Alexandria boasted all of these institutions, but another was more consequential in making Egypt Greek: the library. The strategic location of the city, which quickly became a major port, was crucial for the library’s success. When ships arrived to do business in Alexandria, they were told that they must first share with the library whatever literature they had on board. The library employed an army of copyists to preserve it all, creating the largest collection of scrolls anywhere in the world, aiming to include all existing tools, an ambition recently rekindled by Google’s plan to organize
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