Russell Gmirkin wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 5:22 pm
ABuddhist wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 12:24 pm
Would you be kind enough to try to answer this question, even by citing from something which you have published?
StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 9:03 am
The Library of Alexandria surely collected books, mostly on papyrus. But is there evidence that they created anthropological field studies to create books in non-Greek languages?
Stephen's question is pretty incomprehensible. I assume he was making an attempt at sarcasm. But there are ancient testimonies that the Library of Alexandria under Ptolemy II Philadelphus sought to fulfill the earlier ambitions of Alexander the Great by having the library translate texts from every language into Greek for addition to the collection (Canfora 1990: 23-25, 101, 120, 126-27, 131, 186). See, for instance, Tzetzes,
De comoedia, on the collection and translation of books from "all the peoples of the world." One Byzantine source claimed:
Learned men were enlisted from every nation, men who as well
as being masters of their own languages were wonderfully well
acquainted with Greek. Each group of scholars was allocated
the appropriate texts, and so a Greek translation of every text
was made.
A passage from Epiphanius says:
The second sovereign of Alexandria after Ptolemy, to wit the
king known as Ptolemy Philadelphus, was a man who loved
beauty and culture. He founded a library in this same city of
Alexandria, in the district known as Bruchion (a quarter now
altogether abandoned), and he put one Demetrius Phalereus in
charge of it, instructing him to collect together all the books of
the world.... The work proceeded, and books were gathered
from all parts, until one day the king asked the director of the
library how many books had been collected. The director replied:
'There are about 54,800. We hear, however, that there
is a great quantity of books among the Ethiopians, the Indians,
the Persians, the Elamites, the Babylonians, the Chaldaeans,
the Romans, the Phoenicians and the Syrians.'
A passage from Isidore of Seville,
De bibliotecis V.3.3 reads:
And from here grew the fashion, known among
all sovereigns and in every city, for obtaining the books of
various peoples and, by the work of translators, turning them
into Greek. This is why Alexander the Great, or perhaps
his successors, set about building libraries in which every
book would be contained. And Ptolemy called Philadelphus,
in particular, who was deeply versed in letters and who vied
with Pisistratus in his devotion to libraries, brought together
in his library not only the works of the gentiles but the holy
scriptures too. In fact, seventy thousand volumes were to be
found in Alexandria in those days.
Some of these translations (besides the LXX) made at the Great Library are known from various classical sources. One of them was probably the Tyrian Annals, translated from Phoenician by Menander. The translation of the writings attributed to Zoroaster, numbering over 2 million lines, was another notable example. Professor Michael Lockwood has argued in several books and many articles that the delegation of Buddhists who traveled to Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (and other Greek centers of learning) in a diplomatic mission documented in a well-known stele from the time of Ashoka the Great (ca. 268-232 BCE) invented the Brahmi script (which has clear affinities to Greek) in order to record in writing certain previously oral works on Buddhist religious teachings to be added to the Great Library. (Lockwood had already developed these theories several years before encountering my research, by the way).
So there is considerable evidence for the Great Library translating as many works in "barbaric" (non-Greek) languages as it could obtain.
Canfora, Luciano,
The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990.