Issue No. 610
Opinion
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31 Oct. - 6 Nov. 2002 Issue No. 610 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
A beacon of enlightenment
The revival of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was a spectacular feat. And as Awatef Abdel-Rahman* notes, the original is a tough -- but not impossible -- act to follow
The circumstances surrounding the birth and death of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina have tantalised historians over the centuries. There is a near consensus, however, that the Bibliotheca was built sometime during the reigns of Ptolemy I- Soter and Ptolemy II-Philadelphus, between 285 and 250 BC, and housed virtually all the written knowledge of antiquity.
It all started in the fourth century BC, when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and set off a process of Hellenisation that left an indelible mark on the country for centuries. The young Macedonian king ordered a major city to be built on the shores of the Mediterranean, and he had the priests of the Temple of Amon in Siwa declare him a son of god. However, he did not live to see the city and library that took his name.
Committed to carrying out Alexander's directives, the Ptolemies created both Alexandria and its famed library. Alexander had envisioned a library that could hold all the Greek works in one place and that would ensure their preservation. The great conqueror knew a thing or two about books, and destruction, for that matter. He was in the habit of seizing books in the countries he conquered, having them translated into Greek, and then burning the originals. It is possible that much of the knowledge compiled during the Hellenic era was not Greek in origin, but translated from other languages and cultures.
The Bibliotheca may have been created by the Greek conquerors, but it was inspired by the Egyptian tradition. This is clear from the Bibliotheca's holdings. Not only did it contain what ancient Egyptians would have called a "House of Documents", where millions of rolls of papyrus were stored, but it also contained a "House of Life", or a place where scientists and researchers lived and worked. This set up, envisioned by the library's first curator, Demetrius Phalereus, is reminiscent of the universities of ancient Egypt. Similarly inspired was the degree of specialisation that marked scholarly work in the Bibliotheca. Whereas Greek scholars were mostly of the multi-disciplinary variety, Egyptians went for an academic division of labour. Egyptian universities were places where engineers rubbed shoulders with physicians, philosophers with historians, but with each keeping their separate professional identity.
Egyptians did not just have doctors. They had dentists, ophthalmologists, surgeons and gynaecologists. The Bibliotheca continued this tradition. With names such as Euclid the mathematician, Erastothenes the geographer and Herophilos the physician among its scholars; the Bibliotheca's standing was incontestable. The names of most scholars who worked at the Bibliotheca would sound uniformly Greek, but many were actually locals with Hellenised names. Plotinus, a great curator and the founder of the Neo- Platonism, was from Assiut.
The Bibliotheca contained manuscripts from Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia and Greece, among other places. It was this universality that persuaded UNESCO to assist in the creation of a modern namesake. Librarians believe that the Bibliotheca started its life with 500,000 manuscripts and had acquired about two million at its peak. Most of the books the Bibliotheca contained were copies, not originals. The Ptolemies gave the library curators the authority to borrow books from private collections as well as from ships docked at the harbour, copy them, and return them to the owners, perhaps months later.
The Bibliotheca contained 20,000 papyrus rolls that came from the library of Ramsis II, founded 1,200 years before the Bibliotheca came to life and was deemed the greatest library of its time. The Bibliotheca may have actually borrowed its design from the Ramsis library, whose structure survived till the 19th century in Luxor. French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion visited that library and described it in detail. Perhaps one day this other great library of antiquity may come back to life.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Mouseion and its daughter library in the Temple of Serapis, remained operative for at least two centuries and then suddenly went missing from historic record. It was only in the 19th century, when scholars came across a mention of the Bibliotheca in a manuscript from the 15th century, that the fate of the great library became the subject of debate.
Some historians argue that the Bibliotheca was accidentally destroyed when Julius Caesar burnt the Egyptian navy in Alexandria in 48 BC. Others believe that fanatical Christian mobs, prompted by Patriarch Theophilos, burned down the library in 391, considering it to be a stronghold of heathen doctrines. Others blame the Arabs, who conquered Egypt in 642.
Some historians have pointed out that the Bibliotheca was no longer standing at the time of Arab conquest, for visitors who described Alexandria just before that time made no mention of it. The man who supposedly alerted commander Amr Ibn Al-As to the existence of the great library, a certain Yahya Al-Nahawi, would have been 120 years old had he lived till the time of the incident, scholars note. Also, Alexandria surrendered to the Arabs on terms allowing the inhabitants to take away any possessions they had in the city. Had the Bibliotheca survived until the time of the Arab conquest, Al-Nahawi and others would not have needed permission from the Arab commander to take away as many books as they wanted.
The revival of the Bibliotheca is a spectacular feat, but in order for the new library to live up to the memory of its older namesake, it should breathe life into our cultural scene, a scene that has become so stagnant that we are endlessly debating matters other people and cultures have long taken for granted. The Bibliotheca should do its best to stimulate science, for that -- not literature -- was the mainstay of our old civilisation. The Bibliotheca should become a place where the Pharaonic, Coptic, Islamic and Mediterranean legacies come together.
In article 2 of the law governing the Bibliotheca, there is a mention of the cultural and scientific centres affiliated with the library. These include an international institute for information studies, a centre for documentation and research, a science museum, a calligraphy institute, a museum for manuscripts, a centre for the conservation of books and rare documents. This is an impressive list, but it is not exhaustive. I, for one, would like to see the Bibliotheca have a centre of documentation for the Egyptian and Arab press; one that would compile and classify Arab and Egyptian papers that have appeared since the beginning of the 19th century. This centre could also make collections of Arab papers available on CD-Rom.
The library should cooperate with similar institutions in Asia and Africa -- not just those in Europe and the US. It could sponsor arts -- modern, classical and local. The music of Sayyed Darwish, to give one example, deserves at least as much of our attention as that of internationally known composers. The Bibliotheca should provide the general public with access to culture, information and debate. There is so much the Bibliotheca could inform the public about, from cultural diversity to education, to children's rights, to urban planning. The Bibliotheca needs to give priority to the urgent matters of daily life, for this is what would make it a true beacon of enlightenment.
* The writer is professor of journalism at Cairo University.
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