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The
Library of the Museion in Alexandria Here is my favorite paper from the last quarter of 2004 at Kepler College. One of my classmates commented on how appropriate it was for a Scorpio with a Gemini Ascendant to choose the Library of Alexandria as a topic. I hope you enjoy it! -- Inga Duncan Thornell >^..^< Alexandria was the most populous city of the time and the one most representative of the Hellenistic Age. Comprising the period between the 4th and the 1st century BCE, between the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great and the establishment of Roman law in the territory, the Hellenistic age is characterized by syncretism and universality, a blending of Eastern and Western traditions. Perry says, �The city was an unrivaled commercial center; goods from the Mediterranean world, East Africa, Arabia, and India circulated in its marketplaces, this cosmopolitan center also attracted poets, philosophers� physicians, astronomers, and mathematicians� (1). He does not specify astrologers in his list but the terms: astronomer, physician, and mathematician are often synonymous with astrologer in this era. MacLeod expands on the religious implications of syncretism, �Alexandria the city was a place at the centre of trade in goods and peoples, as well as ideas. It was a religious site, and a site of religions, a place where all the gods were worshipped, where Jews, pagans and Christians debated theologies influenced by the Zoroastrianism of Persia, and the Buddhism and Hinduism of India. Neo-Platonism, some say, was actually invented in Alexandria� (2) Like Rome, there are legends associated with its establishment. In one story, Homer appears to Alexander in a dream, and tells him to build a great city and name it after himself. Alexander conquered Egypt in 331 BCE, and transformed a settlement of fishermen and pirates at the mouth of the Nile into his Alexandria. The story loses some of its cachet when the map shows that Alexander created thirty-one other �Alexandrias� throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. Alexander died before seeing his plans fulfilled but his friend and General, Ptolemy, gained control of Egypt from his rivals and made the city the capital of his dynasty. The concept of a library was not new. Both Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243- 1207 BCE) and Tiglath-Pileser I (1792 � 1750 BCE) created libraries in Assyria. Their successor, King Ashurbanipal, expanded the library at Nineveh into a collection of writings for readers rather than a collection of reference materials for the professional class of scribes. Ashurbanipal boasts that he is the first among the kings to achieve literacy, so historians assume that Nineveh was really his own private library (3). For Ptolemy I, the Museion and library were his way of both creating an impressive cultural monument and giving �his heirs dominion over the learning of the Hellenic world� (4). �Inspired by Aristotle�s Lyceum and Plato�s Academy, it was a place where pursuits favored by the Muses � literature philosophy, science � might be pursued in tranquility� (5). �As a shrine dedicated to the Muses, the Museum had the same legal form as Plato�s school in Athens, where a school required religious status to gain the protection of Athenian law. It was presided over by a priest of the Muses, called an epistates, or director, appointed by analogy with the priests who managed the temples of Egypt� (6). �If the principal shrine of Apollo was Delphi, and that of Zeus, Olympus, then surely the shrine of the Muses would be Alexandria� (7). The Library of the Museion has achieved mythic status in history. MacLeod says, �Much of the Library�s universal appeal resides in the reverence scholars have for independent scholarship and fundamental research� (8). Described by modern scholars as a Proto-University, Think Tank, and Research Institute, �The Library was destined to be a far more ambitious undertaking than a mere repository of scrolls. It was the first to underwrite a programme of cultural Imperialism, to become a �centre of calculation�, in Bruno Latour�s phrase. For similar reasons, royal libraries were later established in all the Hellenistic centres � for prestige, for cultural intelligence, and for the practical purposes of administration and rule. [�] Finally, unlike its rivals, the new Library was to be universal. It would aim for complete coverage of everything ever written� (9). Following the death of Ptolemy Soter, his son and successor Ptolemy Philadelphus carried the project to its completion. The Library of the Museion attracted intellectuals to the city, with Erasistratos, Callimachus, Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes, Eratosthanes, Apollonius of Perga, Aristarchus, Archimedes, Euclid, and Strato all spending time in Alexandria. Julius Caesar was said to have created the Julian calendar with advice from the library�s scholars. Both the physicians Herophilus and Hippocrates were associated with Alexandria as well as with Kos. Herophilus was a pioneer in the study of anatomy who trained at the medical center on Kos, possibly with Hippocrates before moving to Alexandria (10). This evidence of linkage to Kos is firm evidence of the presence of astrology in Alexandria at that time. Claudius Ptolemy also lived in Alexandria for many years and �wrote widely and on a number of subjects: astrology, of course, but astronomy, history, geometry, music, and geography as well� (11). In fact, his Almagest, was based on astronomical observations that were made from the region of Alexandria (12). Hellenistic syncretism is evident in the symbolism and art in recent archeological finds. �The monuments of Pharaonic provenance which have been found to date were transported to Alexandria from distant, more ancient sites, such as Heliopolis, near what is now Cairo. Yet some idea of an Alexandrian architectural style resides in the architectural remnants of the Ptolemaic age� (13). Jean-Yves Empereur recalls his own impressions on first scuba diving at this site: �At first glance, the chaos was incomprehensible. There were elements of Pharaonic history and others which had been part of Greek monuments.� And the Egyptologist Jean-Pierre Coteggiani suggests, further, that the findings of Empereur�s team mean that: �architects of the Hellenistic era already had a taste for Egyptian marvels. We can suppose that they made two sorts of re-use of them. A re-use of monuments as decorative elements: obelisks, sphinxes, statues, etc.; a re-use of materials, such as blocks of granite from Aswan. It appears that Pharaonic monuments existed in Alexandria, and this we never imagined� (14). Among the amalgams we may consider is an Alexandrian column capitol found beneath the sea at the Pharos site, one which modifies the ionic precedent of the Greeks to incorporate the papyrus which was the symbol of Lower Egypt (15). There is archeological and literary evidence of schools and of people reading scrolls from 500 BCE. Papyrus scrolls were to become available from booksellers as early as the 5th century BCE (16). This allowed people to begin their own collections, the most notable of which was Aristotle�s personal library� (17). The earliest textual evidence of the library is the Letter of Aristeas [c180-145 BC] reputedly written by a Jewish scholar employed at the Library. The letter is the story of the Septuagint or translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek. The story of 70 Hebrew scholars working away in the library has been discredited but does provide evidence of Ptolemy�s patronage of the library (18). Archeological evidence for the library remains elusive but circumstantial evidence places it in the Brucheion, or royal quarter, central to the city and its port. �Encouraged by Ptolemy II [Philadelphus], as early as 283 there came together what Strabo later called a synod [community] of perhaps 80-90 learned men [there were no women], salaried members of a �civil list� for their services as tutors, granted exemption from taxes, and given free board and lodging in an area of the palace� (19). �Ptolemy Philadelphus, it is said, was interested in zoology; and so the Museum may have contained a garden, a zoo, and an observatory. From the time of Ptolemy V [205-180 BC], its scholars organized games, festivals and literary competitions� (20). Eventually, many other smaller libraries sprang up throughout in the city� (21). The location of the primary branch library has recently been found. As El-Abbadi describes it, �As the collection grew, so at least one satellite � daughter [some say, branch] Library emerged, the Serapeion, housed in the temple of Serapis, house to a new Greco-Egyptian cult established by Ptolemy III in the southwest of the city, at some distance from the royal quarters. �Archaeologists have had the good fortune to find physical remains of the foundation of the great temple of Serapis. In 1943 and 1945, Alan Rowe, who was at that time acting Director of the Greco-Roman Museum, undertook some additional investigations on the site and was lucky enough to find, in the south-west and south-east corners of the building, some foundation tablets, now in the museum.� (22). The great library�s �architectural style is not known, but we have clues suggesting it was built upon the plan of a rameseseum � as such, a combination of palace, museum, and shrine� (23). The Library�s first curator and consultant to the King, was Demetrius Phalereus, an associate of Aristotle and a distinguished Athenian scholar. Demetrius is probably who Strabo is referring to when he says that Aristotle �taught the kings in Egypt how to arrange a library� (24). He �began its collections in the manner of Plato, with works of statecraft: on kingship and ruling � For the advancement of government and culture were the twin objectives of a wise ruler. It was an axiom of Alexander that in order to govern, conquerors must first know whom they govern. By extension, this required the collection and translation of local literatures into Greek. But the Ptolemies found it equally prestigious to collect and conserve the Hellenistic legacy itself� (25). Alexandria was the home of the papyrus industry, and as such was the center of the book trade throughout the Mediterranean almost from its founding to the third century A.D. In a competitive move to outshine rival libraries in Rhodes and Pergamum, Ptolemy banned the export of papyrus. �The move backfired, however, spurring the Pergamenes to invent parchment (charta pergamenum), which for its strength and reusability would prove to be the preferred writing medium in Europe for more than a thousand years� (26). Ptolemy III, himself eventually banned papyrus in favor of parchment. Casson notes, �Ptolemy sent out agents with well-filled purses and orders to buy whatever books they could, of every kind on every subject, and the older the copy the better. Older books were preferred on the grounds that, having undergone less recopying, they were that much less likely to have errors in the text� (27). Like Ashurbanipal before him, �Ptolemy had little regard for intellectual property or even for property rights per se. It is said that Ptolemy III wrote to all the world�s sovereigns, asking to borrow their books for copying. When Athens lent him texts of Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, he had them copied, but kept the originals, cheerfully forfeiting the fortune of fifteen talents he had deposited as bond. Recalling similar treatment accorded medical texts, Galen recounts that customs officials had orders to confiscate from passing ships all books they had, which were then copied� (28). �The originals were deposited in the library, and marked in the catalogue �From the ships� � thus the expression, �ship libraries� for the larger collection. If they were lucky, owners received copies, but one suspects many travelers sailed from Alexandria minus their first editions� (29). Since the policy of the Ptolemaic kings was to buy, borrow, or copy any and all books, the library ended up with many different copies of the same works. This enabled the scholars to synthesize definitive works from many different traditions. This was most evident in the works of Homer where the library came to own �multitudinous copies with multitudinous differences in the texts they presented� (30). Aristarchus of Samothrace compiled a definitive rendering of the Iliad and the Odyssey using a complex system of notations to describe suspected errors and interpolations. Another example of this synthetic ability is the world map of Eratosthenes. �The library�s holdings not only enabled him to digest the writings of his predecessors but supplied him with fresh information on areas they had scarcely known. For India, the limit of geographical knowledge to the east, he was able to consult the accounts left by members of Alexander�s expedition. For Africa�s east coast, another remote area, he was able to consult the reports of the teams the Ptolemies sent down as far as Somalia to hunt elephants for the army�s elephant corps� (31). The development of Hellenistic philosophy and astrology is directly related to this sharing of ideas prompted by greater access to writings �By the time of Callimachus, the Library possessed over 400,000 mixed scrolls with multiple works, plus another 90,000 single scrolls�(32). �The library�s collections may, for example, have included the Egyptian �sacred records�, from which Hecataeus of Abdera wrote the Aegyptiaca� (33). �Greek astronomers worked with data collected over the centuries by the Babylonians. The Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek for use by Greek-speaking Jews, and some Jewish thinkers, admiring Greek learning, expressed Jewish religious ideas in philosophical terms� (34). Barton says �It is impossible to be sure that the development of the system which was Hellenistic astrology did occur in Egypt on the basis of the evidence we have looked at. However, there is no doubt that Egypt was believed to be the home of astrology by the first century BCE, and that the primary geographical zone for astrologers was Alexandria and that astrologers made efforts to cultivate Hermetic style or to claim acquaintance with Hermetic texts� (35). The ultimate contribution to history made by the Library of Alexandria was to provide the melting pot for the blending of Eastern and Western ideas, thus fulfilling the goals of its founders. Citations:
My understanding was enriched by many sources, including: Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, U.S.A. Brazil, Wendy, Alexandria: Umbilicus of the Ancient World, In The Library of Alexandria, I.B. Tauris & Co, 2000 Canfora, Luciano, The Vanished Library, University of California Press, 1989 Cantor, Norman, Antiquity, Harper Collins, 2003 Cramer, Frederick, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics, Ares Publishers, Inc., 1996. Holden, James Herschel, History of Horoscopic Astrology, American Federation of Astrologers 1996. Hoskin, Michael ed., The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy. Cambridge University Press 1999. Patterson, Gordon M, The Essentials of Ancient History: 4500 BC to 500 AD Research & Education Assn. Strabo, Aristotle�s library: 13,609, written in the 1st century BCE. Tester, Jim, A History of Western Astrology. Boydell & Brewer, Inc. 1999. Tripolitis, Antonia, Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age. Wm. B. Eerdmans Trumble, Kelly, The Library of Alexandria, Clarion Books, 2003 Whitfield, Peter, Astrology: A History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2001 |
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Inga Duncan Thornell |