re: gz/:daver - time for a rest allah the most mer
jconnell, You might be thinking about something else. Here is some baclground of the library of Alexandria that you might find interesting.
There are of course likely to be different versions of the story that you can find. Up to you what you think is more realistic considering the current situation
The Mos lems invaded Eg ypt during the seventh century as their fanaticism carried them on conquests that would take form an empire stretching from Spain to India. There was not much of a struggle in Egypt and the locals found the rule of the Caliph to be more tolerant than that of the Byzantines before them. However, when a Chris tian called John informed the local Ara b general that there existed in Alexandria a great Library preserving all the knowledge in the world he was perturbed. Eventually he sent word to Me cca where Cal iph Oma r ordered that all the books in the library should be destroyed because, as he said "they will either contradict the Ko ran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." Therefore, the books and scrolls were taken out of the library and distributed as fuel to the many bathhouses of the city. So enormous was the volume of literature that it took six months for it all to be burnt to ashes heating the saunas of the conquerors.
Introduction
What happened to the Royal Library of Alexandria? We can be certain it was there once, founded by Ptolomy II Soter, and we can be equally certain it is not there now. It formed part of the Museum which was located in the Bruchion or palace quarter of the city of Alexandria. This great ancient city, occupying a spit of land on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, had been founded by Alexander the Great in his flying visit to Egypt and became the capital of the last dynasty of Pharaohs descended from Alexander's general Ptolemy. The Great or more properly Royal Library formed a part of the Museum but whether or not it was a separate building is unclear.
Stories about its demise have been circulating for centuries and date back to at least the first century AD. These stories continue to be told and embellished today by those who wish to make a moral attack against the alleged vandals. We find that three parties are blamed for the destruction and they correspond to the three occupying powers that ruled Alexandria after it had been lost by the Greeks. Let me first tell those stories as we hear them today - without references, largely inaccurate and used as polemic. Then I will try and establish what, if anything we can know before finally and rather indulgently making my own suggestions.
The suspects respectively are a Roman, a Chri stian and a Mos lem - Julius Caesar, Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria and Cal iph O mar of Dama scus. It is clear that the Royal Library could not have been burnt down or otherwise destroyed by all three of these characters and so we find we have too many sources for the event of the destruction rather than a paucity. As scholars of the Gospels will vouch, this too can be an embarrassment. How we decide to reconcile the stories will depend almost entirely on how we criticise the sources and which of them we choose to consider most reliable.
Archaeology can be a help with ancient history although it tends to be silent about the things in which we are most interested leading the more foolish archaeologists to claim they never happened. In the case of Alexandria a series of earthquakes and floods in the middle ages mean that the entire palace quarter in the North East of the city is now underwater and largely inaccessible. Recent work in underwater archaeology has revealed more but we will probably never be able to dig around in the foundations of the Museum. The Great Temple of Serapis, to which we will later return, was in the south-western quarter and parts of its foundations have been excavated.
