The boring truth about the Library of Alexandria

Modern writers make different claims about who destroyed the Library of Alexandria. Some blame Julius Caesar while others blame a Christian mob or the invading Arabs. But who is really responsible for the Library’s demise? Check out Al Muqaddimah’s video: Support my work on Patreon at The image used in the thumbnail and chapter titles is “Incendie Alexandrie“ by Hermann Goll, 1876 (:) 0:00 Introduction 1:56 Two libraries 3:49 The Museum 4:25 Peaked in the 200s BC 5:15 Decline 8:55 Papyrus 10:36 Julius Caesar 16:05 The Serapeum 20:46 Muslims 21:08 Three points FOOTNOTES [1] For a reality check on what we do and don’t know about the Library of Alexandria, see Roger S. Bagnall, “Alexandria: Library of Dreams,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146, no. 4 (December 2002), 348–62. On the methods of acquiring books, see also S. Johnstone, “A New History of Libraries and Books in the Hellenistic Period,” Classical Antiquity 33, no. 2 (October 2014), 364–65. [2] Bagnall, “Alexandria: Library of Dreams,” 351–56; Diana Delia, “From Romance to Rhetoric: The Alexandrian Library in Classical and Islamic Traditions,” American Historical Review 97, no. 5 (December 1992), 1458–59. [3] The location of the Museum is not known for certain, other than that it was part of the palace complex and close to the harbor: P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 1:15; Delia, “From Romance to Rhetoric,” 1450. On ancient museums as temples to the Muses: Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 1:312–13. [4] Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 1:315. [5] Johnstone, “A New History of Libraries.” [6] Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 1:318–19, 333–35. [7] Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 1:86. [8] Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 1:85. [9] Bagnall, “Alexandria: Library of Dreams,” 358–59. [10] The view that Caesar’s fire did not affect the Museum Library is based in part on the phrase “storerooms of books” in Cassius Dio (). However, see Hendrickson’s comments in “The Serapeum: Dreams of the Daughter Library,” Classical Philology 111, no. 4 (2016), 460–61. [11] Plutarch, Caesar 49.3; Gellius, Attic Nights . [12] Strabo describes the Museum at . [13] Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), 47; Bagnall, “Alexandria: Library of Dreams,” 357–58; Hendrickson, “The Serapeum,” 461. [14] For an introduction to the Serapeum, see Hendrickson, “The Serapeum.” [15] Orosius says the book chests were emptied but doesn’t say what happened to the books (Histories against the Pagans ).