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49 free Library of Alexandria trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Library of Alexandria trivia quiz covers the ancient world's most legendary library, from its founding under the first Ptolemies to the arguments historians still have about how it vanished. The easy questions cover the basics: which country it stood in, what its scrolls were made of, who Eratosthenes was and what Julius Caesar's soldiers set alight in 48 BC. From there it digs into the head librarians, the Pinakes catalogue, the ships whose books were confiscated and copied, and the daughter library in the Serapeum. The harder half is for history buffs: the Letter of Aristeas, the purge of 145 BC, Didymus 'bronze guts', the Roman-era librarian with no scholarly record, Aurelian's assault on the Royal Quarter, and the late Arabic legend of books fuelling the city baths. It finishes with the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina. If you enjoyed our ancient Egypt or ancient Greece quizzes, this is the deep dive on one institution. Every answer was checked against the library's encyclopaedia entry before publishing, and where the ancient sources disagree, the questions say so.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which modern-day country did the Library of Alexandria stand?
Egypt
Alexandria was the Ptolemaic capital, founded on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt by Alexander the Great.
Q 02What was the larger research institution containing the Library, dedicated to the nine Muses, called?
The Mouseion
The word 'museum' descends from the Mouseion, a shrine of the Muses that doubled as a research campus.
Q 03Which exiled Athenian statesman may have proposed the idea of a universal library to Ptolemy I?
Demetrius of Phalerum
Demetrius was a Peripatetic, a student of Aristotle's school, and had taken refuge at the Ptolemaic court.
Q 04Under whose reign was the Library itself probably actually built?
Ptolemy II Philadelphus
Ptolemy I may have laid the groundwork, but modern scholars think it became a physical institution only under his son.
Q 05What writing material made up the Library's scroll collection?
Papyrus
Egypt was the ideal habitat for the plant, which gave the Ptolemies an abundant, cheap supply of writing material.
Q 06Estimates of the Library's holdings at its height range from about 40,000 up to how many scrolls?
700,000
Nobody knows the true figure; the catalogue that might have told us, the Pinakes, survives only in fragments.
Q 07Which head librarian calculated the circumference of the Earth to within a few hundred kilometres?
Eratosthenes of Cyrene
He was also the first scholar to apply mathematics to geography and map-making.
Q 08Callimachus wrote the Pinakes, sometimes considered the world's first what?
Library catalogue
The Pinakes ran to 120 books and listed each author's name, father, birthplace and complete works.
Q 09Which Alexandrian scholar is credited with inventing the first recorded steam engine?
Hero of Alexandria
His device, the aeolipile, spun a sphere using jets of steam but was never put to industrial use.
Q 10Aristophanes of Byzantium invented Greek diacritics and was the first to divide which kind of text into lines?
Poetic texts
Before him, poems were written out on the page just like prose.
Q 11The Library's decline began in 145 BC with a purge of intellectuals under which ruler?
Ptolemy VIII Physcon
His nickname Physcon means 'potbelly'; he expelled all foreign scholars from the city.
Q 12Which head librarian resigned and exiled himself to Cyprus during that purge?
Aristarchus of Samothrace
He was regarded as the greatest of all ancient scholars of Homer and died on Cyprus shortly after fleeing.
Q 13Julius Caesar's forces accidentally burned the Library, or part of its collection, in which year?
48 BC
The fire began when his soldiers torched Egyptian ships in the harbour during his civil war.
Q 21According to Galen, what happened to books found on ships arriving in Alexandria's port under Ptolemy II?
They were seized, copied, and the copies returned to the owners
The originals stayed in the Library, which is why the scrolls were sometimes labelled 'from the ships'.
Q 22Why did the Library favour older copies of texts over newer ones?
Less copying meant fewer errors
This principle is essentially the same one modern textual critics still use.
Q 23Which works did the Library focus on acquiring above all others?
Q 14Which geographer's visit around 20 BC shows the Library survived Caesar's fire?
Strabo
His account also suggests the institution was far less prestigious than it had been centuries earlier.
Q 15A 'daughter library' was established in a temple to which Greco-Egyptian god?
Serapis
The temple, the Serapeum, was opened as a satellite collection when the main Library ran out of space.
Q 16The Serapeum was demolished in 391 AD under a decree from which bishop of Alexandria?
Theophilus
The demolition followed street fighting between Christians and the temple's Neoplatonist teachers.
Q 17Which Assyrian king founded the famous library at Nineveh?
Ashurbanipal
Its clay tablets, unlike Alexandria's papyrus, survived burial and were dug up in the 19th century.
Q 18The earliest surviving source on the Library of Alexandria's founding is a letter attributed to whom?
Aristeas
The Letter was written between about 180 and 145 BC and contains details now known to be inaccurate.
Q 19In which quarter of Alexandria was the Library built?
The Brucheion
The Brucheion, or Royal Quarter, was later destroyed during Aurelian's recapture of the city in 272 AD.
Q 20According to popular description, what inscription hung above the Library's shelves?
The place of the cure of the soul
The other phrases belong to Delphi and to Plato's Academy respectively.
The Homeric epics
Each copy of the Iliad and Odyssey was tagged with a label recording where it had come from.
Q 24Per a Greek geographer, Library scholars enjoyed a salary, free lodging and what other perk?
Exemption from taxes
They also ate together in a large circular dining hall with a high domed ceiling.
Q 25A likely apocryphal story says Ptolemy II drowned the poet Sotades in a lead jar for mocking what?
The king's marriage to his sister
Ptolemy II had married his full sister Arsinoe II, a practice that scandalised Greeks but suited Egyptian royal custom.
Q 26Who was the first recorded head librarian of Alexandria?
Zenodotus of Ephesus
He compiled a glossary of rare words in alphabetical order, making him the first person known to have used that method of organisation.
Q 27What organisational method is Zenodotus the first person known to have used?
Alphabetical order
His system only used the first letter of a word; sorting by the remaining letters did not appear until the second century AD.
Q 28Which surviving epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts was written by the second head librarian?
The Argonautica
Its author, Apollonius of Rhodes, was a native of Alexandria and a pupil of Callimachus.
Q 29Which mathematician was reputedly inspired by the Nile at Alexandria to invent a water-lifting screw?
Archimedes
He later returned to Syracuse and kept inventing until the Roman sack of that city.
Q 30Eratosthenes's lost geographical treatise, known only through later quotations, was called what?
Geographika
He argued the setting of Homer's poems was purely imaginary and that poetry's purpose was 'to capture the soul'.