Alexandria was an important city of the ancient world. For more than two thousand years, it was the largest city in Egypt and was its capital for almost half of that time. It was once the center of the Hellenistic Empire, and the hub of scholarship and commerce in the ancient world.

The Library was built in the Brucheion (Royal Quarter) as part of the Mouseion. Its main purpose was to show off the wealth of Egypt, with research as a lesser goal, but its contents were used to aid the ruler of Egypt.

Answer: B. It attracted brilliant scholars from around the ancient world. The Great Library of Alexandria is one of the most famous and most significant libraries of antiquity. It was created under the reign of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and it transformed Alexandria (now Egypt) into a city of culture and knowledge.

It was where military leaders were trained. It was the largest university in the empire. It was where scholars from all over came to study. It stored Alexander the Great’s government documents.

It provided ships with a safe route to the city and increased trade relationships. It contained scrolls from many cultures, so students built on old knowledge and spread new ideas. It only allowed Greek scholars in the building, which resulted in them becoming an advanced culture.

Throughout its near 1,000-year history, the library was burned multiple times. According to Plutarch, the first person to blame is Julius Caesar. On his pursuit of Pompey into Egypt in 48 BCE, Caesar was cut off by a large fleet of Egyptian boats in the harbor of Alexandria. He ordered the boats to be burned.

Julius Caesar

around 2000 years

approximately five metres

The library of Alexandria It seems to have contained between 400.000 and 700.000 rolls of papyrus dealing with all the sciences. When Julius Caesar landed in Egypt, a fire partially destroyed the library. In 30 BC, Egypt became a Roman province. Vespasian was proclaimed emperor in Alexandria in 69 AD.

Alexandria is somewhat safe and although there is some crime in this city, it’s mostly petty crime and rarely violent. Pickpockets are a problem in Egypt’s major cities, like Alexandria. When it comes to violent crime, it is rare, and you shouldn’t worry too much about being mugged or robbed.

Mediterranean Sea

“In Alexandria itself,” writes Nur, “both historical records and archaeological evidence of collapse have shown that the city was devastated both onshore and offshore by an earthquake in the mid- to late-eighth century A.D., and by one or two earlier earthquakes sometime during the period 200 to 600 A.D.”

Ammianus Marcellinus thought that it happened when the city was sacked under Caesar, and Caesar himself reported the burning of Alexandria as an accidental consequence of his war against his great rival Pompey, in 48–47 BCE.

The city fell to the Arabs in AD 641, and a new capital of Egypt, Fustat, was founded on the Nile. After Alexandria’s status as the country’s capital ended, it fell into a long decline, which by the late Ottoman period, had seen it reduced to little more than a small fishing village.