Alexandria Library Does Not Burn

Just like the title says. I know this is kind of a shot in the dark, mainly because I don't know much about the fire myself, but where do you think the world would be right now if the library never burned?
 

mowque

Banned
1. The Burning was not one single event that can be POD'ed (is that the phrase?)

2. It would mostly have been lost anyway due to the long time spans, unstable polities and fragile nature of the storage.

3. The Greeks didn't know much about science that we don't know (we guess anyway, would be neat to be wrong). Mostly, we miss the fictional works and plays. :(
 
I understand that the library sustained multiple fires, I guess I'm trying to figure out a way in which NO fires ever occur, and the record keeping system (employing skilled copyists and the like) is meticulous enough to preserve SOMETHING for posterity.
 
It was burned at least in four occasions.

Another equally important library and its main rival was the one of Pergamum. It had its colections written on parchment, not papyrus as in Alexandria.

More interesting would be if the Musaeum, a sort of research institute, survived or was reconstructed by other societies. Or perhaps was organized in an early research and collaboration network with similar centers.

for example the Arabic Houses of Wisdom in Baghdad and Cairo can be taken as offshoots of the Musaeum and Library
 
I understand that the library sustained multiple fires, I guess I'm trying to figure out a way in which NO fires ever occur, and the record keeping system (employing skilled copyists and the like) is meticulous enough to preserve SOMETHING for posterity.

A lot of the stuff was preserved for posterity. Unless you subscribe to a fashionable overestimate of Hellenistic science (which is simply not borne out by the facts), a lot of the revelant scientific knowledge has come to us precisely because it was copied and recopied. in the process, it often got shortened or garbled, but I doubt the Museion surviving would have changed that. The libraries at Contantinople did survive, and they were big on producing epitomes and florilegia. It was a fashion in Late Antiquity.
 
i think that the greatest changes will be in philosophy and arts. the former will can have a great effect in the shaping of the catholic church doctrine and the council of nicea. which can lead to all kinds of butterflies, including schisms, heresies (what is considered heretical) and the following inquisitions. from there you can have possible scientists and generals who would otherwise be burned at stake for being lollards etc.
 
It was burned at least in four occasions.

Another equally important library and its main rival was the one of Pergamum. It had its colections written on parchment, not papyrus as in Alexandria.

More interesting would be if the Musaeum, a sort of research institute, survived or was reconstructed by other societies. Or perhaps was organized in an early research and collaboration network with similar centers.

for example the Arabic Houses of Wisdom in Baghdad and Cairo can be taken as offshoots of the Musaeum and Library

Four times???

How did it manage to catch fire four times???
 
Four times???

How did it manage to catch fire four times???

Given enough time and enough incentive for people to set it alight, easy. It's not unusual for buildings of historical significance to go through several fires, especially if the city has as intreresting a history as Alexandria.

Four is a guesstimate, though.
 

Orry

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Monthly Donor
Four times???

How did it manage to catch fire four times???

Not everybody agrees but over the years it has been blamed on

1. Caesar's conquest in 48 BC

The ancient accounts by Plutarch, Aulus Gellius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Orosius agree that Caesar accidentally burned the library down during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC.

Plutarch's Parallel Lives, written at the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd century AD, describes the Siege of Alexandria in which Caesar was forced to burn his own ships:

when the enemy endeavored to cut off his communication by sea, he was forced to divert that danger by setting fire to his own ships, which, after burning the docks, thence spread on and destroyed the great library.
—Plutarch, Life of Caesar


2. 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), who was suppressing a revolt by Queen Zenobia of Palmyra (ruled Egypt AD 269–274).[26] During the course of the fighting, the areas of the city in which the main library was located were damaged.[2] The smaller library located at the Serapeum survived, but part of its contents may have been taken to Constantinople to adorn the new capital in the course of the 4th century. However, Ammianus Marcellinus, writing around AD 378 seems to speak of the library in the Serapeum temple as a thing of the past, and he states that many of the Serapeum library's volumes were burnt when Caesar sacked Alexandria. As he says in Book 22.16.12–13:

Besides this there are many lofty temples, and especially one to Serapis, which, although no words can adequately describe it, we may yet say, from its splendid halls supported by pillars, and its beautiful statues and other embellishments, is so superbly decorated, that next to the Capitol, of which the ever-venerable Rome boasts, the whole world has nothing worthier of admiration. In it were libraries of inestimable value; and the concurrent testimony of ancient records affirm that 70,000 volumes, which had been collected by the anxious care of the Ptolemies, were burnt in the Alexandrian war when the city was sacked in the time of Caesar the Dictator.
—Marcellinus, Ammianus (1862), "Roman History: book 22.16.12–13", in Yonge, C.D., Roman History, London: H.G. Bohn


Decree of Theodosius, destruction of the Serapeum in 391
Paganism was made illegal by an edict of the Emperor Theodosius I in 391. The holdings of the Great Library (both at the Mouseion and at the Serapeum) were on the precincts of pagan temples. While this had previously lent them a measure of protection, in the days of the Christian Roman Empire, whatever protection this had previously afforded them had ceased.[2] The temples of Alexandria were closed by Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria in AD 391.[27]

Socrates of Constantinople provides the following account of the destruction of the temples in Alexandria, in the fifth book of his Historia Ecclesiastica, written around 440:

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.
—Socrates; Roberts, Alexander; Donaldson, James (1885), "Socrates: Book V: Chapter 16", in Philip Schaff et al., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, II, II



Arabic sources
In 642, Alexandria was captured by the Muslim army of Amr ibn al `Aas. There are five Arabic sources, all at least 500 years after the supposed events, which mention the fate of the library.

Abd'l Latif of Baghdad (1162–1231) states that the library of Alexandria was destroyed by Amr, by the order of the Caliph Omar.
The story is also found in Al-Qifti (1172–1248), History of Learned Men, from whom Bar Hebraeus copied the story.
The longest version of the story is in the Syriac Christian author Bar-Hebraeus (1226–1286), also known as Abu'l Faraj. He translated extracts from his history, the Chronicum Syriacum into Arabic, and added extra material from Arab sources. In this Historia Compendiosa Dynastiarum he describes a certain "John Grammaticus" (490–570) asking Amr for the "books in the royal library." Amr writes to Omar for instructions, and Omar replies: "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them."
Al-Maqrizi (1364–1442) also mentions the story briefly, while speaking of the Serapeum.
There is also a story in Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) which tells that Omar made a similar order about Persian books.
 
The gains to science may be small but everywhere else it would be a literal gold mine - the complete works of Homer and countless other storytellers, musings by all the great philosphers lost to the ages, data on nations and peoples we are just now discovering today! Not to mention to sarcoghagus of Alexander the Great! Quite literally, it's continued existence would change the world, at least in the scope of collected knowledge.
 
Four times???

How did it manage to catch fire four times???

Realistically there were probably more fires there. As Mowque mentions its a building full of papyrus and no real system of fire suppressant. There were likely more fires, tho none that rendered any major damage, given the fact of the climate and what sort of climate and, especially, what sort of light and heating sources they had.

Also one would also have to consider, from a librarianship POV, that a portion of the collection would have been lost to any water leaks and to vermin. The same things that plague modern library collections are there, mold being a major problem.
 
In fact, I think a better PoD would be that sometime before Ceasar it becomes fashionable in Greece and Anatolia for a wealthy patron, instead of having a 'pet philosopher', to have a 'pet librarian' trained in Alexandria and a selection of works from the library in copy. Large parts of the Library thus being continually copied so that rich blokes can claim to own 'a portion of the Great Library' and the Romans pick this up from the Greeks (as they did OTL with the Philosophers) so that we have more copying of bits from the library going on through the Empire.

With so much more copying going on, odds on are good that there will be at least some more works survivng, and very famous stuff like the rest of Homer could be near certainties.
 
The gains to science may be small but everywhere else it would be a literal gold mine - the complete works of Homer and countless other storytellers, musings by all the great philosphers lost to the ages, data on nations and peoples we are just now discovering today! Not to mention to sarcoghagus of Alexander the Great! Quite literally, it's continued existence would change the world, at least in the scope of collected knowledge.
Didn't two emperors break into that tomb to get his armor? I doubt he would have lasted. Heck, his body would have disintegrated centuries ago. The rest of the stuff would be riddled with lies and falsehoods that some would take for the gospel truth just because it was old and there were no copies of the arguments that rebuked the ideas do to favouritism.
 
Didn't two emperors break into that tomb to get his armor? I doubt he would have lasted. Heck, his body would have disintegrated centuries ago. The rest of the stuff would be riddled with lies and falsehoods that some would take for the gospel truth just because it was old and there were no copies of the arguments that rebuked the ideas do to favouritism.

Supposedly, Alexander's sarcophagus was burned down with the remainder of the library when it was sacked by the Muslims.

As for the rest of the stuff, there would still be things that would be explosive if known - for example, the location of Sheba, and other lost cities and civilizations would no doubt be in thier archives. Archeologists could then gleam the truth from an on site dig.

I for one, would kill to read Homer's complete works.
 
What I feel was a particular loss were all the histories that we only have a few quotations from, or even just their titles. There were an immense number of them that are now lost, including the emperor Claudius's history of the Etruscans, an account of Hannibal's war with Rome written by a Greek member of his own staff, and a detailed account of the early German wars up to the mid-second century AD (? not sure about date, might be earlier or later). Then there is Manetho's history of Egypt, of which we only have fragments but which appears to have been quite comprehensive and fairly accurate (being based upon the Egyptians' own temple chronicles, now lost as well). Not to mention those works of which we no longer have even the title.

As far as scientific value, those lost records included astronomical observations such as eclipses and great comets. The eclipses would have been of great value in nailing down tiny changes in the Earth's rate of rotation, which are still not known to any degree of accuracy even today, and the comet observations would have been of considerable help in understanding the history of today's periodic comets as well. We know that many recent sun-grazing comets originated in one or more previous comets which broke apart in a previous apparition several thousand years ago, the record of their appearance at that time would likely have been in now-destroyed manuscripts.
 
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