Never found · building · from c. 290 BCE

The royal Library

βιβλιοθήκη

Known · AttestedExistence: AttestedConjectured · Our reconstructionLocation: Never foundConjectured · Our reconstructionForm: Conjecture

Never found.

The kings' book collection, beside the Mouseion or within it, which contemporaries and later writers thought the largest in the Greek world. Its heads were royal appointees and often royal tutors. Ancient figures for its size run from 40,000 to 700,000 rolls and cannot be trusted; tens of thousands of rolls is a safer order of magnitude.

The evidence: No ancient author describes the building or says where it stood, and Strabo does not mention it. A bibliothēkē could be shelves, a collection or a room, so most scholars picture book-rooms off the Mouseion's colonnades rather than one great hall. The granite block inscribed "Dioskourides, 3 rolls" once shown as a library bin is almost certainly a statue base.

Within The Brucheion (royal quarter).

Library?
On the plan of the city, in its own line: solid where the position is known, dashed where it is conjectured.

This place through time

  1. from c. 290 BCE · Its years, as the sources give them.
  2. c. 295–283 BCE · The Mouseion and the Library founded Known: probable
  3. c. 285–260 BCE · Zenodotus edits Homer; the drama sorted for editing Known: probable
  4. c. 270s–240s BCE · Callimachus compiles the Pinakes Known: attested
  5. c. 260s–245 BCE · Apollonius of Rhodes at the head of the Library Known: probable, disputed
  6. c. 246–222 BCE · A story told by Galen: the books from the ships Legend: told story
  7. c. 245 BCE · Eratosthenes summoned; he measures the Earth Known: attested
  8. c. 200–180 BCE · Aristophanes of Byzantium; the rivalry with Pergamon Known: attested
  9. c. 175–145 BCE · Homer's text settles in Aristarchus's time Known: attested
  10. 145 BCE · Ptolemy VIII drives out the scholars Known: attested
  11. c. 81–96 CE · Domitian sends copyists to Alexandria Known: attested
  12. 272–273 CE · Aurelian's war ruins the palace quarter Known: attested
  13. 1847–1848 CE · A story of the 1840s: the Library's book bin Legend: told story

Drawn after

  • after The library in the sanctuary of Athena, Pergamon (2nd century BCE) Rooms behind the upper storey of the sanctuary's north stoa, identified as the Attalid royal library by the German excavators in the 1880s. The largest has a stone podium along the walls, set off from them by an air gap of about half a metre, holes for anchoring wooden cases, and the base of a statue of Athena. It is the nearest Hellenistic model for a royal book-room with a cult statue, though Coqueugniot doubts the identification.
  • after The Library of Celsus, Ephesus (c. 110s–135 CE) Built by Tiberius Julius Aquila as library and tomb for his father, the consul Celsus, whose sarcophagus lies beneath the apse. One hall of about 16.7 by 10.9 metres with rectangular wall niches for wooden book cupboards in tiers, a gallery to reach the upper ones, an apse for a statue, and a double wall with a gap, usually explained as a guard against damp. The best model for a Roman-period book-room; some three centuries later than the Ptolemaic foundation.
  • after The Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum (rolls buried 79 CE) The only ancient library found with its rolls in place: more than 1,800 carbonised rolls and fragments, mostly Epicurean philosophy. The excavators of the 1750s describe a small room with wooden shelving round the walls to about a man's height and a free-standing case in the middle, reachable from both sides. The best evidence for how rolls actually lay on shelves.

In the show

Sources (5)
  • Letter of Aristeas 9–11
  • Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 5.203e
  • Tzetzes, Prolegomena de comoedia Koster XIa I–II
  • R. S. Bagnall, "Alexandria: Library of Dreams", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146.4 (2002) 348–362
  • L. Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001) 31–47