The lost library of Alexandria
History and myth of the most extraordinary cultural institution of the past
Legend place claimed to have contained all the knowledge of classical antiquity, the Library of Alexandria was destroyed without preserving any of its immense cultural heritage and, according to some speculation, among its books was the story of the colonization of the earth by an alien race that later disappeared.
Historical reality gives us the approximate date of the library's founding as the beginning of the 3rd century BC. At that time Alexandria was a young city conceived with revolutionary architectural criteria. It is not surprising that Alexandria was destined to become the capital of Egypt by replacing the city of Memphis, which happened at the time of the Ptolemy dynasty, with Ptolemy I. It was this ruler, a great devotee of the literary arts, who conceived the idea of a place whose main function was the preservation of written knowledge. He also understood the importance of making such knowledge available to the students and handing it down to posterity.
To do this he enlisted the cooperation of a distinguished man of letters of the time, a former governor of Athens, the Greek Demetrius Phalereus, with whom he started two institutions that were fundamental to cultural life for the next thousand years: the museum and the library of Alexandria.
Before that moment, a library was very different from what we imagine. The preservation of knowledge was mostly entrusted to private individuals or sacred institutions such as temples that possessed very few texts, usually only the originals, deposited there by the authors themselves. In those times the dissemination of written texts was very limited because of the prohibitive costs of supporting materials, (wax tablets, parchment or papyrus sheets) The papyrus, introduced in the 6th century B.C., represented a technological revolution, but was still far from being widely used.
It was Aristotle who first conceived of the idea of the collection of texts as a safeguard of knowledge. He passed on his work and his library holdings to his own students, including Theophrastus, a friend of Demetrius Falereus. It was Demetrius Phalerus who introduced the Aristotelian-style library in Egypt, based on the systematic collection of texts made available to a wider public.
THE PRESERVATION OF KNOWLEDGE
Library and museum were built very close to each other and were mutually complementary. Texts were collected in the library, while critical editions of the texts were compiled in the museum; scholars who visited one of the places could not refrain from visiting the other as well. The volumes collected numbered in the hundreds of thousands (at the time of Cleopatra more than seven hundred thousand!) and the fact that several copies of each book existed does not detract from the impressiveness and organization of that enormous preservation work.
The library became a veritable laboratory of philology; the initial purpose was to collect only texts written in Greek, but then the collection increased and was enriched with works of all kinds that were purchased at the sovereign's expense or carefully copied if it was impossible to obtain the originals. This required a lot of space, and in fact the library consisted of ten huge rooms and several reading-rooms for scholars.
In the rooms filled with shelves were stored papyrus scrolls, wax tablets and parchments, i.e., books whose form differed considerably from today's. Books were introduced in the Christian era with the advent of "codes" and remained substantially unchanged ever since.
An obligatory point of reference for the culture of the times, over the years the library was visited by illustrious figures, among whom are Euclid, the father of geometry; Apelles, the famous painter; Aristarchus of Samos and Hipparchus of Nicaea, i.e., the greatest astronomers of antiquity, the one the forerunner of the heliocentric theory, the other the discoverer of the precession of the equinoxes; and again the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace; Heron of Alexandria, the greatest engineer of antiquity, and many others.
FIRES AND DESTRUCTION
The Institution's activities constituted a source of pride for all of Ptolemaic Egypt and came to an end only with the final material destruction of the library, which occurred roughly a thousand years after its founding. And it is well true that before that time the immense collection of books had been threatened several times and from several sides in the course of raids or wars of conquest. In 47 B.C., during the War of Alexandria, the Romans led by Julius Caesar set fire to a section of the library; some scholars say that it was a fortuitous incident, while others claim that it was an action aimed at damaging the Alexandrian cultural heritage: the fact remains that more than forty thousand scrolls went up in smoke. Far more impressive was the fire caused in the 3rd century CE by the soldiers of Queen Zenobia, ruler of the small kingdom of Paimyra: this, however, did not go so far as to completely destroy the library. Nor, in spite of everything, did Emperor Diocletian, who in 295 A.D. to put down a revolt that had broken out in the Egyptian city put the city to the sword.
Before the curtain finally fell on the great library several more centuries would have to pass, during which time Egypt would pass from hand to hand, from the Romans to the Persians and from them in the seventh century A.D. to the Arabs. While the Arab invasion removed many of the harassments imposed by the previous rulers, especially the Romans, it also forced Egypt to clash with the religious intransigence of the Muslim world. In fact, after a long siege by the troops of General Amr Ibn-el-as, under the orders of the Caliph of Baghdad, Omar 1, the city of Alexandria fell to the invader in 646 CE. General Amr asked his ruler what should be the fate of the books contained in the library, and Omar 1 replied to follow the following criterion:
"If the books do not bear what is written in the Quran then they should be destroyed, because they do not tell the truth. If the books bear what is written in the Quran they should be destroyed because they are useless."
The fate of the library was sealed by this sentence that left no way out and condemned the cultural heritage patiently collected over centuries to a purifying burning.
Here the story ends and the myth begins.
THE CONSPIRACY THEORY
The reports regarding the numerous library fires are somewhat nebulous and have led scholars to formulate different theories about the true purpose of those burnings. The conclusions reached by some - we cite in this regard Paul Bergier and his work "The Cursed Books" - see as a fundamental motive the fact that the content of the library of Alexandria was frightening to many, because in the ten huge halls were kept, in addition to the more classical books of fiction and philosophical sciences, abnormal texts. These included the entire work of Berossus, a Babylonian priest who lived in the time of Alexander the Great. It was a History of the World that reported in some passages the encounter between Mesopotamian civilizations and a race of demigods, the Apkallus, descended from the stars in the form of amphibious beings, who would teach mankind the basics of technological progress.
Then there was the work of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived during the time of Ptolemy I. Of Manetho it was said that he knew all the secrets of Egypt and was also in possession of the mythical Book of Toth, a papyrus thousands of years old that according to legend was written by a demigod who lived at the dawn of human history. Toth, in Egypt, was considered the inventor of writing, and reading his book gave enormous power, for it contained the secrets of the world along with certain rituals of high magic that granted almost total control over others.
Bergier further reports that the library also held the texts of the Phoenician scientist Moco, who is said to have been the first to formulate the atomic theory; again, there must have been invaluable Indian books, now lost. Lastly, there were numerous alchemical manuscripts: so many that, again according to Bergier's report, the real reason that prompted Domitian to move against Alexandria was precisely the desire to destroy those very dangerous works. For Domitian thought that the power to transform base metals into gold by means of alchemy would enable Egypt to grow rich beyond measure and thus become a threat to Roman hegemony.
THE DESTROYERS OF LIBRARIES
After all, the theory of conspiracy against Knowledge is a constant in Bergier's work, which supports the hypothesis of a sect of library destroyers devoted to not leaking any knowledge that predates official history.
Bergier is certainly right about one thing: the Library of Alexandria was never looked upon favorably, but this according to official scholars was mainly because of its innovative character and the extraordinary organization behind the preservation of the texts it contained. It aroused quite a lot of envy, even and especially from its more direct competitors, including the great library of Pergamum in Greece. Significant in this regard is the fact that for a time Pharaoh issued an edict aimed at levitating the cost of exporting papyrus, for the sole purpose of harming the Greek competition. The climate surrounding the library in Alexandria was thus not the most serene, and a certain cultural parochialism largely determined envy of each other's cultural institutions.
Without completely ruling out esoteric implications and motives, I believe it is more objective to recognize that the documentation in our possession is too fragmentary to paint an accurate picture of what the library of Alexandria actually contained (moreover, the general catalog has also been lost) or the reasons that led to systematic attempts to destroy it. I only hope that if something managed to save itself from the last burning, as someone claims, it may one day come to light again, thus adding a piece to the complicated mosaic of philological sciences.
A METROPOLIS OF THE PAST
Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. What was initially one of the many Hellenistic colonies scattered around the Mediterranean soon became a magnet for numerous ethnic groups and as many social classes that set the tone and vitality of the city, giving it the cosmopolitan appearance of a metropolis. Alexandria's two main arteries, several kilometers long and up to thirty meters wide (the largest city streets in the ancient world), formed the backbone of a system of streets that followed a strictly geometric pattern and divided the city into immense monumental districts built entirely of stone.
The urban complex, which had more than four thousand buildings, a theater, two temples dedicated to Isis and Serapis, a stadium, numerous gardens, botanical gardens, and sports facilities, was bathed by the waters of the Mediterranean in the region of the great Nile delta; behind it flowed a small river that ensured a constant water supply, thanks to ingenious channeling works, and also enabled the transportation of goods and people by river. Impressive then was also the erection of the immense dam, the Heptastadium (the name refers to the length of the work, which measured precisely seven stages, corresponding to about one thousand three hundred meters), which divided the seaport in two and reached as far as the opposite island of Faro.
On this island, among other things, was built what is considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one hundred and twenty meters high, entirely covered in marble, decorated in bronze and capable of projecting its light up to many miles away.
