Library of Alexandria, the most famous library of Classical antiquity. It formed part of the research institute at Alexandria in Egypt that is known as the Museum, or the Alexandrian Museum.
The Alexandrian library and museum were founded and maintained by the long succession of Ptolemies in Egypt from the beginning of the 3rd century bce. The library’s initial organization was the work of Demetrius of Phaleron, who was familiar with the achievements of the library at Athens. Both the museum and the library were organized in faculties, with a president-priest at the head and the salaries of the staff paid by the Egyptian king. A subsidiary “daughter library” was established about 235 bce by Ptolemy III Euergetes in the Temple of Serapis (Serapeum), the main museum and library being located in the palace precincts, in the district known as the Brucheium. The exact location and the layout of the library and the museum are uncertain, however. The library is said to have encompassed an area in which to walk, gardens, a large dining hall, a reading room, lecture halls, and meeting rooms. Together with the museum, which supported and housed a number of scholars, the library was clearly as much a cultural centre and intellectual meeting place as a repository and research resource.
It is not known how far the ideal of an international library—incorporating not only all Greek literature but also translations into Greek from the other languages of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and India—was realized. It is certain that the library was in the main Greek; the only translation recorded was that of the Septuagint.
The library’s editorial program included the establishment of the Alexandrian canon of Greek poets, the division of works into “books” as they are now known (probably to suit the standard length of rolls), and the gradual introduction of systems of punctuation and accentuation. The compilation of a national bibliography was entrusted to Callimachus. Though now lost, it survived into the Byzantine period as a standard reference work of Greek literature. The museum and library survived for many centuries but were destroyed in the civil war that occurred under the Roman emperor Aurelian in the late 3rd century ce.
The noted British historian Edward Gibbon asserted that Theophilus of Alexandria—under the orders of Theodosius—provoked riots and that in 391 ce a Christian mob leveled the Serapeum and destroyed the Classical library housed there. Some contemporary scholars question that the daughter library was still at the Serapeum at the time that other buildings there were destroyed. In 2002 the Egyptian government inaugurated a new library, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, near the site of the ancient institution.