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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 5 - 11 October 2000 Issue No. 502 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 5 - 11 October 2000 Issue No. 502
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Elections Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Plain Talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
Reviving the Alexandria Library met with much enthusiasm, support and coverage. In addition to funds and collections of books from donor countries, numerous articles have appeared in the international press, the latest contribution being a long article in The New Yorker, by Alexander Stile.
Stile visited Alexandria and met with Alexandria scholars, most notably Dr Mustafa El-Abbadi, a distinguished professor of ancient history at the Alexandria University. Through El-Abbadi we learn the story of the birth of the project. In 1974, on a visit to Alexandria, President Nixon asked his Egyptian hosts where the ancient library of Alexandria had stood. The Egyptians were embarrassed to admit that they had no idea and later asked Dr El-Abbadi to prepare a report on the subject.
The idea of reviving the library was the brainchild of El-Abbadi and his university colleagues. When they approached UNESCO for support they were told that UNESCO made agreements only with governments. Thus, the project -- which came to be named the Revival of the Ancient Library of Alexandria or the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, (as the library is now officially called) -- did not really get off the ground until 1986 when the Egyptian Government procured UNESCO support for the project. In 1988 President Mubarak laid a symbolic foundation stone. In 1989 UNESCO sponsored a major international competition for a building design which attracted 524 entries from 58 countries. A team of young architects from Norway won the competition.
Following that, a number of world leaders, including President Mitterrand, Queen Sophia of Spain, Princess Caroline of Monaco and the heads of most of the Arab countries, were invited as part of a fund- and sponsorship-raising campaign by President Mubarak. They met in Aswan -- and contributions towards the cost of the building began to roll in.
In his article, Stile discusses the library's architecture and argues that it is in keeping with its ambitions. But then he poses some interesting questions now that the building is nearing completion. What does it mean to "revive" an ancient library? Does it make sense to build a library designed to hold eight million books at a moment when so much information is moving from printing to digital form? In the age of the Internet, does it even make sense to conceive a universal library in terms of glass, aluminum and concrete?
Having asked these questions, Stile then suggests that, in spite of these theoretical conundrums, there are many good reasons for reviving and building such a library. For one thing, the decision to build a major international library in Alexandria by the sea, facing north towards Europe, is part of an effort "to open Egypt up to foreign investment, satellite television, the Internet and cellular telephones."
Stile sees some contradictions in the idea of trying to engineer a cultural revival in Alexandria at a time when Cairo has "for more than 40 years sucked so much life out of the city." Alexandria's fortunes have waxed and waned according to Egypt's attitude toward Europe, he adds, "and that deep ambivalence is very much present in the library issue."
I do not agree with this idea. I cannot see why one city's cultural flourishing need necessarily be at the expense of the other. True Cairo is a hub of world culture, but so is Alexandria. With Alexandria University, the Senghor University and the new Swedish Institute there is a surge of cultural activities. These are supplemented by the many cultural activities organised and sponsored by Alexandria's foreign cultural centres. There are also, in Alexandria, big annual state-sponsored cultural events like the Alexandria Biennale and the Film Festival.
Although, as Stile writes, the library was originally supposed to have been completed by 1995 and have a collection of two million books by the year 2000, it is now expected to open this year with 300,000 books. Already, the library has a good general collection and several areas of specialisation -- regarding Alexandria, the rest of Egypt, the Middle East and the Mediterranean -- in which it hopes to build world class collections.
