King Ptolemy II and the Frenzied Pursuit of a Million Books

Ptolemy II, who ascended to the throne in Egypt and the Land of Israel in 283 BCE, inherited a ready-made kingdom. He ruled for nearly forty years, and devoted most of his energy to the development of culture and wisdom in Egypt. His father was a seasoned warrior who built an empire with his own hands. Ptolemy II was a man of culture. He was incredibly wealthy and was compared to King Solomon, and perhaps there was some resemblance to Solomon in his desire to be wise. Ptolemy was a bibliophile, a collector of books. He admired books and sent messengers to every corner of the world to copy books from there. Wisdom, history, science, religions—all interested him. Personally, he was involved in zoology and read and wrote extensively about animals and their nature. He was a tremendous "diligent". The historian Aelianus reported that he fell ill from reading too many books.

Ptolemy established the great library in Alexandria. If you ever thought that the "great" library of the city, or even of the university, was large, you were wrong: over two thousand three hundred years ago, Ptolemy II had about a million books in his library (the Rambam Library in Tel Aviv (Beit Ariella), one of the most famous in the country, has about half a million books). Ptolemy didn't order the books from AliExpress, and he didn't even go to Steimatzky... He sent hundreds of messengers all over the world, from India to Kush, to copy books and wisdom, and gave them an unlimited budget for this purpose.

Ptolemy made a public call throughout the Hellenistic world: Researchers and scientists who would come to live in Alexandria would receive free accommodation in the palace, a nice salary, tax exemption, and free meals for their entire lives! The library and the museum next to it filled up with historians, scholars, philosophers, and perhaps also some freeloaders who came to enjoy the celebration... Every ship docking in Egypt was under a royal search warrant. If a book was found on it, it was taken to the library. A special team would make a copy, and then the book would be returned to its owner. The library was sorted by topics and subtopics, with a special catalog in alphabetical order, through which it was possible to locate any book. The chief librarian was Zenodotus, a student of the famed philosopher Aristotle.

However, let us not be blinded by all these grand concepts. The culture Ptolemy established in Alexandria was Greek culture and was tied to idolatrous worship. The library was located inside a temple of the muses, where the ugliest forms of idolatrous worship were performed. Ptolemy was called "Ptolemy Philadelphus" because he married his sister (adelphos = sister). As king of Egypt, Ptolemy also adopted the Egyptian religion. He called himself Pharaoh and claimed to be the son of the Egyptian god Horus. Ptolemy established a religious cult whose purpose was to worship his wife, and when he took another wife, he established a separate religious cult for her... He devised ritual texts to be said during the worship of his wife, the goddess. Ptolemy and his peers also performed worship for Alexander the Great, who lived a generation before them, as if he were a god. Among the philosophers there were cynics who doubted every value, everything sacred, and everything good. Their main focus was the culture of the body, and promiscuity and idolatry were dominant and not considered bad. On the outside, everything looked glamorous, but upon closer inspection, the bearers of this culture lost human simplicity, innocence, the desire to live pure lives, and became addicted to pleasures, the appearance of culture and wisdom instead of living good and faithful lives. Alexandria under Ptolemy was similar, to some extent, to the Las Vegas of our time.

To understand how this culture affected parts of the Jewish people, one must understand its great power on one hand, and the great risk posed by it, on the other.

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