A quiz question · hard
When was the Library of Alexandria definitively destroyed?
All three famous destruction stories — Caesar (48 BC), the Patriarch Theophilus (391 AD), and Caliph Omar (642 AD) — are partially true at most. The Mouseion was likely damaged in Caesar's Alexandrian War, declined through the Roman period, and the satellite library at the Serapeum was destroyed by the patriarch's mob in 391 AD. By the Arab conquest of 642 there was no library left to burn.
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The Library of Alexandria The Library of Alexandria was the largest collection of texts in the ancient Mediterranean. It was founded by the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt in the early 3rd century BC and declined gradually over the following six centuries. The single-fire-destroys-everything story is a myth.
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