Side notes to: The importance of preservation

This is a series of side-notes to the post about Mirror Culture and preserving the internet. If you're not used to reading my rants, this is both a "developer commentary" and a "by the way" kind of post: it adds information to the original post, but having it in the original post would detract from the point I'm trying to make. Still, sometimes the thread that links all of the ideas in the first post will be referenced here, so while this is a companion piece to the original post, I urge you to read the original first, and only read this after you're done with that.

Contrary to popular belief, the Library of Alexandria was not as big a loss as the stories tell us. That is because of many reasons, and ironically some of which also show up again when I talk about the Internet Archive.

First and foremost, the Library of Alexandria was already in decline by the time Cesar came around. Both in terms of the people who went there but in terms of funding as well. Ptolmey VIII expelled all foreign scholars from Alexandria, so there was immediately an intellectual decline, and the scholars that would have gone to Alexandria then started to go to competitor libraries: libraries themselves were plentiful and the Library of Alexandria was not the only one with the goal to archive any written works. Plus, even smaller libraries were useful if you were going to study.

By the end of Ptolemic rule, there was so much instability that the government could not be bothered to fund the library as much as they had before. The title of head librarian was still somewhat important but even that stopped being so as the position started being occupied by political supporters instead of competent librarians. By the time Cesar came, the Library of Alexandria was but a husk of its former self.

Even then, one could argue that whatever books were forgotten could have been recovered nowadays, but the truth is that that's just not so. The few books we managed to recover nowadays from that time were in very dry areas, and even then it's rare when we manage to find anything that isn't a fragment. As you may imagine, the city known for its splendorous lighthouse - one of the seven wonders of the ancient world - was not a dry place. It's estimated that the papyri in the library would last a bit less than one century, so unless there was intensive restoration or copying, which became less likely with the fund cuts by the end of Ptolemic rule, these scrolls would not have lived long even if there had not been a fire. You may note that this sounds very similar to my mention of hard drive rot, how it's not unlikely that they do it but that it's expensive, when we get to the Internet Archive part of the discussion in the main post. History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Even then, the fire did not burn the whole library. That is because there were really two libraries in Alexandria, both treated as the great library, and that were likely related. This smaller library was not affected by the fire, and continued existing for some time after.

Having that said, the icon of the great library of all human knowledge, and how its loss can come so naturally and so fast at the hands of so few is something I personally find very useful.

If you've studied jungian psychology (or if you played Persona and decided to check out its inspirations) you will know about the concept of the archetypes. Here's a very bare bones explanation.

When travelling around the world and studying mythology and folk tales, you are bound to come across many common ideas that transcend civilization. The nurturing mother, but also the all-consuming mother, the trickster, the all-powerful ruler, the messenger of the divine. Simple ideas that were all cemented into each of our cultures and that may have taken form in different ways, but always with the same connotations. One example of well established archetypes is the major arcana cards in the Tarot deck, each representing a type of person with established virtues and flaws, depending on the reading.

Jung used the idea of the archetypes to formulate his idea of the collective unconscious. This is the idea that these archetypes, these ideas, all live within humans and that all humans understand them inherently through a part of their subconscious that connects to all other humans. This is then what led to the formulation of personas - when you embody one or a mix of the archetypes to craft an idelised version of yourself for the world - and whatnot.

In this case specifically, that of the Library of Alexandria, we have the archetype of the compendium of all knowledge - even knowledge that might be hazardous. This is what's behind concepts like the Journal entries in Gravity Falls, the promise of secret knowledge in secret societies like the freemasons and illuminati or traditions like kabbalah and other more esoteric beliefs. This idea of a way to find and access all knowledge is also what is behind the idea that one day AI might be able to learn anything by connecting to a network of other AI - no matter how farfetched the praxis of the idea actually is. This archetype is almost divine in nature, but in a way that puts no gods at the forefront, and so it is often also symbol of hubris. This last interpretation you might connect with the myth of Prometheus, who brought down from Olympus the knowledge of making fire, thus kickstarting humanity's evolution and pursuit for more knowledge.

Cesar's role in this is the archetype of foolish force bringing disastrous, unforeseen consequences. The tactical advantage Cesar got in burning the port is not worth the immense loss of the library. Brutal losses such as these are usually paired with themes of forgiveness (see also: Saw 3's ending) or overambition (see also: Resonance Cacade from Half-Life). The fire of the Library is a tale about how an ambition for power - such as the one Julius Cesar is known for - will usually pass through bringing everything, even the most sacred knowledge, to its knees.

The story of the Library of Alexandria is a cautionary tale of overambition and its consequences, as well as the story of how knowledge used to be rampant and free until that knowledge became lost. These themes, these archetypes, can be found in most cultures through different stories, and they are useful in that they are both the building blocks for how we understand the world around us and ourselves. Sometimes we embody Cesar's rage and stop ourselves before we make a mistake with disastrous consequences. Sometimes we archive things in an attempt to preserve knowledge that may be hidden or lost otherwise. Whatever the case, the archetypes and icons in these stories are useful to us and while we should always search for the truth behind them, we must also recognise the importance of their romanticization.