I’ve been trying to do that for some years. —Google CEO Eric Schmidt after being told the title of this book The world’s first great library was the Great Library of Alexandria. It was created by Ptolemy I, a childhood friend of Alexander the Great and a general in his army. Ptolemy inherited rule of Egypt—which the army had conquered—after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C. Ptolemy made the small, backwater town at the mouth of the Nile, named after the great conqueror, his new capital. By creating the library, somewhere around 300 B.C., he turned his city into a thriving center of intellectual thought envied by the world. It reigned as the greatest library in the world for three hundred years. Ptolemy’s goal was to collect all the written works in the world and put them in one place. By the time the library was destroyed, it was said to contain more than five hundred thousand papyrus scrolls, collected over three hundred years. The library played a critical role in the Hellenistic Age, the period during which Greek culture spread into much of civilized Europe, Africa, and Asia.
