A greatness reborn

Humanist, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Brian Trent

This latter group is often blamed for the subsequent loss of ancient knowledge; the espousers of this falsity conveniently ignore that the torches and thugs of the new theocrats did far more damage to the era of reason than any iron Visigothic sword. The northern invaders were largely awed by Rome and Roman culture while the theocrats sought to purge or convert every non-Christian notion from the maps and minds of history.

It was the beginning of the aptly-named Dark Ages, when a theocratic elite kept the empire's population shackled in ignorance and fear. In promoting a worldview rooted in theology, many ancient works were destroyed, with exceptions made for those which didn't contradict the Church of Rome--hence, the survival of works by Socrates, Ptolemy, and Aristotle, among others.

The final act of this grisly carnival came in 646 CE when Muslim forces under Amr ibn al-As captured the city. The tale goes that Muslim soldiers, upon entering the Library, were given specific instructions on how to deal with the remaining heaps of "infidel" work: "Either these scrolls contain the Koran," said their general, "in which case we already know it; or they do not contain the Koran, in which case we must not know it." The scrolls were then burned for fuel to heat enough bath water to last six months.

Modern scholars debate whether this last episode is true; some suggest it's a lie perpetrated by thirteenth-century anti-Muslim historians and that all the books had been destroyed during the Christian occupation two centuries earlier. One thing is certain: the Great Library of Alexndria vanished from history and only the scarcest fragments of its distinguished catalog survive. It's hardly coincidence that the loss of this esteemed institution was followed by a thousand years of oppression and ignorance, until the first glimmers of the Italian Renaissance appeared in Florence in the late 1400s.

A Rising Phoenix?

The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina will be celebrating its third anniversary in October 2004. The lost scrolls may never be recovered but the new library boasts four million volumes, a digital archive of ten billion Web pages, and a goal of eventually housing eight million books.

It almost didn't happen. First proposed in the early 1980s, lack of funding delayed the project until 1990, when the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) attempted to rally international support for the rebirth of the Ptolemaic-era institution. The Gulf War of 1991 delayed the project but in 1995 construction began at last.

The new library has four basement levels and seven floors under the highest point of its sloping circular roof. In addition to reading halls (including a hall for the blind) it boasts six hundred staff members, a planetarium, a 3,200-seat conference hall, and a science museum. Like its bygone ancestor, it stands near the University of Alexandria, overlooking the Mediterranean. "By building it back in place," Mubarak said, "We are reviving human heritage in the area. Here, religions were revealed and prophets lived to sow eternal values of tolerance and coexistence. It was the launching pad of movements of liberation and enlightenment throughout history and time."