Library of Alexandria discovered

I've been reading along, and thank everyone for the various contributions to this thread....but, since this is an entirely anonymous forum we cannot ever know WHO is contributing to the discussion.

My impression from the OP is that the archeological foundations of the ancient Library of Alexandria have been discovered, under-water.

What hasn't seemed to be discussed, yet, is that at some point in ancient times the majority of the works of accumulated Human knowledge, after being located into one location, were subsequently burned as the city was under siege, from an invading Army.

THIS is the fate of the Library of Alexandria --- politics as usual, even if it was two or three millenia ago. Given that time-frame, of course, Nature will change coastlines, and the Sea will inundate, as Earth sea-levels fluctuate....

Imagine where we would be, today, if that amount of knowledge had NOT been lost....no 'dark ages' to have set us back for centuries.....the 'renaissance' only began in the 1600s.....nearly two millenia later!

EDIT: oops, wrote '1400s', meant '1600s'....

[edit on 12/26/0808 by weedwhacker]

I thought that the Library was lost when the Romans burnt Alexandria to the ground. Most knowledge of that day was written on papyrus scrolls which are easily set ablaze.

Nice thread, I'm reading a book on the Library as we speak.

Question for all that are reading this threat

What was in the Library?

There are a number of written commentaries on what was in it, book lists and bibliographies.

There were also other libraries, Alex being the most famous. It also contained a good portion of the West's written materials known in the classical age. It didn't have anything (only Egypt as far as is known had any contribution) from the ancient civilizations and nothing from India, Sumer, China, Harappa, Minoan, Hittites, etc.

So when the Library was open and the materials being read what was said about it?

Let's just hope that religion and politics doesn't do that to social and technological development again !

It really bothers me to talk to people who don't have a proper background in world history; because they have skewed opinions based on things people with similarily limited historical knowledge scopes have brainwashed them into believing. IE (extreme examples) people who think the world is flat, or people who believe that waking up early on Sunday morning to go hang out in a large open room and sing about their imaginary friends together.

Unfortunately everything is driven by 3 things as you learn in economics,
Fear, Greed, and Necessity.

I typed up about 8 paragraphs explaining what I mean, but I decided that is not the scope of this thread.

It would be nice if they can do some document recovery in the library of Alexandria, i've always been curious about what was lost

We may find some of the materials that were written at that time but were not at the Alex Library in the Villa of Papyri which contains some 1,800 scrolls and was located at Herculaneum.

Villa

At the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, the valuable library was packed in cases ready to be moved to safety when it was overtaken by pyroclastic flow; the eruption eventually deposited some 20-25 m of volcanic ash over the site, charring the scrolls but preserving them— the only surviving library of Antiquity— as the ash hardened to form tuff.[1]

Using multi-spectral imaging, a new technique that was developed in the early 1990s it is possible to read the burned papyri. With multi-spectral imaging, many pictures of the illegible papyri are taken using different filters in the infrared or in the ultraviolet range, finely tuned to capture certain wavelengths of light. Thus, the optimum spectral portion can be found for distinguishing ink from paper on the blackened papyrus surface. Non-destructive CT scans will, it is hoped, provide breakthroughs in reading the fragile unopened scrolls without destroying them in the process.

I didn't see a mention of Callimachus

Callimachus (c. 305–c. 240 bc) was also the librarian of the great library at Alexandria and is often said to have succeeded Zenodotus. Callimachus compiled the Pinakes (“Tablets”), a vast catalogue raisonné of the chief authors, with biographical and bibliographical information. an annotated catalog in 120 volumes of all the books in the library, from Homeric manuscripts to the latest cookbooks

Callimachus is said to have written a book opposing the chief Peripatetic critic of the time, Praxiphanes, and is widely held to have criticized...

From www.answers.com...

The library collection at the Library of Alexandria contained more than 120,000 scrolls, which were grouped together by subject matter and stored in bins. Each bin carried a label with painted tablets hung above the stored parchments. Pinakes was named after these tablets and are a set of books or scrolls of index lists. The bins gave bibliographical information for every scroll. A typical entry started with a title. It also provided the author's name, birthplace, his father's name, any teachers he trained under, and his educational background. It contained a brief biography of the author and a list of the author's publications. The entry had the first line of the work, a summary of its contents, the name of the author, and information about where the scroll came from.

Callimachus' system divided works into six genres and five sections of prose. They were rhetoric, law, epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, medicine, mathematics, natural science and miscellanies. Each category was alphabetized by author. The Pinakes proved indispensable to librarians for centuries. It became a model to use all over the Mediterranean. Its influence can be traced to medieval times, even to the Arabic counterpart of the tenth century: Ibn-Al-Nadim's Al-Fihrist ("Index").

A description of what and how the Egyptian materials were given into the Library

Egyptian materials in the Library of Alexandria


(ex tags)

[edit on Fri Dec 26 2008 by Jbird]

So it happened in 2004? Hm, I wish there was more out there .. maybe about scrolls or the like still being intact and readable. One day!!! One day I hope to hear talks about all the history that was lost there.

The person that posted the facts about the science that went into the Mount V scrolls, that's a really good find. Look at how much science they are putting into reading these things. That's amazing! I'll be sure to lurk around this thread!

Flagged.

I dont understand why there isnt LOTS more information on this, i mean this is one of if not the greatest discovery in the last millenia. Who knows the amount of information that could have been preserved; books, manuscripts, scrolls, engravings, etc.

reply to post by Quiintus


Excellent find. The history of the Library of Alexandria has always intrigued, saddened, and angered me. What a wonderful vault of ancient knowledge completely destroyed for no justifiable reason. Humans and their destructive nature is infuriating. There's no telling what literary wonders and historical records were lost in its destruction. It is great, however, they may have at least found the site.

reply to post by Hanslune


Check this out, it's from the link to Raising Alexandria.

One column had a diameter of 7.5 feet. Corinthian capitals, obelisks and huge stone sphinxes littered the seafloor. Curiously, half a dozen columns carved in the Egyptian style had markings dating back to Ramses II, nearly a millennium before Alexandria was founded. The Greek rulers who built Alexandria had taken ancient Egyptian monuments from along the Nile to provide gravitas for their nouveau riche city.

Linkie

That's AMAZING to me. And really what someone said earlier about the paws of the sphinx, I wouldn't put it past them to do that. Really, I don't think they would have done such a great job and not have an emergency plan, but it may be scattered out. Weren't the dead sea scrolls found in random caves? The information contained in Alexandria could have been scattered to make it harder for invading enemies etc to destroy the knowledge.. maybe we just aren't looking hard enough? I dunno!

Actually just did a short search on the dead sea scrolls and they pretty much scattered the scrolls so the enemy couln't destroy it all. Really neat stuff!

The Scrolls appear to be the library of a Jewish sect. The library was hidden away in caves around the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt (A.D. 66-70) as the Roman army advanced against the rebel Jews.

Linker

I've been searching, including in the depths of the ATS archive. Nothing on this discovery - Egyptian sources are either nonchalant or analysis is still continuing on the site.

BBC are the only source for this discovery. One cannot even locate pictures of the site or its location. How peculiar.

reply to post by AshleyD

Excellent find. The history of the Library of Alexandria has always intrigued, saddened, and angered me. What a wonderful vault of ancient knowledge completely destroyed for no justifiable reason. Humans and their destructive nature is infuriating. There's no telling what literary wonders and historical records were lost in its destruction. It is great, however, they may have at least found the site.

Yes, I feel the same way. When I first learned about the Library of Alexandria, I was completely saddened. (And pissed off )

I still hold out hope that there are some still saved or at least some copies out there somewhere. Have you seen the movie "National Treasure"? Yep, I still hold a hope

I still wonder what they had at the library even to this day.

[edit on 26-12-2008 by Deaf Alien]

Originally posted by Deaf Alien
I still wonder what they had at the library even to this day.

Undeniable proof of Jesus' existence, no doubt!

That is, if it was destroyed during one of the other suspected times and not by Julius, therefore before Jesus' birth.

Oh, and edit to add just in case: I'm only kidding. It's possible, of course, but the above is just me being silly.

[edit on 12/26/2008 by AshleyD]

If you believe the conspiracy theories, which are partly true, the Vatican probably holds a significant amount of the content from the library.

reply to post by AshleyD

Undeniable proof of Jesus' existence, no doubt!

That will be the day.

That would be earth shattering. However, I still think he preached a different kind of Christianity than what we have today

reply to post by infinite

the Vatican probably holds a significant amount of the content from the library.

That is without a doubt. I am convinced they hold a massive amount of information about our history.

thanks to OP for the finding of the information

i really wondered all my life what might have happend to the plethora of ancient wisedom, even if it really burnt down as it has been claimed all centuries.
but could that have really happend without a single hint?
hardly to belive.
nothing really vanished without a trace.

if the library is as well on the bottom of the mediterian sea, like many of the ancient alexandria, not many of the ancient scrolls will be readable anymore.

reply to post by infinite



that is for sure.
vatican is one of the best secret keepers in the univers.
why?
to let people remain ignorant and stupid!

maybe as well a reason why the library was burnt?

knowledge was always dangorous for the ruling class.

Originally posted by Anonymous ATS
I thought that the Library was lost when the Romans burnt Alexandria to the ground. Most knowledge of that day was written on papyrus scrolls which are easily set ablaze.

I think the one thing they do know is that it may have been burnt. But by whom and when, they say it's difficult to say. It may have been burnt more than once.

This is what it says in Wiki

Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the destruction of the Library:

1. Julius Caesar's Fire in The Alexandrian War, in 48 BC
2. The attack of Aurelian in the Third century AD;
3. The decree of Theophilus in 391 AD;
4. The Muslim conquest in 642 AD or thereafter.

Conclusion

The ancient accounts by Plutarch,[9] Ammianus Marcellinus, and Orosius agree that Caesar accidentally burned the Library down during his visit to Alexandria in 48 BC. Although not confirmed in the accounts of contemporary historians, these accounts do suggest that the Library was a thing of the past when Plutarch was writing around AD 100. Strabo, who lived in Alexandria in 20 BC, wrote about the Library in such a way as to imply that it no longer existed in his time.[23]

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[edit on Fri Dec 26 2008 by Jbird]

Be sure to let us know if they find a heap of charcoal. If so, then they will have found the library stacks.

At least that is the official historical account. I doubt that the Romans really burned all of the books. The Romans were not fools and they would have known the value of the maps that the library contained. I would bet that the maps were hauled back to Rome.

The Romans were also huge fans of Greek philosophy. So, they would most likely have taken the best writings out of the library and these would also have gone to Rome as spoils of war.

Originally posted by serbsta
Flagged.

I dont understand why there isnt LOTS more information on this, i mean this is one of if not the greatest discovery in the last millenia. Who knows the amount of information that could have been preserved; books, manuscripts, scrolls, engravings, etc.

We all know these things take time. I think when I initially heard it I got really excited until I realized that it was going to take a while before we actually hear anything new about it. Maybe there's someone we can e-mail to find out how it's all going.