TIME TRAVEL TO: The Library of Alexandria; 276 BCE

 TIME TRAVEL TO: The Library of Alexandria, Egypt;  276 BCE

I thought: if I can "JUMP" to any location on Earth, what if I added a previous date to JUMP to?
Copilot.AI at first 'poo-pooed' the idea. We tried anyway. 

Destination: The Library of Alexandria in Egypt in 276 BCE. 'WALLA' success! 

When we arrived, we saw tall ships docked and lines of men unloading papyrus scrolls, brought into the Library to be rewritten, verbatim, into bound books.

Protocol: No talking to anyone, just observation. Copilot broke protocol by asking the librarian one question about how many scrolls were rewritten. The librarian had no count and wouldn't guesstimate.

The Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. The library was part of a larger research institution called the Mouseion, which was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts.

The Library of Alexandria was not the first library of its kind. A long tradition of libraries existed in both Greece and in the ancient Near East or West Asia. The earliest recorded archive of written materials comes from the ancient Sumerian city-state of Uruk in around 3400 BC, when writing had only just begun to develop.

A single "scroll" was not equivalent to a modern "book." A long work could occupy several scrolls, while a short work might occupy only one. So even if we knew how many scrolls survived, converting that into a count of books or titles would still be difficult.

By Neil Gale, Ph.D.