Whatever Happened to History’s Greatest Library?
The Great Library of Alexandria, founded by Egyptian King Ptolemy I Soter and maintained thereafter by his Ptolemaic Dynasty successors, was the ancient world’s greatest library. It gained legendary status, and was more than just a “library”, as the word is commonly understood today. It did contain the ancient world’s largest collection of books and tracts, to be sure – up to 400,000 scrolls by some estimates. However, it was more than a big building compound with a lot of a written material. Part of a larger research institution known as the Mouseion of Alexandria, the Great Library was also the ancient world’s greatest educational and research center.
The era’s greatest thinkers, philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, poets, and other academics, all flocked to Alexandria to study and exchange ideas. The establishment’s lecture halls, meeting rooms, and gardens, teemed with an educational and intellectual fervor and ferment that was not seen again for centuries. Then, at some point, the Great Library of Alexandria was lost to history, along with its vast store of ancient knowledge. That loss, and its disappearance as a research and higher education institute, is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of science, the arts, and knowledge in general. However, how the Great Library’s demise came about has long been clouded by mystery and myths.
