| Summary: | The aim of this study is to examine the scientific discourse surrounding the founding of the ancient Library in Alexandria. For this I have used a discourse analytical method and I have limited the investigation by only looking at scholarly books from the period 1952 to 2009. In the initial reading it became obvious that authors exclusively cite influences from three different contexts: a Greek influence, a Hellenistic influence, and a native Egyptian/near eastern influence. This seemed to be an interesting and relevant area of study, especially since it could pertain to the modern library context and how we today handle cultural influences. By applying certain theoretical analysis terms such as node, element and floating signifier to the texts I have examined the different books and have tried go get an idea of what important elements the authors focus on, what sources they base this on, and then I have tried to analyze the arguments they use. I identified a number of tendencies in the source material which are discussed at length in the essay. For instance, some of them relate to the author’s problematic usage of primary sources, others have to do with what seems to be arguments stemming from a historical bias against certain cultures. I also looked at how the scholarship has seemingly changed over time and what possible reasons there could be for this.
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