The Library of Alexandria
Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2003 11:14 pm
Salvete Romani,
Thanks to the information I recieved earlier, I was able to finish the first part of my essay sooner than I had expected. I will post it in small portions to decrease the size of each post so that you don't get lost when reading my essay. If anybody would like to contribute, ask questions, submit information or have comments regarding my essay, please post them on the Collegium Historicum message board.
Here are the first chapters of my essay. Enjoy!
The legendary Library of Alexandria
Chapter I: The Founding of the Museum and the Library.
The Museum was founded by Demetrius Phalerus, under the patronage of Ptolemy I, Ptolemy Soter. The establishment of the Library was handed down to Ptolemy II, Ptolemy Philadelphus, in 283 B.C., and it was during his reign that the monarch began the practice of attracting scholars, housing and funding them in the Museum, and collecting the vast Library.
The idea of a formal institution for scholars of all kinds, complete with a library, was a new one, and the Museum was modelled on the Lyceum of Aristotle in Athens; Demetrius himself, an exiled tyrant of Athens, was one of Aristotle's followers.
A second "daughter" library, the Serapeion, was soon established in the temple of Serapis, a popular god invented by the Ptolemies as a synthesis of Zeus, Pluto, Osiris, and the Apis bull. This library, found in the Rhakotis or Egyptian sector, was open to all, not just to royally pensioned scholars, and had copies of many of the Museum's scrolls.
Chapter II: The Function of the Museum and the Library.
The Museum was a shrine built for the glorification of the Muses, and from the outset contained lecture halls, laboratories, observatories, living quarters, colonnades for ambulatory discussions, a dining hall, a garden, a zoo, the shrine itself, and, presumably, the Library, which most archaeologists and scholars conclude was housed within the shrine and not in a separate building. An estimated 30-50 scholars were probably permanently housed there, probably fed and funded first by the royal family, and later, according to an early Roman papyrus, by public money. The administrator of the Museum was a priest, appointed by the Pharaoh and was ,together with a separate Librarian, responsible for the whole collection.
Chapter III: The Gathering of Knowledge.
Ptolemy III wrote a letter "to all the world's sovereigns" asking to borrow their books and when Athens lent him the texts to Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, he had them copied, returned the copies, and kept the originals. Supposedly, all ships that stopped in the port of Alexandria were searched for books which were given them same treatment. Being a center of trade, ships from many cultures docked at the ports of Alexandria, and in doing so, their knowledge was brought to the Library to be discussed, improved and copied.
Alexandria was a prosperous trade center between east and west, linked to the Mediterranean and, not far to the east, to the Red Sea and Indian traderoutes via a canal. This cosmopolitan city drew Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and Jews into a unique and not entirely harmonious coexistence. The Alexandrian Museum and Library, then, was an ideal place for scholars from these different cultures to meet and exchange learning, and was a repository for the literature and accounts of the Alexandrian intelligensia and the Roman Empire in general.
All documents were carefully stored and the most valuable documents were put in linen or leather jackets. In Roman times, manuscripts started to be written in codex (book) form, and began to be stored in wooden chests called armaria.
Thanks to the information I recieved earlier, I was able to finish the first part of my essay sooner than I had expected. I will post it in small portions to decrease the size of each post so that you don't get lost when reading my essay. If anybody would like to contribute, ask questions, submit information or have comments regarding my essay, please post them on the Collegium Historicum message board.
Here are the first chapters of my essay. Enjoy!
The legendary Library of Alexandria
Chapter I: The Founding of the Museum and the Library.
The Museum was founded by Demetrius Phalerus, under the patronage of Ptolemy I, Ptolemy Soter. The establishment of the Library was handed down to Ptolemy II, Ptolemy Philadelphus, in 283 B.C., and it was during his reign that the monarch began the practice of attracting scholars, housing and funding them in the Museum, and collecting the vast Library.
The idea of a formal institution for scholars of all kinds, complete with a library, was a new one, and the Museum was modelled on the Lyceum of Aristotle in Athens; Demetrius himself, an exiled tyrant of Athens, was one of Aristotle's followers.
A second "daughter" library, the Serapeion, was soon established in the temple of Serapis, a popular god invented by the Ptolemies as a synthesis of Zeus, Pluto, Osiris, and the Apis bull. This library, found in the Rhakotis or Egyptian sector, was open to all, not just to royally pensioned scholars, and had copies of many of the Museum's scrolls.
Chapter II: The Function of the Museum and the Library.
The Museum was a shrine built for the glorification of the Muses, and from the outset contained lecture halls, laboratories, observatories, living quarters, colonnades for ambulatory discussions, a dining hall, a garden, a zoo, the shrine itself, and, presumably, the Library, which most archaeologists and scholars conclude was housed within the shrine and not in a separate building. An estimated 30-50 scholars were probably permanently housed there, probably fed and funded first by the royal family, and later, according to an early Roman papyrus, by public money. The administrator of the Museum was a priest, appointed by the Pharaoh and was ,together with a separate Librarian, responsible for the whole collection.
Chapter III: The Gathering of Knowledge.
Ptolemy III wrote a letter "to all the world's sovereigns" asking to borrow their books and when Athens lent him the texts to Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, he had them copied, returned the copies, and kept the originals. Supposedly, all ships that stopped in the port of Alexandria were searched for books which were given them same treatment. Being a center of trade, ships from many cultures docked at the ports of Alexandria, and in doing so, their knowledge was brought to the Library to be discussed, improved and copied.
Alexandria was a prosperous trade center between east and west, linked to the Mediterranean and, not far to the east, to the Red Sea and Indian traderoutes via a canal. This cosmopolitan city drew Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, and Jews into a unique and not entirely harmonious coexistence. The Alexandrian Museum and Library, then, was an ideal place for scholars from these different cultures to meet and exchange learning, and was a repository for the literature and accounts of the Alexandrian intelligensia and the Roman Empire in general.
All documents were carefully stored and the most valuable documents were put in linen or leather jackets. In Roman times, manuscripts started to be written in codex (book) form, and began to be stored in wooden chests called armaria.