The News In Print weighs in.
They include...
The Great Library & Mouseion: The First Universal Library (Alexandria, Egypt)
History tells us that the first ‘universal’ library was the Great Library & Mouseion in Alexandria, Egypt. Hungry for conquest and knowledge, Alexander the Great spent the last 11 years of his life (334 to 333 B.C.) exploring the world. To broaden the enterprise, he dispatched scholars to unexplored regions to gather knowledge and map their journeys.
After Alexander’s death, the pharaoh Ptolemy I commissioned the Great Library project, appointing his adviser, Demetrius of Phaleron, to build the library and become its first director. It is said that the Great Library of Alexandria even had an intricate system of registration and classification.
It must be said that the Ptolemies had some fairly shocking methods of stocking what was, above all, a royal library. One involved searching every ship that docked at Alexandria harbour and confiscating any books found. The second method involved twisting the arm of the Athens archives, which very reluctantly agreed to lend the Great Library their books. The Ptolemies then simply kept the originals and sent back copies.
Books are particularly vulnerable and easily destroyed. Tragically the contents of the library in Alexandria were extinguished when, in 48 B.C., Julius Caesar defeated the Ptolomaic forces by setting fire to their fleet. The fire, wrote the Roman poet Plutarch, spread from the dockyards and destroyed the Great Library.
No comments:
Post a Comment