History buffs unite... The library at Alexandria was the most famous of antiquity. Who destroyed it?

Question

Christians? Greeks? Romans? Egyptians? Muslims?

Answer 1

there could not be just one reason for distruction of such a huge library. muslim invadors were main reason as they took over eygpt they distroyed all works that were considered anity-islam and those which were in favour of islam were distroyed as they claimed that HOLY QURAN has them already. evidence prooving that fire may also have contributed to its distruction has been found

Answer 2

I just went back and re-read Samantha's answer, so please disregard any criticism I have of her below.

Samantha and MacArthur have the accepted answer, but it is not the correct answer. There was a great deal of damage done to the Library at Alexandria by Julius Caesar's occupation force, but in the few centuries after that much of what was lost was replaced from other libraries around the Roman world (Alexandria was just the largest and most complete library in the ancient world, not the only one). In the late 300's, early Christians completely destroyed the library which was under the leadership of a woman named Hiapatia. This time, the library would never rise again.

Still, much of what had been stored at Alexandria at this time probably had copies at the massive library in Baghdad. This library was subsequently destroyed by the army of Tamerlane, a distant nephew of Ghengis Khan, in the 1400's.

After that, there were no other copies of much of this material. The manuscripts that were saved and copied by Monks were of course only religious texts, while much of the Arab world was ravaged by both the Mongols and the Crusaders.

Answer 3

Julius Caesar (well, Roman troops) accidentally set fire to it during battle although historians are unsure whether this distroyed it completely.

Have a look at the following from Wikipeadia and you can judge the possibilites.

Ancient and modern sources name four possible occasions for the destruction of the Library: Caesar's campaign in 48 BC, the attack of Aurelian in the 3rd century AD, the decree of Theophilius in 391 AD, and the Muslim conquest in 642 AD or thereafter. Each of these has been viewed with suspicion by other scholars as an effort to place the blame on particular actors. Moreover, each of these events is historically problematic. In the first and second case, there is clear evidence that the library was not, in fact, destroyed. The third episode is often regarded as a myth, and the fourth episode is simply not documented.

Plutarch's Lives describes a battle in which Caeser was forced to burn his own ships, which in turn set fire to the docks and then the Library, destroying it[7]. This would have occurred in 48 BC, during the fighting between Caesar and Ptolemy XII. However, there is no corroborating evidence that the library was in fact destroyed at this time. Only 25 years later Strabo saw the library and worked in it. Thus, any damage sustained by this battle was probably slight.

The library seems to have been maintained and continued in existence until its contents were largely lost during the taking of the city by the Emperor Aurelian (270-275 AD), who was suppressing a revolt[citation needed]. The smaller library located at the Serapeum survived, but part of its contents may been taken off to Constantinople to adorn the new capital in the course of the 4th century.

In 391, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all pagan temples, and Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria complied with this request]].[8]. Socrates Scholasticus provides the following account of the destruction of the temples in Alexandria in the fifth book of his Historia Ecclesiastica:


5th century scroll which illustrates the destruction of the Serapeum by Theophilus (source: Christopher Haas: Alexandria in late antiquity, Baltimore 1997)"At the solicitation of Theophilus bishop of Alexandria the emperor issued an order at this time for the demolition of the heathen temples in that city; commanding also that it should be put in execution under the direction of Theophilus. Seizing this opportunity, Theophilus exerted himself to the utmost to expose the pagan mysteries to contempt. And to begin with, he caused the Mithreum to be cleaned out, and exhibited to public view the tokens of its bloody mysteries. Then he destroyed the Serapeum, and the bloody rites of the Mithreum he publicly caricatured; the Serapeum also he showed full of extravagant superstitions, and he had the phalli of Priapus carried through the midst of the forum. Thus this disturbance having been terminated, the governor of Alexandria, and the commander-in-chief of the troops in Egypt, assisted Theophilus in demolishing the heathen temples."
The Serapeum housed part of the Library, but it is not known how many books were contained in it at the time of destruction. Notably, Paulus Orosius admitted in the sixth book of his History against the pagans: "[T]oday there exist in temples book chests which we ourselves have seen, and, when these temples were plundered, these, we are told, were emptied by our own men in our time, which, indeed, is a true statement." Some or all of the books may have been taken, but any books left in the Serapeum at the time would have been destroyed when it was razed to the ground.

As for the Museum, Mostafa El-Abbadi writes in Life and Fate of the ancient Library of Alexandria (Paris 1992):

"The Mouseion, being at the same time a 'shrine of the Muses', enjoyed a degree of sanctity as long as other pagan temples remained unmolested. Synesius of Cyrene, who studied under Hypatia at the end of the fourth century, saw the Mouseion and described the images of the philosophers in it. We have no later reference to its existence in the fifth century. As Theon, the distinguished mathematician and father of Hypatia, herself a renowned scholar, was the last recorded scholar-member (c. 380), it is likely that the Mouseion did not long survive the promulgation of Theodosius' decree in 391 to destroy all pagan temples in the City."
It is alleged by some sources that a final destruction of the Library took place in 642 AD, at the time of the Arab conquest. [9]

It is clear, however, that the library had ceased to function in any important capacity by the 8th century AD. Alexandria was not a major research center for the Islamic world. Moreover, if the collection had survived to the early 700s, it would very likely have been incorporated into the library of the Al-Azhar mosque (and later university) in Cairo. This collection has come down to the present intact, but does not include Alexandrine texts[10].

Answer 4

Fire. The library in Egypt was built in the 300 B.C. So that leaves out a few of the suspects.

Answer 5

I think it was just a fire... if not than the Muslims (lead by none other than Star Jones with a match book.)

Answer 6

Star Jones. She ruins everything.

Answer 7

the romans lead by ceaser I beleave

Answer 8

christians

Answer 9

mother nature

(earthquake)