By any measure, re-establishing the position held by the ancient library will be a tall order. At the time of Christ, Alexandria was one of the greatest cities on earth, and its Great Library was the beacon of Hellenistic civilization. There, Euclid devised his geometry, Archimedes formulated his principles, Aristarchus concluded that the Earth revolves around the sun, and Erastothenes calculated the circumference of the Earth with astonishing accuracy. Herophilus dissected the human body and realized that the brain, not the heart, is the seat of intelligence. Then, mysteriously, the library disappeared off the radar screen of history.
Scholars are still divided over the ultimate fate of the ancient great library.
Julius Caesar, the Christians and the Arabs have all been held responsible. In 48 B.C., Caesar, having entered the Alexandrian War on the side of his lover Cleopatra, found himself under attack from sea. After A.D. 391, when Christianity became the official religion of the empire, Christians destroyed the city's greatest pagan temple, the Serapeum, which housed a daughter branch of the Great Library. And a 12th-century account of the Arab conquest of Egypt in A.D. 642 states that the bathhouses of Alexandria were heated for six months with burning scrolls. Whatever the case, the Great Library, wrapped in myths and fables, has come to epitomize the ideal of free thought and independent scholarship in the pursuit of truth.