2,300 years ago, the rulers of Alexandria set out to fulfill one of humanity’s most audacious goals: to collect all the knowledge in the world under one roof. In its prime, the Library of Alexandria housed an unprecedented number of scrolls and attracted some of the Greek world’s greatest minds. But by the end of the 5th century CE, the great library had vanished. Many believed it was destroyed in a catastrophic fire. The truth of the library’s rise and fall is much more complex.
2300 年前, 亚历山大港的统治者 意图实现人类最大胆的目标: 将世界上的所有知识汇集一处。 在亚历山大港图书馆鼎盛时期, 它馆藏的卷轴 数量之多史无前例, 并吸引了一些希腊 最伟大的学者前来。 但到公元 5 世纪末,这座 雄伟的图书馆消失了。 许多人认为,它毁于一场大火, 其实,图书馆崛起和 衰落的真相更为复杂。
The idea for the library came from Alexander the Great. After establishing himself as a conqueror, the former student of Aristotle turned his attention to building an empire of knowledge headquartered in his namesake city. He died before construction began, but his successor, Ptolemy I, executed Alexander’s plans for a museum and library.
图书馆这一构想 来自于亚历山大大帝, 在他所向披靡、征服各处之后, 曾师从亚里士多德的他, 将目标转向建造一座知识帝国, 建在以他名字命名的城市。 图书馆开建之前,他就去世了。 但他的继任者托勒密一世, 继续执行亚历山大的计划, 开始建造博物馆和图书馆。
Located in the royal district of the city, the Library of Alexandria may have been built with grand Hellenistic columns, native Egyptian influences, or a unique blend of the two--there are no surviving accounts of its architecture. We do know it had lecture halls, classrooms, and, of course, shelves. As soon as the building was complete, Ptolemy I began to fill it with primarily Greek and Egyptian scrolls. He invited scholars to live and study in Alexandria at his expense. The library grew as they contributed their own manuscripts, but the rulers of Alexandria still wanted a copy of every book in the world.
亚历山大港图书馆 位于城市的皇家区域, 人们推测其建筑 包含高大的希腊圆柱, 且受到当地埃及人的影响, 或是融合二者特点—— 现存资料中没有其建筑细节。 我们能够确定的是 它拥有演讲厅、教室、书架。 图书馆建成后, 托勒密一世开始用以希腊和 埃及为主的卷轴填充图书馆。 他出资邀请学者 在亚历山大港居住和学习。 这些学者贡献的手稿 使得图书馆内文献不断增加, 但亚历山大港的统治者 仍希望获得世上所有书籍拷贝。
Luckily, Alexandria was a hub for ships traveling through the Mediterranean. Ptolemy III instituted a policy requiring any ship that docked in Alexandria to turn over its books for copying. Once the Library’s scribes had duplicated the texts, they kept the originals and sent the copies back to the ships. Hired book hunters also scoured the Mediterranean in search of new texts, and the rulers of Alexandria attempted to quash rivals by ending all exports of the Egyptian papyrus used to make scrolls.
幸运的是,地中海地区的船只 都会经过亚历山大港, 托勒密三世制定政策, 要求所有停靠亚历山大港的船只 呈上书籍供图书馆誊抄。 一旦复制完成后, 书籍会保存在图书馆, 而把复制版归还给船只。 还雇佣了一些搜书者, 前去地中海地区找寻新书, 亚历山大港的统治者停止出口 埃及人制作卷轴的纸莎草纸, 来试图打压竞争对手,
These efforts brought hundreds of thousands of books to Alexandria. As the library grew, it became possible to find information on more subjects than ever before, but also much more difficult to find information on any specific subject. Luckily, a scholar named Callimachus of Cyrene set to work on a solution, creating the pinakes, a 120-volume catalog of the library’s contents, the first of its kind.
这项举措为亚历山大港 带来了数十万的书籍。 随着图书馆规模扩大, 人们虽能找到更多领域的信息, 但找寻某特定科目 信息时,却很困难。 幸运的是,学者卡利马科斯 着手解决了这一问题, 他编纂了书册总录, 多达120卷, 这是史上第一本书册目录。
Using the pinakes, others were able to navigate the Library’s swelling collection. They made some astounding discoveries. 1,600 years before Columbus set sail, Eratosthenes not only realized the earth was round, but calculated its circumference and diameter within a few miles of their actual size. Heron of Alexandria created the world’s first steam engine over a thousand years before it was finally reinvented during the Industrial Revolution. For about 300 years after its founding in 283 BCE, the library thrived.
利用书册目录, 人们才能在日益增大的 图书馆藏中定位书籍。 他们有了一些惊人的发现, 在哥伦布出海航行的 1600 年前, 埃拉托斯特尼不仅发现地球是圆的, 还算出了地球的周长和直径, 计算结果与实际仅差几英里。 亚历山大港的希罗造出了 世界上第一台蒸汽发动机, 这比工业革命时期 再次发明的蒸汽机时间 早了一千多年。 自公元前 283 年建成后的 300 年间,图书馆繁荣发展。
But then, in 48 BCE, Julius Caesar laid siege to Alexandria and set the ships in the harbor on fire. For years, scholars believed the library burned as the blaze spread into the city. It's possible the fire destroyed part of the sprawling collection, but we know from ancient writings that scholars continued to visit the library for centuries after the siege. Ultimately, the library slowly disappeared as the city changed from Greek, to Roman, Christian, and eventually Muslim hands. Each new set of rulers viewed its contents as a threat rather than a source of pride. In 415 CE, the Christian rulers even had a mathematician named Hypatia murdered for studying the library’s ancient Greek texts, which they viewed as blasphemous.
但是在公元前 48 年, 尤里乌斯·凯撒包围了亚历山大港, 并点火烧了港口停留的船只。 多年来,学者们一直认为 大火蔓延至城区而烧毁了图书馆。 大火可能烧毁了部分馆藏书籍, 但从古代的文字记录中发现, 在围困发生后的几个世纪里, 学者们依然继续拜访图书馆。 最终,图书馆在统治者的 更迭中慢慢消失了, 从希腊人到罗马人、 基督徒、 到最终被穆斯林统治。 每届统治者都将馆藏视为威胁, 而不是引以为傲的资源。 在公元 415 年, 基督教统治者甚至谋杀了 数学家希帕提娅, 只因她研究了图书馆的 古希腊的文字资料, 这些资料被视为亵渎神灵。
Though the Library of Alexandria and its countless texts are long gone, we’re still grappling with the best ways to collect, access, and preserve our knowledge. There’s more information available today and more advanced technology to preserve it, though we can’t know for sure that our digital archives will be more resistant to destruction than Alexandria’s ink and paper scrolls. And even if our reservoirs of knowledge are physically secure, they will still have to resist the more insidious forces that tore the library apart: fear of knowledge, and the arrogant belief that the past is obsolete. The difference is that, this time, we know what to prepare for.
虽然亚历山大图书馆 和其不计其数的资料已消失, 我们仍在努力 找出最佳办法来收集、 获取、 和保存我们的知识。 如今的信息数量更多, 也有更先进的技术来保存它们, 但我们无法确定 是否这些数字化资料 比亚历山大图书馆的纸墨卷 更能经受各种损害。 即使我们的知识储备 在物理上是安全的, 但它们仍然要对抗 其他摧毁图书馆的更可怕力量: 对知识的恐惧 和认为过去的即过时的 自大想法。 不同的是,这一次, 我们知道要应对什么。