The ancient Library of Alexandria

Many stories have been told about this ancestral library, however, there is not much information except from some philosophical writings so nothing is 100% for sure.

Data:

The Ancient Library of Alexandria was founded in 295 BC by Alexander Ptolemy I Soter in the city of Alexandria, Egypt. It is known as the first research center in the world and the largest library in the ancient world.

It consisted of:

• Library ( with ca. 700,000 documents)
• museum
• zoo
• botanical garden
• astronomical Observatory
• Anatomy room
• Meeting rooms
• Rooms to accommodate notable thinkers and their students that went to learn. 

They had every single book or writing existing at that time all. The books were brought from all over the world, the library workers were concerned to find all the books from known cultures, many of which were donated, but also bought and copied. Taking advantage of the great port city, the guard recorded any ship docked in Alexandria looking for books. If found, they confiscated them, they were taken to the library to copy and then returned. In other cases, they kept the books and compensate the owners for keeping them. The copies were of great value for the large number of entries they had in their margins.

48 BC: Fire in the library during the civil war in which also Julius Caesar took part of it he set fire to part of the fleet and the library which was near the port, was affected so at the end a significant amount of books were lost.

Since then and during many hundred of years, the library would suffer constant lootings and damages to the last and to the final fire that eventually made it disappear. At about the year 642 AD, the caliph  Umar ibn al-Chattab decided to give the order of destroying all the documents and books left at the library.

As a tribute, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was born in 1987. An area of ​​36,770 meters square with a capacity for more than 8 million copies. It was inaugurated in 2002.

If you want a different point of view, we recommend you to watch Agora, where the library is mentioned.