> Researchers currently poring over the papyri in the Carlsberg Collection are finding that medical information discovered in ancient Egypt didn't disappear when the Library of Alexandria burned
That's because almost nothing was lost when the library at Alexandria burned. Because there was almost nothing there to burn at the time. The library had long been in decline by this time period, and there were many other great centers of learning in the world which had extensive libraries. Why does this myth still persist?
>> Researchers currently poring over the papyri in the Carlsberg Collection are finding that medical information discovered in ancient Egypt didn't disappear when the Library of Alexandria burned
> That's because almost nothing was lost when the library at Alexandria burned. Because there was almost nothing there to burn at the time. The library had long been in decline by this time period, and there were many other great centers of learning in the world which had extensive libraries. Why does this myth still persist?
The actual source howstuffworks.com cites for that section doesn't mention the myth (https://sciencenordic.com/denmark-videnskabdk/unpublished-eg...). My guess is the "freelance science writer" who wrote this piece interpolated it for color from a memory of a pop-science source like the one in the critique above.
The short of it is that Alexandria, including its libraries, declined as a center of scholarship after Ptolemy VIII exiled or killed all the intellectuals who worked there in 145 BCE. While the library survived, subsequent administration didn't maintain the institution. Whatever insults the physical institution suffered or when the buildings were finally destroyed, the institution of legend died from neglect long before then.
> subsequent administration didn't maintain the institution
Also papyrus has a limited shelf life, so even the books need to be maintained (copied) to maintain them in the long run, so if the institution is failing, the books will be lost in the medium/long term, even without direct destruction of the library
To contextualize why "history for atheists by an atheist historian" is a thing...
> After over ten years of seeing supposed “rationalists”, most of them with no background in or even knowledge of history, using patent pseudo history as the basis for arguments against and attacks on religion, I felt someone needed to start correcting the popular misconceptions about history which are rife among many vocal atheist activists. I also felt there needed to be some push-back by a fellow unbeliever against several fringe theories and hopelessly outdated ideas which have no credibility among professional scholars and specialists, but which seem to be accepted almost without question by many or even most anti-theistic atheists.
It’s surprising to me that the author finds it improbable that we don’t know many ancient writers. It’s always been my default assumption that the vast majority of all works and writers of antiquity were lost. I would expect that, like today, there is a relatively small number of hugely popular works, which had a decent chance of surviving, and a massive long tail of less popular works that were relatively obscure, especially over the time scale, didn’t get copied, and so therefore were lost. Of course we might get a few random selections from the long tail, but not many compared to the number of total works. I would have supposed there was easily a ratio of 100:1, at least.
> If you have some reliable references, I'd be happy to learn from them!
The problem is that we have no reliable references on the destruction of this library. Written sources contradict each other, and archaeology has nothing.
- According to 3 Roman authors, Julius Caesar burned it. But other Roman authors vigorously deny it.
- Even if no book did burn at this time, centuries of decline followed. The town's activity went down, and other libraries had greater fame.
- When Aurelian took the city (anno 272, thanks Wikipedia), the building was certainly destroyed (among many others) if it still existed.
- There were very late claims that the library was destroyed be the Arab invasion, but this is extremely unlikely since the written sources on the library's activity stopped just before the probable destruction by Aurelian.
In France most people believe in an Arab destruction. For instance, this well known newspaper had to write an justification[^1] after many readers denied the destruction by the Romans mentioned in a previous article. I suppose it is not a mere coincidence that the prejudice against Arabs is very common in this country.
[^1]: https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1990/02/10/qui-a-bru...
That's not great. A quick skim says that the number of books were probably (edit typo: overestimated) by a fair bit:
"The actual numbers were probably lower, perhaps by as much as one order of magnitude"
Reference to this says "a library that was a tenth of this size [sc. the 500,000 in Ps.-Aristeas] would still have been very large in antiquity") so it was a large library. I have to say, claims of hundreds of thousand weren't really plausible anyway.
Second it doesn't say it was dwarfed elsewhere at the time. It does say "The Library of Alexandria, however comprehensive for its time, was not on a scale comparable with the great research libraries of the twentieth century[0]". Which is fair, but doesn't support what you say.
finally it doesn't say (that I can see) that it was empty when destroyed. The guy does say there's now way it would have survived a long time due to the humidity and climate it was in, but doesn't suggest (AFAIKS) that it was nearly empty when it was destroyed.
[0] well duh
So I'm going to go with the more common view for now. Thanks anyway.
Incoming ships got searched for books because there was a law in place made by one of the Ptolemies that any ships coming in would be required by law to lend any books on board to the library to make copies. Sometimes, the scribes would keep the original and give the copy back because they would be hard to distinguish.
Since we can probably assume the copies of these books were made without the consent of the original author or publisher, would that make these pirate ships?
> Sometimes, the scribes would keep the original and give the copy back because they would be hard to distinguish.
Copying books back when you had to do everything by hand and doing so fast enough that you could return the book in time? I would expect less "hard to distinguish" and more "barely legible".
Considering how few people could read and how expensive books would have been, I would expect that those books would have been valuable cargo (as opposed to personal items) and not willingly released anyway.
That's because almost nothing was lost when the library at Alexandria burned. Because there was almost nothing there to burn at the time. The library had long been in decline by this time period, and there were many other great centers of learning in the world which had extensive libraries. Why does this myth still persist?