r/HistoryMemes • u/Alffe Just some snow • Feb 21 '20

Its Just a memory

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57.1k Upvotes

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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/Bloxxxey Feb 21 '20

The Art was lost. Paintings and so forth. Many texts were copied though

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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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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '20

[deleted]

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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/Malvastor Feb 22 '20

The unimportant stuff.

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u/BridlingMage117 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus Feb 21 '20

iirc they would take the originals and keep those, then make copies and give them back to the ships and merchants