#98 What was the Library of Alexandria?

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Today’s newsletter is about the most famous library in history: the Library of Alexandria.

The Library, established in the Egyptian city of Alexandria around 300 BC, wasn’t the first library of the ancient world.

But it represented the first major attempt to collect and categorize all human knowledge in one place.

The Library, which held up to 700,000 scrolls and tablets, was home to some of the most influential scholars and thinkers of the ancient world.

It’s interesting to ask: why did libraries exist in the ancient world?

They played a few roles in ancient societies:

• They were used to collect scrolls and tablets

• They also served as a place where scholars could gather and discuss ideas

• For the kings who founded and funded them, libraries were symbols of power and cultural sophistication.

In the ancient civilizations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean world, only a small percentage of the population was literate.

Outside of the ruling classes, reading & writing was generally taught only to men who were known as scribes.

Ancient societies were not particularly complex by our standards, but they were far more sophisticated than the nomadic tribal societies that came before them.

These primitive social structures — usually centered around a temple-city located on a river — were largely maintained by scribes who recorded information about crop harvests, trade, and other economic events.

The invention of the written word played a fundamental role in the development of early human civilization.

Warrior-kings created new empires, and scribes helped them to run smoothly after the conquest was complete.

As a result, scribes held a high-ranking role in ancient societies.

Ancient Libraries: Before the Library of Alexandria was established, the largest library of the ancient world was located in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh.

The Library of Ashurbanipal, named for the Assyrian king who created it, contained over 30,000 clay tablets featuring writing in multiple languages.

Ashurbanipal, who ruled the Assyrian Empire from 699 BC until his death in 631, was known for his love of the written word. (see a tile depicting Ashurbanipal and his scribes below)

He collected texts and tablets, reaching out to neighboring cities with requests for copies of all their written works.

Ashurbanipal was particularly interested in collecting divination texts, which offered various religious rituals aimed at winning the favor of the gods.

Historians speculate that he was motivated by a desire to “gain possession of rituals and incantations that [could help him] maintain his royal power.”

It’s important to note that ancient civilizations had existed for thousands of years by the time Ashurbanipal came to power, and many of the tablets that he sought out had historical significance for him — a man who lived more than 2,600 years ago.

A few hundred years after Ashurbanipal, Egyptian King Ptolemy II (283-246 BC) established the Library of Alexandria.

Ptolemy II had an ambitious goal: he wanted the Library to serve as a collection of all human knowledge.

Royal agents were sent far and wide with the order to purchase as many texts as they could find.

When foreign ships docked in the port of Alexandria, they were required to turn over any scrolls they had to the Library’s scribes.

Foreign scholars were welcomed at the library and provided with free food, accommodation, and a handsome salary.

By 283 BC, there may have been between 30-50 scholars living at the Library facilities.

According to ancient sources, the library had a main hall with shelves containing thousands of papyrus scrolls. It also had lecture halls, meeting rooms, and a dining hall.

Although the idea of the university wouldn't be developed until the Middle Ages, the Library of Alexandria provided a model of what universities might look like in the future.

The Library began to decline when Ptolemy VIII (depicted on the coin below) took the throne in 145 BC.

He expelled all foreign scholars from Alexandria, indirectly helping to disperse Mediterranean intellectual culture as these scholars and their students established new libraries in different cities.

A hundred years later, the Library was partially burned by Julius Caesar’s army during Caesar’s Civil War.

While the Library continued to exist for a few hundred more years, it no longer played the central role in ancient intellectual life that it did during its first few centuries of existence.

But the memory of the Library’s greatness continued to persist, shaping the imagination of intellectuals from pre-Roman times until the present day.

P.S. Next time you think about ‘scrolling’ on your phone, remember the original scrollers at the Library of Alexandria:

ART OF THE DAY

The Burning of the Library of Alexandria, 1876. Artist Unknown.