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was founded at a unique place and time which allowed its scholars to draw on the deductive techniques of Aristotle and Greek thought, in order to apply these methods to the knowledges of Greece, Egypt, Macedonia, Babylonia, and beyond. The location of Alexandria as a center of trade, and in particular as the major exporter of writing material, offered vast opportunities for the amassing of information from different cultures and schools of thought. Its scholars' deliberate efforts to compile and critically analyze the knowledge of their day allowed for the first systematic, long-term research by dedicated specialists in the new fields of science suggested by Aristotle and Callimachus. Whole new disciplines, such as grammar, manuscript preservation, and trigonometry were established.
Moreover, the fortuitious collection of documents in an Egyptian city allowed the transmission and translation of vital classical texts into Arabic and Hebrew, where they might be preserved long after copies were lost during the Middle Ages in Europe. Alexandria and its cousins, the Lyceum, Academy, and the younger Pergamon library, were probably the prototypes both for the medieval monastery and universities. While modern scholars often lament the amount of information lost through the centuries since the Museum's fall, an amazing number of Alexandrian discoveries and theories, especially in mathematics and geometry, still provide the groundwork for modern research in these fields. Finally, the methods of research, study, and information storage and organization developed in the Library are much the same as those used today, but just as the medium of linear scrolls gave way to books in its halls, we now are watching the transformation from books to multilayered documents in the electronic medium.
The great library and museum of Alexandria was established by Ptolemy I in 290 B.C. and flourished under the Ptolemys and through the Roman Period. The remarkable collection of manuscripts brought fame to the city on the Nile as the literary and scientific capital of the Mediterranean.
Among the first known libraries established by a state for the promotion of literature and science, by 250 B.C., the number of rolls reached 532,000 -- equivalent to 100,000 modern books.
The scholars of the day made Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, the intellectual capital of the Greek world. Alexander the Great proclaimed himself King of Macedon after the death of his father in 336 BC. While not commonly liked within his own kingdom after the disposal of his stepmother and brother (no one is quite sure of their method of disposal), he created the Kingdom of Macedonia. The kingdom stretched from the Baltic states of Europe, south to Egypt and east to India . One of his creations was the city of Alexandria and a famous library. Alexander died at the age of 33 from a infection, thought to be malaria.
Alexander the Great
with crook and flail, and pharaonic head gear, as his likeness might have appeared in the library of Alexandria.
Taken from COSMOS
by Carl Sagan
Like any other library of modern times it held a store of knowledge in the delicate form known as papyrus scrolls. Alexandria was a major trading port during these times in history with commercial ships docking at the port frequently. As a result it had many vessels visiting it's port. A law was passed that the police - not for contraband but for books, would search any vessel or visiting caravan. Any scrolls, maps, and literature were required to hand over to be copied of transformed into written format. Once copied these items were returned to their owners - if they wanted them back.
The library was open to all and held a collection of information that ranged from the correct measurement of the circumference of the earth to the sexuality of humans (subjects such as homosexuality, sexual stimulation and sexual positions). It was these later subjects that would lead to the library's destruction. It was been estimated that the library contained more than a half a millon volumes before its destruction.
The Great Hall of the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt.
A reconstruction based on scholarly evidence.
Taken from COSMOS by Carl Sagan
Paulus in Ephesus.
"Some believe that a new era begins when the rite called 'auto de fe'
(the-burning-of-the-books) can be performed"
From: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon
As seen by accounts on "both sides"
After the beginning of publishing in Sumeria, and the beginnings of scholarship and book publishing in Babylonia, Egypt, Israel and China, the world was to witness a dark age of the destruction of literature, books, and knowledge, which coincides with the rise of Christianity. Only in Europe with Gutenberg's Press, and the Renaissance, and in China with the invention of movable type and the printing press some centuries earlier, does book publishing and the dissemination of knowledge begin again to pick up the legacy started by the Sumerians, Babylonians and Israelis.
(In the "New World," Printing and literature had also begun to appear, and was not spared destruction during the Spanish and Catholic Inquisition)
Publishing in the Greco-Roman World:
The Library of Alexandria's "Publishing Room"
Demetrius of Phaleron
The library of Alexandria held over 400,000 papyrus scrolls of text and housed a museum. Copying facilities provided the means to copy and disseminate writings, which preserved thousands of texts that would have otherwise been destroyed in the fires set by enemies. THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE
The first mention we have of the library is in The Letter of Aristeas (ca. 180-145 B.C.E.), a Jewish scholar housed at the Library chronicling the translation of the Septuagint into Greek by seventy-two rabbis. This massive production was commissioned by the Athenian exile Demetrius of Phaleron under his patron, Ptolemy I, Ptolemy Soter. Demetrius himself was a former ruler, no less than a ten-year tyrant of Athens, and a first-generation Peripatetic scholar. That is, he was one of the students of Aristotle along with Theophrastus and Alexander the Great. Demetrius, helped into power in Athens by Alexander's successor Cassander, provided backing for Theophrastus to found a Lyceum devoted to his master's studies and modelled after Plato's Academy. After Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander's successful generals, secured the kingship for himself of conquered Egypt, Theophrastus turned down the Pharoah's invitation in 297 B.C.E to tutor Ptolemy's heir, and instead recommended Demetrius, who had recently been driven out from Athens as a result of political fallout from the conflicts of Alexander's successors [Diog. Laert. 5.37].
How and why was the library destroyed?
Timeline taken from COSMOS
by Carl Sagan
In 412 Theophilus' nephew Cyril succeeded him as Patriarch of Christianity. The Patriarch exercised control of Alexandria, and the conflict between secular and religious authority was decided in 415, when the Roman prefect Orestes, officially still in charge of the province, objected to Cyril's order that all Jews be expelled from the Alexandia. Cyril's army of monks murdered the prefect and were canonized by him for this deed.
These same monks captured Hypatia, daughter of the Museum's last great mathematician Theon, who was the last keeper of the library. She was a Neoplatonist philo-sopher and astronomer whose teachings are partially recorded by one of her admirers and pupils, the Christian Synesius, and she was also supposedly an advisor to Orestes and one of the last members of the museum-library. Driving home from her own lectures without an attendant, this independent woman and scholar epitomized the suspect nature of Paganism and its heretical scientific teachings. She was dragged from her chariot by the mob, stripped, flayed, and finally burned alive in the library of the Caesareum as a witch. The Patriach Cyril was made a saint for this action. The library itself was ransacked of any gold or silver and then put to the torch.
Today, several diggings where the library stood, have revealed scientific and historical documents that would have resulted in the industrial revolution having occurred 1500 years earlier. Among the lost documents included the methods used to build the pyramids and the parthenon, alchemy, natural plant medicine and utopian philosophy.
"The Great Library of Alexandria, so called to distinguish it from the smaller or "daughter" library in the Serapeum, was a foundation of the first Ptolemies for the purpose of aiding the maintenance of Greek civilization in the midst of the conservative Egyptians. If the removal of Demetrius Phalereus to Alexandria, in 296-295 B.C., was connected with the organization of the library, at least the plan for this institution must have been formed under Ptolemaios Soter (died c. 284 B.C.), but the completion of the work and its connection with the Museum was achievement of his successor, Ptolemaios Philadelphos. As Strabo does not mention the library in his description of the buildings upon the harbour, it is clear that it was not in that part of the city, and its connection with the Museum points to a location in the Brucheion, or northwestern quarter of the city.
Of the means by which the books were acquired many anecdotes are told. Ships entering the harbour were forced to give up any manuscripts they had on board and take copies instead. The official copy of the works of the three great tragedians belonging to Athens was retained by forfeiting the deposit of 15 talents that had been pledged for its return. The rivalry between Alexandria and Pergamon was so keen that to cripple the latter the exportation of papyrus was prohibited. Necessity led to the perfecting of the methods of preparing skins to receive writing, the improved material being known as "charta pergamena," from which is derived our "parchment," This rivalry was also the occasion of the composition of many spurious works, of devices for giving to manuscripts a false appearance of antiquity, and also of hasty and careless copying.
The number of books thus obtained is variously stated, the discrepancy being due partly to the fact that the statements refer to various periods. Demetrius Phalereus is said to have reported that the number of papyrus rolls was 200,000, but that he hoped to increase it soon to 500,000. In the time of Callimachos 490,000 rolls are mentioned; later, Aulus Gellius and Ammianus Marcellinus speak of 700,000 rolls. Orosius, on the other hand, speaks only of 400,000, while Seneca says that 40,000 rolls were burnt (probably an error for 400,000).
The first librarian was Zenodotus (234 B.C.). He was succeeded in turn by Eratosthenes (234-195 B.C.); Aristophanes of Byzantium (195-181 B.C.); and Aristarchos of Samothrace (181-171 B.C.), all famous names in the history of scholarship. The inclusion in this list of Callimachos and Apollonios Rhodios rests on slight authority and seems chronologically impossible. The work of these men consisted in classifying, cataloguing, and editing the works of Greek literature and exerted a deep and permanent influence not only upon the form of the books, their subdivisions, and arrangement, but also upon the transmission of the texts and all phases of the study of the history of literature.
After Aristarchos the importance of the library began to wane. In 47 B.C. Caesar was compelled to set fire to his fleet to prevent its falling into the hands of the Egyptians. The fire spread to the docks and the naval arsenal, and destroyed 400,000 rolls. It is most probable from the statement of Orosius that these were not in the library itself, but had been removed from it preparatory for shipment to Rome, a view confirmed by the statement of the author of the "Bellum Alexandrinum " that Alexandria was built in such a way as to be safe from a great conflagration. Seneca and Gellius also speak only of the burning of manuscripts, though the latter represents the destruction as complete. Less carefully, Plutarch and Dio Cassius speak of the burning of the library, but had this been the case we should find mention of it in Cicero and Strabo.
The loss of books was partly repaired by Anthony 's gift to Cleopatra, in 41 B.C., of 200,000 volumes from the library of Pergamon. Domitian drew upon the library for transcripts. Under Aurelian, in A.D. 272, the greater part of the Brucheion was destroyed, and it is most probable that the library perished at this time. The small library in the Serapeum is supposed to have perished when the temple of Serapis was destroyed by Theophilus, but there is no definite statement to that effect. Up to the time of Gibbon, the generally accepted version of the destruction of the library was that, on the capture of the city by the Mahommedans in A.D. 642, John Philoponos, having formed a friendship with their general Amrou, asked for the gift of the library. Amrou referred the matter to the Caliph Omar and received the answer:
If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless,and need
not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed.
Accordingly, they were employed in the baths as fuel, and lasted six months. This story is now generally discredited, chiefly because it rests only on the authority of Abulpharagius, a writer six centuries later, while earlier writers, especially Eutychius and Elmacin, make no mention of it. Besides, the act is contrary to Mohammedan custom; John Philoponos lived about a century before the capture of the city, and the statement of the time the rolls lasted as fuel is preposterous. Finally, there is the evidence given above for the earlier destruction of the library. "
Exerpted from GEORGE MELVILLE BOLLING
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 1
Copyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton Company
According to many historians, here's a quaint version of what's left out of the official version, regarding the destruction of this great repository of the ancient world's books:
The transference of the capital of the world and the seat of authority from Europe to Asia was not an accident. It was a logical step. Christianity, to be consistent, had to break up housekeeping in Europe and move its menage from Rome to Constantinople. She was homesick for the climate, the atmosphere, the peoples, the traditions, the spirit, the institutions -- the milieu in which she was born. Unable to assimilate western ideas, she pined for Asia . By the same logic, she wished to wipe out in Asia every trace of European thought and culture. When, therefore, we read of the destruction of Pagan schools, libraries, and monuments, let us not look upon such acts as accidents in the history of Christianity, but as the logical unfolding of its genius. Why, you may ask, does it no longer pursue the policy of extermination? For the best of reasons; it is no longer virile enough to be logical. It has stumbled into the ways of inconsistency by reason of old age. Fifteen hundred years ago, in Alexandria, when our religion was both young and lusty, it attempted to, and succeeded in, destroying everything that reminded the world of the glory and liberty of ancient Rome and Greece.
Theodosius was at the time, of which we will now speak, the Christian ruler of the Empire. In reply to a request by the Archbishop of Alexandria, he sent a sentence of destruction against the ancient religion of Egypt . Both the Pagans and the Christians had assembled in the public square to hear the reading of the Emperor's letter, and when the Christians learned that they may destroy the gods of the Pagans, a wild shout of joy rent the air. The disappointed Pagans, on the other hand, realizing the danger of their position, silently slipped into their homes through dark alleys and hidden passage-ways. Yet they did not stand aside and see the temples of their gods razed to the ground without first offering a desperate resistance. Under the leadership of a zealot, Olympus, the Pagans fell upon the Christians, maddened with the cry in their ears of their leader, "Let us die with our gods!" Then came the turn of the Christians. Theophilius, the Archbishop of Alexandria, with a cross in his hand, and followed by his monks, marched upon the temple of Serapis, and proceeded to pull its pillars down. When they came to strike at the colossal statue of the god, for centuries worshiped as a deity, even the Christians turned pale with superstitious awe, and held their breath. A soldier armed with a heavy axe, was hesitating to strike the first blow. Will the god tolerate the insult? Will he not crash the roof upon the heads of the sacrilegious vandals? But the soldier struck the thundering blow right in the cheeks of Serapis, who offered no remonstrance whatever. The sun shone as usual, and the laws of nature maintained their even pace. Encouraged by this indifference of the god to defend himself, the Christian rabble rushed upon the statue, and pulling Serapis off his seat, dragged him in pieces through the streets of Alexandria that the Pagans might behold the disgrace into which their great god had fallen. Thousands of Pagans, seeing how helpless their gods were to avenge this insult, deserted Paganism and joined the Christians. As soon as the ground of the temple was sufficiently cleared, a church was erected on the ancient site. The Alexandrian library was the next point of attack. Its shelves were soon cleared, and you and I, and twenty centuries, were most lamentably deprived of the intellectual treasures which our Greek and Roman forefathers had bequeathed unto us.
When the archbishop under whose influence the monuments and libraries of Pagan civilization were pillaged and pulled down died, he was succeeded by his nephew, St. Cyril, who was even more Asiatic in his sympathies and more hostile to European thought than his uncle, Theophilius. The new archbishop directed his efforts against the living monuments of Paganism -- the scholars, the poets, the philosophers -- the men and women who still cherished a passionate regard for the culture and civilization of the Pagan world. The most illustrious representative of Greco-Roman culture in Alexandria about this time was Hypatia, the gifted daughter of Theon, a mathematician and a philosopher of considerable renown. It is said that Theon would have come down to us as a great man had not his daughter's fame eclipsed his.
Hypatia was a remarkably gifted woman. Her example demonstrates how all difficulties yield to a strong will. Being a girl, and excluded by the conventions of the time from intellectual pursuits, she could have given many reasons why she should leave philosophy to stronger and freer minds. But she had an all-compelling passion for the life of the mind, which overcame every obstacle that interfered with her purpose. The example of a young woman conquering tremendous difficulties, and becoming the undisputed queen of an intellectual empire, ought to be a great inspiration to us faint hearts. She won the prize which was denied her sex, and became "the glory of her age and the wonder of ours."
To pursue her studies, she persuaded her father to send her to Athens , where her earnest work, her devotion to philosophy, the readiness with which she sacrificed all her other interests to the cultivation of her mind, earned for herself the laurel wreath which the university of Athens conferred only upon the foremost of its pupils. Hypatia wore this wreath whenever she appeared in public, as her best ornament. Upon her return to Alexandria, she was elected president of the Academy, which at this period was the rendezvous of the leading minds of the East and West. In fact, it was in this academy that the effort of the advanced thinkers to bring about a pacification between the culture of Europe and that of Asia originated. They wished to make Alexandria, situated midway between the occident and the orient, the point of confluence of the two streams of civilization. They wished to celebrate the marriage of the East as bride to the West as bridegroom. It was their plan to make Alexandria a sort of intellectual distillery, refining and fusing the two civilizations into one. But this amalgamation -- this assimilation -- Christianity, alas, helped to prevent by bringing into still bolder relief the Asiatic habits of mind, and by refusing to concede an inch to the larger spirit of the West. Christianity is responsible for the miscarriage which has ever since left Asia a widow, or, to change the simile, a withered branch upon the tree of civilization. Christianity broke the link which scholarship and humanity were trying to forge between Europe and Asia. The world has never since been one as it came near being under the Roman Empire.
Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, persuaded himself that Hypatia's good name and talents were giving the cause of Paganism a dangerous prestige, and thereby preventing the progress of the new faith. Hypatia was indeed a great power in Alexandria. She was the most popular personage in the city. When she appeared in her chariot on the streets people threw flowers at her, applauded her gifts, and cried, "Long live the daughter of Theon." Poets called her the "Virgin of Heaven," "the spotless star," "of highest speech the flower." Judging by the chronicles of the times, it appears that her beauty, which would have made even a Cleopatra jealous, was as great as her modesty, and both were matched by her eloquence, and all three surpassed by her learning.
"Her beauty did astonish the survey of eyes,
Her words all ears took captive." |
Her renown as a lecturer on philosophy brought students from Rome and Athens, and all the great cities of the empire, to Alexandria. It was one of the great events of each day to flock to the hall in the academy where Hypatia explained Plato and Aristotle. Cyril, the Asiatic archbishop, passing frequently the house of Hypatia, and seeing the long train of horses, litters, and chariots which had brought a host of admirers to the female philosopher's shrine, conceived a terrible hatred for this Pagan girl. He did not relish her popularity. Her learning was rubbish to him. Her charms, temptations for the ruin of man. He hated her because she, a frail woman, dared to be free and to think for herself. He argued in his mind that she was competing with Christianity, taking away from Christ the homage which belonged to him. With Hypatia out of the way the people would turn to God, and give him the love and honor which they were wasting upon her. She was robbing God of his rights, and she must fall; for He is a jealous God. Such was the reasoning of Cyril, whom the Church has canonized.
Moreover, Orestes, the Prefect of Alexandria, respected Hypatia, and was a constant attendant at her lectures. Cyril believed that she influenced the Prefect and tainted him with her Paganism. With Hypatia crushed, Orestes would be more responsive to Christian influences. Ah, it is a cruel story which I am about to unfold. Generally speaking, if a man is jealous and small, no religion can make him sweet; and if he is generous and pure-minded, no superstition can altogether poison the springs of his love. Religion is strong, but nature is stronger. Unfortunately Cyril was a barbarian, and the doctrines of his religion only sharpened his claws and whipped his passion into a rage.
If we were living in those days we would have witnessed at the close of each day, when both sea and sky blush with the departing kiss of the sun, Hypatia mounting her chariot to ride to the academy, where she is announced to speak on some philosophical subject. She is followed by many enthusiastic and devoted admirers impatient to catch her eye. She is nodding to her friends on her right and on her left. She, who refused lovers that she may love philosophy, is not insensible to the appreciation of her pupils. Approaching the academy, she dismounts, ascends the white marble steps and enters by the door, on either side of which sit two silent sphinxes. As we follow her into the hall, we see that it is lighted by numerous swinging lamps filled with perfumed oil; the rotunda of the ceiling has been embellished by a Greek artist, with figures of Jupiter and his divine companions, who appear to be rapt in the words which fall from his lips. The walls have been decorated by Egyptian artists, with pictures of the sacred animals, the crocodile, the cat, the cow, and the dog; and with sacred vegetables, the onion, the lotus, and the laurel. Besides these there is a scene on the walls representing the marriage of Osiris and Isis. On an elevated platform is a divan in purple velvet, and upon a little table is placed the silver statue of Minerva, goddess of wisdom and patron of Hypatia. Behind the table sits the philosophic young woman dressed in a robe of white, fastened about her throat and waist by a band of pearls, and carrying upon her brow the laurel crown which Athens had decreed to her. A musical murmur sweeps over the audience as she rises to her feet. But in a moment all is silent again save the throbbing and trembling of Hypatia's silvery voice. She speaks in Greek, the language of thought and beauty, of the ancient world. Alas! this is her last appearance at the academy. Tomorrow that hall will be a tomb. Tomorrow Minerva will be childless. When Hypatia's listeners bade her farewell on that evening they did not know that within a few hours they would all become orphans.
The next morning, when Hypatia appeared in her chariot in front of her residence, suddenly five hundred men, all dressed in black and cowled, five hundred half-starved monks from the sands of the Egyptian desert -- five hundred monks, soldiers of the cross -- like a black hurricane, swooped down the street, boarded her chariot, and, pulling her off her seat, dragged her by the hair of her head into a -- how shall I say the word? -- into a church! Some historians intimate that the monks asked her to kiss the cross, to become a Christian and join the nunnery, if she wished her life spared. At any rate, these monks, under the leadership of St. Cyril's right-hand man, Peter the Reader, shamefully stripped her naked, and there, close to the alter and the cross, scraped her quivering flesh from her bones with oystershells. The marble floor of the church was sprinkled with her warm blood. The alter, the cross, too, were bespattered, owing to the violence with which her limbs were torn, while the hands of the monks presented a sight too revolting to describe. The mutilated body, upon which the murderers feasted their fanatic hate, was then flung into the flames.
Oh! is there a blacker deed in human annals? When has another man or woman been so inhumanly murdered? Has politics, has commerce, has cannibalism even committed a more cruel crime? The cannibal pleads hunger to cover his cruelty -- what excuse had Hypatia's murderers? Even Joan of Arc was more fortunate in her death than this daughter of Paganism! Beautiful woman! murdered by men who were not worthy to touch the hem of thy garment! And to think that this happened in a church -- a Christian church!
I have seen the frost bite the flower; I have watched the spider trap the fly; I have seen the serpent spring upon the bird! And yet I love nature! But I will never enter a church nor profess a religion which can commit such a deed against so lovable a woman. No, not even if I were offered as a bribe eternal life! If, O priests and preachers! instead of one hell, there were a thousand, and each hell more infernal than your creeds describe, yet I would sooner they would all swallow me up, and feast their insatiable lust upon my poor bones for ever and ever, than lend countenance or support to an institution upon which history has fastened the indelible stigma of Hypatia's murder!
I wish I could live a thousand years to admire the noble spirit and delight in the courage and beauty of this brave martyr of Philosophy, Hypatia! O that my voice were strong enough to reach the ends of the world! I would then summon all independent minds to join with me in a hymn of praise to that incomparable woman, who has joined the choir invisible and whose music is the gladness of the world.
Honor and love to beautiful Hypatia! Pity to the monks who killed her! A delicious feeling of satisfaction, like a warm sunshine on a wintry day, spreads over me as I contemplate the privilege I am enjoying of vindicating her memory against her assassins. Fortune has smiled upon me in selecting me as one of her defenders. I congratulate myself on having both the heart and the head to weep over her sad fate. And I tremble and shrink, as from a paralyzing nightmare, when I think that, under different circumstances, I might still have a minister of the Church whose hands are, after fifteen hundred years, still unwashed of her innocent blood. The thought overpowers me; I labor for breath. But I am free. O joy, O rapture! I am free to speak the truth about Hypatia. Let the clergy praise Peter and Paul, St. Cyril and St. Theophilius. I give my heart to thee, thou glorious victim of superstition!"
From:
"The martyrdom of Hypatia, or, The death of the classical world." A speech given before the Independent Religious Society at the Majestic Theater in Chicago
By Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian
"While I am taking some license to explore the similarities it seems almost remarkable that history will repeat itself. I regard the Internet as a modern day version of the Alexandrian Library. Up to recent times the Internet held information on every subject known to humans. But like all phobias, governments and poorly informed groups fear of knowledge and change will lead to its destruction. The conservative nature of humans will always be their Achilles heel (by the way, Alexander was said to be a descendant of Achilles). While the issues of pornography causes some raised eyebrows among certain humans it is the area of pedophiles that is undeniably the greatest concern. But most governments and authorities are trying to remove the tumor by cutting of the animal's head to stop the spread of cancer in the bowel. This is even more apparent with controlled censorship in countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong. The government censors any unflattering reviews about these countries."
Adapted from Nick's site, see below
• Alexander the Great never spent much time with women and was always in the company of men (as you may surmise, it is believed that he was a homosexual). Though it was reported that he had a mistress called Thais.
• Alexander the Great's teacher was Aristotle.
• The first showers appeared during this period of time. Soap was not invented yet. The use of clay, bicarbonate of soda and other potassium-based solution were used instead.
• Women commonly wore the miniskirt, or Chiton, indoors.
• The first bleach blondes appeared. Women dyed their hair blonde as it was assured of luring a male's attention.
• Alexander the Great couldn't grow a beard and as a result would shave daily and have his hair cut short (and so the profession of barbers was born).
• The use of military strategy was born under Alexander including defensive and attacking strategies. The phanlax maneuver was a key battle strategy.
The Museum of Alexandria was founded at a unique place and time which allowed its scholars to draw on the deductive techniques of Aristotle and Greek thought, in order to apply these methods to the knowledges of Greece, Egypt, Macedonia, Babylonia, and beyond. The location of Alexandria as a center of trade, and in particular as the major exporter of writing material, offered vast opportunities for the amassing of information from different cultures and schools of thought. Its scholars' deliberate efforts to compile and critically analyze the knowledge of their day allowed for the first systematic, long-term research by dedicated specialists in the new fields of science suggested by Aristotle and Callimachus. Whole new disciplines, such as grammar, manuscript preservation, and trigonometry were established. Moreover, the fortuitious collection of documents in an Egyptian city allowed the transmission and translation of vital classical texts into Arabic and Hebrew, where they might be preserved long after copies were lost during the Middle Ages in Europe. Alexandria and its cousins, the Lyceum, Academy, and the younger Pergamon library, were probably the prototypes both for the medieval monastery and universities. While modern scholars often lament the amount of information lost through the centuries since the Museum's fall, an amazing number of Alexandrian discoveries and theories, especially in mathematics and geometry, still provide the groundwork for modern research in these fields. Finally, the methods of research, study, and information storage and organization developed in the Library are much the same as those used today, but just as the medium of linear scrolls gave way to books in its halls, we now are watching the transformation from books to multilayered documents in the electronic medium.
The international community has taken the first step towards effacing the disaster caused by the fire that burned down the old library, more than 1600 years ago, by supporting the Revival of the Ancient Library of Alexandrina Project.
After the memorable historical meeting in Aswan , on February 12,1990 , members of the International Honorary Commission including Heads of State and world dignitaries signed the Aswan Declaration for the Revival of the Ancient Library of Alexandria.
They declared in their statement that the Library would be a witness to a decisive moment in the history of the human spirit, and should provide a base for acquiring information for researchers all over the world.
"The Bibliotheca Alexandrina - a link with the past and opening on to the future will be unique in being the first library on such a scale to be designed and constructed with the assistance of the international community".
Grateful recognition is due to Kings and Presidents who generously gave in response to this historic Declaration about US $65,000,000.
At the beginning of the third century before our era, a great enterprise was conceived in ancient Alexandria , meeting-place of peoples and cultures: the edification of a Library in the lineage of Aristotle's Lyceum, transposing Alexander's dreams of empire into a quest for universal knowledge. On the eve of the third millennium and under the patronage of President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt is seeking, in co-operation with UNESCO and with the financial support of UNDP and other public and private sources, to revive the Ancient Library of Alexandria by restating its universal legacy in modern terms.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina will stand as a testimony to a decisive moment in the history of human thought - the attempt to constitute a summum of knowledge, to assemble the writings of all the peoples. It will bear witness to an original undertaking that, in embracing the totality and diversity of human experience, became the matrix for a new spirit of critical inquiry, for a heightened perception of knowledge as a collaborative process. The Ancient Library of Alexandria and its associated Museum gave birth to a new intellectual dynamic. By gathering together all the known sources of knowledge and organizing them for the purposes of scholarly study and investigation, they marked the foundation of the modern notion of the research institute and, therefore, of the university. Within this haven of learning, the arts and sciences flourished for some six centuries alongside scholarship. The classification and exegesis of the classical literary canon nourished the poetic wit of Callimachus and the pastoral muse of Theocritus. Study of the theories of the masters of Greek thought, informed by the new Alexandrian spirit of critical and empirical inquiry, yielded major insights and advances in those branches of science associated with the names of Euclid, Herophilus, Erastosthenes, Aristarchus, Ptolemy, Strabo, Archimedes and Heron.
The achievements of Alexandrian science, lost to the West for over a millennium before their partial recovery via Constantinople and classical Arabic and Islamic cultures, were to be instrumental in launching the European Renaissance on its quest for new worlds. In this and as the transmitter of Greek civilization in general, the Ancient Library of Alexandria survives as a vital link in a living tradition. On the site of the palace of the Ptolemies, the new Alexandrina will give modern expression to an ancient endeavour. A splendid contemporary design for the Library has already been adopted through an international architectural competition. Detailed plans exist for a facility embodying the latest computer technology and serving as a public research library. Conceived in the framework of the World Decade for Cultural Development, this institution will be open to researchers not only from the Mediterranean countries but from all over the world.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina - a link with the past and an opening onto the future - will be a unique in being the first library on such a scale to designed and constructed with the assistance of the international community acting through the United Nations system. We, the members of the International Commission for the revival of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, meeting at its inaugural session in Aswan in February 1990 under the chairmanship of Mrs. Susan Mubarak, pledge our wholehearted support and commitment to this end the appeal made by the Director-General of Unesco in 1987. We call upon all governments, international governmental and non-governmental organizations, public and private institutions, funding agencies, librarians and archivists, and the peoples of all countries to participate, by means of voluntary contributions of all kinds, in the efforts initiated by the Egyptian Government to revive the Library of Alexandria, to assemble and preserve its collections, to train the necessary staff and to ensure the Library's functioning.
We call on scholars, writers and artists and all those whose tasks is to inform through the written and spoken word to help generate awareness of the international project for the revival of the Library of Alexandria and support for this historic venture. Finally, we urge all governments to donate to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina such works in their possession as will help to constitute and enhance the Library's collection, in recognition of the unique gift made by the Ancient Library of Alexandria to our common heritage.
Alexander the Great's dream of unifying the world sparked the idea of constructing a great library which would gather the cultures and civilizations of the whole world. The location of this great library was Alexandria, Egypt, at the crossroads of the three continents of Asia, Africa and Europe.
In this historical moment, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was built on a site near the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Egyptian government and UNESCO are keen on reviving the role that the Ancient Library of Alexandria played in advancing knowledge, scholarship and the cultural development of Egypt and the Mediterranean area.
To this end a new library is being built in Alexandria. Construction began in 1995 and the inauguration of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is due to take place in 1999. Apart from the main Library, the complex will include a Library for the Blind, a Young People's Library, the Alexandria Conference Centre, a Science Museum, a Planetarium, the International School of Information Studies (ISIS), a Calligraphy Museum, a Restoration and Conservation Laboratory and the Hall of Fame.
•The Revival of the Ancient Library of Alexandria Project aims at building a universal modern public research library to be a center of culture, science and academic research.
• The Library is to provide both the national and international communities of scholars and researchers with unique collections and facilities focusing on Alexandrian, Egyptian, ancient and medieval civilizations as well as on contemporary disciplines. The Library shall also have valuable collections of science and technology resource materials to help the socio-economic and cultural development studies on Egypt and the region.
• The Bibliotheca Alexandrina shall sponsor intensive studies on the historical and contemporary cultural heritage of the region.
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The Bibliotheca Alexandrina,
seen in this 1990 model |
Photograph courtesy
of Bibliotheca Alexandrina |
A microchip, a rising sun, a flying saucer, the new Library of Alexandria, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which opened in October of 2001, gleams on the edge of the Mediterranean, on the Eastern Harbor near the site where archaeologists believe the ancient library once stood.
With the aim of reviving Alexandria Library, the world's most famous ancient library, and to preserve eight million books, a new library has been constructed on almost the same site as its predecessor. The architectural design featured four basement levels, with up to six working floors under the sloping roof. The library's superstructure consists of a reinforced concrete frame comprised of flat 400-mm-deep waffle floors with ribs at 1-m centres. The ribs span from central beam strips to the columns and walls. The library building is supported on a piled raft. Construction of the diaphragm wall and the piles of the library started in May 1995, and the building was scheduled to enter service in December 2000.
View of the library during contruction.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina lies alongside the University of Alexandria Faculty of Humanities campus in Chatby and overlooks the Mediterranean Sea along a substantial portion of its northern frontage.
At Selsela, it is almost the same site of the ancient library-museum complex within the Royal Quarter, in the district then known as Brocheum, where a few remains of the Graeco-Roman civilization were recently uncovered and later will be displayed in the Library museum.
At the panoramic vista across the circular Eastern Port stands the old Mameluke Citadel of Qait Bey, built in 1480 on the site of the famous Pharos Lighthouse.
The information above is provided by the General Organization of the Alexandria Library (G.O.A.L.) .
Bibliographic information:
• Mangasar Mugurditch Mangasarian 1859-1943, Mangasarian's lectures Chicago: s.n., 1912-1919 (v. ; 22 cm) Series: Rationalist (Independent Religious Society of Chicago),
v. 1-4
• Mangasar Mugurditch Mangasarian 1859-1943, "The martyrdom of Hypatia, or, The death of the classical world.", The Rationalist, May 1915
Adapted from COSMOS by Carl Sagan, and various websites.
(Let free expression and the dissemination of information
by sited as well as enhanced)
.
• The Decline of the Library and Museum of Alexandria by Ellen Brundige, December 10, 1991
• The Life and Times of Alexander the Great, Editor-in-chief Enzo Orlandi 1972.
• Cosmos by Dr Carl Sagan, 1980, Macdonald Futura Publishers.
• Bevan, Edwyn. The House of Ptolemy, Argonaut Inc. Chicago : 1968.
• Canfora, Luciano, The Vanished Library, trans. Martin Ryle, University of California Press. Berkely: 1989.
• Ellis, Ptolemy of Egypt, Routledge, New York : 1994.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head,
because you will never, ever get it out.
Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1471-1530)
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Link to the website of the new Alexandrian Library
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