Library of Alexandria

The Library of Alexandria in Egypt has become the epitome of ancient knowledge.

The Library of Alexandria was founded after the death of Alexander the Great as the repository of all the manuscripts which had been collected during the Greek conquest of the civilized world; the ancestors of Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies, stocked the library with thousands, if not millions, of manuscripts.

The library was subsequently destroyed by Julius Caesar, by Christian fanatics, and finally, by the Moslem caliph, Omar; Caesar burned the library as a military maneuver while fighting the Egyptians; the Christians destroyed the library because they were afraid it glorified paganism; caliph Omar is famous for his profound arrogance when he said that the contents of the library should be destroyed because if the manuscripts agreed with the teachings of Mohammed, they were redundant and need not be preserved and if they disagreed with the teachings of Mohammed, they were pernicious and should be destroyed.

It’s curious to note that Edward Gibbon, in his definitive work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, dismissed the destruction of the Library of Alexandria as an event of no great import; Gibbon (chapter 51) implies that the content of the Library of Alexandria was nothing more than a collection of misinformation and superstitious bunk; the final destruction of the Library of Alexandria took place in 638 CE.