Cleopatra’s Library Rival to the Great Library of Alexandria

 

Cleopatra’s Library Rival to the Great Library of Alexandria

Date: c. 35 BCE

Story:
Cleopatra is remembered for her beauty, but she was also an intellectual monarch with a passion for scholarship.
Aside from supporting the Great Library of Alexandria, she funded a second, secret library within the royal palace.
This private archive held forbidden scrolls—alchemy, foreign prophecies, astronomical maps, and Roman political records.
She recruited scribes to copy banned works, and some claim she acquired parts of Aristotle’s lost treatises via trade with Greek islands.
After Caesar’s library fire in 48 BCE, Cleopatra sent ships to Pergamon to purchase replacement manuscripts.
Her archive became a tool of diplomacy. She would "leak" knowledge to foreign embassies—or withhold it.
It is rumored she possessed documents proving Roman war crimes in Gaul, which she threatened to expose if Caesar ever turned on her.
When Octavian invaded, her scribes attempted to seal the collection in lead-lined jars.
Their fate is unknown, but some believe Cleopatra’s hidden library lies buried beneath modern Alexandria.

Key Characters:

-Cleopatra VII

-Royal scribes

-Greek scholars

-Roman diplomats

Reference:

-Strabo, Geography

-Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae

-Tyldesley, Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt