long ago in 331 b.c egypt was ruled by greece after the king of greece alexander the great died a greek general named ptolemy became the ruler of egypt he loved learning he needed to have a place to collect books for people to have written records of their thoughts and ideas to do this he built a library it is the largest and best library in the ancient world before this time great writings were often hard to find then bools were written by hand on a kind of pap er called papyrus these books were stored in the library there scholars studied them and corrected any mistakes the library grew to have over half a million books it was a center of learning for over 700 years before it was destroyed by fire in 391 a.d.