Paranormal
It has been calculated that considerably less than 10 percent of the records of antiquity have come down to us. When one considers, however, the difficulties of preserving such records, and the vicissitudes through which they have passed, it is a wonder that we have even as much as we do. Much of the recorded material we do have has reached our present age because it was cut on stone, painted or incised on tomb walls, baked in clay tablets or inscribed on seals. Such material is often of a laudatory or commemorative nature and is rarely the literary or social commentary material which would give us a better insight on how the past really was, which we often are able to get from other unexpected sources.
Much of the ancient literature that could have come down to us has been destroyed by fire, either intentionally or by chance. Ancient "books" were really long papyrus or parchment scrolls kept in libraries in certain of the great metropoli or place cities and which could be copied by hand for one's own library providing one had permission to do so and enough educated slave power to get the job done. This had the effect of limiting the number of editions of any original manuscript and made masterpieces more vulnerable to loss and destruction.
Here then, is an account of some of the major known losses of knowledge suffered in history, though there may have been several more which we simply do not know about.
Persepolis
Alexander the Great is known to have respected all the people and cultures that he had conquered. However, in a departure from his normal reputation, Persepolis, the mighty capital of the Persian Empire, was destroyed, the Royal Palace being the main target and the Royal Library went with it.The Royal Library at Persepolis had originally been built to rival that of Babylon, wherein thousands of texts had been stored for a very long time in archives mostly containing the collected histories and scientific achievements of the Persian empire. The most notable of its possessions, and also the example most cited, is the original Avesta - a collection of sacred Zoroastrianism texts dating from 1000 BC, said to have been written on cow hides in gold.
It was in 330 AD when Alexander was part of the destruction of Persepolis. History is muddled about what took place but a rough account based upon Plutarch's recordings mention that when the Greeks had taken over the Persian capital, there was so much gold that Alexander held magnificent games and rewarded the winners generously. One day, Alexander and his Companions (an elite group of cavalrymen) were feasting and drinking, when Thais (who later became a queen of Egypt) made a toast.
"From hence designing to march against Darius, before he set out he diverted himself with his officers at an entertainment of drinking and other pastimes, and indulged so far as to let every one's mistress sit by and drink with them. The most celebrated of them was Thais, an Athenian, mistress of Ptolemy, who was afterwards King of Egypt. She, partly as a sort of well-turned compliment to Alexander, partly out of sport, as the drinking went on, at last was carried so far as to utter a saying, not misbecoming her native country's character, though somewhat too lofty for her own condition. She said it was indeed some recompense for the toils she had undergone in following the camp all over Asia, that she was that day treated in, and could insult over, the stately palace of the Persian monarches. But, she added, it would please her much better if, while the king looked on, she might in sport, with her own hands, set fire to the court of that Xerxes who reduced the city of Athens to ashes, that it might be recorded to posterity that the women who followed Alexander had taken a severer revenge on the Persians for the suffering, and affronts of Greece, than all the famed commanders had been able to do by sea or land. What she said was received with such universal liking and murmurs of applause, and so seconded by the encouragement and eagerness of the company, that the king himself, persuaded to be of the party, started from his seat, and with a chaplet of flowers on his head and a lighted torch in his hand, led them the way, while they went after him in a riotous manner, dancing and making loud cries about the place; which when the rest of the Macedonians perceived, they also in great delight ran thither with torches; for they hoped the burning and destruction of the royal palace was an argument that he looked homeward, and had no design to reside among the barbarians. Thus some writers give their account of this action, while others say it was done deliberately; however, all agree that he soon repented of it, and gave order to put out the fire."
-Plutarch on Alexander
-Plutarch on Alexander
In essence, the destruction of Persepolis was an act that sat well with almost everyone in the hall that day as sentiments had ridden strong about the destruction that Xerxes had inflicted upon Athens. As a result of the burning of Persepolis, the library was burnt too, and many Zoroastrian pupils escaped the pillaging. Some of these were scholars, those who had learned portions of the Avesta by heart, as a result of which only fragments survive today.
The Library of Carthage and the Phoenicians
Phoenicians, as you may have studied in history classes, were an ancient civilization that originated around 1200 BC in the historical region of Syria/Lebanon. More notable is the fact that their alphabet formed the basis for a majority of the alphabets of most of today's major languages. The Phoenicians were a maritime nation and as a result were heavy traders and a major naval force in the Mediterranean, where they had spread their empire. Of their many outposts, Carthage, in North Africa, was a notable center of learning, for it had a library containing over half a million texts. Combining the fact that they had writing system that still survives in many forms today, and that their library was an immense behemoth relative to many others, what the Library of Carthage held beckons as an alluring mystery.Unfortunately for the Phoenicians, it was around the same time that the Roman Empire was on the rise in Italy and a clash between the two civilizations was inevitable. There were three Punic wars, all three of which the Phoenicians lost, the third being the worst because it was then that the Romans sacked Carthage and burned the library and all the books inside to provide heating for their bathwater.
The Library of Alexandria
The Library of Alexandria is one that has reached a legendary status, the story of which has been told in several mutated forms over the years. The Library itself has now become symbolic in its representation of the accumulated knowledge of the ancients and synonymous with the destruction of knowledge by 'evil doers'.The Library was founded around 290 BC by the Ptolemies in Alexandria since it was the largest city in the known world at the time. It was an impressive venture that was set forth upon, because the main aim was to make it the largest collection in the world. Covert agents were sent out everywhere possible to purchase, borrow and steal scrolls by any means necessary. A law was passed, requiring all visitors to surrender all books to the library for the duration of their visit to the area; scribes would swiftly copy these scrolls and the scrolls (sometimes the duplicates) returned to the owner, if lucky.
Because the concept of an indexing system didn't exist in the form that it does today, it is not known exactly how many scrolls this library possessed. It is estimated to have had somewhere around 500000 to 1500000 scrolls, some containing 'works' supposedly dating to times before the Egyptian and Sumerican civilizations.
In becoming the most impressive collection of scrolls, it also became a large learning center, and many famous historical figures lived and wrote in Alexandria such as Eratosthanes, Homer, Archimedes and Euclid.
It is at this point that knowledge of the library becomes muddled, owing paradoxically to the stepped destruction of the library over time. There are several versions of single stories associated with the destruction of this great library, and in each one a particular 'race' or 'religion' is blamed. However, the library was destroyed not by one, but by a series of conflagrations.
It started in 88BC when Egypt was undergoing a civil war; large portions of Alexandria were burned, including parts of the library. Although the library wasn't completely destroyed, several major works were lost as well as many scholars who lived and worked there.
Around 47BC, Julius Caesar invaded and burned the harbor, which led to another portion of the library burning. Roman soldiers then proceeded to loot the library, shipping about 50,000 scrolls back to Rome.
It was then in 273 AD that another Roman emperor, Aurelian, invaded Egypt. This campaign again resulted in another fire, again destroying parts of the library.
A century later, Christianity spread throughout the area. Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, in an effort to assert Christian prominence among the locals urged mobs to Alexandria's "sub-library" - the Serapis temple - as the clergy were uncomfortable with the existence of paganistic documents on their lands. The temple was successfully destroyed and this was hailed as a major victory for Christians over the pagans.
Of course, there is also a famous story of the Omar of Caliph who invaded Alexandria in 640 AD and decreed: "The contents of these books (in the Library of Alexandria) are in conformity with the Koran or they are not. If they are, the Korean is sufficient without them; if they are not then they are pernicious. Let them, therefore, be destroyed." The flaw with this story though, is that the story first originated in the 13th century, 600 years after the alleged incident, by Christian monks who wanted to slander their Moslem oppressors.
Over time, after the Serapis incident, the library declined as it lost its prestige and a general air of indifference came to be associated with the Library. Further religious and civil unrest continued to plague the library's infrastructure and eventually the library was buried and forgotten, never to be found again, its existence only known through references in other books.
China
Besides the destruction of ancient records in the Mediterranean world and the Middle East by the misfortunes of war, conquest or fanaticism, we find in China's history an outstanding case of a single individual expunging the written past to immortalize himself, when Shih Huang Ti, the unifying Emperor of the Chin Dynasty (which gave China our name for it), adopted the political and psychological concept that Chinese history should start with him. In the third century BC he decreed that all books should be burned (including those of Confucius) and sent scholars slow to destroy them to the unscholarly and often fatal labor of building the Great Wall. The Emperor excepted only books dealing with medicine, agriculture and necromancy. As Chinese civilization had given rise to eminent scientific advances in very early times we do not know what knowledge and what references may have been lost, although certain medical practices such as acupuncture - piercing the head, shoulders and joints with long needs to restore the balance of yin-yang, the positive and negative forces in the body - dates from those very ancient times and is still used and encouraged by the present rulers of China.The use of the compass may be an instance of scientific knowledge preserved as magic while its true purpose was forgotten and then once more recognized. Chinese necromancers used polished hermitite ladles, sometimes balanced, sometimes half floating, to tell fortunes, but these artifacts also served for establishing directions, both for ships and chariots, as the indicators pointed due north and due south, the south pole being regarded as the principal pole (perhaps a memory of former voyages?) by the ancient Chinese.
It is not completely clear whether the ancient Chinese developed explosives locally or preserved this knowledge from an earlier source, as seems to be the case of the ancient inhabitants of India. The use of explosives in the Far East appears much older than was previously supposed, and not as a diversion but as a weapon. Some sort of explosives were used against Alexander the Great by the Indians and explosive rockets were used by the Chinese against the Mongols and other Turkic invaders. In fact, the only battle that dynastic China ever successfully fought against modern invaders was a defeat she inflicted on one of the earlier Russian probes to the East, almost 200 years ago, during the early days of her last dynasty. The Russians had guns, it is true, but although the Chinese had only bows, arrows, swords and spears to oppose them, they also had offensive rockets.
According to recent reports, Chinese scholars are presently researching antique documents, not only for the purpose of filling in history, but to see what can be learned from them of scientific knowledge, written in more or less disguised terms as was customary in remote times, when handed down knowledge was purposely kept secret by those who controlled it. An analogous search of ancient Arabic records is taking place in Russia and Arab countries, as interesting information about rockets, explosives and chemical reactions, inherited from earlier sources of antiquity by the great Moslem centers of Cordova, Granada, Cairo and Baghdad may contain, like the map of Piri Reis, information indicative of the scientific advancement of the past in the case of the former, relevant to the probable development of the future.
The Mayans
The conquest of the New World by insensitive European invaders was a benefit to themselves but a massacre of people and knowledge when it came to the Mayans. In the early sixteenth century, Bishop Diego de Landa, in Yucatan, caused to be destroyed all the Maya chronicles he could find (written on bark paper they burned nicely), for it was imperative that they spread Christianity in the area, ridding themselves of all that "blasphemed". He thereby also destroyed possibly any key for reading the hieroglyphics carved on stone or the three books which survived the burning - whose number tentatively rose to four in 1971 when another appeared from "confidential" sources.It should be noted, however, that Bishop de Landa eventually became interested in the very material he had destroyed an, in a confused muddle of archaeological research, invented an imaginary alphabet by interviewing surviving Mayans, who nervously told him whatever they thought he wanted to hear. This of course was a complete failure, as the Maya system of writing consisted of hieroglyphics, of which even today we can identify only a few, and were not letters at all. This Maya "alphabet" which never existed has survived to contribute considerable confusion to some researchers of the nineteenth century, as in the case where this imaginary alphabet of de Landa was used by two French scholars to "translate" a part of a surviving Maya book - The Codex Troano. Both Brasseur de Bourbourg and Auguste Le Plongeon thought that the passage they studied described the sinking of the "Land of Clay Hills, Mu... in the ocean, together with its 64 million inhabitants... 8060 years ago..." - calling to mind the phrase historian Robert Silverberg applied to a similar instance... "[it] has about it the fascination of lunacy, like some monstrous bridge constructed of toothpicks..."
Other notables
The Assyrian King Ashurbanipal had started a library which became the largest library in the world at the time. It had about 30000 cuneiform tablets. This library was destroyed by invaders in later ages but was rediscovered in modern ages, with just a few legible tablets. Among the works in the library was the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh.The Library of Pergamum was a Grecian library built near the original Acropolis and was intentioned to have become the center of learning for the Mediterranean world, almost rivaling Alexandria. However, this ended when Mark Antony gave Cleopatra all 200000 manuscripts from the library to be placed in Alexandria, as a wedding present. This emptied the library.
Caesarea, an ancient city in present day Israel is said to have been the largest ecclesiastical library of its time. The library was destroyed when the city was invaded by Persians in the 7th century.
In the later part of the 8th century, the House of Wisdom was established in Baghdad, which became a major library, learning and translation center for all scholarly Arab works. This was destroyed when the Mongols invaded Iraq in the late 13th century.
