seven centuries.” 28 Indeed, given hundreds of years’ worth of munificent imperial support, perhaps the most remarkable thing about the library is how little original scholarship it actually ever produced.
Alexandria’s first librarian was a scholar named Zenodotus, who had won fame for his efforts at standardizing the old Homeric texts. A pioneering figure in library science, Zenodotus introduced the first library classification scheme, a rudimentary subject scheme that assigned texts to different rooms based on their subject matter. At first the library had no catalog; the collection was its own catalog. Curators attached a small tag to the end of each scroll, describing the work’s title, author, and subject. Although this elementary bibliographic data constituted the first systematic abstraction of metadata, those data remained physically affixed to the material book. During the library’s initial period, this approach worked well enough, as long as the collection remained small enough that readers could peruse its contents simply by walking around the room. One of the early librarians, Aristophanes of Byzantium, is said to have read the entire collection himself.
While the library served as, in effect, its own catalog during the early years, eventually the collection reached a size of such magnitude that readers needed a better way to navigate it. The poet and librarian Callimachus was the first to undertake the job of creating a separate catalog of the collection, a comprehensive bibliography known as the
Pinakes
, or “Tables of Persons Eminent in Every Branch of Learning Together with a List of Their Writings.” Although he succeeded in cataloging only one-fifth of the entire collection, his catalog was an impressive undertaking, filling no less than 120 scrolls and earning Callimachus a place in history as not only Alexandria’s greatest poet but also the world’s first great bibliographer. Alas, the
Pinakes
failed to survive the library’s destruction, but thanks to descriptions by contemporary writers, we know something of its structure. It consisted of a set of tables, broken down in a top-level distinction between poetry and prose, further divided into subcategories. Interestingly, the
Pinakes
was not a classification of works but of authors (apparently, the Alexandrian librarians saw no problem with literary typecasting). From what we know of its structure, the classification broke down as follows:
Poetry
Prose
Dramatic poets
Philosophers
Tragedy
Orators
Comedy
Historians
Epic poets
Writers on medicine
Lyric poets
Miscellaneous
Within each table, authors’ names appeared in alphabetical order, accompanied by a brief biographical description. The catalog was the library itself, with each room representing a broad subject area: verse, prose, literature, science, and so forth. As the Alexandrian collection mushroomed to over 500,000 volumes, the task of maintaining the catalog by hand outstripped the ability of the librarians to keep pace. Over time the library began to institute a two-tiered system that gave preference to major authors, ensuring their historical longevity at the expense of lesser scribes.
The story of Alexandria’s demise has long been the subject of competing myths. One story lays the blame for its death at the feet of Julius Caesar, who is said to have burned the library as a defensive ploy against a storming Alexandrian mob. Another story sets the blame 700 years later, at the feet of the Muslim conqueror Amr, who is said to have followed the advice of a caliph who advised him: “Touching the books you mention [at Alexandria], if what is written in them agrees with the Book of God, they are not required; if it disagrees, they are not desired. Destroy them therefore.” 29 Other scholars believe the library persisted in some form until about 270 AD, when the emperor Aurelian laid waste to the city while fighting arabid insurgency. Whatever the circumstances of its
Alexandria’s first librarian was a scholar named Zenodotus, who had won fame for his efforts at standardizing the old Homeric texts. A pioneering figure in library science, Zenodotus introduced the first library classification scheme, a rudimentary subject scheme that assigned texts to different rooms based on their subject matter. At first the library had no catalog; the collection was its own catalog. Curators attached a small tag to the end of each scroll, describing the work’s title, author, and subject. Although this elementary bibliographic data constituted the first systematic abstraction of metadata, those data remained physically affixed to the material book. During the library’s initial period, this approach worked well enough, as long as the collection remained small enough that readers could peruse its contents simply by walking around the room. One of the early librarians, Aristophanes of Byzantium, is said to have read the entire collection himself.
While the library served as, in effect, its own catalog during the early years, eventually the collection reached a size of such magnitude that readers needed a better way to navigate it. The poet and librarian Callimachus was the first to undertake the job of creating a separate catalog of the collection, a comprehensive bibliography known as the
Pinakes
, or “Tables of Persons Eminent in Every Branch of Learning Together with a List of Their Writings.” Although he succeeded in cataloging only one-fifth of the entire collection, his catalog was an impressive undertaking, filling no less than 120 scrolls and earning Callimachus a place in history as not only Alexandria’s greatest poet but also the world’s first great bibliographer. Alas, the
Pinakes
failed to survive the library’s destruction, but thanks to descriptions by contemporary writers, we know something of its structure. It consisted of a set of tables, broken down in a top-level distinction between poetry and prose, further divided into subcategories. Interestingly, the
Pinakes
was not a classification of works but of authors (apparently, the Alexandrian librarians saw no problem with literary typecasting). From what we know of its structure, the classification broke down as follows:
Poetry
Prose
Dramatic poets
Philosophers
Tragedy
Orators
Comedy
Historians
Epic poets
Writers on medicine
Lyric poets
Miscellaneous
Within each table, authors’ names appeared in alphabetical order, accompanied by a brief biographical description. The catalog was the library itself, with each room representing a broad subject area: verse, prose, literature, science, and so forth. As the Alexandrian collection mushroomed to over 500,000 volumes, the task of maintaining the catalog by hand outstripped the ability of the librarians to keep pace. Over time the library began to institute a two-tiered system that gave preference to major authors, ensuring their historical longevity at the expense of lesser scribes.
The story of Alexandria’s demise has long been the subject of competing myths. One story lays the blame for its death at the feet of Julius Caesar, who is said to have burned the library as a defensive ploy against a storming Alexandrian mob. Another story sets the blame 700 years later, at the feet of the Muslim conqueror Amr, who is said to have followed the advice of a caliph who advised him: “Touching the books you mention [at Alexandria], if what is written in them agrees with the Book of God, they are not required; if it disagrees, they are not desired. Destroy them therefore.” 29 Other scholars believe the library persisted in some form until about 270 AD, when the emperor Aurelian laid waste to the city while fighting arabid insurgency. Whatever the circumstances of its
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