What types of history and/or books were burned in the ancient library of Alexandria?

Question

I would like to know ESPECIALLY on the subjects in books regarding astrology, maybe paganism, anything mystical (tarot perhaps) that they may believe were destroyed in these (this fire) in Rome? Was the Alexandria library in Rome?

OKay it was in Alexandria but what types of books involving mysticism were destroyed, do they believe?

Answer 1

The Library of Alexandria was in ALEXANDRIA.

Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great (hence the name) around 330 B.C. (more or less). It grew to be the most intelectually active city in the world, and one of the wealthiest and largest. It also has a reputation for "free thinking" and tollerance, it had a large Jewish quarter, and Hypatia (perhaps the most educated woman of the ancient world) lived there, as did Heron, the great inventor, and Ptolemy the great mathematician and astronomer/ astrologer.

Ptolemy's treatise on astrology, the Tetrabiblos, was the most popular astrological work of antiquity and also enjoyed great influence in the Islamic world and the medieval Latin West. The Tetrabiblos is an extensive and continually reprinted treatise on the ancient principles of Horoscopic astrology in four books (Greek tetra means "four", biblos is "book"). That it did not quite attain the unrivalled status of the Syntaxis was perhaps because it did not cover some popular areas of the subject, particularly electional astrology (interpreting astrological charts for a particular moment to determine the outcome of a course of action to be initiated at that time), and medical astrology.

Alexandria was in Egypt, near the mouth of the Nile river. Alexander built it as a seaport. Since Egypt is built along the Nile, and Alexandria was near the mouth of the Nile, Alexandria was pretty much THE seaport for Egypt, at least on the Medeterreanian side. Egypt grew much of the grain that fed Rome, and there was a lot of traffic between Rome, Greece and Egypt at the time, and almost all of it would have gone through Alexandria. Since Egypt also had contact with India it was the transshipment point for good from India (and China) that were going to Greece and Rome, and vica versa. It had the Lighthouse of Alexandria to guide ships to the Harbor, one of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World.

No index of the library survives, and it is not possible to know with certainty how large and how diverse the collection was. It is likely, for example, that even if the library had hundreds of thousands of scrolls (and thus, perhaps, tens of thousands of individual works), that many of these were duplicate copies or alternate versions of the same texts.

A story concerns how its collection grew so large: by decree of Ptolemy III of Egypt, all visitors to the city were required to surrender all books and scrolls in their possession; these writings were then swiftly copied by official scribes. Sometimes the copies were so precise that the originals were put into the Library, and the copies were delivered to the unsuspecting previous owners.This process also helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city, which made Alexandria THE place to be on the planet if you wanted to learn and read.

The library's collection was already famous in the ancient world, and became even more storied in later years. It is impossible, however, to determine how large the collection was in any era. The collection was made of papyrus scrolls. Later, parchment codices (predominant as a writing material after 300) may have been substituted for papyrus. A single piece of writing might occupy several scrolls, and this division into self-contained "books" was a major aspect of editorial work. King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) is said to have set 500,000 scrolls as an objective. Mark Antony was supposed to have given Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls for the Library.

The collection covered EVERTHING. Many lost works of the great Greeks were in there, books we know about today only because another book mentioned it in passing.

There were a couple of fires during Caesar's conquest 48 BC. How hard the Christians may have been on the Library is in dispute, when Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all pagan temples, this may have included the Library. This is most likely the time when the tomb of Alexander the Great was lost, as he was worshiped as a God at the time.

It is said the Library's final destruction came after the Muslim conquest in 642 or thereafter. Apparently the Moslem commander was asked to spare the Library. He thought about it and said. "Either the books in the Library disagree with the Holy Koran, in which case they are evil and should be burned, or they agree with the Holy Koran, in which case they are redundant and a waste and should be burned". So the books were burned and the tale goes on to say that the books fueled the city's bath-houses for the next six months.

Answer 2

The Alexandria library was in Alexandria.