THE MUSEUM OF ALEXANDRIA 313 



great library, apparatus for the study of astronomy, 

 anatomy, and other sciences, and collections of all kinds. 

 The most learned men were employed in its management 

 and were lodged there and provided with the means of 

 study and teaching. It was a combination of university, 

 learned academy, and temple, and was the pride of the 

 ancient world. It survived many changes of lordship, but 

 at last the library and collections were deliberately 

 destroyed by Moslem invaders in 640 A.D. The precious 

 manuscripts were served out as fuel for the public baths, 

 and were so numerous that it took some months to con- 

 sume them ! The destruction of the museum of Alexandria 

 marks the commencement of the " Dark Ages " ; the 

 ancient culture was dead. Eight centuries of submer- 

 gence with strange mysterious upfloatings were its fate 

 until the Renascence, when its fragments were recovered, 

 and soon did more harm than good to the fetish-worship- 

 ping peoples of Europe. 



The first use of the word " museum " in this country for 

 a place in which collections of ancient works of art and 

 specimens of natural history were stored and arranged for 

 exhibition was in the early eighteenth century, when it 

 was applied to the building at Oxford, erected for Mr. 

 Ashmole's collections, presented to the University. This 

 was called "Ashmole's Museum," or the Ashmolean 

 Museum. Previously such a collection and its loca- 

 tion were spoken of as " a cabinet of rare and curious 

 objects." " Museum " was occasionally used for what 

 we now call a " study," and even to describe lecture- 

 rooms and library. I have not been able to discover 

 that the word was used in its modern sense at an earlier 

 date on the Continent than in England. The first 

 great typical example of a " museum " was the British 

 Museum, founded in 1753. Montagu House, in Bloom- 



