48 Fun Facts About Library of Alexandria

Which Wonder of the Ancient World stood in Alexandria alongside its famous Library?

The Lighthouse of Alexandria stood for centuries until earthquakes wrecked it, and its stones were reused to build the Citadel of Qaitbay on the same site.

What was the research institution that housed the Library of Alexandria's scholars called?

The Mouseion under Roman rule gave membership to politicians and even athletes, not only to scholars.

Which exiled Athenian statesman may have proposed the idea of a universal library to Ptolemy I?

Demetrius of Phalerum was a Peripatetic, a student of Aristotle's school, and had taken refuge at the Ptolemaic court.

Under which ruler was the Library of Alexandria probably actually built?

Ptolemy I may have laid the groundwork, but the Library was probably built only under his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphus.

What writing material made up the Library's scroll collection?

Papyrus was once abundant across the Nile Delta, giving Egypt's rulers a near-monopoly on the ancient world's prime writing material.

Which geometer is said to have told King Ptolemy there is 'no royal road to geometry'?

Euclid taught in Alexandria under Ptolemy I, though the 'royal road' story first appears centuries later, in Proclus.

Which head librarian of Alexandria calculated the circumference of the Earth?

Eratosthenes of Cyrene is also remembered for the Sieve of Eratosthenes, a method for finding prime numbers.

Callimachus's Pinakes is popularly considered the first what in the Western world?

The Pinakes was a 120-book library catalogue of authors and their works, and it survives only in fragments.

Which Alexandrian scholar is credited with inventing the first recorded steam engine?

Hero of Alexandria's aeolipile spun on jets of steam, and he also described a coin-operated dispenser, the earliest known vending machine.

Aristophanes of Byzantium invented Greek diacritics and was the first to divide which kind of text into lines?

Before him, poems were written out on the page just like prose.

Who was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty that built the Library of Alexandria?

After Cleopatra's death in 30 BC, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, ending the Hellenistic period.

The Alexandrian engineer Ctesibius invented the hydraulis, a water-powered forerunner of which instrument?

The pipe organ descends from Ctesibius's hydraulis, which used water pressure to drive air through its pipes.

Which Roman leader's soldiers started the 48 BC fire in Alexandria that is often blamed for burning the Library?

Julius Caesar's soldiers torched ships in the harbour while he was besieged, and the flames spread to warehouses of books near the docks.

Which Greek geographer described visiting the Library's parent institution in Alexandria around 20 BC?

Strabo's visit came decades after the fire of 48 BC, suggesting the institution either survived it or was rebuilt soon afterwards.

The Library of Alexandria's daughter collection was housed in a temple to which god?

Serapis was honoured by the Serapeum, a temple built under Ptolemy III that housed an offshoot of the Library's collection.

Which bishop of Alexandria supervised the 391 AD destruction of the temple housing the Library's daughter collection?

Theophilus acted after Emperor Theodosius I's edict against pagan temples, and Christian crowds then demolished the complex.

Which Assyrian king founded the famous library at Nineveh?

Ashurbanipal's clay tablets, unlike Alexandria's scrolls, survived burial and were dug up in the 19th century.

Legend says 72 scholars translated which text into Greek for the Library of Alexandria?

The Torah translation became known as the Septuagint, from the Latin for seventy, though the legend counts 72 translators.

In which quarter of Alexandria was the Library built?

The Brucheion was the Royal Quarter, where the royal palaces took up a quarter or even a third of the city.

According to popular description, what inscription hung above the Library's shelves?

'The place of the cure of the soul' is the popular description, while 'Know thyself' was inscribed at Apollo's temple at Delphi.

According to Galen, what did Alexandria's officials do with books found on arriving ships?

Officials seized the books, copied them and kept the originals, while the owners were handed the copies.

Why did the Library favour older manuscripts over newer ones?

Less copying meant fewer errors, so an older scroll was likelier to match what its author first wrote.

Which works did the Library focus on acquiring above all others?

The Homeric epics were revered above all other poems, so the Library tagged each copy with a label recording where it came from.

Library of Alexandria scholars reportedly received a salary, free food and lodging, and which other perk?

Exemption from taxes came with communal meals, taken in a common dining hall inside the royal palace grounds.

A likely apocryphal story says a Ptolemaic king drowned the poet Sotades in a lead jar for mocking what?

His marriage to his sister Arsinoe II drew Sotades's obscene verse, and he escaped jail before being caught again.

The division sign ÷ is called an obelus, after a mark Alexandrian scholars used to flag what?

Zenodotus, the Library's first head librarian, marked doubtful passages with the obelus while editing old manuscripts.

What organisational method is Zenodotus the first person known to have used?

Zenodotus's alphabetical order sorted words only by their first letter; sorting by later letters isn't known until the second century AD.

Which surviving epic about Jason and his crew was written by the Library's second head librarian?

The Argonautica's author, Apollonius of Rhodes, was a native of Alexandria and a pupil of Callimachus.

Which mathematician sent his results to Alexandria's scholars by letter, before a Roman soldier killed him?

Archimedes died when Syracuse fell to Rome; legend says he refused to follow the soldier until he had finished a geometry problem.

Which company named its voice assistant with a nod to the Library of Alexandria?

Amazon also picked Alexa for its hard 'x' sound, which helps devices recognise the wake word more precisely.

Ptolemy III forfeited a deposit rather than return Athens' manuscripts by Sophocles, Euripides and which playwright?

Aeschylus's scripts went to Alexandria with the others after Athens demanded a guarantee of fifteen talents.

Legend says Aristophanes of Byzantium became head librarian by exposing which offence at a contest?

Plagiarism was proven when Aristophanes recalled which shelves held the stolen texts, and the king made him librarian.

Which constellation honours a Ptolemaic queen's lock of hair, celebrated in a poem by Callimachus?

Coma Berenices means Berenice's hair; the court astronomer Conon claimed the queen's vanished offering had been set among the stars.

Dionysius Thrax was long credited with the first Greek manual on which subject, used in schools for centuries?

Grammar was his subject: his Art of Grammar was the earliest guide to Greek grammar, though scholars now date most of it to the 3rd or 4th century AD.

Which Stoic quoted Livy's claim that 40,000 of the Library's scrolls burned?

Seneca the Younger was quoting Livy, and scholars still debate whether the fire burned the Library or just waterfront warehouses of books.

Plutarch reports a rumour that Mark Antony gave away all 200,000 scrolls from which rival library?

Pergamum was Alexandria's great rival, and its name lives on in the word parchment.

Didymus Chalcenterus, said to have written 3,500 to 4,000 books, had an epithet meaning what?

Bronze guts honoured Didymus's tireless industry, while book-forgetter mocked how he contradicted books he had forgotten writing.

Which scholarly Roman emperor, a historian of the Etruscans, is recorded to have extended the Library of Alexandria?

Claudius, author of a twenty-book history of the Etruscans, added a new building to the complex.

Which astronomy classic was written in Roman-ruled Alexandria by the scholar Ptolemy?

Almagest comes from the Arabic al-majisti, 'the greatest', the later name for Ptolemy's Greek Mathematike Syntaxis.

In 272 AD, which emperor's forces destroyed the Library's district of Alexandria while fighting Queen Zenobia?

Aurelian was retaking Egypt from Zenobia's Palmyrene Empire, and if the Library still stood then, it was almost certainly destroyed.

Later Arabic sources claimed the Library's books were burned on the order of Caliph Umar to fuel what?

The city baths were supposedly heated with the scrolls, but the story first appeared more than 500 years after the Arab conquest.

Which mathematician and philosopher, head of a school in Alexandria, was murdered by a Christian mob in 415 AD?

Hypatia was later played by Rachel Weisz in Alejandro Amenábar's 2009 film Agora.

Alexandria's giant Roman column, standing where the Library's daughter collection was housed, is misnamed after which general?

Pompey's Pillar was actually raised around 300 AD to honour a later emperor's victory, long after Pompey himself had died.

Which architecture firm won the international competition to design the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina?

Snøhetta, a Norwegian firm, went on to design the Oslo Opera House, which opened in 2008.

Protests against what hindered the anatomical research of Herophilos and Erasistratus?

Protests against dissection of human cadavers aside, Herophilos and Erasistratus were the first known to use human bodies for anatomical research.

Which emperor's siege of Alexandria in 297 AD further wrecked the district where the Library had stood?

Diocletian was crushing the revolt of the usurper Domitius Domitianus, and Alexandria held out until about March 298.

Who commanded the Arab army that captured Alexandria in 642 AD?

Amr ibn al-As then founded Fustat, the garrison town whose remains were later absorbed into Cairo.

Which astronomer hosted the 1980 TV series Cosmos, whose first episode tells the story of the Library of Alexandria?

Carl Sagan's Cosmos was broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 500 million people.