Given that the Library of Alexandria was the largest of the ancient world, what changes would occur if it had not been burnt down? Surely the great loss of knowledge must have impacted society.
Was a lot of knowledge lost? Or was it that some-place where it was collected and could be studied.Given that the Library of Alexandria was the largest of the ancient world, what changes would occur if it had not been burnt down? Surely the great loss of knowledge must have impacted society.
Was a lot of knowledge lost? Or was it that some-place where it was collected and could be studied.
Both. The fire was just one event in the neglect and destruction/dispersal of a very large document collection. Kings gave them away as gifts, scholars borrowed them and lost or failed to return them, vermin ate many.
The 'library' was the center piece of what we might call a research university these days, or a group of research/education institutions. Some historians connect its decline to a stagnation of the government & economy of the era.
A alternate WI might be the invention of printing there when the Alexandrian Library was growing. The huge expense of copying documents by hand limited acess and dissemination. Printing, even Block style as the Chinese used would have helped preserve the knowledge through cheaper reproduction, and made it acessable to a larger number of scholars.
Were the Chinese already printing at that time?
Also, didn't the Library have the "secret" of how to make that firewater thing used in Antiquity?
Not sure about the Chinese. Ur thinking of Greek fire and I think the knowledge had been lost before the library was destroyed. Then again the library was destoryed/damaged several times so I'm not sure.
A question that ought to be asked right about now is how much of that collection was unique. To put it another way, how many documents/copies survived elsewhere?
The Library did flourish for two or three centuries, but I don't know of any innovations or enlightenment that traces its origins back to it.
So which was the worst book-burning ever carried out in history? I can think of several very bad ones, including:
1) The burnings associated with the Library of Alexandria and its annexes.
2) The burnings of almost all Mayan writings by the Spanish. Out of many thousands of codices, only three (and one of disputed authenticity) are thought to have survived.
3) The burnings of most Chinese writings by the first Qin emperor.
4) The burnings of the libraries of Baghdad by the Mongols, including the House of Wisdom, which by its description on Wikipedia sounds like another Library of Alexandria in size and importance.
Out of these, the most devastating in my opinion must be the near-total destruction of the Mayan written heritage, since almost all of the lost knowledge was never recovered and is lost forever. The other burnings, while terrible, at least left enough behind that the associated civilization could reconstruct much of what was lost.
Its certainly exaggerated hugely, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people educated by Hollywood thinking goes Burning Library of Alexandria = Fall into the Dark Ages.I don't know enough about #3 to comapre it, but I'd say #2 and #4 are overwhelmingly the most devastating, and #1 exaggerated.
Its certainly exaggerated hugely, I'm pretty sure that a lot of people educated by Hollywood thinking goes Burning Library of Alexandria = Fall into the Dark Ages.
But OTOH disregarding the hype the Library was a hell of a thing and was as far as I can find out the most aggressive out of all those listed in collecting works from across the known world instead of just focusing down to the more local selection.