A Great Library of the Past and Present

There are good libraries. There are great libraries (we like to think that Seattle Public Library is a great library, thanks to the citizens of Seattle). There are also legendary libraries.  Perhaps the most seductive of those legendary libraries is the Great or Royal Library of Alexandria. The tragic destruction of the Museion of Alexandria, popularly called the Great Library, is one of the background stories of western civilization. Scholars and teachers mourn it’s lost treasures of Greek and Roman literature. Although I’m a librarian, the lost Library is not something I think of often. So imagine my surprise when not one but two of my reading choices over the last week featured the Royal Library in its prime!

The week started with Lindsey Davis’ newest Marcus Didius Falco novel, Alexandria. The 19th novel in this endlessly fascinating series takes Falco, his beloved Helena, their children and assorted extras to Alexandria on vacation. Of course, the vacation has hardly begun when a body turns up.  The body of the Head Librarian no less.  By the time Falco has solved this locked room mystery, Davis has taken us on a thrill packed tour of a decadent city and its star attractions, not one but two libraries. Davis always packs her tales with historical tidbits and I finished the book wondering why I’d never heard of the Serapeum Library. Also called the daughter library, the Serapeum temple complex and library had a key role in Davis’ book.

The day after I finished Alexandria, I started reading a wonderful book that is part biography part scientific history, Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe by Nicholas Nicastro. My jaw dropped when I realized that Eratsothenes, in addition, to being an amazing mathematician, an astronomer, a geographer and philosopher was also the third librarian of the Great Library, appointed in 236 B.C. Circumference is not only the story of Eratosthenes amazing feats of mathematical precision but a history of Alexandria and its library.  Nicastro also mentions the Serapeum Library in his discussion of the various myths surrounding the destruction of the Museion, the Royal Library and other portions of the ancient complex. I felt like I’d stumbled upon the source material for Davis’ novel.

The Great Library was destroyed, depending on who you believe, sometime between 48 B.C. and 642 A.D.  Both Nicastro and Davis tend toward a later date for the final destruction and there are indications that the perhaps the two libraries, Royal and Serapeum, were destroyed at different dates.  We don’t have an eyewitness account.  But we have a firm date for the reborn Bibliotheca Alexandrina, October 16, 2002.  This amazing modern Great library is both a deliberate memorial to the ancient library and a ambitious attempt to rekindle the spirit and scholarship of the original. With space for 8 million books, three subsidiary special libraries, a conference center, three museums, four art galleries, a planetarium and a manuscript restoration laboratory, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is great in nearly every sense of the word. I hope that a thousand years from now my descendants are visiting a thriving cultural treasure rather than reading about a lost monument of scholarship.