Show Notes
Have you ever been sorry you asked something? Don’t be! PLSJ’s Reference Librarian J.L. finds the answers to questions you thought might not even have an answer.
View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Welcome to pls J'S podcast where the public library of Steubenville and Jefferson County shares with you. Our favorite quirky questions finds out what leaders in our community are reading interviews, local authors, and so much more. This podcast is part of the Ask Us series where the reference librarian shares answers to some of our favorite questions from the past and provides information on topics youth ponder but didn't know who to ask. Now you do.
Speaker 2 00:00:41 Hello. I'm jl, reference Librarian for the Public Library of Steubenville and Jefferson County, but I'm here today to talk about another library, one that you may have read about or heard about in countless memes or just know about, and that's the Library of Alexandria. The Library of Alexandria has attained legendary status. All book lovers have heard about the library, but it was a real thing. It existed of course in Alexandria Egypt. Alexandria was founded in 3 31 BC by not other than Alexander the Great. That was why it was called that. While there was a little bit of a town there, it was Alexander who made or envisioned this, and he envisioned it not only as a central port and the capital of his new Egypt, but as a center of learning. And so Tami, the first and his advisor, Demetrius Fanon, began building a temple to the muses known as the Mak, and attached to the Maio was to be a great library.
Speaker 2 00:01:58 I think I should pause here and say that there are a lot of names in Greek, and while I will try my best to pronounce these correctly, I'm sure to mess some of them up. And I do apologize to anybody who knows the proper pronunciation and know that my mispronunciation are not intentional, so call me The first was able to create the library right next to the great Port of Alexandria that comes in later. Egypt was already a civilization known for literacy. Scribes had a good position in Egyptian society and libraries had existed long before the Great Library of Alexandria. They were often attached to temples as the library of Alexandria was, or in the private collections of extremely rich people. But as this, the city of Alexandria was more a Greek city at this point than it was an Egyptian city. The task was set about not only to collect Egyptian and Greek writings, but to translate those that weren't into Greek.
Speaker 2 00:03:17 Still, they were done the Egyptian way on Papyrus Scrolls. So when you think of the library, think of not really shelves and shelves of what we think of as books, but papyrus scrolls. The collection was through what we would consider legitimate means, but there were slightly less legitimate means. It's known that if a ship came into the harbor of Alexandria with the book aboard, the book would be seized. The library scribes would dutifully make a copy, and these were known to be very high quality copies and give that copy back to its original owners. Yes, they got the copy, not the book itself, and then the book would have the phrase book from the ship's put on it and it would be added to the collection. Another example of this was Tmy The third was able to borrow from Athens, the original works of Sophocles Polies and other famous Greek authors, and had to pay a deposit of 15 talents that the original would be returned in good condition.
Speaker 2 00:04:38 He had them copied and then gave them back the copies and told them keep his deposit. As Alexandria was a large port. That meant that all through what had been Alexander's empire and eventually the Roman Empire, they were able to collect books. So the library not only included books in Greek and Egyptian, but writings from India, Africa, and possibly farther. So it truly was the great learning center of its day, and the Makon itself was essentially a university as we think of today. It was a center for learning. The library eventually started branching out. Yes, even in those days they had branch libraries, though they called them daughter libraries. One of these was in the temple to Siraf, who was the patron god of Greek Egypt. That was known as the Safian. The Safian library comes in again later in this story. We also had the Paks, and I know I've pronounced that wrong.
Speaker 2 00:05:53 This was compiled by Kakkis and was described as 120 book catalog of the library. This apparently survived after the library for some time, but is lost to today. And this was compelled in the third century bce. So this would've been at the height of the library. This is a time that when the library could have included as many as 400,000 scrolls, this catalog was known to inspired the people who eventually would put together the British Library and even Melville Dewey, who created our modern Dewey decimal system. So all of this was very much an amazing undertaking, and like any book lover, I would love to be able to go there through a time machine and browse the shelves. Though I'd probably have to stop somewhere and learn ancient Greek while I was at it, and I'm sure that any book lover would agree with me.
Speaker 2 00:07:00 What happened to it though? Why don't we have this anymore? Well, like anything, there were a lot of factors to blame. Yes, the library was well known and initially extremely well funded. You know, they were getting their funds from the royalty of Egypt, but like any library, it kind of fell out of favor. It continued, but the funding wasn't at what it once was. And then in 48 BC a man named Julius Caesar brought his war to Egypt, and he found himself under siege in Alexandria. One of the ways he broke that siege was the Egyptian ships that were in the harbor. He set them on fire, making sure that people fighting him couldn't leave. Thus, that was part of his military tactics. The problem is you set the harbor on fire and all the ships on fire, the fire is likely to spread and spread it did to the library.
Speaker 2 00:08:01 We're not sure how much of the library was burned or how much of the collection was saved, if any. Some accounts say that it was not actually the great library itself that caught fire, though it was the great library that was located next to the harbor, but simply a warehouse where excess books were stored, or it could have been the great library itself. We do know that there's some mention of the mouse on after the fire, so not the entire mountian was destroyed, but that doesn't mean that the library containing as many scrolls as it could, could have been a little more flammable than the rest of the Masum. But after that, we know that the collection at the Sirium would continue. Indeed, we also know that the library of the Sirium eventually absorbed another library from the city of Pergamum where a large number of volumes were transported apparently by Mark Anthony to make up to Cleopatra from the Roman burning of of the Great Library.
Speaker 2 00:09:10 And interesting to note that the library of Pergamum, most of their library did not consist of scrolls, but of parchment, which is not Pyrus Parchment is actually made from animal hide, and they were assembled in as early form of books called a CodeDX. So that would've meant that not only coess and scrolls would've been housed in the program, but still it would've been much smaller than the Great library. This continued till about the fourth century in the common era. This is when the Emperor Theodosius came to power. Theodosius was the Roman Emperor and was a Christian, and he did not like the pagan temples, which is what the Safian was and wanted all of the pagan temples destroyed, especially those in Alexandria. We know that Bishop Theophilus is said to have led a mob to the Safian and to either have destroyed or carted off the remainder of the books there.
Speaker 2 00:10:21 Some say that this was not the final end of the library. In the 13th century, a story began circulated about a general Amir, who was a Muslim, who when he invaded Alexandria, is said to, if the books agree with the Koran, there's no need of them. If the books disagree with the Koran, they must be destroyed. This is most likely a rumor since it didn't seem to have appeared to about a thousand years after the actual destruction of the Safian. So we'll have to put this one on Theophilus rather than the Muslims. What we do know is that of the Library of Alexandria, nothing remains, not even archeological evidence. The city of Alexandria has built on layers of many things. Every time you build a building in Alexandria Uten to find something underneath it, and they've had several earthquakes that have destroyed what was built.
Speaker 2 00:11:25 So we don't even know where either the library or the Safian actually were, but the stories still here. And since many of the books in the library were copies of existing works or they were the originals that a copy was provided, probably more of the works of the library survive than we know that we'll never know for sure, I'm sure. Sure. It would be wonderful to get our hands on that catalog, which in itself must be a fascinating read, but we don't have the Library of Alexandria, but we have some fairly good libraries here and I'm privileged to work in one. Thank you very much for listening.
Speaker 1 00:12:18 Thanks for listening to P ls J'S podcast. Visit us in person at your library, branch, or online have a question you want the answer to. Visit the library's [email protected].
