Introduction, THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA A Cultural Crossroads of the Ancient World, in The Library of Alexandria- A cultural corssroads of the ancient World, Proceedings of the second Polis Institute Imterdisciplinary Conference, edited by Christophe Rico and Anca Dan, Polis Institute Press, 2017 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The destruction of the library of Alexandria: a reassessment (draft paper)
This paper deals with the ancient sources, some of them so far untranslated, on the destruction of the library of Alexandria, in order to try to shed some light about this hotly debated issue. The paper was first presented at the second Polis Institute Interdisciplinary Conference (on the Library of Alexandria), Jan. 8-9, 2015, Jerusalem.
2011
Education needed writing and books from the very beginning and the place of orientation in accumulated knowledge became the library. Kings and emperors who were fond of science liked to possess the entire tradition in their libraries. The first universal, all inclusive library in Alexandria came into being with this very purpose. The question, however, is whether it was the only purpose the founders had in mind. With the re-establishment of the Library of Alexandria in 2002 another question rises: what was the purpose of its founders? How did they manage to realize their goal? Is there a difference between the two acts of foundation? Is there a difference in purpose and intention between the Library of Alexandria and national libraries? The discussions turned around four major issues: what is the purpose of the establishment (to found), what will the library be like as a building, workplace and what the process of work will there be like (to integrate), how should the library take care of the preservation of documents (to preserve), and how should the collection of tradition be used (to create).
Libraries Before Alexandria. Ancient Near Eastern Traditions. ed. K. Ryholt and G. Barjamovic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019
The creation of the Library of Alexandria is widely regarded as one of the great achievements in the history of humankind-a giant endeavour to amass all known literature and scholarly texts in one central location so as to preserve it and make it available for the public. In turn, this event has been viewed as a historical turning point that separates the ancient world from classical antiquity. Standard works on the library continue to present the idea behind the institution as novel and, at least implicitly, a product of Greek thought.¹ Yet, although the scale of the collection in Alexandria seems to have been unprecedented, the notion of creating central repositories of knowledge, while perhaps new to Greek tradition, was age-old in the Near East where the building was erected. Here the existence of libraries can be traced back another three millennia, and the creation of the Library in Alexandria was not as much the beginning of an intellectual adventure as the impressive culmination of a long tradition. Seen in this context, it is no coincidence that the Library of Alexandria was built in Egypt and not in Greece itself. Ptolemy I established for himself a kingdom in a region that had both an ancient tradition of libraries and an outstanding reputation for wisdom in the Mediterranean world. For generations, Greeks philosophers had travelled to Egypt in their quest for knowledge, to the point where it became a recurrent theme or idea in contemporary ¹ Cf. e.g. the optimistic account by El-Abbadi 1990 and his 2016 article for Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as Casson 2001: 31f. MacLeod 2004 is slightly more careful regarding the novelty and Greekness of the Library, but also tends to take ancient sources at face value, cf. e.g. pp. 4-5. Even the critical article by Johnston 2014 refers to the 'invention of the library' (passim) and claims that for 'the first time we can see a library as an institution', building on a somewhat circular definition of the term 'library' itself (p. 356). A new and more sober approach to the historiography was opened up by Bagnall 2002 with a meticulous dismantling of the written tradition on what he called a 'Library of Dreams'.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA: A REASSESSMENT (published paper)
Four events have usually been blamed for the destruction of the Library: the Muslim conquest in 642; the decree of Theodosius in 391; the attack of Aurelian in the 3rd century AD; and Caesar’s conquest in 48 BC. Each one of these events is here carefully analysed according to ancient literary and epigraphic evidence in order to reach a conclusion about the orgin and causes of the destruction.