Those who refused compliance were crucified, had both legs broken, or were put to death in some cruel manner.
How are you to know the difference between genuine old books that are worth money, and trash whose only merit is that it is falling to pieces? It is not clear whether the Royal Library, which was to become the main manuscript Library, was a separate building located next to the Museum or was an extension of it. The existence of the Library in 20 BCE, though in a much less complete form, means that we have to look to someone other than Caesar as the destroyer of Alexandria's ancient wonder.One story goes that the hunger of Ptolemy III for knowledge was so great that he decreed that all ships docking at the port should surrender their manuscripts to the authorities.
Any ransacking would definitely have resulted in the scrolls being looted rather than burned, because they were highly valuable. However, it is probable 'the greatest catastrophe of the ancient world', may never have taken place on the scale often supposed.If the great Library was attached to the Museum then Strabo obviously felt there was no need to mention it separately, and, perhaps more importantly, if he was there in 20 BCE, the Library had obviously not been burned down by Caesar twenty-eight years previously. alphabetical order.” (Greenblatt, p. 88)So where are these people getting all this stuff that makes them so angry?
The fact that Bar Hebraeus was writing so long after the event he describes allegedly took place and the fact that he was a Christian who had an axe to grind against Muslims both give us good reason to doubt the veracity of his account.The problem is that Ioannes Philoponos was born in around 490 AD and died sometime around 570 AD; whereas the Arab conquest of Alexandria took place in 642 AD. If a text had not been copied over to parchment by around 800 AD, chances were it was not going to get copied. Thank you!Our latest articles delivered to your inbox, once a week:Some Rights Reserved (2009-2020) under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license unless otherwise noted.The infamous destruction by fire of the Library of Alexandria, with the consequent loss of the most complete collection of ancient literature ever assembled, has been a point of heated debate for centuries. Under normal conditions of continuous use, papyrus typically only survives for about fifty years or so before it breaks down into dust. The great library needed a great deal of books, and the whole Ptolemaic dynasty worked hard to provide them. You have a strange habit of overstating things. You really are getting creative with your attempts though.I agree the 1/2 million figure seems inflated. The fate of that great wealth of books remains provocative and controversial. For centuries the main point of contention was whether or not the library (or libraries—as two sites existed) survived until the Arab conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century.