02-04-2008, 08:54 PM
Quote:As you say, Carlton, many thousands of scrolls and codices were lost. The Library at Alexandria had basically the complete history of Egypt, if we can believe Herodotus, which was accidentally burned in Mark Antony's day.
There are many stories about what happened to the Library of Alexandria. Some blame Caesar, some blame the Catholic Bishop, some finally blame the Arabs when they captured the city.
In my opinion I chose to think the church is the most likely one.
1. Caesar was fighting a war and while he may have burned the Egyptian fleet and some warehouses the odds of this destroying the library is low since we have reports of people using the library afterward.
3. The arabs of this time period were actually very accepting of knowledge and science. It would be out of character for them to mindlessly destroy all the knowledge within the library.
2. The church though had a very dim and rather destructive view of anything pagan. We already know the church closed down the libraries of Rome once they took over the city and destroyed the manuscripts they contained. Is it really that much of a leap to accept that Theophilus the Patriarch of Alexandria ordered and then oversaw its destruction?
Timothy Hanna
