Alexandra Schultz

Before Alexandra Schultz, a PhD candidate in Classics, explains her research, she asks people whether they’ve heard of the Library of Alexandria. The most common response is an excited, “Of course! That great library with every book ever written!” It’s with some glee that Schultz tells them that the opposite is true. “Estimates put the library somewhere in the order of 10,000 books,” she explains.

Schultz studies ancient libraries, specifically those from the Hellenistic period (323 to 31 BCE) that covers roughly the three centuries after Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire. Older book collections existed in Mesopotamia and Egypt, but these were for a limited audience: kings, scribes, priests. According to Schultz, during the Hellenistic period, a new type of library developed. “All of a sudden you have libraries that are public-facing and a source of pride for the community,” she says. “Some of them even became superstar libraries, known internationally.”

Understanding how these libraries developed is part of Schultz’s work, and what she is finding goes against the standard narrative. “People have told the story of Hellenistic libraries based on the Library of Alexandria,” Schultz explains, assuming the Alexandria library was the inspiration for all other Hellenistic libraries; Schultz wants to correct that assumption. “We’re finding that people had already established libraries before the earliest evidence for the Library of Alexandria, long before it became world famous,” she says. “Rather than being the prototype for all libraries, Alexandria capitalized on what was a growing international trend.”

For Schultz, the demystification of the Library of Alexandria is important. “Fantasies about Alexandria often give people the idea that there’s such a thing as ‘Greek Literature’ and ‘Greek Culture’ and that all of it can be contained in one place,” she says. In reality, each Hellenistic library was unique, taking on the character and interests of its location. A library in Athens, for instance, might have contained many tragedies, while the library in Taormina, Sicily, was filled with historical works. “These populations may have had a sense that they were Greek, but first and foremost they were members of their local community,” Schultz explains. “And there’s an element of that in these libraries.”