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The Mysterious Fate of the Great Library of Alexandria
Other articles of interest:
Contents
Introduction
Julius
Caesar
Theophilus
Omar
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Introduction
What happened to the Royal Library of Alexandria? We can be certain it was
there once, founded by Ptolomy II Soter, and we can be equally certain it is not
there now. It formed part of the Museum which was located in the Bruchion or
palace quarter of the city of Alexandria. This great ancient city, occupying a
spit of land on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, had been founded by
Alexander the Great in his flying visit to Egypt and became the capital of the
last dynasty of Pharaohs descended from Alexander's general Ptolemy. The Great
or more properly Royal Library formed a part of the Museum but whether or not it
was a separate building is unclear.
Stories about its demise have been circulating for centuries and date back to
at least the first century AD. These stories continue to be told and embellished
today by those who wish to make a moral attack against the alleged vandals. We
find that three parties are blamed for the destruction and they correspond to
the three occupying powers that ruled Alexandria after it had been lost by the
Greeks. Let me first tell those stories as we hear them today - without
references, largely inaccurate and used as polemic. Then I will try and
establish what, if anything we can know before finally and rather indulgently
making my own suggestions.
The suspects respectively are a Roman, a Christian and a Moslem - Julius
Caesar, Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria and Caliph Omar of Damascus. It is
clear that the Royal Library could not have been burnt down or otherwise
destroyed by all three of these characters and so we find we have too many
sources for the event of the destruction rather than a paucity. As scholars of
the Gospels will vouch, this too can be an embarrassment. How we decide to
reconcile the stories will depend almost entirely on how we criticise the
sources and which of them we choose to consider most reliable.
Archaeology can be a help with ancient history although it tends to be silent
about the things in which we are most interested leading the more foolish
archaeologists to claim they never happened. In the case of Alexandria a series
of earthquakes and floods in the middle ages mean that the entire palace quarter
in the North East of the city is now underwater and largely inaccessible. Recent
work in underwater archaeology has revealed more but we will probably never be
able to dig around in the foundations of the Museum. The Great Temple of Serapis,
to which we will later return, was in the south-western quarter and parts of its
foundations have been excavated.
Julius Caesar
First, let us read the legendary account:
It is often said that the Romans were civilised but
their most famous general was responsible for the greatest act of vandalism
during antiquity. Julius Caesar was attacking Alexandria in pursuit of his
archrival Pompey when he found himself about to be cut off by the Egyptian
fleet. Realising that this would leave him in a desperate predicament, he took
decisive action and sent fire ships into the harbour. His plan was a success
and the enemy fleet was quickly aflame. But the fire did not stop these and
jumped onto the dockside which was laden with flammable materials ready for
export. Next it spread in land and before anyone could stop it, the Great
Library itself was blazing brightly as 400,000 priceless scrolls were reduced
to ashes. As for Caesar himself, did not think it important enough to mention
in his memoirs.
The accused was indeed in Alexandria in 47 - 48 BC after arriving in pursuit
of his rival Pompey. Caesar was able to occupy the city without any trouble
after destroying the Egyptian fleet and was residing in the palace with
Cleopatra when more trouble started. Some henchmen of the Pharaoh attacked with
a sizable force and Caesar suddenly found himself stuck in a hostile city with
very few forces. That he still won out is a tribute to his luck and powers of
leadership. This much is uncontested but to unravel the fate of the Royal
Library we must examine the ancient sources.
Julius Caesar - The Civil Wars
The earliest account we have of this these events is in
The Civil Wars penned by Caesar (died
44BC) himself. In it he explains how he had to set the dockyards and Alexandrine
fleet alight for his own safety as he was in dire straits. As to whether the
fire spread away from the shore and also damaged the Royal Library, he is
silent. The narrative in The Civil Wars break off at the start of the campaign
in Egypt and the story is taken up by one of his lieutenant's called Hirtius
(died 43BC) in
The Alexandrine War. It does not include
any mention of setting fire to Alexandria but instead states that in fact the
city would not burn as it was made purely of stone.
We can log this as a Not Guilty plea by the accused but note that a reason he
might have mentioned that Alexandria does not burn would be to hide his own
action of burning it. Future history demonstrated many times that Alexandria
burns just as well as any other city. The fire is also not mentioned by Cicero
in his philippics against Caesar's ally Mark Anthony. This is a valuable witness
for the defence, as Cicero did not like Caesar at all. Unfortunately it is also
an argument from silence and it is very possible that Cicero either did not know
about everything that happened, saw no need to mention this particular event or
mentioned it in the quarter of his works no longer extant.
Strabo - Geography
The great scholar, Strabo (died after 24AD) was in Alexandria in 20BC and in
all his detailed description of the palace and Museum does not mention the
library at all. This omission is often explained by scholars claiming that the
library was inside the Museum or annexed to it. But even so, not breathing a
word about this famous institution is very suspicious. Can we conclude that the
library was no longer there but that political constraints meant that its fate
still could not be mentioned?
Modern writer, Mostafa El-Abbadi, comes up with a more subtle point. He shows
how Strabo mentions the body of research available to one of the earlier
librarians was much greater than Strabo himself had access to. He concludes that
this shows that Strabo did not have access to the wisdom of the Royal Library
that his illustrious predecessor had. The point is small but potentially
significant.
Livy and Florus - Epitome of the History of Rome
The first mention of the fire at Alexandria would seem to come from Livy
(died 17AD) in his History of Rome. The book that it was included in is lost and
the surviving Summaries are too brief to include it. However, a second century
Epitome written by Florus survives and
it says that the fire was started by Caesar to clear the area around his
position so the enemy had no cover from which to fire arrows. The library itself
is not mentioned by Florus although it was in the same area of the city as
Caesar who was occupying the palace at the time.
The Younger Seneca - On Tranquillity of the Mind
In fact we do know that the Royal Library is mentioned by Livy because he is
later quoted by Seneca (died 65AD) in his dialogue
On the Tranquillity of the Mind where he
also says that a great number of books were destroyed. It has been asserted that
Seneca must have got his knowledge about the destruction of the books from Livy
but a close reading of the dialogue does not bear this out. Seneca actually only
states that Livy thought the library was "the most distinguished achievement of
the good taste and solicitude of kings" and then only so as he can disagree.
The actual number of books destroyed that Seneca gives is matter of some
controversy that we will need to briefly address. In ancient manuscripts it is
common for large numbers to be expressed as a dot placed above the numeral for
each power of ten. Clearly in copying it is easy to make a mistake with the
number of dots and errors by a factor of ten are frequent. That may have
happened in the case of On the Tranquillity of the Mind. The manuscript from
Monte Cassino actually reads 40,000 books but this is usually corrected to
400,000 by editors as other sources such as Orosius give this figure for the
number of scrolls destroyed. I have not seen the manuscript, of course, so do
not know if this way the number is expressed. However, even if it was given in
words the difference between 40,000 and 400,000 is also pretty small. I propose
therefore that the number given by Seneca, and indeed all other ancient sources,
should be ruled as inadmissible as evidence because we cannot be sure of what it
was originally.
Plutarch and Dio Cassius - Life of Caesar and Roman History
After this, the references become more explicit. Plutarch (died 120AD), in
his
Life of Caesar throws in a reference to
the destruction of the library almost casually. Now Plutarch does not seem to
carry a brief against Caesar, although he is happy to criticise him, so we
should take this reference seriously. Additionally, he had visited Alexandria
and presumably might have noticed if the library was still in existence. Dio
Cassius (died 235AD) tells us that warehouses of books near the docks were
accidentally burnt by Caesar's men. His words are difficult to pin down and have
led some scholars to suggest that only books waiting for export were destroyed.
This reads far more into the text than it allows and I do not think that Dio
saying that the books 'happened' to be in the path of the flames means that
usually they were kept somewhere else.
Aulus Gellius - Attic Nights
Gellius (died 180 AD) included in his
Attic Nights contain a brief passage about
libraries where the destruction of the Royal Library is mentioned as taking
place by accident during our first war against Alexandria when auxiliary
soldiers started a fire. This first war was Caesar's campaign and the second was
when Octavian took Egypt from Mark Anthony and Cleopatra. In The Vanished
Library, Luciano Canfora claims that this passage is an interpolation on the
strength that the introduction does not mention it but again the evidence for
this seems flimsy. Gellius claims 700,000 books went up in smoke.
Ammianus Marcellinus and Orosius - Roman History and History against the
Pagans
One of the final pagan Roman historians, Ammianus Marcellinus (died 395AD),
tells us about the fate of the library during an aside about the city of
Alexandria in his Roman
History. He relates the story of the fire started by Julius
Caesar is 'the unanimous belief of the ancient authors' but confuses the library
building with the Serapeum and increases the number of scrolls destroyed to
700,000 (perhaps Gellius is his source). The story is repeated with the figure
of 400,000 scrolls destroyed by Orosius (died after 415AD), an early Christian
historian, in his History
against the Pagans. Both these writers are far too late to be
accurate sources on their own but they do tell us that by the fourth century the
Royal Library was widely believed to have been destroyed by Julius Caesar. We
will be discussing them further below with regard to the destruction of the
Serapeum which occurred in their own time.
The verdict on Caesar
Taken together we can conclude a number of things from these sources:
- The earliest descriptions of the Alexandrine War, written by Caesar or his
crony, deliberately cover up anything that reflects badly on the great man.
Their silence about burning down the world's greatest library, even by
accident, is not surprising.
- The library as a separate building did not exist by the time of Strabo's
visit in 20BC.
- The belief that Caesar had destroyed the library was widespread by the
time his family no longer occupied the throne of the emperors in the late
first century AD. Plutarch, Gellius and Seneca are all evidence for this. We
must therefore assume that the library did not exist at this time. Plutarch, a
Greek, would certainly have known if it did.
Although we cannot prove his guilt with first hand evidence, it seems
justified to claim that the book stacks of the Royal Library were burnt down by
Julius Caesar. Perhaps the reading rooms, which in any case were part of the
Museum, survived but, as Seneca and all the other sources tell us, the books
themselves perished. That scholarship continued in Alexandria after this time
cannot be doubted but I can find no explicit mention of the Royal Library after
Caesar's ill-fated visit. Indeed as Athenaeus of Naucratis (died after 200AD)
mournfully wrote in the Deipnosophistai "And concerning the number of books and
the establishment of libraries and the collection in the Museum, why need I even
speak when they are all the the memory of men."
Theophilus
Again, the legendary story first:
Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, is also the
patron saint of arsonists. As Christianity slowly strangled the life out of
classical culture in the fourth century it became more and more difficult to be
a pagan. There stood in Alexandria the great temple of Serapis called the
Serapeum and attached to it was the Great Library of Alexandria where all the
wisdom of the ancients was preserved. Now Theophilus knew that as long as this
knowledge existed people would be less inclined to believe the bible so he set
about destroying the pagan temples. But the Serapeum was a huge structure,
high on a mound and beyond the abilities of the raging Christian fanatics to
assault. Faced with this edifice, the Patriarch sent word to Rome. There the
Emperor Theodosius the Great, who had ordered that paganism be annihilated,
gave his permission for the destruction of the Serapeum. Realising they had no
chance, the priests and priestesses fled their temple and the mob moved in.
The vast structure was razed to it foundations and the scrolls from the
library were burnt in huge pyres in the streets of Alexandria.
Theophilus was indeed the Patriarch of Alexandria at the time that the
Serapeum was converted into a Christian church although he has never been made a
saint! The date for the events recorded is usually given as 391AD when
Theodosius was emperor and energetically converting all his subjects to
Christianity. The contention made is that there was another library in the Serapeum temple that a Christian mob destroyed during their sacking of the
temple. We need to establish if there really was a library there and also if
Theophilus destroyed it.
The intervening years
About the library the sources are reasonably silent but this is not a
surprise because we know already that we cannot be talking about the Royal
Library itself. However, Alexandria remained a centre of scholarship and other
libraries existed. The Emperor Claudius set up the eponymous named Claudian to
be a centre for the study of history and Hadrian founded a library at the
Caesarean temple during his visit. Less reliably, Plutarch informs us that Mark
Anthony gave Cleopatra the entire contents - some 200,000 rolls - of the
Pergamon library as a gift.
The 12th century Byzantine scholar, John Tzetzes, in his Prolegomena to
Aristophanes preserves some details about the catalogue of the poet Callimachus
(died after 250BC) who said there were nearly 500,000 scrolls in the Royal
Library and another 42,000 odd in the outer or public library. Note that
Callimachus is not known to have referred to the Serapeum Library although he is
often assumed to be doing so. The fourth century Bishop Epiphanius of Cyprus
(died 402AD) in his
Weights and Measures (actually a
biblical commentary!) says that there were over 50,000 volumes in the 'daughter'
library that he places in the Serapeum. Our previous observations about numbers
fully apply here even if it seems fair to say that there were many fewer scrolls
in the daughter than in the Royal Library. Epiphanius also tells us that by his
day the entire Bruchion quarter of Alexandria was laid waste, no doubt due to
the actions of Aurelian or Diocletian. There is a detailed report of the
acropolis of Alexandria in a
Progymnasmata by Aphthonius of Ephesus
(died after 400AD) which he presents as an example of how to give a description.
He speaks of book repositories open to the public and we can assume this refers
to the Serapeum. Unfortunately the date of the description is impossible to
determine and nor can we tell if it is an eyewitness account. However, we do
have enough evidence in total to assert that there was once a library at the
Serapeum even if it is not the same as the 'outer library' attached to the Royal
Library.
Despite the continuation of academic activity, Alexandria suffered much in
the years up to 391AD. Augustus reduced it, Caracalla massacred many of its
citizens over a perceived insult and Aurelian also sacked the city and the
palace quarter in which the Museum was situated. Finally, the city was taken
with great destruction by Diocletian at the start of the fourth century.
Ammianus Marcellinus - Roman History
In the Roman History,
Ammianus waxes lyrical about the Serapeum but he then gets a bit confused and
says that the libraries it held were those burnt by Caesar in the Alexandrine
War. The point is perhaps vital though because he had visited Alexandria and yet
says of the Serapeum "in it have been valuable libraries" in the perfect tense.
This was before 391AD when Theophilus and his gang set to work and very strongly
suggests there were no books present in the temple at the time of its
destruction.
Rufinus Tyrannius - Ecclesiastical History
The earliest description of the sack of the Serapeum was almost certainly one
by Sophronius, a Christian scholar, called On the Overthrow of Serapis and now
lost. Rufinus (died 410AD) was an orthodox Latin Christian who spent many years
of his life in Alexandria. He arrived in 372AD and whether or not he was
actually present when the Serapeum was demolished, he was certainly there at
around the same time. He rather freely translated Eusebius's History of the
Church into Latin and then added his own books X and XI taking the narrative up
to his own time. It is in book XI that we find the best source for the events at
the Serapeum which he describes in detail. His account largely agrees with the
one given above except that he makes no mention of any library or books at all.
He seems to regret the passing of the Serapeum but puts the blame squarely on
the local pagans for inciting the Christian mob. The only English translation of
his work is still very much in copyright so until I have produced another myself
the reader will just have to take my word for it.
Eunapius - Lives of the Philosophers
The pagan writer Eunapius of Antioch (died after 400AD) included an account
of the sack of the Serapeum in his
Life of Antonius who, before he died in
390AD, had prophesied that all the pagan temples in Alexandria would be
destroyed (not a desperately surprising contingency at the time). Eunapius wants
to show how right he was. As well as being a pagan, Eunapius is vehemently
anti-Christian and spares no effort in making Theophilus and his followers look
as foolish as possible. His narrative is laced with venom and sarcasm as he
describes the sack of the temple as a battle without an enemy. If a great
library had been destroyed then Eunapius, the pagan scholar, would surely have
mentioned it. He does not.
Socrates Scholasticus, Hermias Sozomen and Theodoret
Socrates (died after 450AD) also wrote a
History of the Church that continued on
from that of Eusebius. His was more detailed and in Greek rather than Latin. It
contains a chapter about the destruction of the Serapeum which acknowledges that
the deed was ordered by the Emperor, that the building was demolished and that
it was later converted to a church. Again, no mention is made of any books that
might have been in the Serapeum or what could have happened to them. His passage
about the cross-shaped hieroglyphics found in the temple gives us some idea of
how Christianity turned various pagan symbols to its advantage.
The histories of Sozomen
(died 443AD) and Theodoret
(died after 457AD) cover a similar period. Despite being pleased to report in
detail the Serapeum's destruction they also make mention no books at all
although Theodoret says that the wooden idols of Serapis were burnt. Both of
these histories are heavily dependent on Socrates but do include details from
other sources.
Paulus Orosius - History against the Pagans
Orosius (died after 415AD) was a friend of Saint Augustine who wrote a
History against the Pagans
that was fully intended to paint all non-Christians in a bad light. So as a
historian he is useless but when he says something that suggests that his fellow
Christians were not whiter than white, that is to say, against the grain of his
usual bias, we have to take it seriously. In his aside on the Great Library, he
says something of significance which is both an eyewitness detail and suggests
that his fellow Christians are in the wrong. He says "
there exist in temples
book chests which we ourselves have seen and when these temples were plundered
these, we are told, were emptied by our own men in our own time." His statement
that there was no other major library in Alexandria at the time of Caesar's
expedition is interesting and would seem to count against there being a Serapeum
library at that time. However, Orosius is too late a source to carry much weight
in this matter.
From Orosius we can deduce that Christians did empty some temples of books
but we cannot go much further. We cannot say the books were destroyed as this is
not stated nor can we say which temples he is talking about or who was
responsible. However, we can be sure he was not talking about the Serapeum as
all sources agree it was razed to the ground and the temples Orosius visited are
not only still standing but even have their internal furninshings. The most
likely explanation is that the books were removed to Christian libraries or
sold.
The verdict on Theophilus
It is hard enough to establish beyond doubt that there was a library in the
Serapeum at all but if there was, Ammianus makes clear that it was no longer
there by the mid-fourth century. This is confirmed by the silence of all the
sources, including one that would be keen to report Christian atrocities, for
the destruction of the temple in 391AD. Note that this is not an 'argument from
silence' because there is no reason at all to expect a mention of books in the Serapeum when it was demolished. An invalid 'argument from silence' is when we
claim something that is not mentioned did not happen, even though other evidence
suggests it did. There is no positive evidence for the existence of the library
and instead near conclusive eye witness evidence against.
The story that Theophilus destroyed a library is clearly a fiction that we
can very precisely lay at the door of Edward Gibbon. It is in his monumental
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that we first find the allegation made.
Gibbon seems mainly concerned to clear the Arabs of the responsibility of
destroying the library and allows his marked anti-Christian prejudice to cloud
his better judgement. His excellent footnotes show he had exactly the same
sources as we do but drew the wrong conclusions. The story has recently
been popularised by Carl Sagan who includes it in
Cosmos. He spices the story up with a
role for the murdered philosopher Hypatia, even though there is no evidence
connecting her to the library at all.
Caliph Omar
First the legendary account:
The Moslems invaded Egypt during the seventh century
as their fanaticism carried them on conquests that would take form an empire
stretching from Spain to India. There was not much of a struggle in Egypt and
the locals found the rule of the Caliph to be more tolerant than that of the
Byzantines before them. However, when a Christian called John informed the
local Arab general that there existed in Alexandria a great Library preserving
all the knowledge in the world he was perturbed. Eventually he sent word to
Mecca where Caliph Omar ordered that all the books in the library should be
destroyed because, as he said "they will either contradict the Koran, in which
case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous."
Therefore, the books and scrolls were taken out of the library and distributed
as fuel to the many bathhouses of the city. So enormous was the volume of
literature that it took six months for it all to be burnt to ashes heating the
saunas of the conquerors.
The leader of the Moslem forces that took Egypt in 640AD was called 'Amr and
it was he who was supposed to have asked Omar what to do about the fabled
library that he found himself in control of.
There are only a few sources that we need to examine. They are very late The
first of the two late sources dates from the 12th century and is written by Abd
al Latif (died 1231) who, in his
Account of Egypt while describing
Alexandria, mentions of the ruins of the Serapeum. The problems with this as
historical evidence are enormous and insurmountable. He admits that the source
of his information was rumour and the fantasy about Aristotle does not bode well
for the veracity of the rest of the piece.
In the thirteenth century the great Jacobite Christian Bishop Gregory Bar
Hebræus (died 1286), called Abû 'l Faraj in Arabic, fleshes the story out and
includes the famous epigram about the Koran. Again there is no clue as to where
he found the story but it seems to have been one doing the rounds among
Christians living under the dominion of the Moslems. Gregory is happy to record
plenty of far fetched tales about omens and monstrosities so we must treat this
story with the greatest suspicion. As it is not even included in the original
version of his history but only in the Arabic version that he translated and
abridged himself very late in life, he may not have known the story when he
first put pen to parchment. In The Vanished Library, Canfora mentions a Syriac
manuscript published in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century by François
Nau. It was written by a Christian monk in the ninth century and details the
conversation between John and Caliph Omar. After help from email correspondents,
I have finally been able to find this elusive document in its French translation
and ascertained that it makes no mention of any library and appears to be an
example of a theological dialogue between two representative individuals. In
other words it is not historical and has no pretensions to be.
The verdict on Omar
The errors in the sources are obvious and the story itself is almost wholly
incredible. In the first place, Gregory Bar Hebræus represents the Christian in
his story as being one John of Byzantium and that John was certainly dead by the
time of the Moslem invasion of Egypt. Also, the prospect of the library taking
six months to burn is simply fantastic and just the sort of exaggeration one
might expect to find in Arab legends such as the Arabian Nights. However Alfred
Butler's famous observation that the books of the library were made of vellum
which does not burn is not true. The very late dates of the source material are
also suspect as there is no hint of this atrocity in any early literature - even
in the Coptic Christian chronicle of
John of Nikiou
(died after 640AD) who detailed the Arab invasion. Finally, the story comes from
the hand of a Christian intellectual who would have been more than happy to show
the religion of his rulers in a bad light. Agreeing with Gibbon this time, we
can dismiss it as a legend.
All quotations from or references to this essay should be accompanied by a
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reproduced only with permission of the author although such permission will not
normally be declined.
© James Hannam 2003.
Last revised:
02 December, 2012 .
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