of his son, Ptolemy II. It was built in the Royal Quarter, near to the main ports, which was particularly useful for those librarians whose task it was to collect any written works from the ships, determine if they already existed in the Library, then have them copied and the copies returned (the Library kept the originals). They also made a point of holding copies of the same text from different places for comparison.

            The academics in residence were given a good salary, with lodging and food provided for them, allowing them to focus on their intellectual pursuits without being concerned about day-to-day needs. They were also expected to conduct the occasional lecture for the students at the Museon. The first head librarian was Zenodotus of Ephesus, who designed the system for the library and is given credit for the first known use of alphabetization as an organizational tool. Also during Zenodotus’ tenure, Callimachus put together a what is considered the first library catalog, a listing of authors and all of their known works called the Pinakes. Only fragments of its 120 books survive. Other notable works from the library’s height are the Argonautica, written by the second head librarian Apollonius of Rhodes; Eratosthenes’ Geographika and Concerning the Measurement of the Earth, in which the author calculated the circumference of the spherical Earth that was correct within a few hundred kilometers. It is also believed that Archimedes invented his water-moving screw while in residence at the Library.

            After a few decades, the library had exceeded its space, meaning it had to be expanded into a satellite location in the Serapeum of Alexandria. This expansion was fortuitus, as the main library was accidentally damaged or destroyed by Julius Caesar during his war with Pompey. Ships belonging to Ptolemy XIV were burned on the Dictator’s orders, the fire from which spread to the city. The reports of damage vary widely: Livy claims the fire destroyed forty thousand scrolls, Plutarch says Caesar destroyed the Library, and Cassius Dio says that only warehouses holding scrolls were burned, not the library itself. Caesar mentions none of this in his Bellum Civile. Evidence of at least some damage comes from Plutarch’s Life of Marcus Antonius, in which the Triumvir is said to have gifted 200,000 scrolls taken from other libraries in the East. There is also evidence of the library, or at least some of its contents, being used by various scholars through the first century CE.

            As the Rome grew more powerful, the intellectual life of the Mediterranean shifted away from Alexandria toward the political center in Italy. Roman fighting to maintain control of Egypt under the Emperors Aurelian and Diocletian damaged parts of or destroyed the Museon and the Library. When Christianity took hold in the Empire, much of the library’s contents were deemed unnecessary, if not dangerous. Anything that may have been left after the various conquests was lost when Bishop Theophilus used Emperor Theodosius I’s order to destroy pagan temples as a reason to destroy the Serapeum and (if anything was left of it) the larger Museon. A Christian Church was built on the ruins.

            In the twelfth century, the story of how the Library was destroyed was rewritten, blaming Amr ibn-al-As, the Arab general who took Egypt and occupied Alexandria in 642. The story appears in a work by Ibn al-Qifti, who claims that the scrolls were burned to heat the city baths. The story likely derived from a political dispute between the general and the author’s patron. It has long been known to be false (if it was ever truly believed); Edward Gibbon recognized it as such over two centuries ago. The idea is still sometimes used as an example of the supposed anti-intellectualism of Muslims. There is great irony in this false claim—many of the texts from the ancient world still exist only because they were kept and maintained, copied and distributed by Muslim scholars. And while the copies from which they worked likely had not been housed in the Library at Alexandria, the texts were likely there all those centuries ago.