TIME TRAVEL TO: The Library of Alexandria; 276 BCE

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. 

Our destination: The Library of Alexandria, 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.

In Greek mythology, they are the Nine Muses — daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. They are the goddesses of the arts and sciences.

The 9 Muses:

1. Calliope - Epic poetry and eloquence. The Chief of the Muses.

2. Clio - History

3. Erato - Love poetry and lyric poetry

4. Euterpe - Music, song, and lyric poetry. Often shown with a flute.

5. Melpomene - [nəˈmäsənē, nəˈmäzənē] Tragedy 

6. Polyhymnia - Sacred poetry, hymns, and mime

7. Terpsichore - Dance and choral song

8. Thalia - Comedy and pastoral poetry

9. Urania - Astronomy and astrology

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 be difficult.

The World's First Known Library.

The Library of Ashurbanipal

(We did not visit this Library.)

LIBRARY NAME: The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal 

Location: Nineveh, capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire — modern archaeological site of Kuyunjik, on the outskirts of Mosul in northern Iraq.

Date: 7th century BCE, assembled during Ashurbanipal's reign between 668 and 631 BCE.

Historians recognize this as the world's first systematically organized library. While earlier kings kept temple archives, Ashurbanipal's project was different — he tried to collect the entirety of human knowledge under one roof, organized and cataloged. 

It held over 30,000 clay tablets in cuneiform script [Cuneiform is the world's earliest known writing system]. Writing direction: Originally top-to-bottom, later left-to-right. It began around 3400-3200 BCE and covered literature, medicine, law, astronomy, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Archaeologists discovered it while excavating at Nineveh. 

Guinness World Records lists it as the "First library" for this reason, and it is widely described as the world's oldest known systematically organized library.

By Neil Gale, Ph.D.