November 15, 2024 • 14 mins
Explore the mysteries of the ancient world and uncover the lost secrets of the Library of Alexandria, one of the greatest centers of learning in human history. This ancient repository of knowledge was a hub of wisdom, housing over 500,000 volumes of manuscripts and scrolls on various subjects, including mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and philosophy. From the teachings of famous philosophers like Aristotle and Plato to the works of renowned mathematicians and scientists, the Library of Alexandria was a treasure trove of human knowledge. But what secrets lie hidden beneath the ruins of this ancient wonder? Join us as we delve into the fascinating history of the Library of Alexandria and uncover the secrets that have been lost to the sands of time.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mourning people wake up for peace and quiet. McDonald's breakfast people,
we wake up for the sweet rush of getting that warm,
delicious breakfast right before it ends.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Crush your morning goals with a steak, egg and cheese
bagel or any breakfast sandwich, and snag another one for
just a buck with a buy one, get one deal
only in the McDonald's app. Limited time only. At participating
McDonald's valid ones per day must out into rewards bottom.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
If you have Medicare and Medicaid, then keep listening. You
may qualify for a dual special needs plan from United Healthcare.
It's time you feel confident you're managing your whole health
with a dual special needs plan from United Healthcare. It's
not just health insurance, it's healthy living. You deserve coverage
you can count on, so why not See how a
dual special needs plan from United Healthcare may help you
(00:52):
get extra Medicare benefits if you live in the DC area.
See your options today at uhcdualplans dot com.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt and the
largest city on the Mediterranean. It lies on the western
edge of the Nile River Delta. The Nile Delta is
the delta formed in lower Egypt where the Nile River
spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is
(01:23):
one of the world's larger deltas from Alexandria in the
west to Port Said in the east. The Nile River
is the longest in Africa, and it is known as
the father of African rivers. It has historically been considered
the longest river in the world. Alexandria was founded three
(01:44):
hundred and thirty one years before Christ by Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great three hundred and fifty six to three
hundred and twenty three before Christ was the ruler of
the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. Alexandria was the capital
of Egypt from its founding by Alexander the Great in
(02:07):
three hundred and thirty two before Christ until its surrendered
to the Arab forces led by Amariban al As in
six hundred and forty two. After Christ, Alexander the Great
conquered Egypt, and Egypt became an integral part of the
Hellenistic world. Under the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty, an advanced literate
(02:30):
society thrived in the city of Alexandria founding of Alexandrian Library.
After the death of Alexander the Great in three hundred
and twenty three before Christ, his generals, known as the
Diadokoi all successes, fought among themselves for fragments of his empire.
(02:53):
One of the most successful was the Macedonian Ptolemy, who
declared himself king of Egypt as Ptoleomi the first Sotter
in three hundred and four, and thereby founded the Ptolemaic dynasty,
with its capital at Alexandria. The dynasty lasted until the
death of Cleopatra in thirty before Christ, at which point
(03:16):
Egypt became a Roman province. Ptolemy first also tried to
attract Greek intellectuals to Egypt, of which the best known
was Demetrius of Phelrin, an Aristotelian philosopher and politician from Athens.
Others included the poet Philatus of Cause, the grammarian Zenodotus
(03:38):
of Ephesus, and another Aristotelian philosopher, Strabo, who became the
tutor of Ptolemy's son, Ptolemy the Second Philadelphus. Under the
latter and his successes, many other scholars scientists and poets
came to Alexandria. The idea of a universal life library
(04:00):
in Alexandria may have been proposed by Demetrius of Phileirim,
an exiled Athenian statesman living in Alexandria, to Ptolemy the
first Sota, who may have established plans for the library,
but the library itself was probably not built until the
reign of Ptolemy the second Philadelphus. How many books was
(04:23):
in the library and where did they come from? When
Demetrius of Phalrim was put in charge of the King's library,
he was lavished with resources to collect, if possible, all
the books in the world, and by making purchases and copies,
he carried out the King's intention as far as he could.
(04:45):
When he was asked in my presence how many thousands
of books were there, he said, quote more than two
hundred thousand, my King, and I will try in a
short time to fill up the number to five hundred thousand.
I have been told that the laws of the Jews
also deserve to be copied and to be part of
(05:07):
your library. What is there to prevent you from doing this?
The king replied, Everything necessary is at your disposal, Demitrius said,
a translation is required in the country of the Jews.
They use their characters, just as the Egyptians use their
(05:27):
arrangement of letters and have their language. They are supposed
to use Syrian, but that is not so, but rather
a different mode of writing. When he learned these details,
the king ordered a letter to be written to the
High Priest of the Jews so that the aforementioned plans
could be completed. Some of our most important information about
(05:53):
the library is provided by John Zetz's, a Byzantine scholar
of the twelfth century after crime, in the prologue to
his commentary on three plays of Aristophanes. We do not
know exactly where Zetzis obtained this information, but it was
presumably from Alexandrian commentaries on Aristophanes or other classical authors.
(06:18):
Inter Alia, Zetzis tells us the following quote. This king
Ptolemy Philadelphus, of whom I have spoken, had a truly
philosophical and divine soul, and was a lover of everything
noble in sight, deed and word. Through Demetrius of Phelren
(06:39):
and other advisors, he collected books from everywhere at the
royal expense and housed them in two libraries. Of these,
the external library had forty two thousand, eight hundred books.
The internal library of the Court and Palace had four
hundred thousand mixed books and ninety thousand singles unmixed books.
(07:01):
As Calamachus, who was a young man of the court, records,
after the editing of the books, he compiled his pinates
of them. Galen, the famous Greek doctor of the second
century after Christ, includes several stories about the library and
his writings. When explaining how a copy of the Epidemic,
(07:25):
a work of the hippocratic medical Corpus, which had once
belonged to Nimon of Sidon, reached the library, he claims
that Ptolemy the third Yuegates, ordered that all ships that
came to the harbor of Alexandria be searched for books.
The books were to be copied, the copies given back
(07:45):
to the owners, and the originals placed in the library
with a label from the ships. The same Ptolemy borrowed
from Athens the official copies of the three tragedians Eschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides, after paying a deposit of fifteen talents. He
(08:06):
then kept the official texts and returned copies only, thus
forfeiting his deposit. Galen refers to competition between the kings
of Pergamen and Alexandria in bidding for old books, which
inflated the prices and led to forgeries being made. Finally,
(08:26):
Galen claims that the Alexandrians did not place new acquisitions
immediately in the libraries, but placed them first in warehouses,
all heaped together foreign books at the Library of Alexandria.
The Library of Alexandria was essentially a collection of Greek literature,
(08:47):
but there is evidence that it also included specially commissioned
Greek translations of works in other languages. Zertzers claims, when
all the Greek books, and if those of every foreign people,
including the Hebrews, had been collected, then that generous king
Ptolemy Philadelphus, who was a river flowing with gold and
(09:10):
pouring it out through seven mouths, had the foreign books
translated into the Greek script and language by bilingual scholars
who spoke Greek accurately. For example, the Hebrew books were
written by seventy two Hebrew translators who were experts in
both languages. The Letter of Aristeus claims that the Hebrew Scriptures,
(09:35):
or at least the Pentatei, were translated into Greek as
part of this program. Maneto, an Egyptian priest in Heliopolis,
dedicated to Ptolemy Philadelphus, a History of Egypt in Greek,
but drawn from Egyptian records, which may also have been
part of such a program. The work survives in the
(09:59):
form of by Josephus, the Jewish historian, and by Christian writers.
Pliny the Elder, the Roman encyclopedist of the first century
after Christ, records that Hermopus, a student of Calamachus, wrote
a commentary on the verses of Zoroasta. This story implies
(10:21):
that these verses had been translated from Iranian into Greek
and were available in Alexandria. We also have little precise
information on the arrangement and cataloging of the books. Zetzers
claims that, under the patronage of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Alexander of
(10:42):
Atalia edited the books of Tragedy, Lycopron of Chalcis, those
of Comedy, and Zenodotus of Ephesus, those of Homer and
the other poets. The editing here presumably included some kind
of grouping and cataloging of the relevant author works, and
may also have been extended to other genres of literature
(11:06):
who were the famous librarians. From sources, we can be
fairly certain that this is a list of the Alexandrian
librarians eretas Themees, after whom came Aristophanes, son of Appels
of Byzantium, and Aristarchus, then Apollonius of Alexandria called the
(11:29):
idograph and after him Aristarchus, son of Aristarchus of Alexandria,
originally of Samothrace. He was also the teacher of the
children of Philippater. After him came ciders of the spearmen
under the ninth King, their flourished Ammonius and Zenodotus, and
(11:51):
Diocles and Apollodorus, who were grammarians. It is not clear
exactly what duties the appointment involved. Some of the earlier
librarians were, as in the Papyrus, said to be tutors
of the royal children, and possibly the offices were usually combined.
(12:11):
When was the library destroyed? One of the most controversial
questions about the library of Alexandria is how much of
it may have been destroyed in the fighting between Julius
Caesar and Cleopatra on the one hand, and Ptolemy the
thirteenth on the other, for control of Alexandria in forty
(12:33):
eight seventh spe Plutarch's version of the story is quote
being cut off. Caesar was forced to remove the danger
by setting fire to the fleet, which, spreading from the docks,
also destroyed the great Library end of quote. Did the
(12:58):
Arabs burn the books of the Alli Alexandrian Library? Tradition
says that the library was destroyed by the Arabs when
they conquered the city in six hundred and forty two
after Christ. The story first appears in Abul Farage, an
Arab historian of the thirteenth century after Christ, and is
(13:19):
to the effect that an unfro Christian priest called John
the Grammarian, approached the Arab conqueror of Alexandria, Amra, and
asked for the books of Wisdom which are in the
imperial treasuries, as these could be of no use to
the Arabs. Amra wrote about this to the Caliph Omar,
who replied, touching the books, you mention if what is
(13:43):
written in and agrees with the Book of God, they
are not required if it disagrees they are not desired
destroy them. Therefore, Amra ordered the books to be sent
as fueled to the baths of Alexandria, and it took
six months to use them up. As Butler pointed out,
there are many objections to accepting this tradition. The story
(14:07):
first more than five hundred years after the Arab conquest
of Alexandria. John the Grammarian appears to be the Alexandrian
philosopher John Philipponus, who must have been dead by the
time of the conquest. It seems, as shown above, that
both the Alexandrian libraries were destroyed by the end of
(14:29):
the fourth century, and there is no mention of any
library in the Christian literature of the centuries following this date.
It is also suspicious that the Caliph Omar is recorded
to have made the same remark about books found by
the Arabs during their conquest of Iran. In short, the
(14:49):
story is at best a testimony to the persistence of
legends about the library long after it had disappeared. Conclusion.
If knowledge is power, then Alexandria came to be regarded
as the capital of knowledge and learning, in part because
of the Great Library,
Mourning people wake up for peace and quiet. McDonald's breakfast people,
we wake up for the sweet rush of getting that warm,
delicious breakfast right before it ends.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Crush your morning goals with a steak, egg and cheese
bagel or any breakfast sandwich, and snag another one for
just a buck with a buy one, get one deal
only in the McDonald's app. Limited time only. At participating
McDonald's valid ones per day must out into rewards bottom.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
If you have Medicare and Medicaid, then keep listening. You
may qualify for a dual special needs plan from United Healthcare.
It's time you feel confident you're managing your whole health
with a dual special needs plan from United Healthcare. It's
not just health insurance, it's healthy living. You deserve coverage
you can count on, so why not See how a
dual special needs plan from United Healthcare may help you
(00:52):
get extra Medicare benefits if you live in the DC area.
See your options today at uhcdualplans dot com.
Speaker 4 (01:02):
Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt and the
largest city on the Mediterranean. It lies on the western
edge of the Nile River Delta. The Nile Delta is
the delta formed in lower Egypt where the Nile River
spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is
(01:23):
one of the world's larger deltas from Alexandria in the
west to Port Said in the east. The Nile River
is the longest in Africa, and it is known as
the father of African rivers. It has historically been considered
the longest river in the world. Alexandria was founded three
(01:44):
hundred and thirty one years before Christ by Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great three hundred and fifty six to three
hundred and twenty three before Christ was the ruler of
the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. Alexandria was the capital
of Egypt from its founding by Alexander the Great in
(02:07):
three hundred and thirty two before Christ until its surrendered
to the Arab forces led by Amariban al As in
six hundred and forty two. After Christ, Alexander the Great
conquered Egypt, and Egypt became an integral part of the
Hellenistic world. Under the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty, an advanced literate
(02:30):
society thrived in the city of Alexandria founding of Alexandrian Library.
After the death of Alexander the Great in three hundred
and twenty three before Christ, his generals, known as the
Diadokoi all successes, fought among themselves for fragments of his empire.
(02:53):
One of the most successful was the Macedonian Ptolemy, who
declared himself king of Egypt as Ptoleomi the first Sotter
in three hundred and four, and thereby founded the Ptolemaic dynasty,
with its capital at Alexandria. The dynasty lasted until the
death of Cleopatra in thirty before Christ, at which point
(03:16):
Egypt became a Roman province. Ptolemy first also tried to
attract Greek intellectuals to Egypt, of which the best known
was Demetrius of Phelrin, an Aristotelian philosopher and politician from Athens.
Others included the poet Philatus of Cause, the grammarian Zenodotus
(03:38):
of Ephesus, and another Aristotelian philosopher, Strabo, who became the
tutor of Ptolemy's son, Ptolemy the Second Philadelphus. Under the
latter and his successes, many other scholars scientists and poets
came to Alexandria. The idea of a universal life library
(04:00):
in Alexandria may have been proposed by Demetrius of Phileirim,
an exiled Athenian statesman living in Alexandria, to Ptolemy the
first Sota, who may have established plans for the library,
but the library itself was probably not built until the
reign of Ptolemy the second Philadelphus. How many books was
(04:23):
in the library and where did they come from? When
Demetrius of Phalrim was put in charge of the King's library,
he was lavished with resources to collect, if possible, all
the books in the world, and by making purchases and copies,
he carried out the King's intention as far as he could.
(04:45):
When he was asked in my presence how many thousands
of books were there, he said, quote more than two
hundred thousand, my King, and I will try in a
short time to fill up the number to five hundred thousand.
I have been told that the laws of the Jews
also deserve to be copied and to be part of
(05:07):
your library. What is there to prevent you from doing this?
The king replied, Everything necessary is at your disposal, Demitrius said,
a translation is required in the country of the Jews.
They use their characters, just as the Egyptians use their
(05:27):
arrangement of letters and have their language. They are supposed
to use Syrian, but that is not so, but rather
a different mode of writing. When he learned these details,
the king ordered a letter to be written to the
High Priest of the Jews so that the aforementioned plans
could be completed. Some of our most important information about
(05:53):
the library is provided by John Zetz's, a Byzantine scholar
of the twelfth century after crime, in the prologue to
his commentary on three plays of Aristophanes. We do not
know exactly where Zetzis obtained this information, but it was
presumably from Alexandrian commentaries on Aristophanes or other classical authors.
(06:18):
Inter Alia, Zetzis tells us the following quote. This king
Ptolemy Philadelphus, of whom I have spoken, had a truly
philosophical and divine soul, and was a lover of everything
noble in sight, deed and word. Through Demetrius of Phelren
(06:39):
and other advisors, he collected books from everywhere at the
royal expense and housed them in two libraries. Of these,
the external library had forty two thousand, eight hundred books.
The internal library of the Court and Palace had four
hundred thousand mixed books and ninety thousand singles unmixed books.
(07:01):
As Calamachus, who was a young man of the court, records,
after the editing of the books, he compiled his pinates
of them. Galen, the famous Greek doctor of the second
century after Christ, includes several stories about the library and
his writings. When explaining how a copy of the Epidemic,
(07:25):
a work of the hippocratic medical Corpus, which had once
belonged to Nimon of Sidon, reached the library, he claims
that Ptolemy the third Yuegates, ordered that all ships that
came to the harbor of Alexandria be searched for books.
The books were to be copied, the copies given back
(07:45):
to the owners, and the originals placed in the library
with a label from the ships. The same Ptolemy borrowed
from Athens the official copies of the three tragedians Eschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides, after paying a deposit of fifteen talents. He
(08:06):
then kept the official texts and returned copies only, thus
forfeiting his deposit. Galen refers to competition between the kings
of Pergamen and Alexandria in bidding for old books, which
inflated the prices and led to forgeries being made. Finally,
(08:26):
Galen claims that the Alexandrians did not place new acquisitions
immediately in the libraries, but placed them first in warehouses,
all heaped together foreign books at the Library of Alexandria.
The Library of Alexandria was essentially a collection of Greek literature,
(08:47):
but there is evidence that it also included specially commissioned
Greek translations of works in other languages. Zertzers claims, when
all the Greek books, and if those of every foreign people,
including the Hebrews, had been collected, then that generous king
Ptolemy Philadelphus, who was a river flowing with gold and
(09:10):
pouring it out through seven mouths, had the foreign books
translated into the Greek script and language by bilingual scholars
who spoke Greek accurately. For example, the Hebrew books were
written by seventy two Hebrew translators who were experts in
both languages. The Letter of Aristeus claims that the Hebrew Scriptures,
(09:35):
or at least the Pentatei, were translated into Greek as
part of this program. Maneto, an Egyptian priest in Heliopolis,
dedicated to Ptolemy Philadelphus, a History of Egypt in Greek,
but drawn from Egyptian records, which may also have been
part of such a program. The work survives in the
(09:59):
form of by Josephus, the Jewish historian, and by Christian writers.
Pliny the Elder, the Roman encyclopedist of the first century
after Christ, records that Hermopus, a student of Calamachus, wrote
a commentary on the verses of Zoroasta. This story implies
(10:21):
that these verses had been translated from Iranian into Greek
and were available in Alexandria. We also have little precise
information on the arrangement and cataloging of the books. Zetzers
claims that, under the patronage of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Alexander of
(10:42):
Atalia edited the books of Tragedy, Lycopron of Chalcis, those
of Comedy, and Zenodotus of Ephesus, those of Homer and
the other poets. The editing here presumably included some kind
of grouping and cataloging of the relevant author works, and
may also have been extended to other genres of literature
(11:06):
who were the famous librarians. From sources, we can be
fairly certain that this is a list of the Alexandrian
librarians eretas Themees, after whom came Aristophanes, son of Appels
of Byzantium, and Aristarchus, then Apollonius of Alexandria called the
(11:29):
idograph and after him Aristarchus, son of Aristarchus of Alexandria,
originally of Samothrace. He was also the teacher of the
children of Philippater. After him came ciders of the spearmen
under the ninth King, their flourished Ammonius and Zenodotus, and
(11:51):
Diocles and Apollodorus, who were grammarians. It is not clear
exactly what duties the appointment involved. Some of the earlier
librarians were, as in the Papyrus, said to be tutors
of the royal children, and possibly the offices were usually combined.
(12:11):
When was the library destroyed? One of the most controversial
questions about the library of Alexandria is how much of
it may have been destroyed in the fighting between Julius
Caesar and Cleopatra on the one hand, and Ptolemy the
thirteenth on the other, for control of Alexandria in forty
(12:33):
eight seventh spe Plutarch's version of the story is quote
being cut off. Caesar was forced to remove the danger
by setting fire to the fleet, which, spreading from the docks,
also destroyed the great Library end of quote. Did the
(12:58):
Arabs burn the books of the Alli Alexandrian Library? Tradition
says that the library was destroyed by the Arabs when
they conquered the city in six hundred and forty two
after Christ. The story first appears in Abul Farage, an
Arab historian of the thirteenth century after Christ, and is
(13:19):
to the effect that an unfro Christian priest called John
the Grammarian, approached the Arab conqueror of Alexandria, Amra, and
asked for the books of Wisdom which are in the
imperial treasuries, as these could be of no use to
the Arabs. Amra wrote about this to the Caliph Omar,
who replied, touching the books, you mention if what is
(13:43):
written in and agrees with the Book of God, they
are not required if it disagrees they are not desired
destroy them. Therefore, Amra ordered the books to be sent
as fueled to the baths of Alexandria, and it took
six months to use them up. As Butler pointed out,
there are many objections to accepting this tradition. The story
(14:07):
first more than five hundred years after the Arab conquest
of Alexandria. John the Grammarian appears to be the Alexandrian
philosopher John Philipponus, who must have been dead by the
time of the conquest. It seems, as shown above, that
both the Alexandrian libraries were destroyed by the end of
(14:29):
the fourth century, and there is no mention of any
library in the Christian literature of the centuries following this date.
It is also suspicious that the Caliph Omar is recorded
to have made the same remark about books found by
the Arabs during their conquest of Iran. In short, the
(14:49):
story is at best a testimony to the persistence of
legends about the library long after it had disappeared. Conclusion.
If knowledge is power, then Alexandria came to be regarded
as the capital of knowledge and learning, in part because
of the Great Library,
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