Hypatia, the last librarian
Carl Sagan's Cosmos ends its account of the Library's destruction with Hypatia's death, and so joins the two; later tellers make her its last librarian. Cosmos is the latest date for the link; who first made it is still to be dated from Watts 2017.
Told by Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980, more than fifteen centuries after her death
What the evidence supports
No ancient source supports it. Hypatia taught mathematics and Platonism in Alexandria and was killed by a Christian mob in March 415; no ancient source connects her with the Library or with any library, and the Serapeum had fallen more than twenty years before.
Sources (3)
- Socrates Scholasticus, Church History 7.13–15
- E. J. Watts, Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)
- M. Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995)