For those who didn’t scurry over to Fathom, during our most recent Dark Time:
Of course, it’s not an exact replica and it doesn’t contain the works destroyed in the original, but they’re doing their best to collect copies of all works currently in existence! Here’s the UN site on it! NPR did a piece on it the other morning as well.
Thats fantastic! The destruction of the LOA ranks right at the top of senseless acts in the last 2000 years, another great triumph for militant Christianity.
Or, according to other accounts, militant Islam.
However, according to this site the books may have been burned by Julius Caesar before Christ was born and long before Mohammed.
AFAIK, the Library was accidently burned by Julius Caesar after he had ordered some other things (forgot what) to be burned and the fire spread too quickly.
I’m glad they rebuilt it. All the more reason for me to go to Egypt someday.
If I don’t get back to Egypt soon I may just spontanously combust!
First the find Cleopatra’s Palace and no this!
frets impatiently
Any idea what the requirements are to get a library card? How stringent are they about their book return policy? I wouldn’t want to get any nastygrams from irate Caesars ordering me in to gladatorial combat.
The library was accidentaly burned by Julius Caesar, at that time he was fighting a battle against Cleopatra’s sister (and brother) it wasn’t his fault, it was just one of thos things that usually happen in a war. Or as Rumsfeld says “collateral damage” 
I think they should built a “virtual” library just like project guttemberg (but better). That’s my opinion
When you consider that the University of California libraries have > 30 million books, the 370,000 collected at Alexandria over many years of acquisition, may not have the world flocking to their door. Although the architecture and location make great PR for Alexandria, which is highly motivated by attracting a larger share of tourists, I was none-too-thrilled to hear they’ve built the thing so close to sea level, some of the floors (as I recall) are actually beneath the water table. Just the place to put humanity’s treasures while the sea level rises.
As Colibri’s cite (among others) points out, quite a few disasters happened to the original library. Considering that there weren’t all that many Christians in 44 A.D. – and they weren’t militant – it would seem surprising that a horde of them managed to overpower the authorities in one of the largest cities on earth. Or perhaps, Weirddave, you imagined Julius Caesar was a Christian?
I’ll go with Estilicon, that the future lies in virtual libraries, using hardcopy books as backup.
Project Gutenberg has over 3,500 free texts (watch out Library of Alexandria!) and climbing. They’re all free. Also, you can contribute typing and editing skills (or money) to get your own favorite authors online.
Actually, while the original library was most likely burned by Caesar accidentially, I was refering to the deliberate destruction of what had been rebuilt as well as the acompanying temples and museums. One must remember that the LOA was not just a library as we think of it today, but was also composed of temples and museums, all of which were destroyed on the order of Emperor Theodosius in the name of Christianity. He also cancelled the Olympics as a pagan rite, and closed the temple that housed the Statue of Zeus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Ai! All I knew about the Library of Alexandria was from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and if I knew all of the names of Emperor’s and Mathemeticians and their deeds and histories - I’ve forgotten them.
It’s scary/amazing that you folks know this stuff without Googol.
fades
I can still point out constellations and their mythology - even the arabic names of stars
So what’s up with the militant Islam thing? My mother keeps mentioning this, and I only run across references to Julius Caesar and Theodosius. How many times did these buildings get burnt down?
This site mentions the (non)role of Islam in buring the library:
http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm
Although there’s good guess work on this site, it seems to be looking for a single religiously-motivated event while many other sites are convinced the library was damaged repeatedly.
What seems so tantalizing about the Library(s) at Alexandria is the hope that some part survived the burning. After all, burnt documents have survived in other places, and they’re learning more all the time about how to recover them. Unfortunately Alexandria is built near the sea, near sea level, and doesn’t enjoy the arid conditions underground which have preserved other ancient artifacts in Egypt, and say, Israel. Enormous areas of Alexandria have yet to be examined by archeologists, but apparently the chances of finding scolls in any condition is very small.
Project Gutenburg is good for now, partly_warmer, but what happens when we run out of public domain works? Where are to going to store all our copyrighted works? The Library of Congress right now, I guess, but this Alexandria library may be good for something.
Yeah, mobo85, Project Gutenburg will hit a wall sooner or later, especially if the U.S. keeps dreaming up ways that copyrights can be extended and renewed. This gets my goat, a bit. I find myself (very) slightly agreeing with the pro-Napster folks. There are a couple great references called “The Encyclopedia of Fantasy” and “The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction”. Open at random, and find 3 novels on a page you’d like to read. Now, try to find them. amazon.com for only $40, used? Out-of-print for 60 years? The original author and publisher aren’t making any money out of them, and have little expectation of ever doing so, so why withhold a work of art from the world? Grumble, grumble.
I got really chuffed about the Library at Alexandria, until I started wondering, uh, where are all these rare and important scholarly works supposed to come from? Most of them are in somebody else’s library. Nearly all the unique ones, one supposes. Part of their objective is to assemble a collection about Alexandria and Egypt. That seems reasonable and appropriate. But it’s hard to imagine it will be one of the world’s top, say 30, libraries in our lifetime.