49 Fun Facts About Library of Alexandria

In which modern-day country did the Library of Alexandria stand?

Alexandria was the Ptolemaic capital, founded on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt by Alexander the Great.

What was the larger research institution containing the Library, dedicated to the nine Muses, called?

The word 'museum' descends from the Mouseion, a shrine of the Muses that doubled as a research campus.

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

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

Under whose reign was the Library itself probably actually built?

Ptolemy I may have laid the groundwork, but modern scholars think it became a physical institution only under his son.

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

Egypt was the ideal habitat for the plant, which gave the Ptolemies an abundant, cheap supply of writing material.

Estimates of the Library's holdings at its height range from about 40,000 up to how many scrolls?

Nobody knows the true figure; the catalogue that might have told us, the Pinakes, survives only in fragments.

Which head librarian calculated the circumference of the Earth to within a few hundred kilometres?

He was also the first scholar to apply mathematics to geography and map-making.

Callimachus wrote the Pinakes, sometimes considered the world's first what?

The Pinakes ran to 120 books and listed each author's name, father, birthplace and complete works.

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

His device, the aeolipile, spun a sphere using jets of steam but was never put to industrial use.

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.

The Library's decline began in 145 BC with a purge of intellectuals under which ruler?

His nickname Physcon means 'potbelly'; he expelled all foreign scholars from the city.

Which head librarian resigned and exiled himself to Cyprus during that purge?

He was regarded as the greatest of all ancient scholars of Homer and died on Cyprus shortly after fleeing.

Julius Caesar's forces accidentally burned the Library, or part of its collection, in which year?

The fire began when his soldiers torched Egyptian ships in the harbour during his civil war.

Which geographer's visit around 20 BC shows the Library survived Caesar's fire?

His account also suggests the institution was far less prestigious than it had been centuries earlier.

A 'daughter library' was established in a temple to which Greco-Egyptian god?

The temple, the Serapeum, was opened as a satellite collection when the main Library ran out of space.

The Serapeum was demolished in 391 AD under a decree from which bishop of Alexandria?

The demolition followed street fighting between Christians and the temple's Neoplatonist teachers.

Which Assyrian king founded the famous library at Nineveh?

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

The earliest surviving source on the Library of Alexandria's founding is a letter attributed to whom?

The Letter was written between about 180 and 145 BC and contains details now known to be inaccurate.

In which quarter of Alexandria was the Library built?

The Brucheion, or Royal Quarter, was later destroyed during Aurelian's recapture of the city in 272 AD.

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

The other phrases belong to Delphi and to Plato's Academy respectively.

According to Galen, what happened to books found on ships arriving in Alexandria's port under Ptolemy II?

The originals stayed in the Library, which is why the scrolls were sometimes labelled 'from the ships'.

Why did the Library favour older copies of texts over newer ones?

This principle is essentially the same one modern textual critics still use.

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

Each copy of the Iliad and Odyssey was tagged with a label recording where it had come from.

Per a Greek geographer, Library scholars enjoyed a salary, free lodging and what other perk?

They also ate together in a large circular dining hall with a high domed ceiling.

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

Ptolemy II had married his full sister Arsinoe II, a practice that scandalised Greeks but suited Egyptian royal custom.

Who was the first recorded head librarian of Alexandria?

He compiled a glossary of rare words in alphabetical order, making him the first person known to have used that method of organisation.

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

His system only used the first letter of a word; sorting by the remaining letters did not appear until the second century AD.

Which surviving epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts was written by the second head librarian?

Its author, Apollonius of Rhodes, was a native of Alexandria and a pupil of Callimachus.

Which mathematician was reputedly inspired by the Nile at Alexandria to invent a water-lifting screw?

He later returned to Syracuse and kept inventing until the Roman sack of that city.

Eratosthenes's lost geographical treatise, known only through later quotations, was called what?

He argued the setting of Homer's poems was purely imaginary and that poetry's purpose was 'to capture the soul'.

Ptolemy III borrowed Athens' original Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides manuscripts against how many talents?

He kept the originals, sent Athens fine copies, and told them to keep the deposit.

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

He fetched the plagiarised source texts from the Library shelves purely from memory to prove it.

The obscure fifth head librarian, Apollonius Eidographus, is known by an epithet meaning what?

One late lexicographical source explains this as classifying poetry by its musical form.

Dionysius Thrax wrote the first book on what subject, a school text until the twelfth century?

He set up his school on Rhodes after the scholars were driven out of Alexandria.

Seneca quotes Livy as saying Caesar's fire destroyed how many scrolls?

Cassius Dio's wording suggests the fire actually consumed warehouses of books near the docks rather than the Library itself.

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

Plutarch himself flagged his source as unreliable; the tale may have been Roman propaganda against Antony.

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

He was also nicknamed 'book-forgetter' because supposedly even he could not remember everything he had written.

Which Roman emperor is recorded as having built an extension to the Library?

Under Roman rule, Mouseion membership was granted for distinction in government or even athletics rather than scholarship.

The only known head librarian of the Roman period, a man named Balbilus, was notable for lacking what?

He was a politician, administrator and military officer instead.

In 272 AD, which emperor's forces destroyed the Broucheion quarter while fighting Zenobia?

If the Mouseion still existed at that point, it was almost certainly destroyed or badly damaged then.

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

The story first appears some 500 years after the 642 conquest, and most historians dismiss it as legend.

In which year was the philosopher Hypatia, head of a school in Alexandria, murdered by a mob?

She had succeeded her father Theon around 400 AD; her school collapsed after her death.

One Ptolemaic king is said to have set what target number of scrolls for the Library?

Whatever the true size, the collection was so large it required vast storage space.

Which Norwegian architectural firm won the 1989 competition to design the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina?

The new library, completed in 2002, sits on four hectares of land donated by Egypt.

In what year was the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina completed?

It also houses the International School of Information Science, which trains library staff for Egypt and the Middle East.

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

Their work at Alexandria was nonetheless a high point of ancient anatomy.

Which emperor's siege of Alexandria in 297 AD again destroyed the Brouchion quarter?

Any remnants of the Library that survived Aurelian's attack in 272 would likely have perished then.

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

Much later Arabic sources tied the Library's destruction to this conquest, a story modern historians doubt.

Hypatia's father, the mathematician Theon of Alexandria, headed a school named in emulation of what?

The school had little real connection to the Hellenistic Mouseion that once housed the Library.