Culture Critic

The great library died because classical culture did.

Cultures aren't lost in great fires — they die from something much worse: apathy...

Alexandria's texts were at risk long before any disaster struck. Successors to Ptolemy didn't share his commitment to knowledge, and the library fell into disuse.

By 400 AD, there are no accounts of a great library at Alexandria at all.

The fate of Aristotle's works is unclear, but one account says they weren't burned but confiscated by Sulla — why?

The historian Plutarch said it was "because they had fallen into idle and base hands"...

And remember: papyrus was fragile enough that regular handling eroded it. Ancient libraries had to continually re-copy their texts, so commitment was required to maintain them.

If that commitment fell away, so did the knowledge.

Texts through history weren't generally lost in fires — but because they weren't copied in the first place.

Cultures need a reason to preserve them. We have so much Virgil and Homer today because they were in school curricula for centuries.

So what happened to the library?

We don't really know. Some say Caesar's men razed it by accident during a civil war in 48 BC, or Diocletian did when he sacked the city in 298 AD.

These events likely did damage, but something worse happened...

It was 120 papyrus rolls of information. Essentially a detailed guide of the entire intellectual world of antiquity.

It hurts to think just how much we might know had it been recovered.

But if we could have just one lost item back it would easily be the "Pinakes" of Callimachus.

Callimachus was a librarian who catalogued the library by subject, author, with a summary of each book's contents — the first time it was ever done in the West...

There were the lost plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, who wrote over 73 and 100 plays respectively — the vast majority now missing.

They might've been foundational works of Western literature, or taught us things about Greek life we'll never know...

Today, we have just 30 of them — none of which survive in complete form.

Just these had immeasurable impact for centuries, so imagine what might've been in the remaining 90%...

Among the most precious lost works were the writings of Aristotle, which Ptolemy II paid a fortune to acquire.

Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises in his life, across philosophy, natural sciences, economics...

Ptolemy's buying spree furnished it with manuscripts of incalculable value: Plato, Homer, Herodotus...

And very significant original work took place: Earth's circumference was calculated for the first time in Alexandria.

It became the world's largest collection of manuscripts — some say 700,000 scrolls at its peak.

So what was really in there, and what did we lose?

Ptolemy acquired books aggressively, and scholars came from across Egypt, Greece, Persia, India — and were paid generously.

Every ship docking in Alexandria had to submit all written material on board for the library to make copies.

He wanted it to be the intellectual center of the world — the new Greece. He had a great library and museum built, and the lighthouse: one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World.

The library was to contain all the knowledge of antiquity under one roof.

Alexandria was once antiquity's greatest city — a trade port connecting Africa, Europe and Asia.

When Ptolemy I took control of Egypt in 305 BC after the death of Alexander the Great, he built Alexandria into his thriving capital...

What was lost when the Library of Alexandria burned?

Well — our entire knowledge of the Greco-Roman world comes from about 500 volumes. 700,000 scrolls were potentially lost at Alexandria alone.

Here's what was in there... (thread) 🧵

They were born out of brutal necessity, yet catered for much more than mere survival.

Deep down at the 7th level is a cruciform chapel the size of a basketball court — all the stone hand cut and carried to the surface by the faithful...

In fact, we're only just scratching the surface of how far this all goes.

Derinkuyu stretches on for miles below ground, and there are maybe 200 other cities connected deep beneath the Anatolian Plains.

And Derinkuyu itself is connected to another city, Kaymakli, via a 5-mile tunnel. It might also be bigger than Derinkuyu.

This might all seem hard to believe, but there are others. The city of Matiate, being excavated right now, may have safeguarded 70,000 Christians.

So far, they've dug down 330 feet, but it might go further...

An entire population could simply disappear, taking livestock and grain to sustain them as long as necessary.

But they'd have to descend one at a time down its narrow walkways — designed to prevent invaders storming in en masse.

How did people breathe?

Via a system of some 15,000 air ducts. Lower down, these double as water wells fed by underground rivers. Water is controlled at the lowest levels, so supply can't be cut off by invaders at the surface.

It's all planned masterfully for defense. At the surface, entrances are blocked by massive, circular stones rolled into place from the inside.

Then, each level is kept secure by similar doorways.

...even a winery, into which grapes drop through holes in the ceiling from a vineyard at the surface.

Christians later extended it, planning a living space in which they could spend months on end during a crisis — upper levels for living, lower for storage.

There are grain storage rooms, stables, taverns, schools...

It may have started anywhere between 2000 BC and 100 AD, when early Christians might've first needed it.

Writings by Xenophon of Athens say people of Anatolia were living below ground in the 4th century BC.

The underground city is thought to have been dug mostly in the 8th century, and used by Christians and Jews up until the 12th century in the Arab–Byzantine wars.

But it may be far older than that...

Close by, the astonishing discovery at Derinkuyu was made.

But unlike the caves, this is 18 stories and 280 feet deep...

But persecuted by Romans, then Persians and invading Muslim forces, Christians convened in secret for centuries — taking to the remote landscape.

That's why you find cave churches there lavished with icons...