#The secrets of underground medicine read online archive
The earliest recorded archive of written materials comes from the ancient Sumerian city-state of Uruk in around 3400 BC, when writing had only just begun to develop. A long tradition of libraries existed in both Greece and in the ancient Near East. The Library of Alexandria was not the first library of its kind. The Serapeum was vandalized and demolished in 391 AD under a decree issued by Coptic Christian Pope Theophilus of Alexandria, but it does not seem to have housed books at the time and was mainly used as a gathering place for Neoplatonist philosophers following the teachings of Iamblichus.Ī Roman copy of an original 3rd century BC Greek bust depicting Alexander the Great, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen The daughter library of the Serapeum may have survived after the main Library's destruction.
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Between 270 and 275 AD, the city of Alexandria saw a Palmyrene invasion and an imperial counterattack that probably destroyed whatever remained of the Library, if it still existed at that time. Its membership appears to have ceased by the 260s AD. The Library dwindled during the Roman period, from a lack of funding and support. The Library, or part of its collection, was accidentally burned by Julius Caesar during his civil war in 48 BC, but it is unclear how much was actually destroyed and it seems to have either survived or been rebuilt shortly thereafter the geographer Strabo mentions having visited the Mouseion in around 20 BC and the prodigious scholarly output of Didymus Chalcenterus in Alexandria from this period indicates that he had access to at least some of the Library's resources. Many other scholars, including Dionysius Thrax and Apollodorus of Athens, fled to other cities, where they continued teaching and conducting scholarship.
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This decline began with the purging of intellectuals from Alexandria in 145 BC during the reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon, which resulted in Aristarchus of Samothrace, the head librarian, resigning from his position and exiling himself to Cyprus. During the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes, a daughter library was established in the Serapeum, a temple to the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis.ĭespite the widespread modern belief that the Library of Alexandria was burned once and cataclysmically destroyed, the Library actually declined gradually over the course of several centuries. Many important and influential scholars worked at the Library during the third and second centuries BC, including, among many others: Zenodotus of Ephesus, who worked towards standardizing the texts of the Homeric poems Callimachus, who wrote the Pinakes, sometimes considered to be the world's first library catalogue Apollonius of Rhodes, who composed the epic poem the Argonautica Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who calculated the circumference of the earth within a few hundred kilometers of accuracy Aristophanes of Byzantium, who invented the system of Greek diacritics and was the first to divide poetic texts into lines and Aristarchus of Samothrace, who produced the definitive texts of the Homeric poems as well as extensive commentaries on them. It is unknown precisely how many such scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height.Īlexandria came to be regarded as the capital of knowledge and learning, in part because of the Great Library. The Library quickly acquired many papyrus scrolls, owing largely to the Ptolemaic kings' aggressive and well-funded policies for procuring texts.
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The idea of a universal library in Alexandria may have been proposed by Demetrius of Phalerum, an exiled Athenian statesman living in Alexandria, to Ptolemy I Soter, who may have established plans for the Library, but the Library itself was probably not built until the reign of his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The Library was part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, which was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. The Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. Probably during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246 BC) Įstimates vary somewhere between 40,000 and 400,000 scrolls, perhaps equivalent to roughly 100,000 books Įstimated to have employed over 100 scholars at its height Von Corven, based partially on the archaeological evidence available at that time Nineteenth-century artistic rendering of the Library of Alexandria by the German artist O.