Library of Alexandria Trivia
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48 free Library of Alexandria trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Library of Alexandria trivia quiz covers the ancient world's most legendary library, from its founding under the first Ptolemies to the arguments historians still have about how it vanished. The easy questions cover the basics: which country it stood in, what its scrolls were made of, who Eratosthenes was and what Julius Caesar's soldiers set alight in 48 BC. From there it digs into the head librarians, the Pinakes catalogue, the ships whose books were confiscated and copied, and the daughter library in the Serapeum. The harder half is for history buffs: the Letter of Aristeas, the purge of 145 BC, Didymus 'bronze guts', the Roman-era librarian with no scholarly record, Aurelian's assault on the Royal Quarter, and the late Arabic legend of books fuelling the city baths. It finishes with the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina. If you enjoyed our ancient Egypt or ancient Greece quizzes, this is the deep dive on one institution. Every answer was checked against the library's encyclopaedia entry before publishing, and where the ancient sources disagree, the questions say so.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Wonder of the Ancient World stood in Alexandria alongside its famous Library?
The Lighthouse
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.
Q 02What was the research institution that housed the Library of Alexandria's scholars called?
The Mouseion
The Mouseion under Roman rule gave membership to politicians and even athletes, not only to scholars.
Q 03Which exiled Athenian statesman may have proposed the idea of a universal library to Ptolemy I?
Demetrius of Phalerum
Demetrius of Phalerum was a Peripatetic, a student of Aristotle's school, and had taken refuge at the Ptolemaic court.
Q 04Under which ruler was the Library of Alexandria probably actually built?
Ptolemy II Philadelphus
Ptolemy I may have laid the groundwork, but the Library was probably built only under his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
Q 05What writing material made up the Library's scroll collection?
Papyrus
Papyrus was once abundant across the Nile Delta, giving Egypt's rulers a near-monopoly on the ancient world's prime writing material.
Q 06Which geometer is said to have told King Ptolemy there is 'no royal road to geometry'?
Euclid
Euclid taught in Alexandria under Ptolemy I, though the 'royal road' story first appears centuries later, in Proclus.
Q 07Which head librarian of Alexandria calculated the circumference of the Earth?
Eratosthenes of Cyrene
Eratosthenes of Cyrene is also remembered for the Sieve of Eratosthenes, a method for finding prime numbers.
Q 08Callimachus's Pinakes is popularly considered the first what in the Western world?
Library catalogue
The Pinakes was a 120-book library catalogue of authors and their works, and it survives only in fragments.
Q 09Which Alexandrian scholar is credited with inventing the first recorded steam engine?
Hero of Alexandria
Hero of Alexandria's aeolipile spun on jets of steam, and he also described a coin-operated dispenser, the earliest known vending machine.
Q 10Aristophanes of Byzantium invented Greek diacritics and was the first to divide which kind of text into lines?
Poetic texts
Before him, poems were written out on the page just like prose.
Q 11Who was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty that built the Library of Alexandria?
Cleopatra
After Cleopatra's death in 30 BC, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, ending the Hellenistic period.
Q 12The Alexandrian engineer Ctesibius invented the hydraulis, a water-powered forerunner of which instrument?
The pipe organ
The pipe organ descends from Ctesibius's hydraulis, which used water pressure to drive air through its pipes.
Q 13Which Roman leader's soldiers started the 48 BC fire in Alexandria that is often blamed for burning the Library?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar's soldiers torched ships in the harbour while he was besieged, and the flames spread to warehouses of books near the docks.
Q 21According to Galen, what did Alexandria's officials do with books found on arriving ships?
Copied them and kept the originals
Officials seized the books, copied them and kept the originals, while the owners were handed the copies.
Q 22Why did the Library favour older manuscripts over newer ones?
Less copying meant fewer errors
Less copying meant fewer errors, so an older scroll was likelier to match what its author first wrote.
Q 23Which works did the Library focus on acquiring above all others?
The Homeric epics
Q 14Which Greek geographer described visiting the Library's parent institution in Alexandria around 20 BC?
Strabo
Strabo's visit came decades after the fire of 48 BC, suggesting the institution either survived it or was rebuilt soon afterwards.
Q 15The Library of Alexandria's daughter collection was housed in a temple to which god?
Serapis
Serapis was honoured by the Serapeum, a temple built under Ptolemy III that housed an offshoot of the Library's collection.
Q 16Which bishop of Alexandria supervised the 391 AD destruction of the temple housing the Library's daughter collection?
Theophilus
Theophilus acted after Emperor Theodosius I's edict against pagan temples, and Christian crowds then demolished the complex.
Q 17Which Assyrian king founded the famous library at Nineveh?
Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal's clay tablets, unlike Alexandria's scrolls, survived burial and were dug up in the 19th century.
Q 18Legend says 72 scholars translated which text into Greek for the Library of Alexandria?
The Torah
The Torah translation became known as the Septuagint, from the Latin for seventy, though the legend counts 72 translators.
Q 19In which quarter of Alexandria was the Library built?
The Brucheion
The Brucheion was the Royal Quarter, where the royal palaces took up a quarter or even a third of the city.
Q 20According to popular description, what inscription hung above the Library's shelves?
The place of the cure of the soul
'The place of the cure of the soul' is the popular description, while 'Know thyself' was inscribed at Apollo's temple at Delphi.
The Homeric epics were revered above all other poems, so the Library tagged each copy with a label recording where it came from.
Q 24Library of Alexandria scholars reportedly received a salary, free food and lodging, and which other perk?
Exemption from taxes
Exemption from taxes came with communal meals, taken in a common dining hall inside the royal palace grounds.
Q 25A likely apocryphal story says a Ptolemaic king drowned the poet Sotades in a lead jar for mocking what?
His marriage to his sister
His marriage to his sister Arsinoe II drew Sotades's obscene verse, and he escaped jail before being caught again.
Q 26The division sign ÷ is called an obelus, after a mark Alexandrian scholars used to flag what?
Doubtful passages
Zenodotus, the Library's first head librarian, marked doubtful passages with the obelus while editing old manuscripts.
Q 27What organisational method is Zenodotus the first person known to have used?
Alphabetical order
Zenodotus's alphabetical order sorted words only by their first letter; sorting by later letters isn't known until the second century AD.
Q 28Which surviving epic about Jason and his crew was written by the Library's second head librarian?
The Argonautica
The Argonautica's author, Apollonius of Rhodes, was a native of Alexandria and a pupil of Callimachus.
Q 29Which mathematician sent his results to Alexandria's scholars by letter, before a Roman soldier killed him?
Archimedes
Archimedes died when Syracuse fell to Rome; legend says he refused to follow the soldier until he had finished a geometry problem.
Q 30Which company named its voice assistant with a nod to the Library of Alexandria?
Amazon
Amazon also picked Alexa for its hard 'x' sound, which helps devices recognise the wake word more precisely.