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BIBLICAL LIBRARIES

but this has nothing to do with the type, for it simply grows out of the fact that the building is on the slope of a hill.

It has been conjectured that a series of rooms, adjoining the library but not directy connected with it(?) was for the use of the library staff. However that may be it at least suggests the "great establishment where the men of letters who use the Museum take their meals together," which with the lecture-room and colonnade made up the Alexandrian Museum—and this too may be typical of scholarly public libraries.

Various ancient library buildings have been ascribed directly to the influence of this, including the earliest library buildings of Rome, (Clarke pp. 12 sq.) and Vitruvius affords material for the suggestion (VII Praef ) that even the later library buildings of Alexandria may have been influenced by it, although certainly the Alexandrian collection of books was

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