The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that Eratosthenes, the head librarian of the Library of Alexandria, calculated the circumference of the earth with remarkable accuracy in the third century BC?
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We should have an article on every pyramid and every nome in Ancient Egypt. I'm sure the rest of us can think of other articles we should have.
Cleanup.
To start with, most of the general history articles badly need attention. And I'm told that at least some of the dynasty articles need work. Any other candidates?
Standardize the Chronology.
A boring task, but the benefit of doing it is that you can set the dates !(e.g., why say Khufu lived 2589-2566? As long as you keep the length of his reign correct, or cite a respected source, you can date it 2590-2567 or 2585-2563)
Stub sorting
Anyone? I consider this probably the most unimportant of tasks on Wikipedia, but if you believe it needs to be done . . .
Data sorting.
This is a project I'd like to take on some day, & could be applied to more of Wikipedia than just Ancient Egypt. Take one of the standard authorities of history or culture -- Herotodus, the Elder Pliny, the writings of Breasted or Kenneth Kitchen, & see if you can't smoothly merge quotations or information into relevant articles. Probably a good exercise for someone who owns one of those impressive texts, yet can't get access to a research library.
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Dear authors,
Thank you for this great information about the world's biggest library in ancient world, but it seems The library of Alexandria was not world's biggest library. It was Takshila (that time in Bharat(India)) followed by two more libraries which had at least 9 times the collections as that possessed by Alexandria.
I just wanted to share this information.
Please feel free to share the feedbacks.
Latest comment: 6 months ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Hello @A. Parrot, I don't think that in my revision, we were patently stating that Theodosius was the one who destroyed the library. Instead, we presented a historian's perspective on what he considered probable. Additionally, the sources seemed appropriate to me.
Regarding the section title "Arabic sources on Muslim invasion," I find it somewhat inaccurate since many of the sources did not seem to be exclusively Arabic. The term "Arab invasion" would be more relevant and accurate. Therefore, I am considering updating the section name and the associated wikilink accordingly, if that’s alright. StarkReport (talk) 22:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Regarding sourcing, I was mostly concerned about the Arab News source; its statement about Theodosius relied on D. P. Singhal, whose qualifications I'm uncertain of. In any case, a mention of Theodosius seems to be misplaced here. The existing article text treats it as the consensus that the library no longer existed in its original location in Theodosius' time, so the case for blaming him rests on the idea that 1. some of the library's collection was relocated to the Serapeum and 2. Theodosius was to blame for the Serapeum's destruction. Those topics are already extensively discussed in the section that follows the one where you were adding your text.
If we were to add anything more about why scholars disbelieve the story about the Arab conquest, I would favor elaborating on the reasons for their skepticism—e.g., that John Philoponus was almost certainly dead by the time of the conquest. A. Parrot (talk) 23:43, 30 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
Hmm, so would this work: "Additionally, Roy MacLeod notes that the story first appears 500 years after the conquest, and John Philoponus was likely deceased by then, indicating that the tale lacks historical credibility."[1] right after the quote of Diana Delia. @A. Parrot? StarkReport (talk) 04:28, 1 June 2024 (UTC)Reply
^MacLeod 2000, p. 71. "The story first appears 500 years after the Arab conquest of Alexandria. John the Grammarian appears to be John Philoponus, who must have been dead by the time of the conquest. It seems, as shown above, that both of the Alexandrian libraries were destroyed by the end of the fourth century, and there is no mention of any library surviving at Alexandria in the Christian literature of the centuries following that date. It is also suspicious that Omar is recorded to have made the same remark about books found by the Arab during their conquest of Iran." sfn error: no target: CITEREFMacLeod2000 (help)
Latest comment: 3 months ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Is there no information about who built the library and when? In the article there seems to be a lot of question about who came up with the plans and when it was built. Is there a way to get more solid knowledge on this kind of information? If not maybe reword the text on that part because there seems to be a lot of "maybe" and "probably" that take away from the article. Cturpen21 (talk) 00:42, 20 September 2024 (UTC)Reply
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