Memes

Sorry to be the one to break this to whoever still believes this:

The main myths surrounding the Great Library of Alexandria are that 1) it was just one enormous library 2) containing a half-million or more scrolls full of ancient knowledge that was 3) sensationally destroyed in a senseless act of vandalism.

Problem is, there's no hard evidence to substantiate any of that nonsense. There are so many fantasy accounts of the “Great Library,” its founding, its contents and its destruction that we today really do not know how much of it is true and how much is revisionist bullshit. But we're pretty sure most of it is revisionist bullshit.

It's more likely that the “Great Library of Alexandria" was actually comprised of two or three (or maybe more) small “libraries,” which were just limited collections of scrolls and reading rooms associated with various Greek temples. These were all part of the larger Mouseion (a scholarly Greek institution honoring the 9 goddesses of the Arts, aka the Muses), which had branches all over the Greek world at the time, all the way back to Athens.

The Greeks were also famous for making multiple, multiple handwritten copies of any literature they encountered, such that the scroll collections at Alexandria probably existed as duplicate copies elsewhere all across the Greek world. So, it would be virtually impossible to destroy the collected knowledge of the Ancient World by simply destroying one “library" in one city.

Furthermore, the alleged fiery destruction of the “Great Library” has undoubtedly been blown out of proportion for millennia, right up to the present, by opinionated pseudo-historians attempting to assign blame for one heinous act that may not have even happened. The fact is that nobody knows how the Great Library (or several small reading rooms) of Alexandria came to an end. Very likely, it met the common fate of most libraries throughout history…a gradual decline of interest and eventual extinction due to lack of funding.