Can someone tell me about the ancient library in Alexandria, Egypt in the Hellen

Question: Can someone tell me about the ancient library in Alexandria, Egypt in the Hellenistic period!?
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The Royal Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest library in the ancient world!.

Alexandria was Ptolemy's founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great!. His successor as Pharaoh, Ptolomy II Soter, founded the Museum or Royal Library of Alexandria in 283 BC!. The Museum was a shrine of the Muses modeled after the Lyceum of Aristotle in Athens!. The Museum was a place of study which included lecture areas, gardens, a zoo, and shrines for each of the nine muses as well as the Library itself!. The structure of the library resembled a large hall that contained shelves for the collections of scrolls that scholars used!. A famous inscription was carved into the wall above the shelves that read: The place of the cure of the soul!. Archaeologists unearthed thirteen "lecture halls", each with a central podium and!.!.!. rooms uncovered so far could have seated 5000 students!. It has been estimated that at one time the Library of Alexandria held over half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India and many other nations!. Over 100 scholars lived at the Museum full time to perform research, write, lecture or translate and copy documents!. The library was so large it actually had another branch or "daughter" library at the Temple of Serapis!. According to the earliest source of information, the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas, the Library was initially organized by Demetrius of Phaleron, a student of Aristotle!.

Initially the Library was closely linked to a "museum", or research center, that seems to have focused primarily on editing texts!. Libraries were important for textual research in the ancient world, since the same text often existed in several different versions of varying quality and veracity!. The editors at the Library of Alexandria are especially well known for their work on Homeric texts!.

A story concerns how its collection grew so large: by decree of Ptolemy III of Egypt, all visitors to the city were required to surrender all books, scrolls as well as any form of written media in any language in their possession which, according to Galen, were listed under the heading "books of the ships"; these writings were then swiftly copied by official scribes!. Sometimes the copies were so precise that the originals were put into the Library, and the copies were delivered to the unsuspecting previous owners!. This process also helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city!. According to Galen, Ptolemy III requested from the Athenians to borrow the original scripts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; the Athenians demanded the enormous amount of fifteen talents as guarantee; the Athenians were happy to receive the fee and Ptolemy was happy to pay, but kept the original scripts for the library!.

Some of the works included:
Aristotle's library formed the basis, mainly by means of copies, of the library established at Alexandria, which became the greatest in antiquity!. From 300 BC until around the time of Christ all significant biological advances were made by physicians at Alexandria!. One of the most outstanding of these men was Herophilus, who dissected human bodies!. His discoveries were recorded in his book On Dissections, but all of his writings have been lost – though Galen (and other medical writers) quoted much of his work centuries later!.
Demosthenes’ speech!.!.!.the defense of his career delivered in 330, has been termed “the greatest speech of the greatest orator in the world!.” In the century following his death, the scholars at the Library of Alexandria carefully edited the manuscripts of his famous speeches!. His fame was such that, when the Roman orator Cicero delivered a series of speeches in 44 BC opposing Mark Antony, in!.!.!.
Septuagint (sometimes abbreviated LXX) is the name given to the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures!. The Septuagint has its origin in Alexandria, Egypt and was translated between 300-200 BC!. Widely used among Hellenistic Jews, this Greek translation was produced because many Jews spread throughout the empire were beginning to lose their Hebrew language!. The process of translating the Hebrew to Greek also gave many non-jews a glimpse into Judaism!. According to an ancient document called the Letter of Aristeas, it is believed that 70 to 72 Jewish scholars were commissioned during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus to carry out the task of translation!. The term “Septuagint” means seventy in Latin, and the text is so named to the credit of these 70 scholars!.

It is impossible to determine how large the collection was in any era!. The collection was made of papyrus scrolls!. Later, parchment codices (predominant as a writing material after 300 BC) may have been substituted for papyrus!. In fact, the Library of Alexandria had an indirect cause in the creation of writing parchment!. Because of the critical need at the library, little papyrus was exported and thus an alternate source of copy material became essential!. A single piece of writing might occupy several scrolls, and this division into self-contained "books" was a major aspect of editorial work!. King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) is said to have set 500,000 scrolls as an objective!. Mark Antony was supposed to have given Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls for the Library as a wedding gift!. These scrolls were taken from the great Library of Pergamum, impoverishing its collection!. Carl Sagan, in his series Cosmos, states that the Library contained nearly one million scrolls, though other experts have estimated a smaller number!. No index of the Library survives, and it is not possible to know with certainty how large and how diverse the collection was!. It is likely, for example, that even if the Library had hundreds of thousands of scrolls (and thus, perhaps, tens of thousands of individual works), some of these were duplicate copies or alternate versions of the same texts!.

It has been reasonably established that the Library or parts of the collection were destroyed by fire on a number of occasions (library fires were common and replacement of handwritten manuscripts was extremely difficult, expensive and time-consuming)!. To this day the details of the destruction (or destructions) remain a lively source of controversy!. So who did burn the Library of Alexandria!? Unfortunately most of the writers from Plutarch (who apparently blamed Caesar) to Edward Gibbons (a staunch atheist or deist who liked very much to blame Christians and blamed Theophilus) to Bishop Gregory (who was particularly anti-Moslem, blamed Omar) all had an axe to grind and consequently must be seen as biased!. Probably everyone mentioned above had some hand in destroying some part of the Library's holdings!. The collection may have ebbed and flowed as some documents were destroyed and others were added!. It is also quite likely that even if the Museum was destroyed with the main library the outlying "daughter" library at the Temple of Serapis continued on!. Many writers seem to equate the Library of Alexandria with the Library of Serapis although technically they were in two different parts of the city!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

This library grew as it aged!. By about 100 AD it was considered the largest library in the world, with all kinds of Greek, Latin, Egyptian, Persian and Jewish histories, literature and scriptures!. It had well over half a million books!.
Who burned it is murky, as the three principal sources all had axes to grind!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Founded by the Ptolemy dynasty (Greeks who ruled Egypt after Alexander of Macedon died)
SAid to contain all the knowledge of the world

Systematically sacked and burned to the ground in 642 AD by the invading muslims!. Seems they had no use for the knowledgeWww@QuestionHome@Com

Lots and lots and lots of scrolls holding info on everything- history, astronomy, etc!. and famous works like The Iliad!.
Grand architecture!.

It burned down, so no one really knows anything beyond that!.Www@QuestionHome@Com