Question by milthistagent: Based on ancient sources, What is your assessment of the items in the Great Library of Alexandria?
In other words, What do you think resided in the Great Library at Alexandria (what topics, information that could solve present mysteries on ancient peoples?) and could some of it reside somewhere unknown to us?
This is not a question to promote National Treasure. But I’m curious. If it was the greatest ancient library in the world, it must of contained more information on what they thought and knew than anywhere else. Why wouldn’t you make copies of that, if not to keep the knowledge alive.
Best answer:
Answer by Wounded Duck
Just a bunch of scrolls.
What do you think? Answer below!
It probobly contained just about every written thing ever, either in original form or a copy. Topics and information that these writing covered was probobly just about anything you could want. I would image they were texts on philosophy, mathematics, early sciences, astronomy, histories, encyclopedias, and maybe even texts that taught translation because everything was probobly written in many different languages.
Sources indicate that there may have been as many as 400,000 scrolls in the library, that’s an awful lot to copy by hand. It is almost certain though that there were copies of many of the items elsewhere, but much will have been lost over the centuries. It is quite possible that there are still scrolls and books waiting to be discovered.
The Great Library of Alexandria was not like the libraries of today. The idea of copies is in fact what the Great Library contained and many originals of other civilizations now lost to the rest of mankind. It was full of technologies I’m sure, advanced for their time, medicines that today we still search for, it was the history of all humanity forever lost to all. Think of the civilizations we will never know of that at one fleeting moment in time existed now forever gone. One can only hope fragments of these things are scattered through out the world and once again will come together so all people may glance back in time with amazement. As for making copies, you answered your own question in a way. Knowledge is power and was not meant to be shared by all at that point in history.