Talk:Library of Alexandria

World's oldest and biggest library

Dear authors, Thank you for this great information about the world's biggest library in ancient world, but it seems The library of Alexandria was not world's biggest library. It was Takshila (that time in Bharat(India)) followed by two more libraries which had at least 9 times the collections as that possessed by Alexandria. I just wanted to share this information. Please feel free to share the feedbacks.

Best

Arab Invasion Section

Hello @A. Parrot, I don't think that in my revision, we were patently stating that Theodosius was the one who destroyed the library. Instead, we presented a historian's perspective on what he considered probable. Additionally, the sources seemed appropriate to me.

Regarding the section title "Arabic sources on Muslim invasion," I find it somewhat inaccurate since many of the sources did not seem to be exclusively Arabic. The term "Arab invasion" would be more relevant and accurate. Therefore, I am considering updating the section name and the associated wikilink accordingly, if that’s alright. StarkReport (talk) 22:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Regarding sourcing, I was mostly concerned about the Arab News source; its statement about Theodosius relied on D. P. Singhal, whose qualifications I'm uncertain of. In any case, a mention of Theodosius seems to be misplaced here. The existing article text treats it as the consensus that the library no longer existed in its original location in Theodosius' time, so the case for blaming him rests on the idea that 1. some of the library's collection was relocated to the Serapeum and 2. Theodosius was to blame for the Serapeum's destruction. Those topics are already extensively discussed in the section that follows the one where you were adding your text.

If we were to add anything more about why scholars disbelieve the story about the Arab conquest, I would favor elaborating on the reasons for their skepticism—e.g., that John Philoponus was almost certainly dead by the time of the conquest. A. Parrot (talk) 23:43, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Hmm, so would this work: "Additionally, Roy MacLeod notes that the story first appears 500 years after the conquest, and John Philoponus was likely deceased by then, indicating that the tale lacks historical credibility." right after the quote of Diana Delia. @A. Parrot? StarkReport (talk) 04:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

I've edited in a tweaked version of your suggestion. A. Parrot (talk) 07:28, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

When and Who it was build by.

Is there no information about who built the library and when? In the article there seems to be a lot of question about who came up with the plans and when it was built. Is there a way to get more solid knowledge on this kind of information? If not maybe reword the text on that part because there seems to be a lot of "maybe" and "probably" that take away from the article. Cturpen21 (talk) 00:42, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

No, there isn't. Ancient history always has "a lot of "maybe" and "probably". Johnbod (talk) 02:21, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Size of collection

At the time this article passed GAN, the text on the size of the collection said:

At its height, the library was said to possess nearly half a million scrolls, and, although historians debate the precise number, the highest estimates claim 400,000 scrolls while the most conservative estimates are as low as 40,000, which is still an enormous collection that required vast storage space.

As of now, the same paragraph reads:

At its height, the library was said to possess nearly half a million scrolls, and, although historians debate the precise number, the highest estimates claim 900,000 scrolls while the most conservative estimates are as low as 40,000, which is still an enormous collection that required vast storage space.

Wiegand & Davis 2015 mentions "40,000, 400,000 and even 700,000 scrolls", which implies that 700,000 is an extreme outlier among the modern estimates. The source for 900,000 is here, whose own citation for that number is to what seems to be a journal article: "Alexandria's Great Library. (October 2001). Architecture, v90, i10, p74". Searching for this article doesn't seem to produce anything, and the only journal I can find with this title is a different one that only began publication in 2021.

If "the library was said to possess nearly half a million scrolls" is referring to an ancient source, ancient sources are infamous for having unreliable large numbers, and it would be rather strange if modern scholars' estimates far exceeded ancient numbers that are themselves suspected of being exaggerations. My gut says that this passage should either go back to the wording at the time of the GAN, or to something that better matches Wiegand & Davis's wording, with 700,000 (not 900,000) mentioned but treated as an extreme outlier. But I would have to know the scholarship here better than I do in order to feel certain of anything. A. Parrot (talk) 13:45, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

@A. Parrot: The reference is probably to "Architecture : the AIA journal", which had volume 90 in 2001. If you can't get access, asking at WP:RX will probably work. I agree that these large numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt. Zero^talk 10:55, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

No matter, I found it at the given coords. It is a 1-page introduction to the issue with no references. It says "The library's holdings were eventually numbered as high as 900,000 scrolls, thanks in part to an innovative, if inhospitable, method of acquisition: Pharaonic decree suffered every ship passing through the busy harbor to be searched for new texts, which were then seized, taken to the library, and transcribed. The library kept the originals; the rightful owners got the copies. Even the most conservative scholarly estimate of a 50,000 scroll collection seems impressive when one considers that the U.S. Library of Congress got its start with the 1815 purchase of Thomas Jefferson's private library--then the largest in the country, with 6,487 volumes." Personally I would ignore this source as there is no author specified and so no way to judge its reliability. Zero^talk 11:09, 22 May 2026 (UTC)