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Burning the ‘Library of Alexandria’ [Part I]


Burning the ‘Library of Alexandria’ [Part I]


Preface

The ‘future’ now seems blindingly obvious to me.

We are headed towards a reality so apparently inevitable that I can see it already, like a large city lighting up the night sky in the distance as a traveler hurtles along a lonely highway.

Just a matter of ‘time’…

This article grew out of what was originally meant to be two sections of a four-section piece focused on exploring this inevitable future.

Soon you will understand why the ‘Library of Alexandria’ story is fundamental to the narrative playing out before our eyes.

In other words, this two-part series will lay the foundation for what is to come.


Recommended Prior Reading/Viewing

Article: Primary Source Research Methodology (17-Oct-2017)

Article: The History of ‘Histories’ (24-Oct-2017)

Article: The History of ‘Histories’ [Addendum] (26-Oct-2017)

Video: FMVU #07 ‘Air of Authority’ (3-Nov-2017)


Contents

Part I – Fantastical ‘History’

A) The Incredible ‘Library of Alexandria’
B) Carl Sagan and Cosmos
C) Edward Gibbon and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
D) The Masses and ‘Research’
E) Quick Recap
F) Eddie Gibbon Under the Microscope

Summary – Part I

Footnotes

Credits


Part II – Regular ‘History’

G) What Do The Experts Believe?
H) University of Chicago
I) Caesar and The Civil Wars
J) The Burden of Research

Summary – Part II

Credits


Article Structure

Many claims have been made (and continue to be repeated) about a great library in Alexandria (i.e. Ancient Egypt).

For the purpose of this analysis, these claims can be separated into two different groups: the basic and the fantastical.

Together they comprise a general narrative which is popular among the masses – particularly those who are interested in the field known as ‘history’.

The basic claims of the story:

A large library existed in Alexandria (Egypt) about 2,000 years ago.

It disappeared somehow.

The fantastical claims of the story:

The library attracted the brightest minds and housed the most comprehensive collection of written information anywhere on earth.

It was intentionally destroyed by fire (possibly by Christians and/or Caesar).

Human progress was set back hundreds (if not thousands) of years by its disappearance.

Part I of this article will address the fantastical elements of the story; Part II will then consider the basic claims.

The reason for this structure will become clear to you as you make your way through the analysis.


Part I – Fantastical ‘History’

It would be unfair to lump all ‘history’ and/or all ‘historians’ under the same umbrella.

Part I of this series is focused on assessing the claims made by those who promote the more fantastical elements of the ‘Library of Alexandria’ narrative.


A) The Incredible ‘Library of Alexandria’

You have probably heard of this one before: a long time ago there was a great library, housing all the world’s knowledge, but it was intentionally burned to the ground, setting back human progress hundreds if not thousands of years.

A real tragedy.

“The burning of the Library of Alexandria certainly ranks among the worst crimes ever committed against humanity, and it is widely believed that the losses of scientific research, including that of physics and medicine, as well as the losses of cultural and historical knowledge and documentation, set back the progress of human civilisation by at least a thousand years.”

-Jimmy of Bright Insight (500,000+ views on YouTube video posted July, 2017)

A crime against humanity.

If you were to perform a YouTube search for ‘Library of Alexandria’ there is a good chance that the first video in your results would be from ‘Jimmy’ whose channel is called ‘Bright Insight’.

The quote above is taken from the first thirty seconds of that video. See for yourself by clicking the image below.

Screenshot 27-Dec-2017.

Yep, that is when you know you are a ‘history fan’: You get upset about a library which you are told was burned down 2,000 years ago.

I highly recommend you take the eight minutes or so required to watch Jimmy’s video. If nothing else it will provide a perfect opportunity to gauge your current level of understanding of what I call the ‘History Hoax’. Do the burning red flags in Jimmy’s video jump out at you? Or do his claims seem legitimate and reasonable?

Put another way, can you sit through Jimmy’s presentation without realising what he is doing, without noticing what is taking place? If so, you may want to revisit the recommended prior viewing/reading material before continuing with this piece.

Take notice of the support for Jimmy’s claims in the thumbs up/down and comments section below his video. While it is true that these metrics can be manipulated, it is also true that the average normie quite enjoys fantastical stories about ‘history’, especially when told by somebody who seems knowledgeable and enthusiastic.

For the sake of posterity, I will also link here to the second most-viewed video on this topic (according, at least, to the first few pages of results of my own YouTube search). As coincidence would have it, this video — just like Jimmy’s — was released earlier this year (i.e. 2017).

Screenshot 27-Dec-2017.

Although slightly more measured and less hyperbolic than Jimmy from Bright Insight, this V-Sauce lookalike presents a story with some of the same flaming red flags. Those of you with eyes to see will identify them quickly.

It would be easy to dismiss both Jimmy and V-Sause-lookalike-guy as amateur YouTubers with little impact/influence. Those who watch the second video in particular until the end might come to see that this is no amateur operation.

Although it beyond the scope of this particular article to go into too much detail on the matter here, it shall suffice to point out that professional production houses have moved into the YouTube content creation scene, and now use it in much the same way as television program production houses once used television stations to broadcast their wares (and thus attract eyeballs and the advertising dollars they generate). The salmon shirt-wearing dude reading his lines is likely no mere ‘amateur’.

In any event, the two videos cited above provide a fair overview of the story of the ‘Library of Alexandria’ as understood by normies and wannabe hobby historians.

In short: The popular method for disseminating ideas today (i.e. social media outlets such as YouTube) propagate fantastical stories concerning the ‘Library of Alexandria’, and their purported viewcounts suggest that these stories are popular with the masses.


B) Carl Sagan and Cosmos

Before the advent YouTube and other social media, we had television and the Public Broadcasting Service.

Before clowns like ‘Jimmy’ from Bright Insight and V-Sauce-lookalike-guy from ‘Today I Found Out’, we had the esteemed Carl Sagan.

“If I could travel back in time, this is the place that I’d visit. The Library of Alexandria, at its height, 2,000 years ago. Here, in an important sense, began the intellectual adventure which has led us into space.”

Carl Sagan

Wait, the ‘Library of Alexandria’ story is somehow connected to man walking on the moon?

Don’t take my word for it. Here is Carl Sagan himself in a 4-minute clip from the 1980 TV series Cosmos:

 

Note that the video embedded above is only a short clip of what Sagan had to say; you can find a 22-minute version here.

For me personally, my time in the alternative/conspiracy/truth (ACT) realm has been nothing if not an exploration of why the lemming masses believe what they do.

It turns out that Carl Sagan and his Cosmos series have played a large role in the spread of popular beliefs about not only ‘space’ but ‘history’ as well.

According to CosmoLearning.org the series Cosmos has been seen by millions:

The series was first broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service in 1980, and was the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until The Civil War (1990). It is still the most widely watched PBS series in the world. It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award and has since been broadcast in more than 60 countries and seen by over 600 million people, according to the Science Channel. A book to accompany the series was also published.

The most widely watched PBS series in the world? This National Geographic page supports the claim of 500,000,000 viewers across 60 countries. An Emmy award? IMDB appears to corroborate the claim. It was all a little bit before my time but I would not be the least bit surprised if this series truly was/is as popular as we are led to believe (even if I am highly skeptical of the reported total number of viewers).

After all, Carl Sagan had a smooth, confident, and yet somehow — for want of a better term — mysterious voice. Throw in the fact that he presented himself as an expert scientist and it was a slam dunk: he would be able to convince his audience of just about anything — and they would enjoy every minute of it.

In short: Decades before the hyperbolic YouTube videos which now reinforce fantastical tales concerning the ‘Library of Alexandria’, the esteemed and admired Carl Sagan was seeding the stories himself via a popular PBS ‘documentary’ series seen around the world.


C) Edward Gibbon and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empires

Imagine the frustration of ‘expert’ historians upon realising how much impact Sagan’s claims have had on the public imagination concerning ‘history’.

You see, Sagan’s assertions about the ‘Library of Alexandria’ are considered to be complete bullcrap by modern historians and mainstream skeptics.

The blog post linked above is very detailed and well worth the time of anybody seriously interested in Carl Sagan and/or the official story in question.

One section in particular is worth repeating here:

Of course, Sagan did not invent the tale of a Christian mob burning down the Great Library; in fact, to be fair, he really only alludes to it indirectly. Like many of these positivist fables, the origin of this story seems to lie in the polemics of the eighteenth century: in this case, the main perpetrator is our old friend Edward Gibbon.

If you spend enough time digging into the History Hoax for yourself you will become all too familiar with the figure known as Edward Gibbon.

Eddie Gibbon was one helluva History Hoaxer.

It is certainly true that Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a central text in the prevailing ‘Ancient History’ narrative.

For a pertinent example, take a look at the ‘Sources’ and ‘Further Reading’ lists of the Library of Alexandria page on wikipedia:

Screenshot from wiki page 26-Dec-2017 (includes my additions). Click on image to enlarge.

Notice anything interesting?

Those of you who are familiar with the recommended preparatory materials (i.e. Primary Source Research Methodology and History of ‘Histories’) will immediately spot the red flag: only one of the sources listed is dated before 1990.

Even in the ‘Further Reading’ section you will find nothing dated prior to 1952.

And whose work is the solitary piece cited as a ‘source’ which was published before Carl Sagan brought the fantastical tale of the ‘Library of Alexandria’ to public attention?

That’s right: our mate Eddie Gibbon.

This is significant for several reasons, which we’ll see in a moment.

In short: Even mainstream ‘historians’ today reject the more fantastical elements of the ‘Library of Alexandria’ story, and Edward Gibbon (circa 1700s) is cited as the chief source of misinformation on the matter. Despite this he remains the only source from antiquity cited by the relevant wikipedia page.


D) The Masses and ‘Research’

Coming to terms with the History Hoax is much easier when one understands how the lemming masses source their information/beliefs.

Most people will never bother to even websearch ‘Library of Alexandria’, but among those who do, wikipedia will naturally be the first (and often last) port of call for a significant proportion of would-be researchers.

How many will bother to check the ‘sources’ section to find out what the wikipedia article is supposedly based upon? Of those who do check the ‘sources’ section, how many will notice that only one of the sources listed is more than a few decades old?

Of those who do pick up on this obvious red flag, how many will be aware that modern historians dismiss Eddie Gibbon?

That is, how many people will discover that the single antique source of their information is the book of a man who has since been discredited by the historical establishment?

When I say that my website is designed (only appropriate for/of potential appeal to) for ‘the fringe of the fringe of the fringe’, I’m not exaggerating.

Here is a little Venn Diagram I put together to help illustrate what I personally see as the obvious, natural, and logical breakdown of peoples interest in, and ‘research’ of, stories like that concerning the ‘Library of Alexandria’.

Clearly NOT to scale. If it were, you would not be able to see the black dot (it would be <1 pixel). Click on image to enlarge.

 

 

This diagram is obviously intended only for illustrative purposes.

What proportion of the general population is at least vaguely familiar with the story of the Library of Alexandria? I would guess it is well above 50%, perhaps as high as 90%, but I simply do not know.

Of those who are familiar with the story, how many have taken some time to websearch the story?

Of those who have taken some time to websearch the story, how many went beyond wikipedia?

It would obviously be less than the total number who bothered to search for information online: wikipedia is one of the first searches listed by google and a favourite of the masses.

Via The Atlantic, 11-May-2016.

It goes without saying that I don’t know if the above graph is based on legitimate/true data. It could easily have been made up.

The graph does however accord with what I have observed for myself (i.e. anecdotally) among the regular people I know ‘in real life’. While they don’t necessarily believe everything they see on wikipedia, the average normie I know trusts it as a reliable source of information, especially on topics concerned with ‘history’ and ‘science’.

In any event, it is fair to infer that of the tiny fraction of people who will ever bother to continue searching beyond wikipedia, precious few will seek out the primary sources for themselves.

One major reason for this is that the typical high school graduate today has not even been taught the difference between primary/secondary sources, let alone the significance of the distinction.

Why are the youth of our society not equipped with even an elementary understanding of independent research methodology? John Taylor Gatto explains the matter in just twelve minutes.[1]

If you find that JTG speaks a little too slowly to keep your attention, you might want to try speeding him up with the settings function on the bottom-right of the YouTube player window.

 

In short: Genuine research is founded upon finding, scrutinising and prioritising various sources for the claims being made. The masses are not encouraged to understand ‘research methodology’. This is why they can read/hear stories about what supposedly happened 2,000 years ago and fail to notice that only one of the cited sources is more than a few decades old. It is also why they will fail to notice that said source has already been dismissed by experts in the very field responsible for reinforcing the very story in question.


E) Quick Recap

Before shifting our focus onto Eddie Gibbon it is worth reviewing the key points made so far:

The masses are generally familiar with the story of the ‘Library of Alexandria’.

In recent times this familiarity has been assisted by popular YouTube channels repeating the narrative.

In years gone by it was ‘astronomer’ and ‘science populariser’ Carl Sagan helping to seed the story into the public consciousness.

Carl Sagan’s fantastical version of events appears to have been largely based upon the work of Edward Gibbon (circa late 1700s).

Even on wikipedia, the only source listed which is more than a few decades old is a book by Edward Gibbon.

Modern historians dismiss the fantastical elements of the story put forward by Edward Gibbon and Carl Sagan.

Among those who are familiar with the story of the ‘Library of Alexandria’, few will ever bother to check for the primary sources themselves.

One reason why so few people bother to check for primary sources themselves is because most do not understand why primary sources are important.

One reason why so few people understand the importance of primary sources is that they are generally not taught anything about research methodology in school.

One reason research methodology is generally not taught in school is that school is there to dumb us down, not to make us ‘smart’ (hence ‘school’ as in fish).

Now let’s move on to the fun part.


F) Edward Gibbon Under the Microscope

I have already demonstrated above that the ‘Library of Alexandria’ wikipedia page cites no sources which are more than a few decades old — save for the discredited Edward Gibbon.

In other words, one of the most popular outlets for normies to learn more about ‘history’ has a page dedicated to the ‘Library of Alexandria’, an historical monument/event which supposedly existed/took place roughly two millennia ago, and yet the wikipedia page in question cites only one source which is more than a few decades old.

That alone ought to raise some serious red flags for those with eyes to see.

Today the ‘real’ historians dismiss Sagan and Gibbon’s fantastical version of events, but they still support and reinforce the basic story i.e. that a great library existed in Alexandria two thousand years ago and it somehow disappeared. We’ll revisit the basic story in Part II.

Of course, the fact that modern historians dismiss Gibbon and his version of events does not necessarily mean that we should, too.

So what did Gibbon write about the ‘Library of Alexandria’?

You can find the pdfs of every volume of his 12-part epic series here.

What we want to focus on is to be found in Volume 5 of that collection, namely pages 85 and 87.

p85

This implies that a library in Alexandria had been burned down. Fair enough. What is the source?

p85 (footnotes)

The source is listed as ‘Memoires de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, tom. ix. p397-416’.

Best of luck to any of you who decide to follow that one up. My own search came back with nothing.[2]

In any event, this is not the key passage, which is to be found a couple of pages later:

p87

‘The valuable library of Alexandria was destroyed’. Well that is a little bit more specific than the earlier passage. ‘The compositions of ancient genius’. That fits in with the general narrative of the ‘Library of Alexandria’. Not quite so grandiose or hyperbolic as modern re-tellings of the story, but at least it is something.

What is Gibbon’s source this time? Orosius, as edited by Havercamp (and Zangemeister).

On the latter count I can only infer that ‘Zangemeister’ may be this German philologist (who purportedly lived 1837-1902), and my inference seems to be supported by this page and also this page.

‘Havercamp’ appears to have produced his ‘translation’ of Orosius in 1738. From Tufts University:

The only really good edition [of Orosius’ Historiarum] is that of Havercamp, Lug. Bat. 4to. 1738, prepared with great industry, and containing a mass of valuable illustrations.

So let’s get this straight: the source for Gibbon’s claims about ‘the valuable library of Alexandria’ are based on a 1738 ‘translation’ of ‘Orosius’?

If I have read this right, then the story of the ‘Library of Alexandria’ (which supposedly existed and burned down roughly 2,000 years ago) has made its way to us via Edward Gibbon (late 1700s) who sourced the story from a ‘translation’ of Orosius published in 1738.

Gibbon’s series was republished in the early 1900s with historian John Bagnell Bury as editor.[3]

In the Appendix of Volume 5 (pp. 363-364), Bury notes that he himself disagrees with Gibbon’s claims regarding the burning of the ‘Library of Alexandria’:

“But is it an attested fact that the… library was destroyed in A.D. 301?… The only evidence on which Gibbon’s statement rests is the sentence which he quotes from Orosius. But Orosius does not mention the Serapeum or speak of a large library. He merely says that he had seen bookcases in temples (which he does not name); and that, since then, he had been informed that the temples had been pillaged and the bookcases emptied. It seems to me highly improbable that Orosius is thinking either of the Alexandrian library or the Serapeum.”

That’s right: the editor responsible for republishing Gibbon’s series himself dismisses Gibbon’s claims concerning the ‘Library of Alexandria’, due to the fact that Gibbon’s only source does not even speak of a large library.

I have not been able to find a copy of Orosius by Havercamp, so I can’t know what he supposedly said; all I can go by is the editor of Gibbon’s republished book, who states categorically that Orosius made no mention of a large library.

Note that Orosius  supposedly existed around 400 AD i.e. several hundred years after the alleged existence and destruction of the ‘Library of Alexandria’.

In other words, Gibbon’s claims concerning the ‘Library of Alexandria’ were supposedly based on the account of a person writing hundreds of years after the events in question — and that person, Gibbon’s editor tells us, did not even speak of a large library!

Even if you could find a reliable source for ‘Orosius’ (good luck with that), this should be more than enough for you to understand the absurdity of citing Gibbon as a source for stories about anything to do with ‘Ancient History’, let alone the ‘Library of Alexandria’.

This is bad news if you want to believe in the stories told by either Wikipedia or Carl Sagan. In the case of the former, Gibbon is literally the only source cited whose work is more than a few decades old; in the case of the latter, Gibbon is the inspiration for the fantastical tales being told to the masses via the popular Cosmos series.

Seem a little hard to believe? Click to enlarge.

This bears repeating once more in black and white:

Wikipedia’s entry on the ‘Library of Alexandria’ cites just one source which is more than a few decades old.

That source is Eddie Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Gibbon’s work appears to have inspired (or been the basis for) Carl Sagan’s claims in his Cosmos episode on the topic.

The editor of a republication of Gibbon’s own series states that Gibbon cites only one source for his claim about the Library of Alexandria.

That source is a figure named Orosius.

Even if you could find a legitimate source for Orosius (good luck) he was supposedly writing hundreds of years after the events in question.

Orosius (or his ‘translator’ — wink wink) did not even mention a large library in the first place.

Those of you with eyes to see will understand why the above is enough for me personally to dismiss the fantastical tales about the ‘Library of Alexandria’.

That is, the popular narrative about an ‘epicentre of knowledge’ being ‘intentionally burned down’ and ‘setting back mankind’ is simply not supported by the ‘primary’ sources cited.

The entire story appears to be hearsay at best, outright make-believe at worst.

In short: Eddie Gibbon’s book is the only source more than a few decades old cited by wikipedia’s ‘Library of Alexandria’ page; Gibbon also appears to have been the inspiration for the fantastical claims made by Carl Sagan in his Cosmos series. The problem is that Gibbon’s only source (Orosius) was writing hundreds of years after the alleged events in question, and apparently does not even mention a large library; in any event, Orosius’ words come to us via Haverback whose ‘translation’ was published in 1738.


Summary – Part I

A) The popular method for disseminating ideas today (i.e. social media outlets such as YouTube) propagate fantastical stories concerning the ‘Library of Alexandria’, and their purported viewcounts suggest that these stories are popular with the masses.

B) Decades before the hyperbolic YouTube videos which now reinforce fantastical tales concerning the ‘Library of Alexandria’, the esteemed and admired Carl Sagan was seeding the stories himself via a popular PBS ‘documentary’ series seen around the world.

C) Even mainstream ‘historians’ today reject the more fantastical elements of the ‘Library of Alexandria’ story, and Edward Gibbon (circa 1700s) is cited as the chief source of misinformation on the matter. Despite this he remains the only source from antiquity cited by the relevant wikipedia page.

D) Genuine research is founded upon finding, scrutinising and prioritising various sources for the claims being made. The masses are not encouraged to understand ‘research methodology’. This is why they can read/hear stories about what supposedly happened 2,000 years ago and fail to notice that only one of the cited sources is more than a few decades old. It is also why they will fail to notice that said source has already been dismissed by experts in the very field responsible for reinforcing the very story in question.

E) N/A

F) Eddie Gibbon’s book is the only source more than a few decades old cited by wikipedia’s ‘Library of Alexandria’ page; Gibbon also appears to have been the inspiration for the fantastical claims made by Carl Sagan in his Cosmos series. The problem is that Gibbon’s only source (Orosius) was writing hundreds of years after the alleged events in question, and apparently does not even mention a large library; in any event, Orosius’ words come to us via Haverback whose ‘translation’ was published in 1738.


Footnotes – Part I

1] In the video presented, John Taylor Gatto makes reference to The Principles of Secondary Education by Alexander James Inglis.

You can access a pdf copy of the book at the internet archive here.

Recall that JTG points out that Harvard named their annual Lecture in Secondary Education after Inglis. This is confirmed here:

The Inglis Lectureship in Secondary Education was established by the Harvard Graduate School of Education in honor of the late Professor Alexander Inglis, a member of the time of his death in 1924 had become a leading scholar and writer in the field of secondary education.

JTG explains that the purposes of secondary education include homogenisation and socialisation of the masses i.e. creating a conformist society of people who do not generally think beyond whatever the group thinks.

Naturally I recommend you check out the relevant passage (pp. 367-384) for yourself, but here are two screenshots from the very pdf in question which show quite clearly that JTG is not exaggerating.

p368

Even the lemmings’ leisure time is to be steered towards the public good. Right there in black and yellow.

Those of you who have read Huxley’s Brave New World might note that the masses in his vision of the ‘future’ were trained to dislike being alone, or engage in hobbies which did not involve others.

If I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Huxley was not talking about the ‘future’. He knew, they all know. And hopefully by now you know.

p377

‘…like-mindedness, of unity in thought, habits, ideals, and standards, requisite for social cohesion and social solidarity’.

And Harvard named their annual lecture on secondary education after this guy. Lol.

None of this is ‘hidden’ or ‘secret’, my friends. It is right there out in the open.

2] In theory it is possible that if one were to track down this source, and satisfy himself that it was legitimate, it may go some way towards supporting the notion that Gibbon’s story is not entirely make-believe after all. I remain open-minded. If we are being honest, though, would a single source writing about a ‘famous Alexandrian library’ prove anything?

As the editor of the republication of Gibbon’s series (J. B. Bury) noted himself, it is the claim on p87 which specifically refers to the destruction of ‘ancient genius’ and is of most relevance to the topic at hand, hence my own focus upon it. This is the claim which is based on Orosius, whose work comes to us via Haverbeck (1737).

3] Note that Bury’s edition of Gibbon’s work is also cited as a key reference by Open Learn. As with the relevant wikipedia page, it is the oldest source provided by that institution’s relevant page on the ‘Library of Alexandria’. The only other source more than a few decades old listed by Open Learn is Plutarch’s work entitled Plutarch’s Lives. This was ostensibly written in the first or second century AD, but Open Learn cite the 1918 edition edited by Perrin, which I tracked down and you can see here.

In other words, we have another figure of ‘ancient history’ who apparently did his best work in the 20th century.

Perrin cites as his source material for Plutarch’s Lives two authors who released their own ‘translations’ in the mid-late 1800s.

It gets better: Perrin also notes that there exist manuscripts of Plutarch’s work (the Codex Sangermanensis, Codex Seitenstettensis, and Codex Matritensis) but that (for whatever reason) he prefers to stick with the cited ‘translations’.

Here is the interesting part: if you look up the three codices mentioned, the Codex Sangermanensis returns a few results (whereas the others do not seem to return much). See for instance:

Screenshot 28-Dec-2017 of this page. Click to enlarge.

Those of you who have looked into the history of the ‘bible’ (or were listening closely during my Talk with Tom) may be familiar with the name Tischendorf: this is the same character who supposedly discovered the Codex Sinaiticus. For more info see here and here. Now we see his name attached to a manuscript connected to Plutarch. This site adds weight to the connection.

What are the odds of that? Note that the other man attached to the Codex Sangermanensis, one Paul Sabatier, is a contemporary of Tischendorf (purportedly living 1858-1928).

My suspicion, and this is a line of research I may pick up at another time, is that there exists an overlap in the amazing ‘codex’ discoveries by ‘biblical scholars’ and ‘ancient historians’. That is, characters like Tischendorf may have their Hoaxy hands all over both the ‘bible’ hoax and the ‘ancient history’ hoax

In any event, here we see that another key source of the story concerning the ‘Library of Alexandria’ (i.e. Plutarch) has a primary source evidence trail which goes back only as far as the 1800s – and that is if we employ a very loose definition of ‘primary source’ to begin with.

This whole thing is a joke.


Remember to check out Part II of this two-part series.


Credits

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Set to public temporarily for RER listeners 19-Oct-2024.

8 thoughts on “Burning the ‘Library of Alexandria’ [Part I]

  • Magnificent work once again, John. It is pretty obvious by now that the whole ancient history is make belief.. that raises new questions most notably “why”?

    Love the normie picture 😀

    • Thanks, Hando. You would be amazed how long it took me to finish that diagram with the Normie.

      The base image of the normie in the mickey mouse pyjamas is something I stole from one of the pol boards (4chan or 8chan).

      I have stolen so many awesome memes from those boards. I’ve got a folder with literally hundreds of them.

  • mezzie

    Hello JLB, can you clear something up for me pls. There are several ways you spelled Haverback
    1. Haverback
    2. Havercamp
    3. Haverkamp
    4. Haverbeck
    and i found this one
    5. Haverkampi

    I tried to find something/anything on this guy but no luck.

    • Thanks for bringing this to my attention, Mezzie. I will go back through it tomorrow and try to standardise my spelling of the name (or alternatively consider the possibility that we may be dealing with two different individuals!)

  • Knightly News

    The tribe sure do love to leverage the tale of a good book burning. Part 2 should be good.

    • Lol, did you ever hear the one about how the Jews were ‘kicked out of over 100 countries’? Just wait til I expose that nonsense for what it is.

      I’ll be interested to get your overall take/opinion on the Tribe at some point, by the way.

      It is fair to say that their power/intent has been a point of contention on this site in the recent past.

  • agentsrapier

    Minor point re: Memoires de l’Acad. des inscriptions…

    See here (Wikipedia, I know)

    Looking for a book, I found this but it is beyond my basic French, and probably not the volume referenced.

  • RicStaR13

    So pissed, went to watch the video, looked at the comments and I’m there at the top, questioning the burnings reasons, saying a load of shit from history I thought I knew. Says a year ago, I clearly wasn’t feeling the story we’re given, but I certainly believed a lot of the other history we have been forced to believe, Islamic conquests and piracy and all that stuff.
    However I feel utterly embarrassed, I could delete the comment but that would be cheating. I know I argued for thee moon landings at one point in my life, so really.
    I never actually believed the liberty was as great as they said anyway,it’s crazy how it is said to be so great, it’s blatant fantasy. What damn science did they know? They certainly didn’t have technology, and isn’t that why we’re so great and know the universe so well? Maybe Graham Hancock knows the truth hahaha

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