The Demise of the Museum of Alexandria

For many centuries, Athens retained her prestige as a center of art and culture. Her schools went on indeed to 529 AD, that is to say for nearly a thousand years. But the leadership and intellectual activity of the world passed presently across the Mediterranean to Alexandria. Here the Macedonian general Ptolemy had become pharaoh with a court that spoke Greek. He set up a foundation in Alexandria, which was formerly dedicated to the Muses, the Museum of Alexandria. Over two or three generations, the scientific work done at Alexandria was extraordinarily good. The museum produced little good work after its first century of activity.