Liber chronicarum (“Nuremberg Chronicle”), Folio 92 verso

The Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt was one of the largest and most important research institutions in the ancient world, established to realize the Ptolemaic rulers’ goal of collecting all knowledge. It became known for its academic freedom and attracted scholars from afar. The library’s scribes copied every text that entered the city—be it literary, scientific, or medical—to add to the library’s collection. 

This illustration of the library’s partial destruction in 48 BCE during a Roman siege is from the Nuremberg Chronicle, an ambitiously comprehensive record of world history. The depiction focuses on the burning books, rather than showing the building ablaze, symbolizing not just the loss of physical texts but also of ideas. Instead of rendering papyrus scrolls, the artist represented the texts as codices, which would have been more familiar to the Chronicle’s early modern European audience.