Camp Gagnon - The Library of Alexandria NEVER Burned

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Today, we take a closer look at the legendary Library of Alexandria. We’ll talk about the city's founding, the creation of the Great Library under Ptolemy I, the tragic accidental burning by Caesar, its slow decline and the destruction of the Serapeum Library, the murder of Hypatia, the things lost to history, and other interesting topics... WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsor: Mars MenFor a limited time, our listeners get 60% off FOR LIFE AND 3 Free Gifts at Mars Men when you use code 'CAMP' at https://mengotomars.com👕🧢 Use CHRISTMASCAMP at checkout for 17% off when you shop at https://camp-rd.com/collections/christmas🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History Here: https://www.dailytodayinhistory.comTimestamps:0:00 Christos YAPPIN1:09 Shoutout to Joseph Manning1:53 The Founding of Alexandria4:54 Ptolemy I Takes Over7:07 The Creation of Alexandria's Library14:40 Caesar Accidentally Burns Alexandria17:49 Decline of Alexandria23:34 Destruction of Serapeum Library27:35 Murder of Hypatia30:30 Arab Invasion of Alexandria 33:14 Things Lost In Alexandria38:35 Archeological Discovery of Alexandria 41:08 The Scholarly Thoughts#foryou #history #podcast #knowledge #interesting #comedy #film #interview #mystery

Most of us think we know what happened to the Library of Alexandria. One massive fire on a dramatic night and the ancient world's greatest knowledge went up in smoke. But the real story isn't exactly like that. Because the library didn't burn down all at once. It died slowly. Across multiple centuries, hit by politics, religion, ego. And piece by piece, it fell apart.

The lighthouse of Alexandria, the philosophers, the knowledge, everything that made Alexandria, the center of the ancient world, vanished. This is the real story. behind the burning of the library at Alexandria. So, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people? Welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Jagdon, and thank you for joining me in my tent where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world from all time forever. Yes, this is the place where we get to the bottom of everything that's been going on. Now, of course, the show's not possible without you,

the good people at home, and also, well, I'm a good pal, Christos. What's up? I didn't even ask you nothing, dude. Okay, today it was going to be the day where we were going to get into it and I was going to say, you know what, scrap the script. Me and Cresos was going to get into it for two and a half hours,

but he just ruined it. Mark, if I may, I just want to apologize to absolutely everybody for what I said on religion camp and you could go check that out when you want. Wait, what did you say on religion camp? You don't want to know. No, did you say something bad?

I said I was the first best Christos and people weren't. happy about that. Oh man, you are a heretic. I yield the floor. That's great. Nope, you are, yeah, I'll forgive you. You know who won't? The fans, the commenters. God will forgive you, but you know who won't? Oh man, you put yourself in a real pickle here. But you know what, today we're not talking about Jesus Christo or Bald Christo. We're talking about the Library of Alexandria. Now, I had a guest on this program, our pal Joseph Manning over at Yale, great guy. And, We were talking about the Library of Alexandria. He's basically an expert in like, you know, the Hellenistic period of kind of like Greece and Rome type vibes. And he was telling me like, yeah, the Library of Alexandria, again, it's debated. There's speculation on both sides. But most people don't think that it actually burned. And I was like, hold on a second. What does that mean? And he was like, well, what actually happened is kind of more interesting. And he broke it down for me. And I was like, you know what? This would be a great topic for an episode.

And here we are. So what is it? What is the library of Alexandria? Why is it in Alexandria? Who would go there? What kind of texts were in it? And was it burned? Was it kind of burned? Was it just forgotten? Where did it all go? Well, we're going to figure it up. So the city of Alexandria is probably a good place to start. It doesn't just happen like by accident. Okay. It is designed and, you know, kind of geographically predisposed to, be the smartest place on earth. So ancient writers claimed that Alexander the Great chose the spot because he kept dreaming of a strange island named Pharos, a future site of the famous lighthouse of Alexandria, also known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. So basically, Alexander the Great is going through, you know, conquering the whole world, and he goes through Egypt in 331 BC. He doesn't stay long, but he does something that changes the ancient world.

He picks this spot on the Mediterranean coastline and says, we're building a city right here. Yes, we're going to make this place a massive, you know, coastal town. And so in that place, he picks it for a few reasons. Obviously, it's good for, you know, supply lines and trade lines for his war effort. And, you know, it's perfectly located between Greece, Africa, the Middle East. And it's a perfect place to create this bustling metropolis. And like with most cities, when you have a bunch of people from all around the world coming in, you get a lot of new ideas and with that some new knowledge.

So it was said that during the construction of the city, his engineers didn't have enough chalk to actually outline the perimeter of the city. So they just used white flour, which is kind of funny, because when they put the white flower down, like literally like flour you would like bake with. So when they put it down, birds immediately swarmed and ate the outline of the city. And this made the Egyptian priest take it as a sign that the people from, everywhere would come to Alexandria to feed. So even just off-rip, they were like, uh-oh, this is, this is now what we thought it was going to be.

And it wasn't. So the layout that the city was and how they traced it, it wasn't random either. So Alexander is one of the first cities in the ancient world to be built on a grid system. So if you live in New York or any other major city, maybe you've heard of the grid system. But basically it has two massive boulevards that cross at perfect right angles. there's these massive streets that are wide enough for like chariots to pass, you know, by each other and not, you know, collide. And they literally were doing like ancient urban planning on a level that doesn't show up again

until, you know, Europe centuries later. So around eight years after the construction of the city started Alexander the Grey dies. But the city already had a blueprint that was so detailed that it even listed where like the statues for the harbor would go. everything down to like the little flourishes and details was all worked out. So although Alexander the Great never lived to see this creation actually flourish, his successor, Ptolemy the first did. So who is Ptolemy?

Well, he is the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty. And he wasn't just trying to like rule the land, right? He wanted Egypt to be this intellectual capital of the entire world. So he started building this insane thing. Okay. This is a library that tried to call it. collect every written work ever made. And no, this is not an exaggeration. He literally like, the way Bezos is like, dude, I want to make the store that sells everything. We're going to sell

cat food and books and cars. He was like, I want a library that has every book ever written ever. And at this point, it's not that impossible to do, right? We're talking like 320 B.C. vibes. So, yeah, you know, just how many books are? There's like 10 books. You get a library of 10 books, right? Is that crazy? Nope, there's some books in there, bro. Easy. So he was like, this is time, we're going to do it. And the Library of Alexandria as an idea is born. Now, this guy, Ptolemy is an interesting dude.

Basically, for general context, Alexander the Great cuts through the whole world and he's, you know, eating up land. He goes to Egypt, founds Alexandria. And it's basically we're going to build up this little town. It's like a real village. Let's get it popping. And then when Alexander the Great is basically on the way out, he gives control to Ptolemy. and Ptolemy is one of his top generals. Now, Ptolemy basically controls this Egyptian, you know, region and is really focused on Alexandria as this hub for commerce and intellectualism.

And at a certain point, even declares himself Pharaoh Ptolemy. So you can also think of this in Egyptian history. Like, this is basically the end of the new kingdom. And it's kind of like the Egyptian, you know, sort of story is kind of, you know, going away. At this point, the pyramids are like 2,000 years old. or something like that. It's like insane. So matter of fact, Cleopatra, if you're familiar with her, she'll be relevant and not too long. She's actually a descendant directly of Ptolemy. Just kind of an interesting detail. So basically, Ptolemy wanted to build something insane.

He wanted to build a library that was so big that it collected every written work ever made. Yes. Not an exaggeration. That's what he wanted. Library with every book in it. Now, keep in mind, this is like, you know, 3.20 something-ish BC. Not that many books, right? I used for like 100 books. Like, how many books could there be? This is not, I don't know really the answer. But not as many as to that.

But regardless, it's not the easiest task to collect every written work ever again. There's no printing press. Every book is basically hand-scribed by a dude or woman. And put down into this book and then they have to, you know, somehow get it. Books are expensive, and it's a very difficult task to actually store all these books in a library. But Ptolemy was an ambitious man. So he starts building this library. Now, the library itself is not a small building, okay?

It, you know, wasn't waiting for scholars to bring scrolls, and it wasn't waiting for these authors to write, you know, books and stuff. The people of Alexandria literally went out and got the books themselves. They wanted the text. So, like, every ship coming into the harbor in Alexandria was searched. Like, literally, there was like, this is like a gang of nerds. Like, they were like, hey, if you want to come do trade in our city, you got to pay us a little piece. And they're like money, they're like, nah, bro, Mark Twain. Like, they wanted just copies.

So any scrolls that were on board were taken to the library and copied by scribes. But get this, the original texts were kept and then the copies were sent back to the owners. Some gang shit. fire. And the people of Alexandria believed the originals were, you know, basically just too valuable to give up. They're like, we want the OG, you guys can have the copy. Sorry. And then the copies

were good. Again, these scribes were, you know, pretty professional. But regardless, they kept the OG stored it away. They even send agents across the Mediterranean with some cash to go buy up scrolls. They're going to Syria, roads. Even at certain points going to like Persia and basically like

what y'all reading about. And then took that shit, brought it back. The king sent letters to other rulers asking for, you know, rare texts and philosophical works and local religious myths and anything that they could get their hands on was going into that library. A little fun fact. The city of Athens actually loaned the city of Alexandria works by like Sophocles, what's the other one?

Euripides. And then I feel like there was like another dude. But Alexandria kept the original. and then returned the copies like they always had. And it just goes to show that even like a big city, like Athens, wasn't safe from this kind of like, you know, a little fugazi act. So the building that housed all this knowledge

was part of a larger complex known as the museum. Is that how you pronounce it in Greek? The museum. Museo. Oh. And it was Eshalis also, though. Eschelis. That was the other guy that they were on loan from.

So literally Athens. is like, hey, here's some philosophical works. Like, take a copy, send it back. They're like, yeah, we'll send something back. Psych. So, this library, you know, this knowledge house, is a part of this bigger complex, okay? And this is literally where the word museum comes from. You know, musion is like the OG word, but the current word is.

Museum. Museo. And it's not a museum in the way we think about it now. It was more like a research institute slash like hangout slash like men's. like, you know, club where dudes get to, like, chop it up. So if you walk through, you would see botanical gardens, you'd see a lecture hall, you'd see like an observatory, you'd see a dissecting room for surgeons, you'd see, like, housing for scholars, you'd see a dining room and a tutoring space.

It's more like college vibes. But again, like the concept of college is not really developed in like a really robust way at this point. But it's like an ancient like MIT or Stanford or some shit. Okay. Now, what made Alexandria different from other ancient libraries is not just the size, but like the model itself. So most ancient libraries, like the one at Pergamon or like the smaller collections in like Athens, they're either privately owned by really wealthy people or they are temple libraries that are focused on religious text.

Because again, at the time, like to maintain and collect a library, it was extremely expensive. And governments and like academic institutions were not doing it at scale. They didn't really have the money. So who had the money? Rich people, the elites of a society, and the religious people, the church, the temples, the priestly class. So as a result, that's the only type of place that you were going to get a library. So these are the kind of places that you would store scrolls that maybe like you copied or you wrote and then you hope scholars come visit it and then they read your stuff and then you kind of can make a name for yourself. So what happens in Alexandria with the Musion actually just changes this completely. It was an active research institute with like a salary structure and like collaborative work spaces and projects being looked at by multiple different scholars at the same time. And they're not just like reading existing knowledge. They are taking these old scrolls and these old texts deliberating on it, writing new knowledge, and then putting that back into the library collection. So they're actually creating new ideas

from the library. So at Pergamon, if you've heard of that, you might find like a mathematician working alone on like a geometric problem. But Alexandria at Alexandria, that same mathematician would be collaborating with an astronomer and then like an engineer that maybe like a geographer comes by or like a cartographer and they're like all talking and then they get new ideas and develop entirely new fields of research. So for example, the botanical gardens. This is I think really interesting because you see botanical gardens and you're like, oh, this is like a pretty thing to walk through. And that may be true. But the original purpose for many of these botanical gardens, specifically at research institutes and colleges, is that they

are used for medicine. Yes, medical researchers are using it to experiment with plants while working, you know, alongside scholars who are like actually translating medical texts from like Babylon and from India. And then they're translating them into the local language. And then they're now experimenting with these ancient texts and creating, you know, different medicines and tinctures and stuff like that. And this is why so many breakthrough discoveries came out of Alexandria, right? When you put all these different specialists from all these different fields in the same building with, you know, unlimited resources and, you know, to an extent, like they have money and pensions and salaries. And there's no day job to worry about. Innovation will just naturally happen, right? You put a bunch of smart people in the same room, stuff starts to pop off. So Alexandria ultimately becomes the most diverse city on earth. Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Jews, Nubians, Syrians, Syrians, Syrians,

Romans, people from India, all coming together, living side by side. It's like the New York City of the ancient world. And that's why its destruction is so crazy. Right. Like, remember, the library didn't vanish in just one big blaze, generally speaking. This is how most historians look at it. To understand how it died, you need to understand how politics, war, religion, and some bad luck actually pulls it apart over the centuries. So if, this library at Alexandria or the Musion, as we refer to it, had a big moment, you know, what would that be? The closest thing we could probably point to is in 48 BC during Julius Caesar's civil war in Egypt. So, Caesar is stuck in Alexandria, fighting against the forces that are actually

loyal to the Egyptian king, Ptolemy the 13th. You remember that name, Ptolemy? So this is literally a direct descendant from Ptolemy the first, the guy who kind of, you know, took control over it, after Alexander the Great. His now descendant, Ptolemy the 13th, is the Egyptian king, fighting against Julius Caesar. Now, at this point, this is in Cleopatra's era, okay? And Julius Caesar is outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and boxed in. So Caesar made a move that he is, you know, famous for.

He burned his own ships in the harbor to prevent the enemies from capturing them. And he did something similar to this in the Battle of Massilia. But at Massilia, he burned a captured enemy fleet rather than his own personal fleet. But the logic is basically still the same, right? If the enemy, you know, steals it, then let's just destroy it first. Because we're going to lose it either way, but at least they're not going to get access to, you know, our weapons, our food, our resources, anything that we have on there, etc. Now, they never anticipated what would happen next. The fire spreads from the docks to nearby warehouses that are holding grain.

and also some scrolls. Now, we don't know how many scrolls are destroyed in this specific fire, but the philosopher Seneca, also a great Stoic, shout out Seneca, claimed 40,000 scrolls are destroyed. Plutarch says, quote, large quantities are destroyed, and modern historians argue maybe 70,000 are destroyed, some fewer, but some even argue that maybe no scrolls are destroyed. But regardless, it seems that there's some,

number between, you know, 10,000 and 70,000 scrolls that are destroyed in this one burning of the ships by Julius Caesar. But the important part here isn't the number. It's that the fire probably hit a storage area for scrolls, not the main library building where all the academics and researchers are actually working. So you can think of this as like losing like your backup key, right? Or like, I don't know. Like it sucks, right? But it's not the worst thing, right? You have another. Your second favorite pair of shoes, you step in dog poop. Sucks, but you know, it's not your, it's not the best ones here. Okay. But here's a detail that most people don't realize. The main library most likely survived that fire. Now, we know this because scholars kept writing and referencing

it for centuries after this event occurs, right? The fire was bad. Julie Caesar's fire was not a good thing. There's war happening Alexandria. That's never good. But it's not the end. The real damage actually comes from something, you could say, is worse than fire. And that, That is neglect and apathy and budget cuts and maybe worst of all political chaos. So when Caesar leaves Egypt and Cleopatra took power with Mark Antony, the library is still there. But Egypt is no longer this stable intellectual kingdom that's, you know, has all this, you know, academic sort of, you know, heavy power in it. It's completely changed. So starting in the first century BC, Alexandria becomes a battleground.

Everyone wants it. So you have the Romans, Egyptian elites, foreign influences. There's like religious movements that are creating turmoil even internally within the city. And then economic instability because of all of this, that just exacerbates the problem. Now, at this point, the building is still there. The students are still there, but the, like, I don't even know how you describe it, like the jeuge, like the jeanne-secois, the it, the X factor. It's not there in the building in the way that it was, you know, 200 years before that. So the Ptolemaic system was basically a royal research grant on, you know, steroids.

So like the scholars, they didn't pay for housing. They didn't pay for food. They didn't pay for like research materials. Literally everything is covered by the king. But this isn't charity. This is politics. He's not doing this for like the good of mankind. He's doing it because he wants to brain drain every country in the region and create all

the smartest people in one place. So the Ptolemy's used the library like we would use a space program, okay, to show the world how advanced and powerful they are. Foreign officials would tour the facility and see scholars working and then go home and be like, dude, the Egyptians are so smart. The people in Alexandria are legit geniuses. And that reputation was preceding them. So when Rome takes control, that incentive is no longer there. Romans had their own intellectual traditions and they didn't really see this reason to subsidize, you know, Greek scholars in Egypt. They were just like, this is not, like the Roman Empire is not an intellectual empire. This is an empire built on war and battle and conquest, right? The new Roman administrators looked at the

budget that, you know, this region is getting allocated, the Alexandria is eating up all this money. And they're like, why are we paying for this? What is, what is happening? So, without the royal backing, the Musion couldn't maintain this massive staff. They couldn't send agents to go out and buy scrolls around the Mediterranean. They can't, you know, go to scholars in Persia and be like, hey, we're going to give you a comfortable life and you can do all the research you want if you just live in Alexandria. They didn't have the money and they couldn't attract the best minds in the region. So then Alexandria also became known as a place for riots. So Greek pagan practices and Jewish scholarship in early Christian groups, you know, when they're all coming together, they're also,

they're sharing all these ideas and they're sharing all the stuff, but then they're now clashing. And this wasn't like the calm intellectual city that it was, you know, a few centuries before. So by the time we get into the second and third centuries AD, parts of this library and this sort of academic complex are still existing. But it's not the beating heart of knowledge that it once was. and you can see how the money goes away, the people go away, the magic is getting lost, and you can see more or less the pattern that this is going on. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I have a story to tell you.

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Now, something that most people don't know is that Alexandria had two major library buildings. So you have the Great Library, which is the original Musion. This is like the OG. And then you have the Serapium Library. Now, the Serapium Library is the second library that was built a little bit later, and the Serapium was built in honor of the God Serapis. Now, Serapis is a deity.

that was created by the Ptolemies to unite Greek and Egyptian religions. And this secondary library was located on a hill called the Acropolis of Alexandria. So why build another library? Well, that's because the first library was so full, they needed more space. So the Serapium became more like a public library, right? You can think of the first grand library as like, this is where the scholars and the academics go. But the Serapium is, hey, the average person, the average merchant, the more middle class people can kind of come through and take a scroll, read through it, put it back. It's more accessible, more used, more connected to the city.

And what's ironic is that the second library is the one that we know the most about, because its destruction is unfortunately very well documented. So by the late 4th century, Alexandria is a hotspot for religious tension. Now, you've got to think, when Alexandria is formed, there is no Jesus yet. And then we hit like 1 AD, we get Jesus type vibes, right? Some people say it was actually later, like two or three, but regardless, timeline. Okay, so by the 4th century, Christianity is now taking hold in the region, and it's gotten more popular, and these pagan temples are losing power. And then there's a bishop named Theophilus, who is aggressively trying to shut down all the pagans. So by 391 AD, this conflict reaches a breaking point, and where does it happen?

the Serapium. This is a, I'm now like a series of street fights that erupt between, you know, Christian groups and pagan resistance groups that are the, like basically resisting the destruction of their places of worship. And these fights turn into bigger fights. They turn into riots. And then during the violence, several Christians are reportedly killed, causing many pagans to fortify themselves inside the Serapium and basically, you know, turn this library into a, like, defensive. stronghold, right? They kind of just like camp out, branched divinian style. So when news of the fighting reaches the emperor Theodosius I first, he issues a ruling that any remaining pagan temples need to be shut down

and all of their idols are destroyed. So with this authorization, Theophilus, the bishop and the Alexandrian authorities go to the Serapium to end the standoff. So inside the library, you have the pagans that are basically fortified and eventually they surrender.

And, you know, there's basically a deal that's brokered amongst the, you know, Theophilus and the other Alexandrian authorities where they basically say, hey, we won't kill you if you surrender. And ancient sources actually tell us that this happens. So despite killing these Christians and these skirmishes, the pagans themselves were not executed after surrendering. But this whole area, right, the Serapium is not spared. And the great statue of Serapis, because it is this sort of. of non-Christian deity created by the Ptolemies is demolished. And then sacred objects are destroyed and seized. And the Serapium was basically torn down. But what happened to all the scrolls and to all the knowledge? Well, they were likely destroyed along with everything else.

Now, this is the moment where Alexandria's library and the heritage around these library complexes takes the biggest hit. Now, you can't talk about Alexandria's intellectual collapse. without talking about hypatia, one of the most famous scholars to ever teach in the city. And she's often mythologized, but here is what we know. And one of the things that makes hypatia so interesting

is that she's a woman. Yes, didn't see that coming. Curb balls. Hypatia is a mathematician, a philosopher, and an astronomer, and she's teaching openly in the city and around the libraries, even after religious tensions

are coming into the city. And she's advising political leaders, and she's really well respected all over the Mediterranean, even outside of Alexandria. But in 415 AD, she's murdered by a Christian mom. Sorry. All right, we're not perfect, okay? I never said that.

Sometimes Christians do bad stuff, and that includes murdering hypatia. So the bishop, Cyril, and the prefect Orestes are locked in a power struggle, okay? And this is tale as old as time. Political elite, priestly elite, they're battling. And then Hypatia gets pulled into the middle of it, not because of anything that she taught,

but because she was being seen as, she was seen as being very close to the prefect. Now, a group of Christians, I guess you could say Christian extremists, perhaps, stop her chariot in the street, they drag her into a building, and then they kill her, and then they burn her remains. Not great, right?

Okay, sorry. Ancient writers make it clear that she wasn't targeted for her ideas. She wasn't targeted because she was a woman. She wasn't targeted for any of the obvious sort of external features. She's targeted simply because people thought that she was standing in the way of the bishop, surreal, and his political influence. Now, this moment officially marks when Alexandria stopped being a safe space for philosophy and debate, right? After her murder, one of the most famous scholars in Alexandria is murdered, not for her ideas of what she was doing just because some political BS.

All the scholars leave. They're like, dude, what are, like, no, I'm not going to get clipped for being tight with, like, a politician. Like, this is insane. Like, just because I talk to some guy and he asked me to console for him, now all of a sudden, I'm going to get chopped, like, I'm out.

So, once that happens, and you have the lack of funding because the Romans take over, and you have the destruction of, you know, the temple or the, you know, the library because of, you know, pagan influence. The academic culture is almost completely collapsed. So for Alexandria, this is not a place of learning anymore. This is a place

where philosophy gets people killed, okay? So what's interesting is that no building actually needs to burn because the people who made Alexandria are actually what makes the library, you know, a fascinating place in this sort of intellectual breadbasket. They're gone. But yet, the legend keeps growing. Now, here's where we get, you know, one of the most famous and controversial stories. Okay. there is a very interesting sort of rumor that people will describe, okay? And this is, I'm just going to say what it is again. This is not my interest to peddle conspiracy theories, especially baseless ones, about different ethnicities. But some people, specifically in the ancient world, speculated and would share the rumor that Arabs burned down the library in the 7th century. A lot of people say yes, okay, some scholars will say it technically was Arab influence. And they'll tell you that when the Muslim general, Amir bin al-Az, conquered Alexandria in 6th,000. He burned the library on orders from the Caliph Umar. You'll even hear the line, if the book agrees with the Quran, they are unnecessary. If they disagree, they are dangerous. And basically the, you know, the story here is that, you know, the Quran is the single only

book that Muslims need. So if it agrees with it, you know, just read the Quran itself. And if it disagrees with it, get it out of here. Now, here's the problem is that the quote that we just read doesn't come from the 600s. It doesn't really even come close. It first shows up 600 years after, written by a Christian author who had his own reasons for kind of painting the conquest in a very unflattering light for the Muslims. Now, modern historians agree that by the time that the Arabs actually arrive, the great library wasn't even standing anymore. It didn't even exist. Not as a functioning institution, not as a book collection. It just was nothing. Now, the place had already fallen apart after centuries of fires, riots, temple destruction, neglect. It's like somebody

invading a town today and then they get blamed for like destroying Blockbuster. It's like, yeah, I guess in a way, but like Blockbuster was already gone before they pulled up, all right? Like, yeah, you invaded, you know, Portland. There's no more Blockbuster. Sorry, dude. So when the Arabs actually come to the city, they find a city that, you know, has scholars and books, for sure. There's obviously an academic tradition, but not this legendary library. complex that needs to get destroyed. So this whole like Arabs burn the library story catches on later because people wanted, you know, a very easy villain that they could blame as the people that, you know, cause this academic collapse, which, I mean, to be frank with you, I also just don't

think aligns with like this sort of Islamic Renaissance that comes up where there's like all of these, you know, inventions of like, you know, algebra are coming up with like so many mathematical proofs, all that kind of stuff. It's like, I don't know if there's like the real like anti-intellectualism though and make them be like. like destroy everything. I think if anything, they would go in there and be like, let's take all this stuff. Regardless, when history is used to give you like a clean answer, the myths tend to like kind of fill in the gaps. So what actually is lost? This is where the story gets really interesting because we don't fully know what is lost, but we can guess, right? The library's goal was to collect

every written work in the world and some authors estimate that it holds around like half a million to 750,000 scrolls at its peak. And even if the real number is lower than that, which it presumably was, that is an absurd amount of text. Also remembering every letter on every scroll is handwritten. Everything is done by hand. So one of the most famous discoveries

that comes out of Alexandria is the discovery of the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Now, the Hebrew Bible, if you don't know, this is the Old Testament, basically. And the Septuagint is the Greek translation of that. And it said that the Ptolemy king actually requested this translation in an attempt to boost Alexandria's reputation as the center of world knowledge.

And Jewish scholars from Jerusalem were shipped in under royal escort to actually complete the works. According to tradition, 72 translators each worked separately and somehow produced these identical copies. The final manuscripts became so influential that early Christians actually used the septagint as their primary Old Testament. And New Testament writers would actually quote the septuagint more than any other version. So for thousands of years, if you're reading the Hebrew Bible in the Mediterranean world, odds are that you are reading the septuagint, the Alexandrian version, which is pretty crazy.

And remember, it wasn't just literature. It was a place where people were experimenting and building and mixing and just trying to understand how the world is actually working. So, for example, engineers like Hero of Alexandria were playing. with ideas that wouldn't show up again for nearly 2,000 years. So he created something called the Eola Pile. Now, this is a small metal sphere that spins and it spins using steam. Now, it's a pretty simple device, but what's remarkable about it is that it shows that someone in that building had already figured out the basic fundamental ideas behind the steam engine. I mean, you can see a picture of the Eola Pile now where it's like, yeah, this is a steam engine. Now, they didn't know

exactly how to harness it, but the fundamentals of how the steam engine were working, I mean, in the modern era, the steam engine changed the world. Imagine if they were able to harness that. Now, who knows, maybe they did. But it wasn't just invention. Alexandrian medicine was just as advanced. So the doctors in Alexandria are like dissecting bodies, and they're taking some of the most detailed anatomical notes of the ancient world and refining surgical techniques. They're treating illnesses, documenting symptoms, and they're actually passing down all of their findings for generations and generations and generations, putting them all into scrolls,

storing them in Alexandria, and much of that is lost. And then there's geography. So Eratosthenes, one of the library's most famous scholars, measured the earth, using sunlight and shadows and, you know, some math,

basically trying to find the circumference of the earth, and his results were so close to the real circumference that modern scientists are still amazed at how accurate he was with nothing but sticks and brainpower. It's actually pretty interesting.

Maybe we can put up the image, of how you can basically use like a giant pole and the sun to measure, you know, the earth by using the shadow. It's interesting geometry to actually figure out the earth, which is also another thing. Most people in the ancient world knew that the earth was round. There's this whole thing of like, oh, people thought the earth was flat and that, oh, people were going to fall off the earth. It's a myth. It's not true. But regardless, language was also thriving and like linguistic studies. So scholars are comparing dialects and creating dictionaries and explaining how, you know, Greek was spoken differently in different regions. And this is work that people are still doing

today. You're still modern linguists that are kind of exploring the stuff. And the kind of work that they were doing was essential to a city that was filled with people traveling from all around the world. Another thing that was very important and largely lost was astronomy. So the library was said to have held star catalogs and planetary models and debates about how the universe was arranged and how was formed. And many different scholars were discussing this. Aristarchus of Samos was one of the most famous astronomers. is associated with the library and is said to have proposed the heliocentric model, basically the idea that all of the planets and our solar system are going around the sun as opposed to the

earth. And he was developing this idea 1700 years before Copernicus actually considered the concept. So on top of all of this, the library also housed historical records from cultures across the ancient world. Egyptians, Jews, Greek historians, Babylonian astronomical logs and possibly even texts from India. Anyone reading in these halls would have been exposed to an enormous range of human knowledge. Basically in short, if you dropped a modern scientist into the library

at the peak, they wouldn't even feel like they had gone that far back in time. They would feel like they're in just kind of like an alternate version of, you know, like a college where, you know, people are dealing with a lot of the same information and dissecting it in a lot of the same ways.

And in certain ways, they would actually have more information than we have today because so much of it was lost. And somehow, all of that, the experiments, the ideas, the discoveries are slowly disappearing as the library is fading away. So, what does that mean for Alexandria today, right? Even though so much of this ancient city was destroyed or built over, archaeologists are still uncovering physical pieces of Alexandria. And some of the most interesting finds have only been discovered in the last few years. So one of them is the sunken royal quarter. Okay, this is one of the most famous discoveries that has come about

recently. And that included basically the remains of what's believed to be Cleopatra's palace, a royal harbor, a temple to ISIS, the foundations of the palace, like how they actually built it, even blocks from the original lighthouse of Alexandria, one of those ancient world wonders that we talked about. This area just kind of sank gradually due to like earthquakes and the coastal bedrock of the city and kind of went into the ocean. But it also confirmed ancient accounts of Alexandria's shifting shoreline. So the real reason behind the death of the library, right? If you really boil it all the way down and stick to what the evidence actually supports, the story is pretty simple. Okay. The library of Alexandria didn't burn down in a literal sense.

In one big moment where everything went up in flames, there was a fire. But the real reason is that it slowly fell apart. Over centuries, it was hit again and again with riots and religious persecution and crack down and changes in, you know, the political hegemony that actually controlled the city, right? There's no single villain you can point to and be like, these people came here and started a fire and destroyed all this knowledge, right? But instead, you get this long line of people and events each taking small pieces from the library and its legacy. And that's what makes the story, in my opinion, more interesting, right? If it was one dramatic disaster, you could just be like, all right, don't do that again, you know, like fireproof the building better or,

something. Instead, the real cause is more familiar, right? There's neglect, right? Like, I mean, one detail that I don't even think we really even touched on that much that Joseph Manning told us about is like, because the staff is underpaid, you have less people, you know, maintaining it. And a lot of the scrolls are just like getting damaged and like decomposing due to the, you know, due to the environment. Again, it's not like temperature controlled, so the scrolls are slowly starting to go. And back in the day when you would have someone monitoring what scrolls were being destroyed, you would have people recopy them and recopy them and recopy them and make modern updates. But you have the scrolls decomposing and getting destroyed. You have, you know, one fire from, you know, a few centuries

before it actually goes away and bad priorities and people kind of just forgetting how important this knowledge was until it's too late. And ultimately, that is the real story behind the destruction of the library of Alexandria. I think it's an important story to think about Because it's not, again, it's not some dramatic cataclysm that just is like, oops, it's gone. It's a generational span of politics and violence and priorities that eventually makes all this information go away. And, you know, you have to be concerned that that same thing could happen now. You know, like we have with the Internet so much information. Like, I don't think the Internet is going to literally be destroyed.

I mean, it could, right? AI. Sorry. But like, I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. But it is possible that with so much information that we have, due to political interests and, you know, infighting and misinformation, that it's possible that all of the knowledge that we have is actually just useless because the fake narratives and the misinformation becomes more popular. And people lose their priorities of what actually the purpose of all this knowledge is, which is to try to ascertain sometimes. of legitimate truth and try to operate in good faith to figure out what actually is happening on this earth, what exactly history really is, who the big global players are in the story of humankind. And to me, I don't think the internet is going to go away in all of our digital archives, but it's possible that because of all the things I mentioned, it just might go away in the hearts and minds of, you know, the people that are reading it. So that I think is the thing

that I take away from this that I try to think about where I'm like, all right, like there's a lot of good information out there and I think it is, you know, the, I think it's in the interest of all people to try to pursue all the information and really try to prioritize the good stuff, the stuff that we can verify,

the stuff that, you know, we can cross, collect with, you know, different scholars that we can come to some type of mutual consensus and we can look at all the debates and, you know, all the competing theories, but trying to keep an open mind of what is actually true. Yeah. So I don't know, Christos.

Did you learn anything from this from your sort of Greek satellite college that got ruined? First of all, I'm just very proud of the way you pronounce a lot of the words. Thank you very much. I couldn't have been done without my pal, Zach, that was helped me figure it out. And then also you on the side being like, it's actually tall of me. I was like, okay, thanks. Shout out, Zach. And, yeah, basically the library just needed cloud storage way earlier than it was available.

That is true. That is true. Going to the cloud would have been nice. instead of a cloud of smoke, am I right, though? But again, even if it's backed up on the cloud, you have all these competing forces where it's like people are, like, if the priorities of the Romans

is not to finance these academic institutions, then even if it's all like preserved, like people are just like, yeah, we don't care about that crap, you know? Like you need the, you know, the powerful money sources to be invested in, you know, maintaining information and not necessarily pushing a you know academic agenda but just creating a space where people can go and learn freely and financing really smart people to operate in good faith and try to discover stuff right yep i agree with you christos fully you put it very well thank you guys

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