during the reign of the Abbasids, the site was centered around an enormous library stocked with Persian, Indian and Greek manuscripts on mathematics, astronomy, science, medicine and philosophy. First established in the early ninth century A.D. The Iraqi city of Baghdad was once one of the world’s centers of learning and culture, and perhaps no institution was more integral to its development than the House of Wisdom. Portrait of Razi polymath, physician and alchemist in his laboratory in Bagdad, Iraq. As a result, the city may have later become a leading production center for parchment paper. There is even a legend that Egypt’s Ptolemaic dynasty halted shipments of papyrus to Pergamum in the hope of slowing its growth. Both sites sought to amass the most complete collections of texts, and they developed rival schools of thought and criticism. According to the ancient chronicler Pliny the Elder, the Library of Pergamum eventually became so famous that it was considered to be in “keen competition” with the Library of Alexandria. It was housed in a temple complex devoted to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, and is believed to have comprised four rooms-three for the library’s contents and another that served as a meeting space for banquets and academic conferences. by members of the Attalid dynasty, the Library of Pergamum, located in what is now Turkey, was once home to a treasure trove of some 200,000 scrolls. The Library of PergamumĬonstructed in the third century B.C. during the reign of the Roman emperor Aurelian, while others believe that it came even later during the fourth century. Some scholars argue that it finally met its end in 270 A.D. But while the blaze may have damaged the library, most historians now believe that it continued to exist in some form for several more centuries. when it supposedly burned after Julius Caesar accidentally set fire to Alexandria’s harbor during a battle against the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy XIII. The great library’s demise is traditionally dated to 48 B.C. At different times, the likes of Strabo, Euclid and Archimedes were among the academics on site. The library and its associated research institute attracted scholars from around the Mediterranean, many of whom lived on-site and drew government stipends while they conducted research and copied its contents. Little is known about the site’s physical layout, but at its peak, it may have included over 500,000 papyrus scrolls containing works of literature and texts on history, law, mathematics and science. The result was the Library of Alexandria, which eventually became the intellectual jewel of the ancient world. Private Collection.įollowing Alexander the Great’s death in 323 B.C., control of Egypt fell to his former general Ptolemy I Soter, who sought to establish a center of learning in the city of Alexandria. The Burning of the Library of Alexandria, 1876. An inscription in one of the texts warns that if anyone steals its tablets, the gods will “cast him down” and “erase his name, his seed, in the land.” 2. Interestingly, even though Ashurbanipal acquired many of his tablets through plunder, he seems to have been particularly worried about theft. Archaeologists later stumbled upon its ruins in the mid-19th century, and the majority of its contents are now kept in the British Museum in London. Most of its titles were archival documents, religious incantations and scholarly texts, but it also housed several works of literature including the 4,000-year-old “Epic of Gilgamesh.” The book-loving Ashurbanipal compiled much of his library by looting works from Babylonia and the other territories he conquered. Located in Nineveh in modern-day Iraq, the site included a trove of some 30,000 cuneiform tablets organized according to subject matter. for the “royal contemplation” of the Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal. The world’s oldest known library was founded sometime in the 7th century B.C.
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