Library of Alexandria discovered

BBC News ^ | Wednesday, 12 May, 2004 | Dr David Whitehouse

[VadeRetro]

Library of Alexandria discovered

Guess I have to return that book now ...

[LanPB01]

I hope your humor and Freeper etiquette improve the longer you're here.

[jpsb]

Caesar burned it by accident, he set fire to an enemy fleet and the fire spread. Terrible lose, Muslims of 7th century would not have burned it. Todays Muslims might.

[VadeRetro]

Somewhere I've read that the library was destroyed when the Byzantine general Belisarius retook Alexandria from the Vandals in Justinian's reign (mid-500s AD). Or you could just say that the destruction has been put by someone or other at every hiccup of history from about 50 BC to 700 AD.

[inflation]

It isn't humor when you talk about burning down buldings that that are the only place for some kids to get books from. The comment was made in bad taste and I think you know that.

[jpsb]

Really? Hmmm, I thought the early Muslims were keepers of knowledge not destroyers. Got a source? I'd like to read up on that.

[Bon mots]

So it took 2000 years to find a library, and we knew what city it was in. But they expect Bush to find WMDs in a place where they were deliberately hidden, and we don't know where?

[nopardons]

bttt

[rwfromkansas]

awesome

[xsrdx]

Charles E. Beatley, Jr. Central Library

5005 Duke Street

Alexandria, VA 22304-2903

[Ignatz]

It was not the only fire - and what ever was left of the library was done in by the Arabs - they used the books to heat their baths for months.

Arabs used to take baths?!? Wow. Who knew?!
Must have been the non-Muslim Arabs.

[Phsstpok]

...Socrates left no writings....

yes, but many of his lectures and sayings were written down by his students and thus preserved for posterity. Among the most famous were his last words:

"I drank what?"

[JusPasenThru]

Don't blame me. I voted for Julius Caesor.

[RadioAstronomer]

bttt

[Fester Chugabrew]

Yeah. But real science didn't some along until Charles Darwin emerged.

[nopardons]

I hope you spelled his name right,back then. LOL

You would have had to vote for him for Senator,though, because ONLY the Senators could have made him a Proconsul.Pompeii was one of the triumpherate and it was in the battle AGAINST Pompeii,that the Alexandrian library caught fire.

[nopardons]

Right you are.

[nopardons]

Correct!

[KC_for_Freedom]

I have always wondered how much more scientific, medical and technological information the world would now posses if it had not been for the Alexandria Fire.

Interesting conjecture, what did survive was enough to develop the calculas (at least integral calculas) but the Arabs who translated it did not understand what they had. It took until the enlightenment and Issac Newton to realize and "rediscover" it. But I am astonisned that othes before him did not realize from the proofs of Archimedes what was already done.