The burning of the library of Alexandria is one of the greatest tragedies in history. Let me put it this way in all likelihood if the library hadn’t been burned then we would probably be using warp drives or by the very least colonizing mars. However not matter how horrible the burning was there is no point to what ifs. But scholars and historians scratch their heads to this very day on how the library was burned. Any one of the following theories could be true. But also it could be all a joint action.
Before we go into theories of its demise lets look at little bit at the library itself. The city was founded by Alexander The Great who founded several cities called Alexandria. However the library itself was founded by his successor in Egypt. Ptolomy II Soter. The library was actually only a part of a museum. But not like the museums we know today the museum was meant to be a temple to the 9 muses. The other parts of the temple included a zoo shrines to each of the muses as well as several gardens and lecture areas. Though of course the most important part was the library itself.
The first suspect is Julius Caesar. Julius had been chasing Pompey. He had chased Pompey all the way into Egypt and Egypt took this is a military action and responded. Julius was quickly cut off from escape and outnumbered. In order to escape he needed to create a distraction and what better distraction then a really big fire? He lit several of his ships on fire and sent them into the Harbor of Alexandria. The fire could have easily spread to the Library.
There Library had so many books that it couldn’t hold all of it and there was another temple that held roughly 10% of the books called the temple of Serapis. However a Patriarch of the city of Alexandria Theophilius was a devout christian and had the temple converted and the majority of books burned. Also the final librarians of the great Library were killed in riots between Jews and Christians.
Caliph Omar is the last man to be blamed for destroying the great library. Caliph was a Moslem. The Moslems had conquered the city and the general had heard of the library which supposedly held all the information in the world. He asked his adviser Caliph who suggested that they burn the books to heat up the bath house. Since they would either agree with the Koran and there for be unnecessary or disagree in which case it would be heresy. It is said it took 6 months to burn all the books.
