ancient city of Alexandria

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The Golden Thread of the Muses:

How the Museum and Library Came to Alexandria

The Museum and Library at Alexandria were the first attempts to acquire and preserve all human knowledge and advance the development of knowledge in an institutional setting. This made Alexandria the world’s first “university town.” But little has ever been written about how the Museum and Library were actually founded. The surprising fact is that these institutions were founded by a member of Aristotle’s school, to advance the kind of systematic research that had begun earlier in Athens. This workshop will explore the earlier Greek “Academies of the Muses,” including Plato’s Academy, and how they led to the formation of the Museum and Library