Library of Alexandria Timeline

A shift in Greek scholarship at large occurred around the beginning of the first century BC. Many scholars began producing syntheses and reworkings of the commentaries of the Alexandrian scholars of previous centuries, at the expense of their own originalities.

Alexandrian scholarship was probably introduced to Rome in the first century BC by Tyrannion of Amisus (c. 100 – c. 25 BC), a student of Dionysius Thrax.

The first-century AD Roman playwright and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger quotes Livy's Ab Urbe Condita Libri, written between 27 and 9 BC, as saying that the fire started by Caesar destroyed 40,000 scrolls from the Library of Alexandria.

Image source: Siege of Alexandria (47 BC)

Further evidence for the Library's survival after 48 BC comes from the fact that the most notable producer of composite commentaries during the late first century BC and early first century AD was a scholar who worked in Alexandria named Didymus Chalcenterus.

Nonetheless, Strabo's manner of talking about the Mouseion shows that it was nowhere near as prestigious as it had been a few centuries prior.

Image source: Strabo

The only known head librarian from the Roman Period was Tiberius Claudius Balbilus, who lived in the middle of the first century AD and was a politician, administrator, and military officer with no record of substantial scholarly achievements.

The Caesareum and the Claudianum in Alexandria are both known to have had major libraries by the end of the first century AD.

Zenodotus's system of alphabetization only used the first letter of the word, and it was not until the second century AD that anyone is known to have applied the same method of alphabetization to the remaining letters of the word.

By the second century AD, the Roman Empire had grown less dependent on grain from Alexandria, and the city's prominence declined further.

A recent article identifies literary evidence suggesting that the original Ptolemaic library collection was moved to the Serapeum by the end of the second century AD and that a library is attested there until the Serapeum was destroyed along with the books it contained.

Image source: Serapeum of Alexandria

Mention of both the Great Library of Alexandria and the Mouseion that housed it disappears after the middle of the third century AD.

By the fourth century AD, there were at least two dozen public libraries in the city of Rome alone.

Scattered references indicate that, sometime in the fourth century, an institution known as the "Mouseion" may have been reestablished at a different location somewhere in Alexandria.

The Suda, a tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia, calls the mathematician Theon of Alexandria (c. 335 – c. 405) a "man of the Mouseion".

For much of the late fourth century AD, it was probably the largest collection of books in the city of Alexandria.

In retaliation, the Christians vandalized and demolished the Serapeum, although some parts of the colonnade were still standing as late as the twelfth century.

The late-fifth-century writers Zacharias Scholasticus and Aeneas of Gaza both speak of the "Mouseion" as occupying some kind of physical space.

Image source: Zacharias Rhetor

Neoplatonism and paganism both survived in Alexandria and throughout the eastern Mediterranean for centuries after Hypatia's death.

Image source: Hypatia

Many texts preserved through the Alexandrian scholarly tradition were eventually gradually transmitted to Europe from the 12th century onward.

Image source: Transmission of the Greek Classics

The earliest account was al-Qifti, who described the story in a biographical dictionary, History of Learned Men, written before 1248. Bar-Hebraeus quotes Umar as saying: "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them." The general ordered the books burned to fuel the fires heating Alexandria's city baths.

Later scholars, beginning with Father Eusèbe Renaudot in his 1713 translation of the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, are skeptical of these stories, given the amount of time that had passed before they were recorded and the political motivations of the various authors.

Image source: Eusèbe Renaudot

The idea of reviving the ancient Library of Alexandria in the modern era was first proposed in 1974, after Lotfy Dowidar was president of the University of Alexandria.

Image source: Bibliotheca Alexandrina

In May 1986, Egypt requested the executive board of UNESCO to allow the international organization to conduct a feasibility study for the project.

Starting in 1988, UNESCO and the UNDP worked to support the international architectural competition to design the Library.

An international architectural competition took place in 1989 with Norwegian architectural firm Snøhetta winning the competition.

Image source: Snøhetta (company)

Completed in 2002, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina now functions as a modern library and cultural center, commemorating the original Library of Alexandria.