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ANCIENT SCIENCE IN EGYPT. 309
it. Others increased it to over seven hundred thousand
volumes. To further add thereto, the following unique
plan was devised :
" Seize all books brought into Egypt by-
Assyrians, Greeks, and foreigners, and transcribe them,
handing the transcriptions to the owners, and putting the
originals into the library."
Book-burning is a business common to both ancients and
moderns. Christians and Mohammedans. In an article on
Alexandria, " The Encyclopaedia Britannica " says,
"This structure [alluding to the Serapeion] surpassed in beauty
and magnificence all others in the world, except the Capitol at Rome.
Within the verge of this temple was the famous Alexandrian library,
. . . containing no fewer than seven hundred thousand volumes.
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In the war carried on by Julius Caesar against the inhabitants of the
city, the library in the Brucheion, with all its contents, was reduced to
ashes. The library in the Serapeion, however, still remained, and here
Cleopatra deposited two hundred thousand volumes of the Pergamenean
library. These, and others added from time to time, rendered the new
library of Alexandria more numerous and considerable than the former;
but, when the Temple of Serapis was demolished under the archiepiscopate of
Theophilus, A. D. 389, the valuable library icas pillaged or destroyed ; and
twenty years afterwards the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of
every intelligent spectator."
The blinded zealots of the agone ages strove to obliterate
every vestige of that historic knowledge which distinguished
the nations of antiquity. John Philaponus, a noted Peripatetic
philosopher, being in Alexandria when the city was
taken, and being permitted to converse with Amrou the
Arabian general, solicited an inestimable gift at his hands, ^-
tJie royal library. At first Amrou was inclined to grant
the favor ; but upon writing the caliph, he received, it is
said, the following answer, dictated by a spirit of unpardonable
fanaticism :
" If those ancient manuscripts and writings
of the Eastern nations and the Greeks agree with the Koran,
or Booh of Crod, they are useless, and need not be preserved ;
but, if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be
destroyed.^'' The torch was applied, and a wretched barbar-