of 





AN ANCIENT LIBRARY. 
By Mr. ARNOLD C. CONDER. 14th February, 1905. 
After describing the ancient city of Alexandria, the Lecturer 
said the most glorious monument of the Macedonian kings is the 
Museum. Its influence will last when even the Pyramids have 
passed away. Its sculptured apartments contained the Philadel- 
phian library, which eventually comprised 400,000 volumes. In 
course of time an additional library was established, containing 
300,000 books. There were, therefore, 700,000 books in these 
royal collections. Those volumes were entirely manuscript rolls, 
written on papyrus. As the ancient volume or roll contained a 
much smaller quantity of matter than a modern book, the 
*« History of Heroditus’’ might form nine books or volumes, and 
the ‘ Illiad of Homer” twenty-four, so that the number of books 
in the Alexandrian library must be discounted for comparison 
with modern collections. Our English libraries contain many 
more books. In 1902, the British Museum contained two million 
of printed volumes and 55,000 MSS., besides charters and rolls. 
The Bodeleian, at Oxford, 600,000 books and 31,000 MSS. ‘The 
Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh, contains 455,000 printed 
books and 3,200 MSS. ‘Trinity College, Dublin, 255,000 volumes 
and 2,027 MSS. ‘The Rylands’ Library, Manchester, 80,000 
volumes, of which 2,500 are what are called ‘ incunabula,”’ @.e., 
made before the art of printing was known. Alexandria, at this 
time was not merely the capital of Egypt, but the intellectual 
metropolis of the world. There, it was truly said, the genius of 
the Hast met the genius of the West, and this Paris of antiquity 
became a focus of fashionable dissipation and universal 
scepticism, 
