What really was the final blow to the Library of Alexandria's collection?

[Nora.T]

I’ve always been taught that the Library of Alexandria’s destruction was this singular, catastrophic fire that set human knowledge back centuries. But recently I’ve been reading that its decline was actually a much slower process over several centuries, with multiple damaging events. It makes me wonder if we’ve oversimplified the whole narrative. What really was the final blow that made its vast collection unrecoverable?

[Mason78]

I was taught the big fire story too yet the more I read the more it seems the decline was slow and messy. It wasn't one dramatic collapse but a long fade with fires and wars and neglect stacking up over centuries.

[HannahMW]

From what I remember the Caesar era fire did some damage but even after that the collection kept getting moved and copied in other places. The final blow may not exist as a single moment but a chain of losses.

[HarperD]

I tried to trace some titles and many vanished without leaving a trace because copies did not survive. It feels like a slow erosion rather than a single disaster.

[Hannah30]

Maybe the real issue is that we are looking for a final end while the truth might be that the archive faded long before the bricks tumbled. Is the problem the place or how knowledge moved around?