Sometime during the reign of Ptolemy the first or

Ptolemy the second, the Egyptian state decided to build an institution

dedicated to accumulating all human knowledge in the city of Alexandria.

As the city grew, this institution grew along with it to become the greatest knowledge repository in the ancient world.

And then Julius Caesar burned it down. Maybe. Learn more about the Library of Alexandria, how it was created, and how it ended, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. The Library of Alexandria was the best known library in the ancient world, but it certainly wasn't the first.

We know of at least one large collection of cuneiform Hittite tablets that was found in the modern day Turkish city of Bois Calle.

There was also a large library located at the Academy of Gandhi Shopper in Western Iran.

It was an enormous collection of Persian, Indian, and Chinese texts which may have numbered

as high as 400,000.

In fact, the Academy of Gandhi Shopper is so important that I might do a future episode on it.

That being said, there weren't a lot of libraries.

The written word was still rare at this time.

Everything had to be written or copied by hand. Literacy was relatively rare and limited to only a few people.

Despite how long its civilization was around and its many great monuments, Egypt

really wasn't a great center for learning. Knowledge and literacy were in the realm of

a select priestly class who did the job of governing the country on behalf of the

Pharaoh. This all changed when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt.

Alexander established himself as the new Pharaoh.

He brought an infusion of Greek culture into the ruling of Egypt and a greater appreciation for knowledge, learning, and philosophy.

After all, Alexander was personally tutored as a child by Aristotle.

Alexander didn't stick around and left to go conquer more lands, a story which I covered in my episodes

about Alexandria and Alexander's Tomb.

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