The Destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria

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On a sunny morning in 642 C.E., armies of Muslim Arabs, in the process of conquering Egypt, destroyed the ancient library at Alexandria, which for a thousand years had been the western world’s most important center of learning.1 The library held a million volumes, including an extensive collection of Greek and Roman literature, as well as works of science, philosophy, religion and law. The Alexandria Library was nothing less than the summit of ancient scholarship. Its archives and museum were filled with the intellectual riches of Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, Rome and Egypt, and its research center was visited by […]

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Footnotes

See Frank Holt, “Alexander in the East,” AO 04:04.

For a more detailed account of Callimachus and his Pinakes, see J. Harold Ellens, “You Can Look It Up!” Origins, AO 02:02.

The Arab conquest did not mark the first time that the Alexandria Library was imperiled. The actions of both Julius Caesar, in 47 B.C.E., and Theophilus, the fourth-century C.E. archbishop of Alexandria, caused thousands of volumes to be lost. See J. Harold Ellens, “The Ancient Library of Alexandria: The West’s Most Important Repository of Learning,” BR 13:01.

Endnotes

See J. Harold Ellens, The Ancient Library of Alexandria and Early Christian Theological Development, Occasional Papers, Number 27, (Claremont: The Institute for Antiquity and Christianity of Claremont Graduate School, 1993), pp 7–12.

See Mostafa El-Abbadi, Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, (Paris: UNESCO/UNDP, 1990), pp. 145–179. Also see Luciano Canfora, The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, translated by Martin Ryle, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Ellens, The Ancient Library of Alexandria, pp. 6–12 and 50–51; and Edward A. Parsons, The Alexandrian Library, Glory of the Hellenic World: Its Rise, Antiquities, and Destructions, (London: Cleaver-Hume, 1952), pp. 356–429.

See El-Abbadi, Life and Fate, p. 101ff; and Ellens, The Ancient Library of Alexandria, p. 50.