The Probert Encyclopaedia of General Information

ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY

The Alexandrian Library was the largest and most famous of all the ancient collections of books. It was founded by Ptolemy Soter, King of Egypt, who died in 283 BC, and greatly enlarged by succeeding Ptolemies. At its most flourishing period it is said to have numbered 700,000 volumes, accommodated in two different buildings, one of them being the Serapeion, or temple of Jupiter Serapis. The other collection was burned during Julius Caesar's siege of the city, but the Serapeion library existed to the time of the Emperor Theodosius the Great, when, at the general destruction of the heathen temples, the splendid temple of Jupiter Serapis was gutted in 391 by a fanatical crowd of Christians, and its literary treasures destroyed or scattered. A library was again accumulated, but was burned by the Arabs when they captured the city under the caliph Omar in 611. Amru, the captain of the caliph's army, would have been willing to spare the library, but Omar is said to have disposed of the matter in the famous words: 'If these writings of the Greeks agree with the Koran they are useless, and need not be preserved; if they disagree they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed.'
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