Library of Alexandria and catalogue (Pinakes)
Biblioteca universal y catálogo (Biblioteca y Museo de Alejandría)
- Date
- c. 285 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Alexandria, Egypt
- Credited to
- Ptolemy I and II; Demetrius of Phalerum; catalogue of Callimachus
- People
- 👤 Ptolomeo I365 BCE–285 BCE
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A state institution that gathered hundreds of thousands of scrolls with the aim of possessing all written knowledge, with a systematic catalogue (Pinakes) and salaried scholars. The first state-funded research centre.
Its destruction was a gradual process (48 BCE, 3rd century, 4th century, 642 CE), not a single fire; the figures for scrolls (400,000-700,000) are unverifiable.
What it led to
- Philology, textual criticism and canonical editions of Homer
- Concentrated Hellenistic science: Euclid, Eratosthenes, Herophilus, Ctesibius, a visiting Archimedes
- Systematic translation (the Septuagint) and rival libraries (Pergamon)
- A model for the library and academy up to the modern university
Built on
Made possible
- Euclidean axiomatic geometryc. 300 BCE
- Aristophanes of Byzantium's punctuation dotsc. 200 BCE
- House of Wisdom and the translation movementc. 830
- Bibliographic catalogue
- Euclidean geometry
- Dionysius Thrax's grammar
- Measurement of Earth's circumference