the
Jewish Scriptures, which was undertaken at the suggestion of Demetrius
Phalerius, his first librarian. The measures adopted by this monarch for
augmenting the Alexandrian Library were pursued by his successor,
Ptolemy Euergetes, with unscrupulous vigor. He caused all books imported
into Egypt by Greeks or other foreigners to be seized and sent to the
Museum, where they were transcribed by persons employed for the purpose;
and when this was done, the copies were delivered to the proprietors,
and the originals deposited in the library. He refused to supply the
famished Athenians with corn until they presented him with the original
manuscripts of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; and in returning
elegant copies of these autographs, he allowed the owners to retain the
fifteen talents (more than L3000 sterling) which he had pledged with
them as a princely security. As the Museum, where the library was
originally founded, stood near the royal palace, in that quarter of the
city called Brucheion, all writings were at first deposited there; but
when this building had been completely occupied with books, to the
number of 400,000, a supplemental library was erected within the
Serapeion, or Temple of Serapis, and this gradually increased till it
contained about 300,000 volumes--making in both libraries a grand total
of 700,000 volumes.

The Alexandrian Library continued in all its splendor until the first
Alexandrian war, when, during the plunder of the city, the Brucheion
portion of the collection was accidentally destroyed by fire, owing to
the recklessness in the auxiliary troops. But the library of the
Serapeion still remained, and was augmented by subsequent donations,
particularly by that of the Pergamean Library of 200,000 volumes,[19]
presented by Mark Antony to Cleopatra, so that it soon equalled the
former, both in the number and in the value of its contents. At length,
after various revolutions under the Roman Emperors, during which the
collection was sometimes plundered and sometimes reestablished, it was
utterly destroyed by the Saracens at the command of the Caliph Omar,
when they acquired possession of Alexandria in A. D. 642. Amrou, the
victorious general, was himself inclined to spare this inestimable
treasury of ancient science and learning, but the ignorant and fanatical
caliph, to whom he applied for instructions, ordered it to be destroyed.
"If," said he, "these writings of the Greeks agree with the Kor