What really happened to the Library of Alexandria? - Elizabeth Cox

2,751,339 views ・ 2018-08-14

TED-Ed


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2,300 years ago,
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the rulers of Alexandria set out to fulfill
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one of humanity’s most audacious goals:
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to collect all the knowledge in the world under one roof.
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In its prime,
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the Library of Alexandria housed an unprecedented number of scrolls
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and attracted some of the Greek world’s greatest minds.
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But by the end of the 5th century CE, the great library had vanished.
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Many believed it was destroyed in a catastrophic fire.
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The truth of the library’s rise and fall is much more complex.
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The idea for the library came from Alexander the Great.
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After establishing himself as a conqueror,
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the former student of Aristotle turned his attention
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to building an empire of knowledge headquartered in his namesake city.
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He died before construction began,
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but his successor, Ptolemy I,
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executed Alexander’s plans for a museum and library.
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Located in the royal district of the city,
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the Library of Alexandria
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may have been built with grand Hellenistic columns,
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native Egyptian influences,
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or a unique blend of the two--there are no surviving accounts of its architecture.
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We do know it had lecture halls, classrooms, and, of course, shelves.
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As soon as the building was complete,
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Ptolemy I began to fill it with primarily Greek and Egyptian scrolls.
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He invited scholars to live and study in Alexandria at his expense.
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The library grew as they contributed their own manuscripts,
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but the rulers of Alexandria still wanted a copy of every book in the world.
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Luckily, Alexandria was a hub for ships traveling through the Mediterranean.
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Ptolemy III instituted a policy requiring any ship that docked in Alexandria
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to turn over its books for copying.
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Once the Library’s scribes had duplicated the texts,
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they kept the originals and sent the copies back to the ships.
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Hired book hunters also scoured the Mediterranean
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in search of new texts,
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and the rulers of Alexandria attempted to quash rivals
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by ending all exports of the Egyptian papyrus used to make scrolls.
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These efforts brought hundreds of thousands of books to Alexandria.
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As the library grew,
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it became possible to find information on more subjects than ever before,
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but also much more difficult to find information on any specific subject.
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Luckily, a scholar named Callimachus of Cyrene set to work on a solution,
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creating the pinakes,
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a 120-volume catalog of the library’s contents,
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the first of its kind.
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Using the pinakes,
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others were able to navigate the Library’s swelling collection.
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They made some astounding discoveries.
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1,600 years before Columbus set sail,
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Eratosthenes not only realized the earth was round,
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but calculated its circumference and diameter
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within a few miles of their actual size.
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Heron of Alexandria created the world’s first steam engine
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over a thousand years before
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it was finally reinvented during the Industrial Revolution.
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For about 300 years after its founding in 283 BCE, the library thrived.
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But then, in 48 BCE, Julius Caesar laid siege to Alexandria
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and set the ships in the harbor on fire.
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For years, scholars believed the library burned as the blaze spread into the city.
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It's possible the fire destroyed part of the sprawling collection,
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but we know from ancient writings
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that scholars continued to visit the library for centuries after the siege.
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Ultimately, the library slowly disappeared as the city changed from Greek,
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to Roman,
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Christian,
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and eventually Muslim hands.
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Each new set of rulers viewed its contents as a threat
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rather than a source of pride.
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In 415 CE,
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the Christian rulers even had a mathematician named Hypatia
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murdered for studying the library’s ancient Greek texts,
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which they viewed as blasphemous.
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Though the Library of Alexandria and its countless texts are long gone,
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we’re still grappling with the best ways to collect,
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access,
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and preserve our knowledge.
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There’s more information available today
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and more advanced technology to preserve it,
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though we can’t know for sure
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that our digital archives will be more resistant to destruction
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than Alexandria’s ink and paper scrolls.
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And even if our reservoirs of knowledge are physically secure,
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they will still have to resist the more insidious forces
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that tore the library apart:
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fear of knowledge,
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and the arrogant belief that the past is obsolete.
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The difference is that, this time, we know what to prepare for.
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