![]() ![]() If he was solely to blame for the disappearance of the Library it is very likely significant documentation on the affair would exist today.Īlthough the second version of the story of the Library's destruction is more popular, thanks primarily to Edward Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", the story is also a tad more complex. Although, Caesar was not without public detractors. Interestingly, Caesar wrote of starting the fire in the harbor but neglected to mention the burning of the Library which proves little since he was not in the habit of including unflattering facts while writing his history. Unfortunately, it also burned down part of the city - the area where the great Library stood. Caesar was outnumbered and in enemy territory, which led him to order that the ships in the harbor be set on fire which spread and destroyed the Egyptian fleet. In 48 BC, Caesar was pursuing Pompey into Egypt when he was suddenly cut off by an Egyptian fleet at Alexandria. The first person blamed for the destruction of the Library is none other than Julius Caesar himself. The library was so large it had another branch or "daughter" library at the Temple of Serapis. Over 100 scholars lived at the Museum full-time to perform research, write, lecture, or translate and copy documents. Historians have estimated that at one time the Library of Alexandria held over half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India, and many other nations. The Museum was a place of study that included lecture areas, gardens, a zoo, and shrines for each of the nine muses as well as the Library itself. The Museum was a shrine of the Muses modeled after the Lyceum of Aristotle in Athens. However, it was his successor as Pharaoh, Ptolemy I Soter, who founded the Museum (also called Museum of Alexandria, Greek Mouseion, “Seat of the Muses”) or Royal Library of Alexandria in 283 BC. The mystery exists not for lack of suspects but from an excess of them.Īlexandria was founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great. But how and why it was lost is still a mystery. The loss of the ancient world's single greatest archive of knowledge, the Library of Alexandria, has been lamented for ages. ![]()
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