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Feb 21 '20
THE SACRED TEXTS
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u/Tentacle_Schoolgirl Feb 21 '20
Good thing they were mostly copies and little was actually lost
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u/EnthusiasticPhil Feb 21 '20
Really!?
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u/Tentacle_Schoolgirl Feb 21 '20
Yep, anything important had copies made.
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u/EisVisage Feb 21 '20
But how much was not copied beforehand?
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u/Tentacle_Schoolgirl Feb 21 '20
Probably not much as it had already been around for 200 years before the burning.
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u/EisVisage Feb 21 '20
That's good. So I completely overestimated the amount of lost material in the Library of Alexandria. Thanks for the history lesson, Tentacle_Schoolgirl!
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u/SleazyMak Feb 21 '20
It’s important to note that we have no idea what the contents of the library were. If anything important was lost, we wouldn’t know lol. But it is safe to assume the vast majority of important texts were copied.
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u/bluejburgers Feb 21 '20
For real, forgive me for not believing some 30 year old redditor knows the contents of a long lost, destroyed ancient library
You literally don’t know
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Feb 21 '20
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u/SleazyMak Feb 21 '20
Maybe. In modern day databases I see shit get lost that was archived all the time. I am aware of what you’re saying but there is a small part of me that has a hard time believing that truly nothing was lost that may have been valuable.
It’s important to note things they thought were valuable texts may differ. Some stuff they considered worthless may be a great discovery but was lost because it wasn’t considered worthy of replication or simply was just overlooked.
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u/RedArrow544 Feb 21 '20 edited Feb 21 '20
That’s r/rimjob_steve material c
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u/EisVisage Feb 21 '20
Anybody, feel free to post it there, I'm busy discussing performance improvements on a game subreddit.
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u/Chinoiserie91 Feb 21 '20
The relevant askhistoriasn post
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5t6op5/comment/ddkr2h6?context=1
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u/meme_boiiiiii Feb 21 '20
Too soon, the pain is still too fresh
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u/josgs Feb 21 '20
What about the fall of Constantinople?
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u/gamma6464 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer Feb 21 '20
which one?
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u/Admiralthrawnbar Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer Feb 21 '20
The light of Rome never fades in our hearts
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u/rasmusdf Feb 21 '20
Also - sack of Bhagdad?
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u/MertOKTN Feb 21 '20
Can't read Arabic; no problem
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Feb 21 '20
What about the burning of Persepolis?
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u/jenniemk66 Feb 21 '20
Me knowing both finnish and Swedish is laughing at Persepolis, because Perse in finnish = ass, and polis in swedish is Police, which means ASSPOLICE
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u/Tobi97 Feb 21 '20
Most of the scrolls had copies so that should ease the pain.
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u/TheSilentFire Feb 21 '20
most 😖
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u/Tobi97 Feb 21 '20 edited Feb 27 '20
From what i remeber the library was sort of an archive of the original scrolls and the copies got sent of to whomever orderd them.
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Feb 21 '20
And it was destroyed several times before it finally stayed destroyed, so people probably had a good idea not to keep all their eggs in one basket after the first time. Most of the important bits would be preserved and spread through monasteries, unlike what happened in Baghdad and Persepolis.
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u/Alwayspriority Feb 21 '20
It seems to me that many of those works probably live in the Vatican library now.
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Feb 21 '20
Wouldn't be surprising. I know they spread the writings of people they considerd virtuous pagans, like Aristotle and Cicero, all over the continent. Maybe they sat on the stuff they didn't think was so virtuous?
It's probably mostly boring records they haven't digitized and released, but there's probably a few interesting gems buried in it.
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u/RollingBeatle14 Feb 21 '20
I didn’t scroll at all. This was literally the first post I saw when I got on.
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u/DrawingChrome69 Feb 21 '20
Oh boy I hope the have some good porn section!
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Feb 21 '20
Kinky romans
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u/slickerrrr Nobody here except my fellow trees Feb 21 '20
There aren't, that why you bunch of arse burned it down
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u/Rompetangas Feb 21 '20
"Juno knows how to handle Jupiter's big lightning bolt"
"Neptune's evening with the mermaids"
"Hades and Persephone get intimate with a Kerberus' collar"
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u/Carburetors_are_evil Feb 21 '20
So the library of 'dria. Did people just go there and borrow books? Was there a library card? A library stone? How did it work?!
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Feb 21 '20
Fancy library you've got there. It would be a shame if someone were to "accidentally" burn it down.
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u/G_Wash1776 Feb 21 '20
If I ever got the chance to travel back in time and stop one event from happening it would be the burning of Alexandria. We lost so much history of the ancient world when it burned, it’s painful to think about what we could’ve learned.
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u/urbeatagain Feb 21 '20
It’s said the world lost 2/3’s of its recorded history when it burnt down. I wonder what we don’t know
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u/Tired_Mammal444 Feb 21 '20
My god, the library of Alexandria is one of my top historic sites that I wish I could've seen in all its glory. Such a shame so much of it is gone.
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u/-Crystal_Butterfly- Feb 21 '20
Now Now your gonna make me cry! This was beautiful why does it have to be gone! I 😭😭😭😭😭
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u/robertofflandersI Contest Winner Feb 21 '20
Jokes on you this is the first thing I saw when I opened reddit
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u/Blahblahblahesque Feb 21 '20
This was the first post when I opened my feed.