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The Library of Alexandria is one of the most famous and well-known buildings from the ancient world. Despite this fame, scholars know little about it and much debate surrounds the details of its existence and eventual destruction. Most disagree on its size, its location and most of all the way in which it was ultimately destroyed (Galbraith, 4). Although the Library of Alexandria was not the first library of its kind in the ancient world, if what its contemporaries say about it is true, it was most certainly the largest. Many libraries existed in antiquity but none contained as many books or enjoyed the same amount of financial support from the ruling monarchy. The Library of Alexandria was utilized by some of the most famous scholars of its time and it amassed a collection of books some say was half a million or more. No other institution had such a reputation. Ultimately the Library was destroyed but scholars do not know how or even in what century it met its demise. Despite the fact that the Library is one of the most famous relics of the ancient world, we know very little about its appearance, the work that was done there or how it eventually came to its end.

===Ancient Learning and Libraries===

With the invention of writing, believed to have occurred in Mesopotamia around 3200 B.C., came the need to archive and store collections of texts. Most of the earliest clay tablets that were created contained information saved for practical purposes. As such, when their relevance expired, the tablets were either erased and used again or re-used as building materials. Their creators had no need to save or archive them and as such those first examples of writing are lost.

The earliest known collection of archived content comes from the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk, located in southeast of Iraq. Archaeologists discovered roughly 4500 texts as part of a collection of varying in topics from astronomy to mathematics. This is the earliest known evidence of what archaeologists call “archival behavior” (Potts, 19-20). Other libraries that existed in that time included The Royal Library of Antioch (est. 221 B.C.) and the already ancient Library of Ashurbanipal, located in modern day Iraq. It is said that, upon seeing Ashurbanipal, Alexander the Great was inspired to establish his own Library and he bestowed that responsibility upon his Macedonian general Ptolemy I. <ref>Philips, Heather A., “The Great Library of Alexandria?” <i>Library Philosophy and Practice</i>:1 August, 2010. Web. 10 January, 2016.</ref>

===Outline of the Museum and the Library===