Archaeological Find Supports Ancient Greek Explorer’s Account of Britons

The Greek Reporter ^ | August 26, 2023 | Paula Tsoni

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Contrary to myth, Julius Caesar didn’t burn the Great Library. He was holed up in the Alexandrian citadel area, and that’s where the library was. The other old name for it was The Ships’ Library, since the collection was started by the port officials searching incoming vessels for books (scrolls), taking them to Ptolemy’s posse of librarians, who copied them in short order, and returned the copies to the ships. In Caesar’s “Civil War”, he describes how he sent out what we’d call commandos to set fire to the enemy ships in the harbor, and the fire spread in one spot to a warehouse at dockside and like ships, it was destroyed, along with “some books which chanced to be there”.

The Library continued to exist and grow throughout the rest of Roman and Byzantine times. When the muzzies conquered Alexandria, the Caliph ordered it destroyed, without looking over the collection, because if any books had information contrary to the Koran, they were heretical, and if they agreed with the Koran, they were superfluous.

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I had always heard it was the muslims that burned the library.