James WuJul 22, 2023

TIL there was no single burning of the historic Great Library of Alexandria. The “single burning” story is just myth.

Instead, the Library of Alexandria was slowly defunded and its librarians, intellectuals purged from Alexandria. Over generations its prominence and scholarship slowly faded away, and the collection was likely slowly lost to corruption, war, plunder, dilapidation, or dispersed across other private and public collections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

Library of Alexandria - Wikipedia

Show threadlegraLeGra

@analogist @stefan

Well this is interesting.

My postdoc just finished up a paper about how in the 160’s BC, a series of 4 very large volcanic eruptions within a decade wrecked havoc with the Nile flood, undermining the foundation of the Ptolemaic stability. Looks like this is coincident with the turn of fortunes for the library.

Its is an interesting angle — maybe my historian colleagues can pursue this angle for their companion paper.

https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/si06400u.html

Pubs.GISS: Singh et al. 2023: Investigating hydroclimatic impacts of the 168-158 BCE volcanic quartet and their...

Jul 23, 2023 at 9:57pmWeb