The chronology

331 BCE

Alexander has a city laid out on the limestone ridge between the sea and Lake Mareotis, opposite the island of Pharos, and Deinocrates of Rhodes plans its grid.

321/320 BCE

Ptolemy, satrap of Egypt, diverts Alexander's funeral cortège to Memphis.

c. 300 BCE

Proclus places Euclid in the reign of the first Ptolemy.

c. 297 BCE

The exiled Peripatetic statesman, pupil of Theophrastus and former governor of Athens, comes to Ptolemy I and advises him to read books on kingship, "because what friends dare not say to kings is written in books".

c. 295–283 BCE

Probably late in Ptolemy I's reign, a shrine of the Muses with salaried scholars, a covered walk, an exedra and a common dining hall is set up in the palace quarter, on the model of the Mouseion of Aristotle's school at Athens.

c. 280s BCE

The tower of white stone on the tip of Pharos island is finished, dedicated by Sostratus of Cnidus "for the safety of sailors".

c. 280s–270s BCE

Manetho, a priest of Sebennytos, gives Greek readers the dynasties of Egypt in his Aegyptiaca.

c. 285–260 BCE

Zenodotus of Ephesus, who by the Suda's account headed the libraries (no earlier head is known), probably makes the first critical edition of Homer and marks suspect lines with the obelos.

283/282 BCE

Ptolemy II Philadelphus, co-regent from 285/284, becomes sole king.

c. 280–250 BCE

The Jewish community of Alexandria probably produces the Greek Pentateuch in these decades, the core of the Septuagint.

c. 270s–240s BCE

In 120 books Callimachus of Cyrene lists the Greek authors worth reading by class, each with a life, titles, opening words and length in lines: the first great bibliography.

c. 260s–245 BCE

The poet of the Argonautica, a pupil of Callimachus, is the first name to survive, after a break, in a papyrus list of royal tutors usually read as the Library's heads.

c. 246–222 BCE

Galen tells, some four centuries later, that Ptolemy III had every book on ships putting in at Alexandria copied and kept the originals labelled "from the ships", and that he borrowed Athens's official texts of the tragedians for fifteen talents and never sent them back.

c. 246–222 BCE

On the hill of Rhakotis, the old Egyptian quarter, Ptolemy III builds a temple and precinct for Sarapis.

c. 245 BCE

Ptolemy III calls Eratosthenes of Cyrene from Athens to Alexandria to head the Library; the papyrus list puts him after Apollonius, the Suda before.

c. 200–180 BCE

Aristophanes heads the Library, edits the poets and writes a book correcting and supplementing Callimachus's Pinakes.

c. 175–145 BCE

Aristarchus of Samothrace, tutor to the royal children, writes his editions and commentaries on Homer.

145 BCE

Taking Alexandria, Ptolemy VIII drives out the grammarians, philosophers, physicians and artists who had backed his rivals.

late 48 BCE

Besieged in the palace quarter, Caesar burns the Egyptian fleet and the fire spreads to the docks.

32 BCE

Plutarch reports that Calvisius, accusing Antony in Rome, said he had given Cleopatra the libraries of Pergamon, 200,000 single-roll books, and adds that most of Calvisius's charges were thought to be lies.

30 BCE

After Actium and the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian annexes Egypt.

c. 25–20 BCE

Strabo, living in Alexandria, writes the only eyewitness description of the Mouseion: a covered walk, an exedra with seats, a great hall where the learned men eat together, property in common, a priest.

c. 20 BCE–50 CE

The Jewish Platonist reads the Septuagint allegorically, describes the contemplative Therapeutae by Lake Mareotis, and records libraries among the porticoes of the Caesareum.

13/12 BCE

Two obelisks of Thutmose III are set up before the Caesareum on the harbour, on bronze crabs whose inscriptions give the year.

38 CE

Under the prefect Flaccus the Jews of Alexandria are attacked and driven into one quarter.

41–54 CE

Claudius founds a new wing of the Mouseion where his Greek histories are read aloud each year.

c. 81–96 CE

To restore Rome's burned libraries, Domitian sends scribes to Alexandria to copy and correct texts.

c. 100–300 CE

The treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Asclepius and related texts, put in the mouth of Hermes Trismegistus, are probably written in Greek in Roman Egypt, where Greek philosophy met Egyptian temple tradition.

115–117 CE

The rising of the Jews of Egypt and Cyrene under Trajan ends with the community of Alexandria, the largest outside Judaea, destroyed.

c. 120–160 CE

Alexandria produces the great Gnostic teachers.

127–c. 170 CE

Ptolemy records observations at Alexandria from 127 to 141, sets up the Canobic Inscription in 146/147, and writes the Almagest, then the Tetrabiblos, which gave Western astrology its classical form.

130 CE

Visiting Egypt, Hadrian puts questions to the professors of the Mouseion and answers them himself, by the account of the Historia Augusta.

c. 180–231 CE

Clement teaches a Christian gnosis steeped in Greek philosophy until the persecution of 202/203.

215 CE

Blaming Aristotle for Alexander's death, Caracalla abolishes the common meals and privileges of the Aristotelian philosophers at Alexandria, and his troops massacre the city's young men.

232–243 CE

At twenty-seven Plotinus finds in Ammonius the teacher he had been seeking and studies with him for eleven years, then joins Gordian III's expedition to learn the wisdom of the Persians and the Indians.

272–273 CE

In the war that recovers Egypt from Palmyra the city's walls fall and it loses most of the Brucheion, "long the dwelling place of distinguished men".

297–298 CE

Diocletian takes Alexandria after a siege.

c. 364 CE

Theon observes eclipses in 364 and writes commentaries on Euclid and Ptolemy.

21 July 365 CE

An earthquake under the sea sends a wave over the coast.

391 or 392 CE

After Theodosius forbids sacrifice, Bishop Theophilus's campaign ends with the pagans who held the temple dispersed, the colossal statue of Sarapis broken, and the temple pulled down.

March 415 CE

Hypatia, Theon's daughter, who revised her father's work on Ptolemy and taught Plato to the city's elite, is killed by a Christian mob in the feud between the prefect Orestes and Bishop Cyril.

c. 416 CE

Orosius writes that he had himself seen book-chests in temples, emptied, he was told, by "our own men in our own times" when the temples were plundered.

c. 425–430 CE

The young Proclus studies rhetoric and then philosophy in Alexandria before going on to Athens, where he heads the Platonic school for half a century.

c. 430–610s CE

Hierocles, Hermias and his son Ammonius, Olympiodorus, John Philoponus and Stephanus keep Plato and Aristotle alive in Alexandria.

c. 450 CE

Along a portico in the city centre stand some twenty halls with tiers of stone benches and a raised seat for the teacher.

529 CE

In Alexandria John Philoponus writes Against Proclus on the Eternity of the World, turning Aristotle's physics against the pagan doctrine that the world has no beginning.

641–642 CE

In November 641 the city surrenders by treaty; in September 642 the Byzantine garrison sails.

c. 1200 CE

‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, who was in Egypt about 1200, mentions in passing the library which ‘Amr burned with ‘Umar's permission.

before 1248 CE

Ibn al-Qifti tells the full story: John the Grammarian asks for the books, the caliph replies, and the books heat the city's baths for six months.

1303 and 1323 CE

Two earthquakes, in 1303 and 1323, bring down what remained of the tower.

1349 CE

Coming back through Alexandria in 1349, Ibn Battuta finds the lighthouse so ruined that he cannot enter it or climb to its door.

1419 CE

Cristoforo Buondelmonti buys a manuscript of the Hieroglyphica on Andros and brings it to Florence, where it feeds the Renaissance's Hermetic Egypt.

1463–1471 CE

Marsilio Ficino translates the Corpus Hermeticum from a Greek manuscript for Cosimo de' Medici in 1463; it is printed in 1471.

1477–1479 CE

The sultan Qaitbay builds a fort on the site of the Pharos, partly from its fallen stone.

1614 CE

Isaac Casaubon shows from their language and ideas that the Hermetic treatises are not the work of an Egyptian sage of the age of Moses but of writers of the Christian era.

1663 CE

Edward Pococke's Latin edition of Bar Hebraeus brings the story of ‘Umar's order into European learning.

1720 CE

John Toland's Hypatia (1720) makes her a learned and virtuous woman torn to pieces by the clergy; Voltaire and Gibbon follow him.

1776–1788 CE

In the Decline and Fall Gibbon rejects the story of ‘Umar's order (chapter 51), writes that the Serapeum's library was pillaged or destroyed (chapter 28), and shapes the modern story of Hypatia's death (chapter 47).

1847–1848 CE

Scholars of the 1840s hail a granite block inscribed "Dioskourides, 3 rolls", found in Alexandria, as a storage bin of the Library.

1853 CE

Charles Kingsley's novel Hypatia carries her legend to a wide Victorian readership.

1866 CE

Mahmoud el-Falaki traces the ancient street grid under the modern city by trenching, for a map made for Napoleon III.

1878 and 1881 CE

The two obelisks that stood before the Caesareum are shipped to London in 1878 and New York in 1881.

1902 CE

Alfred J.

1914 CE

The papyrus handbook of learned lists that names the royal tutors from Apollonius to Cydas is published, and read from then on as a list of the Library's heads.

1943–1945 CE

Excavating the Serapeum, Alan Rowe finds foundation deposits with plaques in Greek and hieroglyphic Egyptian naming Ptolemy III as the temple's builder.

1945 CE

Coptic codices are found near Nag Hammadi, some 600 km south of Alexandria in Upper Egypt.

1960 CE

The Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology begins the excavations that will uncover the late antique lecture halls.

1980 CE

Carl Sagan's Cosmos ends a sequence on the Library's destruction with Hypatia's death, joining the two.

1992 and 1994 CE

Franck Goddio's team begins surveying the drowned royal harbour and Antirhodos in 1992; from 1994 Jean-Yves Empereur's team maps the blocks and statues off the Qaitbay fort.

16 October 2002

A new library opens by the eastern harbour, near the presumed site of the old palace quarter: a homage, not a reconstruction.

2009 CE

Alejandro Amenábar's film Agora puts Hypatia at the sack of the Serapeum and its library.