Post by prr on Aug 15, 2011 21:53:44 GMT
In his insightful article on the destruction of the library in Alexandria,
James Hannam wrote the following:
Modern writer, Mostafa El-Abbadi, comes up with a more subtle point. He shows how Strabo mentions the body of research available to one of the earlier librarians was much greater than Strabo himself had access to. He concludes that this shows that Strabo did not have access to the wisdom of the Royal Library that his illustrious predecessor had. The point is small but potentially significant.
I'd like to know where El-Abbadi wrote that. I did a search for Strabo in El-Abbadi's book on Google Books, but didn't see anything like this quotation in his work. In fact, I read the following quotation in El-Abbadi's book, What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria?:
Surely, Strabo would have deplored the destruction of the Library while he was dedicating a paragraph to the Mouseion. The logical result of this has been that, during the past few years, one has come to see Caesar’s fire as burning only a storehouse, either of manuscripts destined for export or of blank papyri, and that the Library itself was too far from the coast to have been ignited by the burning boats (page 76).
Did the first reference come from another article or book that El-Abbadi wrote? Or was that idea somewhere else in his book?
EDIT: FWIW, here's a link to the article itself: bede.org.uk/library.htm
Gotta say its been the best read by far that I've come across on the destruction of the library. What I wrote above was not meant as a critique so much as a request for clarification.
James Hannam wrote the following:
Modern writer, Mostafa El-Abbadi, comes up with a more subtle point. He shows how Strabo mentions the body of research available to one of the earlier librarians was much greater than Strabo himself had access to. He concludes that this shows that Strabo did not have access to the wisdom of the Royal Library that his illustrious predecessor had. The point is small but potentially significant.
I'd like to know where El-Abbadi wrote that. I did a search for Strabo in El-Abbadi's book on Google Books, but didn't see anything like this quotation in his work. In fact, I read the following quotation in El-Abbadi's book, What Happened to the Ancient Library of Alexandria?:
Surely, Strabo would have deplored the destruction of the Library while he was dedicating a paragraph to the Mouseion. The logical result of this has been that, during the past few years, one has come to see Caesar’s fire as burning only a storehouse, either of manuscripts destined for export or of blank papyri, and that the Library itself was too far from the coast to have been ignited by the burning boats (page 76).
Did the first reference come from another article or book that El-Abbadi wrote? Or was that idea somewhere else in his book?
EDIT: FWIW, here's a link to the article itself: bede.org.uk/library.htm
Gotta say its been the best read by far that I've come across on the destruction of the library. What I wrote above was not meant as a critique so much as a request for clarification.