The Great Library of Alexandria would be the subject of an epic Hollywood movie. It was the grandest institution of learning in the ancient world and comprised of 700,000 scrolls, the equivalent of ...

The story of Alexandria is a myth—in fact a collection of myths and legends, sometimes competing with each other—to which the popular imagination continues to cling. The idea of a truly universal ...

Back in the 80s, the fourth-century burning of the great library at Alexandria was a popular totem among atheists I knew. At the time it was widely believed that Church leaders torched it because they ...

In 48 B.C., Julius Caesar was engaged in a fierce battle for power against his arch rival Pompey. By this time, the Romans largely controlled Egypt, though the descendants of Ptolemy still ruled ...

All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Gizmodo may earn an affiliate commission. Reading time 5 minutes One ...

An Egyptian library with a heritage dating back over 2,000 years is set to build a high performance supercomputer in order to help academics perform scientific research with far more power than their ...

The opening episode of Carl Sagan’s TV series Cosmos, first shown in 1980, lamented the most famous burning of books in history—the conflagration that destroyed the Library of Alexandria. “If I could ...