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

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1. 0:072,300 years ago,
2. 0:09the rulers of Alexandria set out to fulfill
3. 0:11one of humanity’s most audacious goals:
4. 0:14to collect all the knowledge in the world under one roof.
5. 0:18In its prime,
6. 0:19the Library of Alexandria housed an unprecedented number of scrolls
7. 0:23and attracted some of the Greek world’s greatest minds.
8. 0:27But by the end of the 5th century CE, the great library had vanished.
9. 0:31Many believed it was destroyed in a catastrophic fire.
10. 0:35The truth of the library’s rise and fall is much more complex.
11. 0:39The idea for the library came from Alexander the Great.
12. 0:42After establishing himself as a conqueror,
13. 0:45the former student of Aristotle turned his attention
14. 0:47to building an empire of knowledge headquartered in his namesake city.
15. 0:52He died before construction began,
16. 0:54but his successor, Ptolemy I,
17. 0:56executed Alexander’s plans for a museum and library.
18. 1:01Located in the royal district of the city,
19. 1:03the Library of Alexandria
20. 1:05may have been built with grand Hellenistic columns,
21. 1:08native Egyptian influences,
22. 1:09or a unique blend of the two--there are no surviving accounts of its architecture.
23. 1:15We do know it had lecture halls, classrooms, and, of course, shelves.
24. 1:20As soon as the building was complete,
25. 1:21Ptolemy I began to fill it with primarily Greek and Egyptian scrolls.
26. 1:26He invited scholars to live and study in Alexandria at his expense.
27. 1:30The library grew as they contributed their own manuscripts,
28. 1:34but the rulers of Alexandria still wanted a copy of every book in the world.
29. 1:39Luckily, Alexandria was a hub for ships traveling through the Mediterranean.
30. 1:44Ptolemy III instituted a policy requiring any ship that docked in Alexandria
31. 1:49to turn over its books for copying.
32. 1:51Once the Library’s scribes had duplicated the texts,
33. 1:55they kept the originals and sent the copies back to the ships.
34. 1:58Hired book hunters also scoured the Mediterranean
35. 2:02in search of new texts,
36. 2:03and the rulers of Alexandria attempted to quash rivals
37. 2:06by ending all exports of the Egyptian papyrus used to make scrolls.
38. 2:12These efforts brought hundreds of thousands of books to Alexandria.
39. 2:16As the library grew,
40. 2:17it became possible to find information on more subjects than ever before,
41. 2:21but also much more difficult to find information on any specific subject.
42. 2:26Luckily, a scholar named Callimachus of Cyrene set to work on a solution,
43. 2:32creating the pinakes,
44. 2:33a 120-volume catalog of the library’s contents,
45. 2:37the first of its kind.
46. 2:39Using the pinakes,
47. 2:40others were able to navigate the Library’s swelling collection.
48. 2:43They made some astounding discoveries.
49. 2:461,600 years before Columbus set sail,
50. 2:49Eratosthenes not only realized the earth was round,
51. 2:52but calculated its circumference and diameter
52. 2:55within a few miles of their actual size.
53. 2:57Heron of Alexandria created the world’s first steam engine
54. 3:01over a thousand years before
55. 3:03it was finally reinvented during the Industrial Revolution.
56. 3:06For about 300 years after its founding in 283 BCE, the library thrived.
57. 3:13But then, in 48 BCE, Julius Caesar laid siege to Alexandria
58. 3:19and set the ships in the harbor on fire.
59. 3:21For years, scholars believed the library burned as the blaze spread into the city.
60. 3:26It's possible the fire destroyed part of the sprawling collection,
61. 3:30but we know from ancient writings
62. 3:32that scholars continued to visit the library for centuries after the siege.
63. 3:36Ultimately, the library slowly disappeared as the city changed from Greek,
64. 3:41to Roman,
65. 3:42Christian,
66. 3:43and eventually Muslim hands.
67. 3:45Each new set of rulers viewed its contents as a threat
68. 3:48rather than a source of pride.
69. 3:50In 415 CE,
70. 3:52the Christian rulers even had a mathematician named Hypatia
71. 3:56murdered for studying the library’s ancient Greek texts,
72. 3:59which they viewed as blasphemous.
73. 4:02Though the Library of Alexandria and its countless texts are long gone,
74. 4:06we’re still grappling with the best ways to collect,
75. 4:09access,
76. 4:10and preserve our knowledge.
77. 4:12There’s more information available today
78. 4:14and more advanced technology to preserve it,
79. 4:17though we can’t know for sure
80. 4:19that our digital archives will be more resistant to destruction
81. 4:22than Alexandria’s ink and paper scrolls.
82. 4:25And even if our reservoirs of knowledge are physically secure,
83. 4:29they will still have to resist the more insidious forces
84. 4:32that tore the library apart:
85. 4:34fear of knowledge,
86. 4:36and the arrogant belief that the past is obsolete.
87. 4:39The difference is that, this time, we know what to prepare for.