The Alexandrian Library: Crucible of a Renaissance

Abstract

At the end of the 4th century BC, the Macedonian-Greek armies of Alexander the Great swept across Asia from Egypt to the Indus River, redefining political boundaries within that vast territory at a time when important cultural changes were also taking place in the Greek world. New literary forms were beginning to emerge from the classical literature, which was then the subject of scholarly investigation. There was growing curiosity about the physical world and mathematics. Aristotle and his contemporaries were redefining scholarship at a time when Alexander was redefining the political sphere. These remarkable transformations converged in Alexandria, which became the center of a new intellectual universe. The first Ptolemaic rulers founded two unique institutions--the Alexandrian Library and the Mouseion--and the Library became the crucible within which the Hellenistic renaissance was forged.

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