How much was lost when the Library of Alexandria burned?
The Library of Alexandria was the classical world’s greatest repository of knowledge. How much was lost when it vanished in late antiquity?
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Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:13 Foundation of the library
2:09 Size and prestige of the library
3:39 Caesar’s fire
4:55 Late antique disasters
5:29 Destruction of the daughter library
5:59 Decay and dissolution
7:10 Significance of the library’s disappearance
8:45 Conclusion
Thanks for watching!
When you consider that our entire knowledge of the Graeco-Roman world comes from about 500 volumes, the thought that some 700,000 scrolls potentially existed in Alexandra is astonishing and heartbreaking.
Well today, we'd have copies of copies of copies of the really important stuff, plus digitised versions. Back in the day, they simply couldn't afford the upkeep of ancient scrolls, nor the education of academics who would have done so. Plus, if civilisation really had fallen apart, I imagine people's interests would have been a little different. More survival rather than preserving "dusty old scrolls". Good old backups and printing presses. Glad we can more or less ensure that the good stuff is kept around.
@@danielharvison7510 don’t give them too much credit. It was often the ones in power who destroyed key information that was seen as discourse for things like religion.
@@brad7928 Blame the Black Rock worshipping pagans for most of the problems.
@@jonathansoko5368 blame Christians
@@fayereaganlover Blame the other guys.
The histories of cultures, ancient and contemporaneous, from distant lands in Asia, Africa, and Europe to the mediterranean basin, the early history of civilization is the loss that I mourn.
Perhaps, but perhaps half of them were the equivalent of Tik Tok at the time so it wouldn't be a total loss.
Thats a wierd comment dude. Get ahold of yourself...
well all of the books were copies
Diogenes Laertius related that the Sumerians had 30,000 years (yes thousand) years of astronomical and historical records. That is but one example.
@@alfredneuman6840 he isnt wrong tho. U never know. Id say it probably wasnt that but i dont know. Neither do you
A huge problem nowadays is that history isn't looked at as an important subject.
Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.
History is rewritten, suppressed and not easily available
@@Revick_Revas It’s already happening, people just like to be repetitive and act like sheep
@@plaguetheair8975 examples?
For most its not going to get them paid
I actually get a visceral feeling of discomfort when I hear about important historical things being destroyed like this. Can you even begin to imagine the wealth of knowledge the world would have today if this library, and many others, had survived until today? So much of our history has been robbed from us over the generations, and I often wonder what it would have been like if none of that priceless information had ever been destroyed.
The bulk of its collection contained recipes for potato salad.
@@texaswunderkind Lmao!! With mustard or mayo? 😂
@@yogsenforfoth5948 Mayo ofc
😂😂@Texaswunderkind that’s funny, but I wanted too say, I bet the Vatican has alot of history
You have many people attempting to similar things today. Hopefully they won't be allowed to.
the patrons with late-fees were all breathing a sigh of relief though
😅👍
They were all of the ones who banded together to burn it.
@@Elmownz hahaha owe a few bucks and just full send it with the homies and burn it all down 😂🔥
Yes 💯 burn it down again.
Thid is not a joke Bakhtiar Khilji did the.same.thing in Nalanda India.The Greeks wanted to know about India .The tribes from thr middleeast had.no respect.for knowledge
An incalculable loss to science, mathematics, history and mankind.
unfortunate, We lost the real history and started following such history which is filled with lies. I mean self authors..!
@@Souza4u history is written by the victors. This is true in all times.
@@miscellania4263 I am crazy of Alexander the great, If we had Greek books then entire world would have known the reality.
GROW UP
@@hunter9403 thank you for that insightful addition Hunter..
Truly one of the most depressing events in history. The amount of knowledge we lost is insane.
When you look at the Roman era, I feel like they were basically at what we eventually got to at like 1600 or so. Absolutely mind-boggling to consider where we might have been today with this knowledge
Yea that always baffled me. The Roman Empire at its height was easily as a strong as Renaissance era super powers. Which is crazy cuz that’s 1300 years into the future. I’ve also seen that the Romans were abt 400 years away from an Industrial revolution.
@@Ghall2708he actually did a video on if Rome was close to an Industrial Revolution. It was really interesting and listed points I did not consider
I deleted a term paper once, the day before it was due. I stayed up all night re-working it. So I know what humanity went through.
ouch
recall the term paper but not posting this???
@Roger Roldan I always hand wrote it first
@Roger Roldan isn’t it crazy how each of us are capable of compartmentalizing dozens and dozens of hours of our streamlined thoughts onto digitized paper with the stroke of a finger, but in that same breath, allow the concept of charging batteries to escape us
Did you check the recycle bin?
Alexandria has to be one of the most fascinating cities to ever exist, imo. Edit: I get it. Apparently there’s like 587 other Alexandrias dispersed across planet Earth that I was unaware of. I meant the ancient city of Alexandria, Egypt, is _one of_ the most fascinating cities to ever exist.
you can still go
Which one lol
@@XIXCentury True! One of my school tutors actually lives there; I always remind her of how jealous I am 😄
You have been there?
It is the most interesting City in Louisiana.
Same happened to Nalanda and taxila library, the books were burned by Turkic and arab invaders, there were so many books that it took 3 months to burn. We lost a good chunk of knowledge from samkhya philosophy, medicines, alchemy, mathematics, sciences etc
Taxila punjabi city 🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰💪🏼
@@TheHomieNickGurr pakistan didn't existed 😂 and the hindus who lived there are back and concentrated in India now
@@rahulsiddharth2609 Pentepotamia = greek word for punjab. Where are most punjabis from? Pakistan. Not india where people all speak Hindi and have no ethnic identity 🤣 Sindh is true name of the historic region not india is British name 😂😂 Alexander the Great never stepped foot in india cos the kingdom in india was different to the kingdom of the Sindhus 🇵🇰💪🏼
@@TheHomieNickGurr Maybe I need to teach you some history then, before that I would like to question your understanding of how speaking a language is related to an ethnic identity? And since when being a punjabi is an ethnic identity ? It's geographical nomenclature. You guys have Urdu as your national language, a language borrowed from India, what does that make you ethnically? Sorry for asking a dumb question but you started it w your stupid analogy. During taxila, king purushottam ruled over Punjab and Afghanistan, he was a moyhal brahmin, and Alexander didn't invade bc his soldiers gave up also magadha was a big empire so he didn't wanted to risk it, its well documented by Greeks. Also impressed by the mohyals, Chanakya invited alot of mohyals to the capital of patliputra, idk what makes you think that they were different 🤔 And why are you arguing on this topic 😂 when it doesn't have to do anything w your people, taxila library was a place for brahmins and scholars, not for barbarians and pusslam followers.
How The Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill is a fantastic read. The book covers how some of these great works of literature were saved by the Celts
Cheers
A lot of books and knowledge were saved by Arabs and Persians. But some people enjoy the fictional narrative that somehow Muslims destroyed the library, even though it was actually Christians who last did. Even the video kind of makes it seem like the library got caught in a crossfire between Christians and pagans and arguably tries to brush over the fact that Egyptian Christians specifically targeted it.
Is it wrong to assume that there were likely a lot of histories were lost. And other things that might've shed light on the events and lifestyle of more ancient peoples?
There were many precious texts in the library that existed in only a few copies, and vanished forever when both the Alexandrian library and the other great libraries of antiquity vanished. We get a sense of how much was lost from the so-called Hellenica Oxyrhynchia. The few surviving pages of this history - discovered in the famous papyrus cache at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt - were written by a historian worthy to be ranked with Thucydides. But now we don't even know his name.
@@toldinstone Thanks for the very interesting reply!
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-Beams glitter in the dark by the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost to time, like tears in the rain." (Tears in the rain speech) 'Bladerunner'
Not wrong. You knew that.
I feel a pit of sadness in my belly when I think of what was lost, and how we are repeating history today.
The destruction of the library of Alexandria is a case of modern day wishful thinking. We wish to imagine that there was this great repository of knowledge, that in one instance was destroyed, taking all its ancient knowledge and promises of progress like it. In fact, sheer neglect and loss of interest likely doomed far more of Alexandria's works than destructive fanaticism. This is a much scarier idea, since it suggest that all of modern Earth's collective knowledge, even with the safety net of mass printing, might over the centuries simply disintegrate and vanish, and people in the far future will look at us like we today look at the Ancients
We must secure the existence of our knowledge and a future for our culture.
These days we have it stored on hard drives, which are way more durable than books. Plus we have printing techniques now, which has enabled us to copy books in the thousands with little effort. Back in those days everything had to be copied by hand, which was a job onto itself. The danger of knowledge getting lost is immeasurably less than back then.
@@argylemanni280 Yes, it's something I'm concerned about it. I intend to have my personal book collection stored and buried when I die, in the hopes that some future generation might stumble upon it and uncover lost knowledge. There are so many hurdles when it comes to the preservation of human knowledge however, and considering that we likely only have less than 1% of all classical histories, it seems probable that far future generations will only have a fragmentary view of 20th/21st century history. Just imagine 99% of all the books on WW2 disappearing, and having people in the far future rely on Churchill's biased history of WW2 to construct events, in the same way we today rely on Julius Caesar's biased narrative on the Gallic and civil wars.
This makes me anxious
Its already happening as people feel that old means bad and new means good. Sad
Thanks for a unbiased commentary. Your speech and pace of your voice are very conducive to absorbing the info you are giving.
This channel is an argument for KZhead. Excellent work. I still think you could port these posts as side-by-side podcasts, as well. Thanks again for this channel!
Often times in the ancient world, advanced learning was carefully protected and rarely shared.
EXCEPT in the case of Alexandria where even commoners could utilize the library... [Like modern societies of today where every person has access to the library... The control mechanism of the world did not appreciate this... It's the central reason they found a way to burn the library of Alexandria down... Just like the beast found a way to demolish the 1st & 2nd Holy Temples in Israel...] And they may not have gotten all the books but they for sure got some of the books as the story about them burning books for some time afterwards is accurate and occurred... The original Nazi book burners... @NaziBlackSun @OmarsBlackCubeCaliphate
Wikipedia: Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon.
How Alexander Built Alexandria-The Myth and Legend According to the myth of Alexandria’s construction, Alexander the Great himself was responsible for the city’s foundation. Recorded in Plutarch, the foundation story gives us some idea of what the Alexandrians, and particularly the Ptolemies, wanted to project about their city’s birth. How Alexander Built Alexandria-A Mythical Beginning The Alexandrians were not interested at all in anything to do with Egypt. They saw their city as a kind of divine foundation of the Greeks. Plutarch tells us that when Alexander came to Egypt, he left behind a large and populous Greek city that would bear his name: Alexandria. On the advice of his architects, Alexander was about to measure out and enclose a city elsewhere, when during the night, he saw a remarkable vision. He thought he saw a man with white hair and a venerable appearance standing beside him and speaking these lines. “Then there is an island in a stormy sea in front of Egypt. They call it Pharos.” This vision was unusual because this wasn’t a god. No Greek god was described in those terms. It was a venerable old man.
World History Encyclopedia: Alexandria is a port city located on the Mediterranean Sea in northern Egypt founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great. It was the site of the Pharos (lighthouse), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the legendary Library of Alexandria and was once the most vital cultural center of the ancient world, rivalling even Athens, Greece. The city developed from a small port known as Rhatokis after the arrival of Alexander who laid out the basic design for what he wanted and then left to continue his conquest of Persia. The city was further developed under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BCE) into the greatest city of its time and would later become a famous center of early Christianity. It also became infamous for the religious strife which resulted from the clash of pagan, Jewish, and Christian faiths after the rise of Christianity in the 4th and 5th century CE. Among the most memorable events of this period the martyrdom of the Neo-Platonic philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria in 415 CE. After Christianity became the dominant faith, pagan sites such as the Temple of Serapis and the Serapion - both associated with the Library of Alexandria - were destroyed and the intellectuals who taught and studied there fled for more tolerant regions. When the Muslim-Arabs conquered the region in the 7th century CE, other ancient sites around the city met the same fate and the once great metropolis of Alexandria declined further.
Wikipedia: Tomb of Alexander the Great The location of the tomb of Alexander the Great is an enduring mystery. Following Alexander's death in Babylon, his body was initially buried in Memphis by Ptolemy I Soter, before being transferred to Alexandria, where it was reburied. Julius Caesar, Cleopatra and Augustus, among others, visited Alexander's tomb in Alexandria, though it had possibly been destroyed by the 5th century; since the 19th century, over one hundred official attempts have been made to try to identify the ancient site of Alexander's tomb in Alexandria.
If I'm not mistaken, when the library copied the books from the incoming ships, the library kept the ship's book and gave the ship a copy back.
That's bogus.
@@JB-1138 I did some quick digging. It was the Roman physician Galen who claimed that. Galen 17A 606 " Ptolemy the king of Egypt was so eager to collect books, that he ordered the books of everyone who sailed there to be brought to him. The books were then copied into new manuscripts. He gave the new copy to the owners, whose books had been brought to him after they sailed there, but he put the original copy in the library with the inscription "a [book] from the ships".
@@automaticmattywhack1470 that's actually cool.. good way to collect books from anywhere in the world.. promise of a safe port and bring books lol.
Ima pass on being the person to get "War and Peace" to copy 😂🤣....
I doubt many 'books' existed at all back then. Scrolls were likely the main format, perhaps stored in some sort of water tight container made of animal stomach or something similar.
Thank you for the informative video and thank you for not having any irritating background music or sound effects so so refreshing
Great video, I love how high quality they are. They're a joy to watch and learn from
As a librarian in an educational institution we discard books all the time: patrons damage them; they wear out after hundreds or even thousands of loans; people never return them; the information they contain becomes obsolete, superseded by new editions or formats; we can run out of space. There are many reasons and are all part of a working library, but deliberate destruction is thankfully rare; war and accidents are the major culprits. Often what survives does so by accident rather than design. The Library of Alexandra was the first institution that I am aware of that attempted to be universal in its collections and a ‘lender of last resort’ and from that perspective I wish even a small fraction of its holdings had survived; in the modern world we have our own libraries of Alexandria: the new Library of Alexandria, US Library of Congress, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Russian National Library, the British Library and hundreds of others. They more than the internet store and preserve information and our written and pictorial heritage; they attempt to be universal in their scope and act as lenders of last resort too.
@@shamanbeartwo3819 You're pulling my leg! Yep it is a repository of sorts and to some degree an enabler (if you can afford to pay); but not a preserver or an venue of intellectual discovery or scholarship. Dear Mr Bezos only did it or does it for the money he makes; if he didn't make mountains of cash he'd do something else and no Amazon. Libraries are only tangential to his worldview. Libraries are different creatures, thankfully we're not here for the cash.
I never returned ' Tropic of Cancer'.
@@jamesfields2916 To my library? Thanks for sharing that! Another library? Not my problem. Be a good bloke and return it - someday.
Hi Peter! You make an observation of greatness! Hooray for you! I wonder about the positive side of artificial super intelligence, if some day they could enter all the information in all of those libraries to be combined where the vital evolution of ideas that so obviously aided our advancements in civilization that has been interrupted and destroyed so many times (wonder too about how Hitler and the Nazis had so many books burned) that great things could be derived from the valuable combined knowledge of such vast resources you note. Thanks for your profound comment!!! You are a man of greatness!!
@@mwj5368 Thanks for the kind words! But no greatness on my part, nothing original as everything I say has been said by others long ago. Nonetheless, I do love the idea of a universal repository of all knowledge and information; the internet plays a role, but libraries, archives and museums a bigger and more profound one.
When you said "the scrolls of the library simply rotted away in Alexandria's humid air' and sequeid into your sponsor I thought it was going to be for dehumidifiers!😂😂😂
I shit you not. I was at that part of the video right when I read your comment and he narrated your comment to me😂 it made me question reality for a second
@@nickywags0712 I'm pretty sure the "narration" here was a text-to-speech algorithm, albeit a good one.
its segued*
@@blake6242 I thought it was but my spell-checker wouldn't accept it but would accept 'sequeid' - weird
@@blake6242 I had never seen that word written down. I thought it was "Segway" 😅
For being a library myself, this video brings tears to my eyes.
It may not have set us back centuries technologically, but it most definitely set us back centuries in just our overall knowledge of the world that we live in.
65 years after learning this, I still feel a palpable sense of great loss. I could never understand it allegedly being located so near a sea. Surely there was a cultural, folkloric kowledge of past oceanic catastrophies.
It was located there because it was created to burnish Ptolemy I's image and thus had to be in his new capital city.
All of these portcities had laws that required the copying of books upon arriavail.
The UN is near the sea...Do you think future scholars will study this and say "The fools put their major cities near the sea and ALL succumbed to the great floods created by the melting polar caps"...Surely we've been warned for 50+ years that these port cities will "go under" before 50 more years have passed.
Ports are better and quicker for trading and gaining texts
@@harvardarchaeologistprofes3751 why was it stored in Alexandria?
Scrolls would drive me nuts. I'm sure I'd be trying to read one and it would keep trying to roll back up.
What if they where like: "Imagine reading from books. Having to turn the pages would drive me nuts!"
@@romariomejia5396 that's true
No background music. Just a calming, soothing voice, perfect to get lost in the world of history.
very informative video. Thank you for making a great video!
So many commentaries on the Iliad, up in flames.
Would be interesting to know many ancient views on the Illad, though.
Right… 😔
Same with Baghdad House of Wisdom, same with Library of Nineveh
Commentaries on the Iliad would have provided us with a lot of ancillary information about the ancient world. Details they simply mentioned in passing could be treasures for us today.
Having worked as a library Page many years ago, I can only imagine how much of a challenge it was to index, store and retrieve each asset.
Hey thanks for producing this video
Just bought your book and can’t wait to read it!
Somewhere, somehow, the recipe for making concrete was lost for centuries...
Probably not because the Romans developed it and kept using for a long time after the loss of the library. That one was lost likely because it was passed by word of mouth rather than being written down.
Coade stone.....
Nah, they were aware of concrete. The reason why it wasn't used anymore was because the materials for making it were only present in Italy and they weren't building colossal structures until the lower middle ages
He also has a video about this fyi
It was on the same recipe shelf as Greek Fire.
Brilliantly told. So nice to hear the clear truth about the "Lost Treasures" of the Library, rather than the usual "History Channel Drama" of unknown, secret, advanced, knowledge being lost. Yes, we probably lost heaps of texts on philosophical rantings, and musings, but, not the real knowledge. That was already in use, around the "known" world. Great presentation as always!
Totally agree! The history channel and their drama…. According to them the best history lessons are taught by family feud pawn shop owners and garage box scavengers….. “Dramatic narrative voice”: it is not unthinkable that the secret to turn ordinary metal into gold was lost during the great fire….”
Straight to the point, as it should be.
What was lost in the library was historical and mythical stories. It was definitely a BIG deal.
And why do you consider philosophy not real knowledge? If I may ask
Not saying that there was some hidden technology that we have yet to rediscover but I feel that the technical knowledge that was accumulated during this time can be underestimated. For example Hero of Alexandria's aeolipile in the 1st century. The aeolipile is itself very inefficient but demonstrates an understanding that they could use steam power to create mechanical motion to perform work. Something that wouldn't become prominent in our human society until around 1600 years later.
I'm holding back tears ... this video is so powerful.
You relived a number of my anxieties about the Alexandria library by referring to multiple libraries and the importance of works lost. Thanks.
More than a book, less than infinite books
How many scrolls constitute a book? 😉
@@sternamc919sterna3 at least one
*fewer #pedantry #birdcageofthemuses
@@sternamc919sterna3 1 scroll = roughly 80 pages
@@PrimetimeNut 'Infinite' is not a number; thus 'less than infinite' is arguably correct. #doublepedantry
I heard rumors that the great library housed a sizable collection of scrolls on naked statues (with drawings) and also a few about plus sized gladiators.
not impossible;)
Who'd you hear the rumors from??? Were they there lol
Copied some porn magazines from lonely seamen of Mediterranean
😆
Yes but those volumes were destroyed by a war elephant.
thank you for this video
The libraries of Alexandria was told to hold the story of the Ancient Egyptian culture. Which may have also described how the pyramids may have been built. This could have held back humanity centuries in my opinion.
the first 30 seconds of this video made me so s a d. the level of detail in your descriptions is amazing, and never ceases to make me sad when it's about lost ancient artifacts lol
I just discovered your channel and i am in love. Binged watched all your videos and got sad when i reached the end(fairly quick). Please keep em coming! Thank you for all these gems.
I learned a lot in this video, ty.
Really a shame this happened. How much knowledge will never be found? This is one of the first places I’d go to if time travel were possible
I appreciate the quick and simple nature of the Ad, I also liked the placement. Just some feedback if you were interested.
Much appreciated! I didn't want the ad to be obtrusive.
Keep up the great work. This is rapidly becoming one of my favorite channels!!!
This is one of the best channels on KZhead
A large portion of the works in the library were commentaries and analysis of Iliad. In fact the 1st few chief librarians of alexandria made it their personal project to standardize a text for Iliad. There's a channel called Peter Presents where he goes over it.
I suspect many of the surviving books have ended up in the Vatican library which by the way is a difficult place to visit for scholarly research. Toldinstone, have you ever gone to the Vatican library to do research?
No, I never have. Although the process of getting permission to visit is still time-consuming, the Vatican Library is much easier to visit than it used to be (in fact, they've digitized many of their most famous manuscripts). There are some wonderful texts there, including some very ancient examples. But probably no books from the Library of Alexandria, unfortunately...
The Vatican Libraries are maybe difficult to visit, but definitely not impossible. You need to be highly educated and have a very precise book you're searching for, tho. It's not infinite, and there aren't the mysteries of the universe in there. Just like the "untold riches" the people usually think are in the Vatican City. All of it is just what it is: vain popular legends, rumors. The Vatican patrimony is very finite and documented, and usually it goes to fund their missions. And their archives are not some kind of shrine of ancient lost knowledge that they wanna keep away from "the people". There's definitely extremely interesting stuff, but not some game-changing books.
There are however, documents that have been discovered or more rightly rediscovered within the Vatican library.
Most probably in Vatican Library there are copies of copies of ancient texts with added/removed content to suit the readers' interests. Portuguese popular wisdom states that story/history tellers add more info to the tale (Quem conta um conto acrescenta um ponto ~ Who tells a tale adds a point)
We have many copies of ancient texts only because the Catholic Monks were vigilant in their copying of anything* they could get their hands on That’s why most earliest writings we have of the ancients are dated from the 8th or 9th century.
As someone who works in IT, all I can say: THIS is why you have backups, backups and more backups! No excuse for not having them all scanned in and kept off-site somewhere in the desert! ... What's that? They didn't have scanners and Internet? Savages! ;)
That is what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. The backup stored in desert caves.
@@RogerWKnight Interesting point. I'd not studied those enough to know: were they simply where the Essenes kept their scrolls or was it indeed where they kept a "worst case" backup, what with the various Jewish revolts and the Romans going scorched earth on Judaea? Thanks for that comment, I might look into that a bit more!
stinkin' primitives. no appreciation of the finer things in life.
Definitely wasn’t looking for this video, but I certainly watched the whole thing and was very interested nonetheless
Great video thank you 👍🏻
For years I have been searching all over Tamriel for a lost Elder Scroll. It was last known to have been in the Great Library of Alexandria but rumours are that it survived
Probly some vampire stole it and hide it inside a cave
😆
This is one of the most heartbreaking losses to human history that ever happened. 😪
The most heartbreaking is how easily fooled we all are. We will never know our true history sadly.
@@xfistedwaffle3167what
Can you elaborate?@@xfistedwaffle3167
Wow awesome video!
Excellent work, thank you. Always get that sobering, calm feeling when I hear a logical description/explanation for historical events where others have injected conspiracy theories. I admit I entertain some from the angle of blurring fiction and non fiction since most fictional plots bore me, and the longer I keep listening - I love when I finally hear the down to earth explanation that rings true and then promote it as if I’m some wise sage 😇. For example, on a podcast the father of comedy writer Mike Gibbons explained how WTC building 7 fell because it was not built to code. The mob was involved in the construction and was selling off and substituting a bunch of the high quality metal and then shortcuts were taken with lower quality materials and every other rivot kind of thing.
The book most scholars lament the loss of was, " IKEA assembly made simple".
Awesome video 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Thank you for this Garrett! It will help me sleep tonight knowing we didnt set ourselves back by hundreds of years
.... smart, concise synopsis encouraging all to take a closer look at those fascinating times.
Would love to hear you take a crack at the Diadochi. Such interesting characters, like Antigonus the One-Eyed and his son Demetrius the Besieger
Walking along the coast of Alexandria and imagining what took place thousands of years ago and what I was possibly standing above was surreal. I recommend a visit if you have the chance.
wondered about this for years never clicked on a video so fast!
I love Aristophanes. The Library of Alexandria had 39 of his 40 plays; only 11 survive today (plus fragments) because of Byzantine preservation. Zeus, how I wish papyri of the lost comedies were found!
@@trannystomper88 a necessary nerd
And Aristotle's second book of Poetics to be found with them, since we are talking of comedies.
@@dlevi67 You have read too much Umberto Eco.
@@martijnspruit So have you, my good friend, to catch the reference (which, incidentally, is totally historical). Take care and have a very good day!
@@dlevi67 "the plan"....... Foucault's Pendulum !!
I'd be interested in Mesopotamian libraries found in ruins in current Iraq and Iran. How many and how well preserved are clay tables found?
I had a professor first semester of college who studied Assyrian (written in cuneiform). Apparently there are hundreds of such tablets lying around in museum basements. There just arent enough jobs in academia for that kind of research. Most of the tablets are business ledgers containing transactions of livestock and the like. However just a few years ago someone translate one that turned out to be a lost bit of the epic of gilgamesh.
@@stanleywhitfield9692 Anyone translated it yet? Last translation I read had huge gaps in it. Fascinating story but with missing episodes.
Just some years ago, a historian in Brazil translated a random brick that a reporter had taken in the rubble of a bombed house in Iraq. It turns out that it was a Babylonian brick. And the writings on it clarified a biblical passage about the captivity in Babylon. Wild stuff.
There are thousands of tablets, and few experts. Mostly boring stuff in them, but that’s history too and it’s still an interesting topic. Look up Irving Finkel, he has a bunch of videos on it!
@@riograndedosulball248 pls link🔗
I enjoy the content you create, given how old this history is I was wondering what your sources are? E.g. you mention that many books were lost due to decay as a result of humid air, how did you come to know about that and why wouldn't they keep active "undecayed" copies? Thank you
Thank you that was quite good.
I can already feel the pain this video will bring me just from the title alone.
Always hits hard hearing about this subject
It’s kind of ironic because it was made so that different events in history could be remembered throughout the centuries. Yet it burned down.
Although it is sad all those scrolls disappeared, I think it’s more so a miracle that a great library existed at that time in history
Good to see you have a sponsor to plug, Dr. Ryan. The length, execution, and product of the plug were done very well; for example, I'm glad you weren't compelled to give a forced editorialization. Wish you continued success.
I laughed at the part about the ancient scholars, like tenured academics of all eras, attacking each other over minor pedantic points.
I love how much depth u go into but just tell us what they lost
I would always hear, "History is written by the winners." This never got through to me until I was seasoned by life. Learning how ppl around me actually lived or believed is what helped me understand that simple saying. Having zero context that saying is very broad and can be interpreted diff ways depending on what you know/knew previously to hearing that. Knowing that History is written by the winners of war, horrific atrocities, backstabbing, turn coating, lying, songs, marketing, literally everything.
The siege of Baghdad in 1258 would be very interesting for you to cover! Possibly even more knowledge lost there than Alexandria
I'd argue that Library of Alexandria, Library of Ctesiphon and Library of Delhi combined are more damaging to advancements of humanity than the one in Baghdad, after all, the arabs until 1258 stole all their knowledge from all their neighbours You don't believe me? The fact that the arab world was left behind on technology since 1258 shows more than enough.
@Rex absolutely not including the knowledge of Alexandria library bc it was destroyed back then and baghdad library was made by the caliph buying books as much as he can from everywhere during the islamic era, so it's a person buying books and putting it in library not as a library where a great scientists ,philosophies ,artists worked, collecting both the ancient egyptians knowledge and the greeks
@@radwaelshehry2679 Bullshit. The library of Baghdad was made with the contributions of Arab poets, scientists and philosophers all going 500 or so years.
Both were terrible for humanity, idk why we have to compete, the library of alexandria had all greco roman history, house of wisdom had a lot of also preserved greco roman history translated but (also) works from other places in the world, and a ton of work from baghdad itself. The only part which is more heartbreaking for the house of wisdom is that humans (mongols) themselves saw all that knowledge and decided to destroy it... after they already had butchered baghdad, it was theirs and they decided to destroy it...
@@sarwatarannya8786many of the scientific books taught in 1600’s Europe like optics, Treasury of Astronomy, The Canon of Medicine, al-jabr (aka algebra) etc are written by Arabic and Persian scientists, i feel like people doesn’t give enough credit to the golden age of islam because of religion
I like how you debunk popular myths and cliché thinking and give the raw facts in as much as they are known to us...reminds me of your vids on the Atlantis story..very refreshing
I agree.
If only the news could do this 🤷♀️
Arab sources state it was ordered destroyed...
I bet a few books on how the Egyptians built the pyramids, maps on how to get to Atlantis, and how to understand women disappeared.
I think the biggest question is, why? Why did someone think, " this knowledge is too dangerous to exist"
Fascinating. Previously, I hadn't heard much of this history of the Library of Alexandria. I had only heard stories of invasions, burnings, and science/math advancements that were lost and destroyed. What are the research sources for your presentation - are they commonly available? Thanks
this is such an interesting topic. the open endedness of the legend really invites the imagination to speculate, given the facts we know
Great insight Floyd! I wish many thought as you!
Now this is a crime against humanity
I always wonder just how much knowledge was lost, and what the world might have been today had it survived.
I'm inclined to believe the fire was started by a time traveller with a Galaxy Note 7.
Trying to scan/photograph the scrolls😉
Such an old random ass reference
When we find it, we will only find books that will disintegrate when touched, making them useless.
Buuuuuut protooooooo
Nah. Read up on X-ray spectroscopy and similar techniques. The charred writings from the "Villa of the papyri" can be read now, without even touching the paper, so the same would be true for books found in this area.
Damn I bought your book, wich I really enjoyed and know I found you on KZhead amazing
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. People can't help but wonder sometimes if there is more to human fault and tragedy than meets the eye..
If they only had the Dewey Decimal system I’m sure every scroll would still be around today in perfect shape
That scroll my ancestor from Gaul borrowed on gardening and never returned - which is still around up in the attic - that must have an overdue fine of about $2,000,000,000,000,000 still outstanding!
w-w-wait, you have...an actual scroll?!?
Now there is a man who outlived his creditors
That rebel nerd
Jesus christ man! If you are not lying get that scroll to those who know its importance and will preserve it.
@@larrysorenson4789 Demain matin sans faute!
Makes you wonder how accurate this information is. Unbelievable
This saddens me can only imagine how much important history was lost in that time
Love this channel
It’s great!
just found your channel.. good shit!
The most terrifying thought it that there could be volumes buried containing information about OTHER sources of great information like the Library of Alexandria, or just around the world, sitting under the soil, never to be found, containing thousands of petabytes of historical data. It's absolutely gut wrenching how much history we lost that answers so many questions and may even contain relevant, current knowledge. If we had that information, it's likely human civilization would have been able to develop much faster.
The internet is the new library of Alexandria
Thank you for the analysis of the Library of Alexandria, disappearing in not one event, but many over time, as well as neglect. Today, how much of our electronic knowledge would disappear in a storm of giant solar flares?
Since it is unknown exactly what works were in the library and what was lost, I don't know how you can declare with such certainty that the loss did not have a seriou negative impact on the advancement of civilization.
because there is no reason to assume the library of Alexandria held books that weren't also present in Rome and Constantinople. The more important a scholarly work, the more likely it was to be copied in other libraries too. Its the accumulated loss of ALL those ancient libraries that results in "a serious negative impact on the advancement of civilization", not Alexandria alone.
Because really important books wouldn't be present only in Alexandria, thus, it wouldn't have been lost for the people of the time. It's the decline of the Roman Empire that made us lose knowledge, not the loss of a single library
I’ve recently have become a fan of Halo lore, and just like within the Lore, I really want to believe that once open a time Humanity we’re like Technological, Advanced, God-like beings that where able to expand all across the cosmos, but somewhere down the line something happen that pushed us back to what I’ll like to describe the Second Stone Age, and the history of such Mythology was within this library. I know it sounds ridiculous but hey fiction can be inspiring. 🙂
What secrets are hidden the Vatican Library? That should be a more important topic to cover.
Thank you for putting it into historical context - I don't feel so bad over the loss of knowledge and information! ;-)
ignorance is bliss amirite