The Library of Alexandria

Founded in the third century BCE under the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great, the Library of Alexandria was conceived on a scale of breathtaking ambition. Its royal patrons set out to gather, in a single institution, a copy of every book worth having—an attempt to assemble the whole of human knowledge under one roof. Attached to a research centre called the Museum, a temple dedicated to the Muses, the library drew scholars from across the Mediterranean world with the promise of stipends, lodging, and access to an unrivalled collection of scrolls. It was, in effect, one of history's first great state-funded research institutions. The choice of Alexandria was itself deliberate, for the city stood at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, Africa, and the East, and its bustling harbour drew a constant stream of travellers, traders, and texts. The Ptolemies grasped that knowledge, like commerce, flourished where the world's routes converged, and they spared no expense to make their capital its centre.

The methods by which the library filled its shelves were as aggressive as they were ingenious. According to ancient accounts, ships docking at Alexandria were searched, and any scrolls found aboard were confiscated, copied by the library's scribes, and—so the story goes—the copies handed back to the owners while the originals were kept. Agents were dispatched abroad to buy books wholesale. Within its walls, scholars produced work of enduring significance: the geographer Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth with remarkable accuracy, while others edited and preserved the texts of Homer and laid the foundations of grammar, astronomy, and medicine. For a few centuries Alexandria was the intellectual capital of the ancient world. The library also amassed translations, most famously a Greek rendering of the Hebrew scriptures said to have been produced by scholars gathered for the purpose. Rival rulers, envious of Alexandria's collection, are reported to have banned the export of papyrus in an effort to starve it of writing material, prompting the Egyptians to refine the use of parchment as an alternative.

The library's end is shrouded in legend, and popular imagination tends to picture a single catastrophic blaze that consumed all this learning in an afternoon. The truth is almost certainly less dramatic. The collection likely dwindled over several centuries through a combination of misfortunes: fires, including one during Julius Caesar's siege of the city, but also chronic underfunding, political turmoil, the expulsion of scholars, and the slow decay of neglected scrolls. No single culprit destroyed it. If Alexandria offers a lesson, it is perhaps that great institutions of knowledge are fragile not only in the face of sudden disaster but also, and more insidiously, in the face of indifference and gradual neglect. Later generations, mourning what was lost, would turn the library into a symbol of vanished wisdom, a reminder of how much of antiquity's learning slipped away before it could be copied and passed on. Its fate lends weight to the modern practice of preserving knowledge in many places at once, so that no single misfortune can erase it.