4. The Ptolemies Founded the Ancient World’s Greatest Learning Center
It wasn’t all seediness, incest, and murder. The Ptolemies also did some good, like establish the Great Library of Alexandria. Founded by Ptolemy I Soter and maintained thereafter by his successors, it was the ancient world’s greatest library. It was more than just a “library”, as the word is 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, as 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.