The Great Library

[Godwynn]

Aight Civ'ers I know this is right up your alley.

The Great Library... questions.

1. What year was it destroyed. I heard a theory that it contained more books to the Bible namely the life of Jesus. I wanted to check the date of its destruction to see if it matches up with the lifetime of Jesus.

2. What kind of information did it hold? History? Blueprints? Novels?

3. How far did its destruction setback humanity in technological advancement. I heard once around 1000 years.

 

[taper]

Straight Dope
Nobody's really sure when the library was destroyed, and it almost certainly didn't happen all at once, but it was definately open after Jesus's time. It held all sorts of info, sort of an ancient wikipedia, and many travelers had their scrolls confiscated, copied, and then sometimes returned when they entered the city. I don't think 1000 year setback is even close. The brittle scrolls fell apart gradually over time, the library was looted and/or destroyed in stages, and much of the info inside existed elsewhere anyway.. The political upheaval of the time would have alot more effect.

 

[Esox]

Let's see here, the Great Library was built around 600AD in Sparta, by me. I had no marble. It was made obsolete around 1600AD when Mansa Musa came up with the Scientific Method. This event was really just an annoyance and didn't set me back at all.
What did it contain? A couple of scientists who remain anonymous.

That was kind of an easy quiz. What else ya got?

 

[MjM]

^ Civ4 is overrated! It should be obsolete by education.

 

[Esox]

I don't know a thing about the real Great Library. But I did prefer the civ3 one which gave you a chance to get some techs. The Internet comes way too late in civ4 to be worth it, IMHO.

OK I'm done hijacking.

 

[The Yankee]

Moderator Action: Esox and MjM warned for spam/threadjacking.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[The Yankee]

Moderator Action: Moved to History.

 

[Plotinus]

No-one knows precisely when the library was destroyed, but it was probably a long and drawn-out process since the library (like the museum, with which it was associated) was not housed in a single building but spread out all across the city - kind of like Oxford University. The destruction may have begun before Jesus' birth (Julius Caesar's invasion of Egypt is sometimes blamed for destroying part of it), but it was certainly still around at least largely intact for some centuries afterwards (Theophilus of Alexandria's destruction of the Serapeum in the late fourth century is sometimes blamed for destroying most of it, although Gibbon was the first to say this so it's probably not true).

I doubt very much that there was anything about Jesus in there, at least anything more useful than what we have. The library contained pretty much all literary works, including works of philosophy. Among the things that it contained and that we have now lost would have been all the books of the pre-Socratic philosophers, such as Heraclitus, which now exist only as fragmentary quotations in later authors; and the lost works of Aristotle (we possess only a fifth of his writings). "Novels" would no doubt have been in there too, but they were virtually unknown in antiquity, as were "blueprints" (for what?).

It sounds rubbish to me to say that its destruction set humanity back technologically by a millennium. For one thing, the Chinese didn't store all their stuff in it, so is loss was hardly a disaster for the whole of humanity. For another, the library didn't contain "technology", it contained literary texts. Their loss was awful but it wasn't a technological setback. Most of the technology known in the days of the Roman empire was actually being used, so its survival was not dependent upon any library. Examples would be water wheels, windmills, or semaphore towers.

 

[deo]

I thought the library was destroyed in a large fire during cleopatra.

 

[Warman17]

Well it's well believed that the ancient greeks and romans knew more about technology than they're letting on. The idea that if a Great Library still existed than perhaps the dark agees/middle ages wouldn't have needed a rennisance.

Inventions like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_clock would still be well known, and could have been overcome before thre 17th century. Steam technology would have advanced faster, etc. Perhaps maybe not 1000 years worth of technology was lost, but certainly the technological splenders of the ancient world were. That along with countless histories/chronicles and architectural "blueprints."

 

[Plotinus]

Well it's well believed that the ancient greeks and romans knew more about technology than they're letting on.

And what's the evidence for this? If they knew any technology they'd have been using it, not keeping it secret, wouldn't they? The technology for water clocks wasn't lost with the library - on the contrary, they continued to be used for centuries. The only reason we don't use them today is that we've got better clocks. And I don't see how the steam engine would have been developed any faster with an intact library. Heros of Alexandria designed a steam engine, but his technology wasn't lost with the library - it was just never developed anyway.

The only example of a "lost" technology from antiquity that I can think of is Greek Fire, but its loss had nothing to do with the destruction of the Great Library (it was invented later).

 

[Tee Kay]

Plotinus was right, the "library" of Alexandria isn't a single building. Its contents is spread over several building (the main one was known by the name "Museum") and it also had an assiociate library at the Temple of Serapis (Serapeum).

Now let us line up the culprits!!!

- Platarch, the Greek historian, blamed Julius Caesar for burning the library during a battle in Alexandria. (So, deo, you have a point there)

- Edward Gibbon, English historian, blamed Theophilus of Alexandria, the patriarch of Alexandria in the 4th century. He apparently discovered a hidden pagan temple and provoked a Christian attack on it. The pagans ran to the Serapeum, which was destroyed by rampaging Christians.
- Meanwhile, Theodosius I, Roman Emperor, had ordered all pagan temples to be destroyed in 391, including the Serapeum, and possibly the Museum.

- Ibn al-Kifti, Muslim historian, blamed Caliph Umar, who, when he conquered Egypt, ordered the library to be destroyed in case it contained anything contradictory to the Koran.

Useful links: http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/indextext/Alexandria.html
http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm

 

[Tee Kay]

Greek/Romans technologies weren't entirely lost when the Library was destroyed, but simply became harder to access. if it weren't for the Arabs and Byzantines gathering up all the loose bits and pieces of Greek science the West wouldn't advance as quickly as it did. had the library remained intact, the years spent saving Greek science can be spent instead on developing and expanding existing Greek science.

 

[Verbose]

The assumption that somehow technological progress derives from theoretical innovation has been refuted more times than I can remember. It's a nice theory, kind of the underpinning of postivist ideology, but thechnology never worked like that in practice.

And what people forget looking at Alexandria is that there were other libraries competing with it. We never hear about the huge library in Pergamon do we? Still it rivalled Alexandria. And it also somehow faded into history without anyone really sure how it ended.

 

[Tee Kay]

That's true. There's a lot of other great libraries around the ancient Mediterranean world. Still, Alexandria's was most likely the largest and most complete of all the libraries, and I wonder how much was left of Pergamum's library after Marc Antony gave 200,000 scrolls to Cleopatra?

 

[Pokurcz]

More books to the bible and about Jesus where found in the Egyptian desert in the '40:s I believe, wich were in fact gnostic gospels.

I recomend "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elain Pagels, a very nice read.

 

[atreas]

And what's the evidence for this? If they knew any technology they'd have been using it, not keeping it secret, wouldn't they? The technology for water clocks wasn't lost with the library - on the contrary, they continued to be used for centuries. The only reason we don't use them today is that we've got better clocks. And I don't see how the steam engine would have been developed any faster with an intact library. Heros of Alexandria designed a steam engine, but his technology wasn't lost with the library - it was just never developed anyway.

The only example of a "lost" technology from antiquity that I can think of is Greek Fire, but its loss had nothing to do with the destruction of the Great Library (it was invented later).

As impossible as it seems, there IS a very important technological discovery that was lost (not necessarily because of the destruction of Great Library, but because of the general loss of knowledge in the dark ages). This is the way to make concrete - Romans knew how to do it, then everybody forgot it, and it was reinvented by a British egnineer in 1756.

 

[onejayhawk]

Wasnt there a new world library burned by the Spanish, which turned out to be just about the only sizable library in the Americas?

J

 

[Plotinus]

That doesn't sound very likely to me, given that of all the indigenous Americans, only the Maya had anything like a written language (mostly hieroglyphics on buildings). The Aztecs used knotted string to send messages but I don't think they wrote books in it. They'd have looked like big carpets...

 

[sydhe]

It was the Inca who used knotted strings. Here's an article on Aztec writing, which doesn't seem as developed as the Mayan. The surviving codices are post-conquest.

http://www.ancientscripts.com/aztec.html