Last week we tried to solve the mystery of the fire that burned the Ancient Library of Alexandria down to the ground. Today, we’re continuing our search for the guilty culprit…

If Julius Caesar was to blame for the fire, surely this would be absolute in the history books (or what’s left of them)? But there were many other stories, including Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. This tale claims that Theophilus (Patriarch of Alexandria from 385 to 412 AD) was responsible, after converting the Temple of Serapis a Christian church.

This temple held many of Alexandria’s scrolls, so it’s likely many were destroyed during Theophilus’s renovations. He also had a naughty nephew (named Cyril) that took charge when he died, and made a terrible mess of running the city. He allowed a charming young lady named Hypatia to look after the library, but after a short while she was murdered. Some regard her death as the final destruction of the Ancient Library of Alexandria.

The final person on this historic list of arson suspects is Caliph Omar. All the way back in 640 AD, the Moslems took the city of Alexandria in a dramatic siege. Upon learning of “a great library containing all the knowledge of the world” the conquering general supposedly asked Caliph Omar for instructions.

The Caliph has been quoted as saying of the Library’s holdings, “they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.” So, allegedly, all the texts were destroyed by using them as tinder for the bathhouses of the city. Even then it was said to have taken six months to burn all the documents. But these details, from the Caliph’s quote to the incredulous six months it supposedly took to burn all the books, weren’t written down until 300 years after the fact. These facts condemning Omar were written by Bishop Gregory Bar Hebræus, a Christian who spent a great deal of time writing about Moslem atrocities without much historical documentation.

Alas, as with so many other historical events, it seems this tale is filled with a lot of he-said, she-said. So who did burn the Library of Alexandria?

Unfortunately most history writers from Plutarch (who apparently blamed Caesar) to Edward Gibbons (a staunch atheist who liked very much to blame Christians and Theophilus) to the anti-Moslems, who blamed Omar) all had an axe to grind and consequently must be seen as biased.

It’s far more likely that everyone mentioned above had some hand in destroying some part of the Library’s holdings. The collection may have ebbed and flowed, as some documents were destroyed and others were added. For instance, Mark Antony was supposed to have given Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls for the Library long after Julius Caesar is accused of burning it. We guess it’s just guesswork!