The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders

by Stuart Kells

To expand the great library’s famous collections, the authorities at Alexandria adopted a famous policy. Whenever a ship arrived at the city’s port with scrolls on board, the scrolls were taken to the library for copying. When the copying was finished, the new facsimiles were returned to the ship, and the originals stayed in the library. Books obtained in this way were identified in the catalogue as “from the ships.” Alexandria’s assertive collections policy seems to have been applied in other ways, too. When the library borrowed the works of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus from Athens in order to make copies, the copies rather than the originals were sent back to Greece. Once Alexandria became notorious as a book moocher, other cities and libraries refused to lend their books unless the Ptolemies staked large security deposits. According to Galen, the great library could only keep the Athenian books by forfeiting an enormous bond of fifteen talents (450 kilograms) of gold or silver.