneca, citing Livy, says 40,000 scrolls burned in it. Plutarch writes that the fire destroyed the great library. But according to Cassius Dio, the dockyards and storehouses of books burned. Florus and Lucan mention only ships and houses near the sea. So many scholars think that perhaps not the whole library, but a warehouse near the harbour, was burned.

In any case, the library was not completely finished. Around 20 BC the geographer Strabo visited the Mouseion. It had either survived or been rebuilt quickly. Yet Strabo does not mention the library separately.

Plutarch reports another rumour: Mark Antony gave Cleopatra 200,000 scrolls from Pergamum. Plutarch himself admits his source was sometimes unreliable. According to Edward J. Watts, the gift may have been meant to make up for the loss in Caesar's fire. Another piece of evidence is Didymus Chalcenterus, who worked in Alexandria. He is said to have written 3,500 to 4,000 books, which earned him the nickname book-forgetter. According to Casson, so much work would not have been possible without the library's ample resources. So when did the library finally come to an end?

Chapter 7The Last Chapters: Rome, Aurelian and the Serapeum

Very little is known about the library in the Roman period. It seems its fortunes rose and fell with the city of Alexandria. Emperor Claudius, who ruled from 41 to 54 AD, had an extension built for the library, but overall conditions worsened. The Mouseion still existed. But membership was no longer given for scholarly success; it came from making a name in government, the army or sports.

The only well-known Roman-era head librarian was Tiberius Claudius Balbilus. He lived in the middle of the first century and was a politician and military officer. No major scholarly achievement of his appears in the record. Members no longer even had to teach, do research, or live in Alexandria. After the middle of the third century, mentions of the Library and Mouseion stop. The last reference to Mouseion members dates to the 260s.

Then came 272 AD. Emperor Aurelian was fighting to retake Alexandria from the armies of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. During the fighting, Aurelian's army destroyed the Broucheion district, where the main library stood. If the Library still existed then, it was almost certainly destroyed or damaged. And if anything remained, the Brouchion was destroyed again during Emperor Diocletian's siege in 297.

Now let us turn to the Serapeum. Ptolemy III Euergetes built it for the god Serapis, and it is called the daughter library of the Library. By the end of the fourth century it was probably the city's largest collection of books. Neoplatonist philosophers taught there, and for pagans it was a major pilgrimage site.

In 391 AD Bishop Theophilus oversaw the destruction of an old mithraeum. Some cult objects were paraded through the city, and the pagans were enraged. According to Sozomen and Rufinus, the pagans barricaded themselves in the Serapeum and fought. According to Sozomen it was later turned into a Christian place of worship. Eunapius, a pagan historian, tells a completely different story. In his account a Christian mob attacked without cause and destroyed the Serapeum.

So did the Library still exist then? The key point is that only Orosius clearly mentions the destruction of books or scrolls. According to Jonathan Theodore, by 391 or 392 the famous Great Library no longer existed. But a recent article claims a library survived in the Serapeum to the end.

In the same city Theon had a school, which was called the Mouseion. Around 400 AD his daughter Hypatia became its head. According to Edward Watts, it had little connection to the ancient Library. After Hypatia's death in 415 AD the school came to an end. The story of 642 remains.

Chapter 8Myth of the Caliph and the Real Answer

In 642 AD an Arab army under Amr ibn al-As took Alexandria. And here a famous story begins. Several later Arabic sources say that the library was destroyed on the order of Caliph Omar. The first of these is al-Qifti, who wrote before 1248. In the thirteenth century Bar-Hebraeus wrote that Omar told John Philoponus: if those books agree with the Quran they are not needed, otherwise destroy them. According to Ibn al-Qifti, the books were then used to fuel the fires of the city's bathhouses. It is said they were enough to heat them for six months.

But later scholars doubt this. The doubt began in 1713 with Father Eusèbe Renaudot, because the story was written down very much later. Roy MacLeod notes that it appeared 500 years after the event. John Philoponus had almost certainly died by then. And according to MacLeod, the Great Library and the Mouseion had probably both ended long before.

So why was the story created? According to Diana Delia, conservative authorities may have created and used it as a moral example in later uncertain times. Bernard Lewis has a different theory. In his view the myth arose in Saladin's time, to justify the Ayyubid dynasty breaking up the Fatimid collections in public auctions.

So what is the real answer? It seems no single fire ended the Library. It was a slow decline spread over many centuries. The expulsions of 145 BC, the fire of 48 BC, the fighting of 272 AD and the Serapeum in 391 AD are all part of the story. But each one is still debated.

And what of the knowledge in the books? Ancient texts were copied again and again. First professional scribes, and later the Graeco-Arabic translation movement, preserved them. According to some historians, most of the material may have passed on through the Imperial Library of Constantinople, the Academy of Gondishapur and the House of Wisdom. The movement grew under the Abbasid Caliphate. Under Caliph al-Ma'mun's patronage, the Christian scholar Hunayn ibn Ishaq completed translation projects on Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen. These translations were then made into Latin and reached Europe from the 12th century. So a great deal of knowledge survived, but why did Egypt rebuild the library?

Chapter 9Egypt Rebuilds Its Memory

In 1974 a committee of Alexandria University chose the land for a new library. It lay between the campus and the sea, near the ancient library. Then in May 1986 Egypt asked UNESCO for a feasibility study. International involvement began here, and President Hosni Mubarak also took a personal interest.

An architectural design competition followed. Our sources disagree on the year: one says 1988, another 1989. The winner was the Norwegian firm Snøhetta, which beat 524 other entries. At a conference in Aswan in 1990, pledges of 65 million US dollars were made, mostly from MENA countries. Construction began in 1995. About 220 million US dollars more was spent in the process, and finally on 16 October 2002 the complex opened formally.

The library has shelf space for eight million books. But in 2002, because of a lack of funds, it had only 500,000. The Bibliothèque nationale de France donated 500,000 books. The year is given as 2009 or 2010, and this made it the sixth-largest Francophone library in the world. The Internet Archive gave a 5 million US dollar donation. It included 10 billion web pages, 1000 archival films and 100 terabytes of data.

The complex has four museums, four art galleries for temporary exhibitions, 15 permanent exhibitions, a planetarium and a manuscript restoration laboratory. The Antiquities Museum holds about 1,316 artifacts, including items recovered from the sea in the Eastern Harbour and the Bay of Abukir. Descriptions are in three languages. The Manuscript Museum has the largest digital manuscript collection in the world. The Sadat Museum holds Anwar Sadat's Nobel Prize medal and personal belongings.

The Taha Hussein Library has special software for blind and partially sighted readers. There is also a separate section for books by Nobel Literature laureates. The Digital Assets Repository, or DAR, was built by the International School of Information Science. It gives free public access to the library's digitized collections. ISIS is also a post-graduate school, aiming to train professional staff for libraries in Egypt and the Middle East.

So is this new library the answer to every question? Was it also criticized? We look at that in the final part.

Chapter 10A Library with Open Questions

Every great dream raises questions, and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has not escaped them. Many people criticized it harshly. Some accuse the library of being a white elephant, a vanity project of the Egyptian government with little benefit and a lot of show. The building's design, resembling a rising sun, bothered some people. They said more money was going into construction than into books. Because of the lack of funds, the library had only 500,000 books in 2002. And even today it depends on donations to buy books.

Another worry was censorship. People feared it could affect the library's collection. On opening day there was international criticism of an exhibition at the Manuscript Center. It included the forged text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, placed alongside the Bible and the Torah. The library's director ordered it removed, and Youssef Ziedan called it a forgery and a racist work.

Then came 2011. During the Egyptian revolution the library was closed, but young people formed a ring around the building to protect it from looters and vandalism. That same year the library held several symposiums on subjects such as the revolution and social work. All these events were free for the public.

The first director was Ismail Serageldin, who served until May 2017. Moustafa El Feqy then took over. Students from nearby universities make up about 80 percent of patrons.

What is the lesson of this story? The ancient Library of Alexandria stood on royal patronage, and when support and funding shrank, decline began. To preserve knowledge a building is not enough; it also needs people, funding and an open mind. Will the new library keep that balance? The question is still open. Friends, if you enjoyed this journey, like the video, subscribe to the channel, and tell us in the comments what you think the real answer about the library is.