Budget Cuts, Not Fire, Destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria
The Great Library of Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy I Soter and maintained thereafter by his Ptolemaic Dynasty successors, was the ancient world’s greatest library. It was more than just a “library”, as the word is commonly understood today. It did contain the ancient world’s largest collection of books and tracts, to be sure – up to 400,000 scrolls by some estimates. However, it was more than a big building compound with a lot of a written material.
Part of a larger research institution known as the Mouseion of Alexandria, the Great Library was also the ancient world’s greatest educational and research center. The great thinkers of the age, philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, poets, and other academics, all flocked to Alexandria to study and exchange ideas. The Great Library’s lecture halls, meeting rooms, and gardens, teemed with an educational and intellectual fervor and ferment that would not be seen again for centuries.
Then, at some point, the Great Library of Alexandria was lost to history, along with its vast store of ancient knowledge. That loss, and its disappearance as a research and higher education institute, is one of the greatest tragedies in the history of science, the arts, and knowledge in general. However, how the Great Library’s demise came about has long been clouded by mystery and myths.
The most widespread popular perceptions revolve around the library burning down or otherwise getting destroyed in some cataclysmic event. One of the earliest accounts, by the Greek historian Plutarch (46 – 120 AD), holds that the library was accidentally destroyed by Julius Caesar during the siege of Alexandria in 48 BC. However, the geographer Strabo, writing 30 years after the siege of Alexandria about the Mouseion to which the Great Library was attached, makes no mention of such destruction.
Another culprit is Christian zealotry. According to these accounts, after the Emperor Theodosius banned pagan practices in 391, gangs of Christians celebrated with anti pagan riots, during which they torched the building. However, the accounts of the rioting actually refer to the Christians destroying the Serapium, or temple of Serapis, which is not the Great Library, or even a library at all.
Another culprit is the Muslim Caliph Omar. Supposedly, after Egypt fell to the Muslims in the 7th century, somebody asked the conquering general Amr for the books in the royal library. Amr wrote the Caliph for instructions, and Omar reportedly replied “If the books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them, and if they are opposed to the Quran, destroy them“. However, there is nothing to support this story other than a single account by a Syrian Christian writer, who probably wanted to tarnish the Caliph’s image.
The fact of the matter, is that there is no archaeological evidence to support any account of a cataclysmic destruction of the Great Library. The likeliest culprit is something more prosaic and petty: budget cutbacks. The Ptolemaic Dynasty generously supported the Great Library, both out of belief in its mission, and because its presence lent their capital city of Alexandria significant prestige as the ancient world’s greatest educational center. That changed after the Romans conquered Egypt in 30 BC: the new rulers had no attachment to the Great Library, so they did not support it like the Ptolemaic rulers had.
Additionally, Alexandria in the Roman era was given to frequent rioting between its Greek, Jewish, and native Egyptian populations – not the most inviting environment for scholars. More significantly, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius suspended the Mouseion’s revenue, eliminated its members’ stipends, and expelled all foreign scholars from Alexandria. The Great Library’s significance in the ancient world was based not on its being a repository of scrolls, but on its scholarship. When Marcus Aurelius essentially fired the scholars and forbade new students from coming in, he effectively shut down the Great Library’s operations. It would be analogous to the fate of MIT or Harvard, if all their professors were fired, and out of state students were prohibited from setting foot in Boston.