Transcript
Commercial Announcer (0:00)
Toast the holidays in a new way and raise a glass of Rumchata, a delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. Enjoy it over ice or in your coffee. Rumchata. Your holiday cocktails just got sweeter. Tap or click the banner for more. Drink responsibly. Caribbean rum with real dairy cream. Natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025, Agave Loco Brands, Pojoaquee, Wisconsin. All rights reserved. So good, so good, so good.
Commercial Announcer (0:31)
Give big, save big with RAC Friday deals at Nordstrom Rack. For a limited time, take an extra 40% off red tag clearance for everyone on your list. All sales final and restrictions apply. So bring your gift list and your wish list to your nearest Nordstrom Rack today.
Mark Yagnon (0:49)
Most of us think we know what happened to the Library of Alexandria. One massive fire on a dramatic night and the ancient world's greatest knowledge, one up in smoke. But the real story isn't exactly like that. Because the Library didn't burn down all at once. It died slowly, across multiple centuries, hit by politics, religion, ego. And piece by piece, it fell apart. The Lighthouse of Alexandria, the philosophers, the knowledge, everything that made Alexandria the center of the ancient world vanished. This is the real story behind the burning of the Library at Alexandria. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people? Welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Yagon and thank you for joining me in my tent, where every single week we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world. From all time, forever. Yes, this is the place where we get to the bottom of everything that's been going on. Now, of course, the show's not possible without you, the good people at home, and also that my good pal, Christos. What's up? I didn't even ask you. Nothing, dude. Okay. Today was going to be the day where it was gonna freaking. We're gonna get into it. I was gonna say, you know what? Scrap the script. Me and Criso just gonna get into it for two and a half hours. But you just ruined it. Mark, if I may, I just want to apologize to absolutely everybody for what I said on Religion Camp. And you could go check that out. Wait, what you say on Religion? You don't want to know. No. Did you say something bad? I said I was the first best Christos. People weren't happy about that. Oh, man. You are a heretic. I yield the floor. That's great. Nope, you are. Yeah, I'll forgive you. You know who won't? The fans. The Commenters. God will forgive you, but you know who won't? Oh, man, you put yourself in a real pickle here. But you know what? Today we're not talking about Jesus Christo or bald Cristo. We're talking about the Library of Alexandria. Now, I had a guest on this program, our pal Joseph Manning over at Yale, great guy. And we were talking about the Library of Alexandria. He's basically an expert in like, you know, the Hellenistic period of kind of like, you know, Greece and Rome type vibes. And he was telling me, like, yeah, the Library of Alexandria. Again, it's debated. There's speculation on both sides, but most people don't think that it actually burned. And I was like, hold on a second, what does that mean? And he was like, well, what actually happened is kind of more interesting. And he broke it down for me and I was like, you know what? This would be a great topic for an episode. And here we are. So what is it? What is the Library of Alexandria? Why is it in Alexandria? Who would go there? What kind of texts were in it? And was it burned? Was it kind of burned? Was it just forgotten? Where did it all go? Well, we're gonna figure it out. So the city of Alexandria is probably a good place to start. It doesn't just happen, like by accident. Okay? It is designed and, you know, kind of geographically predisposed to be the smartest place on Earth. So ancient writers claimed that Alexander the Great chose the spot because he kept dreaming of a strange island named Pharos, a future site of the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, also known as one of the seven wonders of the Ancient world. So basically, Alexander the Great is going through, you know, conquering the whole world. And he goes through Egypt in 331 BC. He doesn't stay long, but he does something that changes the ancient world. He picks this spot on the Mediterranean coastline and says, we're building the city right here. Yes, we're going to make this place a massive, you know, coastal town. And so in that place, he picks it for a few reasons. Obviously it's good for, you know, supply lines and trade lines for his war effort. And, you know, it's perfectly located between Greece, Africa, Africa, the Middle east, and it's a perfect place to create this bustling metropolis. And like with most cities, when you have a bunch of people from all around the world coming in, you get a lot of new ideas and with that, some new knowledge. So it was said that during the construction of the city, his engineers didn't have enough chalk to actually outline the perimeter of the city. So they just used white flower, which is kind of funny because when they put the white flower down, like, literally, like, like flour you would, like, bake with. So when they put it down, birds immediately swarmed and ate the outline of the city. And this made the Egyptian priests take it as a sign that the people from everywhere would come to Alexandria to feed. So even just off rip, they were like, oh, this is. This is not what we thought it was going to be. And it wasn't. So the layout that the city was and how they traced it, it wasn't random either. So Alexandria is one of the first cities in the ancient world to be built on a grid system. So you. If you live in New York or any other major city, maybe you've heard of the grid system. But basically it has two massive boulevards that cross at perfect right angles, and there's these massive streets that are wide enough for, like, chariots to pass, you know, by each other and not, you know, collide. And they literally were doing, like, ancient urban planning on a level that doesn't show up again until, you know, Europe centuries later. So around eight years after the construction of the city started, Alexander the Great dies. But the city already had a blueprint that was so detailed that it even listed where, like, the statues for the harbor would go. Like, everything down to, like, the little flourishes and details was all worked out. So although Alexander the Great never lived to see this creation actually flourish, his successor, Ptolemy the First, did. So who is Ptolemy? Well, he is the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty. And he wasn't just trying to, like, rule the land, right? He wanted Egypt to be this intellectual capital of the entire world. So he started building this insane thing, okay? This is a library that tried to collect every written work ever made. And no, this is not an exaggeration. He literally, like the way Bezos is like, dude, I want to make this store that sells everything. We're going to sell cat food and books and cars. He was like, I want to library that has every book ever written ever. And at this point, it's not that impossible to do, right? We're talking, like 320 BC vibes. So, yeah, you know, just how many books are. There's like, 10 books. You get a library of 10 books, right? Is that crazy? Nope. There's some books in there, bro. Easy. So he was like, this is time. We're going to do it. And the Library of Alexandria as an idea is born. Now, this guy Ptolemy is an interesting dude, basically, for general context, Alexander the Great cuts through the whole world and he's, you know, eaten up land. He goes to Egypt, founds Alexandria and just basically we're going to build up this little town. It's like a real village. Let's get it popping. And then when Alexander the Great is basically on the way out, he gives control to Ptolemy. And Ptolemy is one of his top generals. Now Ptolemy basically controls this Egyptian, you know, region and is really focused on Alexandria as this hub for commerce and intellectualism and at a certain point even declares himself Pharaoh Ptolemy. So you can also think of this in Egyptian history. Like this is basically the end of the new kingdom. And it's kind of like the Egyptian, you know, sort of story is kind of, you know, going away at this point. The pyramids are like 2000 years old or something like that. It's like insane. So matter of fact, Cleopatra, if you're familiar with her, she'll be relevant and you know, not, not too long. She's actually a descendant directly of Ptolemy. Just kind of an interesting detail. So basically, Ptolemy wanted to build something insane. He wanted to build a library that was so big that it collected every written work ever made. Yes. Not an exaggeration. He, that's what he wanted. Library with every book in it. Now keep in mind, this is like, you know, 3, 20 something is bc not that many books, right? It's probably 100 books. Like, how many books could there be? This is not, I don't know really the answer. But not as many as today. But regardless, it's not the easiest task to collect every written work ever. Again, there's no printing press. Every book is basically hand scribed by a dude or woman and put down into this book. And then they have to, you know, somehow get it. Books are expensive and it's a very difficult task to actually store all these books in a library. But Ptolemy was an ambitious man, so he starts building this library. Now the library itself is not a small building, okay? It, you know, wasn't waiting for scholars to bring scrolls and it wasn't waiting for these authors to write, you know, books and stuff. The people of Alexandria literally went out and got the books themselves. They wanted the text. So like every ship coming into the harbor in Alexandria was searched. Like, literally there was like, this is like a gang of nerds. Like, they were like, hey, if you want to come do trade in our city, you gotta, you gotta pay us a little piece. And they're like, money. They're like, nah, bro, Mark Twain, like, they Wanted just copies. So any scrolls that were on board were taken to the library and copied by scribes. But. But get this. The original texts were kept, and then the copies were sent back to the owners. Some gang. That's fire. And the people of Alexandria believed the originals were, you know, basically just too valuable to give up. They're like, we want the OG you guys can have the copy. Sorry. And the copies were good. Again, these scribes were, you know, pretty professional. But regardless, they kept the OG stored away. They even send agents across the Mediterranean with some cash to go buy up scrolls. They're going to Syria, Rhodes, even at certain points, going to, like, Persia and basically, like, what y' all reading about? And then took that shit, brought it back. The king sent letters to other rulers asking for, you know, rare texts and philosophical works and local religious myths, and anything that they could get their hands on was going into that library. Little fun fact, the city of Athens actually loaned the city of Alexandria works by, like, Sophocles. What's the other one? Euripides. And then I feel like there was, like, another dude. But Alexandria kept the originals and then returned the copies like they always had. And it just goes to show that even, like, a big city like Athens wasn't safe from this kind of, like, you know, little fugazi act. So the building that housed all this knowledge was part of a larger complex known as the Muzion. Is that how you pronounce it in Greek? Muzion? Moussillo. Moussillo. Oh.
