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Mermaid
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The Ghost of Hypatia
« on: 2003-03-02 23:21:30 » |
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Someone mentioned that it could be the Ghost of Hypatia. She is pissed. What can I say? He may be right.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&u=/ap/20030302/ap_on_re_mi_ea/egypt_library_fire_5&printer=1
Fire Mars Egypt's New Alexandria Library
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt - A fire broke out Sunday in the sleek, new Alexandria library, sending thick smoke swirling through the building that opened to international fanfare in October.
The fire, which lasted about 45 minutes, appears to have been caused by a short circuit in the fourth-floor administrative area of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina — the waterfront site of what was the most renowned library of the ancient world.
Authorities evacuated the 11-story building and 29 people were taken to hospitals for treatment for smoke inhalation.
"Everybody is safe, thank God," said Leila Dewidar, head of the library's grants division.
The fire was confined to the administrative area and no books were destroyed, said Khaled Azab, a library spokesman. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina reopened later Sunday.
Egypt built the $230 million library, on Alexandria's renovated seaside promenade, with financial and other assistance from around the world. The ancient library, founded in about 295 B.C. by Ptolemy I Soter, burned in the fourth century.
It had been an international intellectual center where scholars are thought to have produced the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament and edited Homer's works.
The new library contains about 240,000 books, a planetarium, conference hall, five research institutes, six galleries and three museums.
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rhinoceros
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My point is ...
 
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Re:The Ghost of Hypatia
« Reply #1 on: 2003-03-03 07:36:48 » |
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[Mermaid]
Someone mentioned that it could be the Ghost of Hypatia. She is pissed. What can I say? He may be right.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=514&u=/ap/20030302/ap_on_re_mi_ea/egypt_library_fire_5&printer=1
Fire Mars Egypt's New Alexandria Library
<snip>
[rhinoceros]
I thought I should dig out some accounts of the legend and mystery surrounding the ancient Library of Alexandria and its demise. When I was in school, I had been told that the Library was eventually destroyed by the Arabs. However, it seems that there was more to be said.
http://www.tulsasda.com/staff/russ/russ/history/libraries/Libraries.htm#al
LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA
The library of Alexandria is a legend. The destruction of this library of the ancient world has been retold many times and seems to have been attributed to just as many different rulers. The stories that have been told were not for the purpose of chronicling the library, but rather for politics. Much has been written, ancient and modern, concerning the 40,000 volumes discovered there. These were thought to have been incinerated when Julius Caesar torched the fleet of Cleopatra's brother. In one of Livy's lost books, which Seneca quotes, "Hypatia, a fifth-century scholar and mathematician of Alexandria, being dragged from her chariot from an angry Pagan-hating mob of monks who flayed her alive then burned her upon the remnants of the old Library, has found her way into legend as well, thanks to a few ancient sources which survived." (Seneca) While we have many differing stories of the destruction of "The Library" (there were at least three libraries in the city), there is very little on the whereabouts, layout, holdings, organization, administration, and physical structure of the actual buildings there.
<snip>
Ptolemy's successors' methods for achieving his goal were slightly... unethical. Ptolemy III wrote a letter "to all the world's sovereigns" (Fraser 1972) asking to borrow their books. When Athens lent him the texts to Euripides, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, he had them copied, returned the copies, and kept the originals. Supposedly, all ships that stopped in the port of Alexandria were searched for books which were given them same treatment, thus the term "ship libraries" for the collection housed in the Museum. This unethical procedure was of some benefit. With the large collection of books they developed the first systematic work in collation of classical texts without which none of the authors would have survived.
<snip>
The number of volumes in the two libraries in Alexandria is thought to have been between 500,000 and 600,000. Galen tells us that the autograph original copies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were also procured for the library. This priceless collection suffered considerably in the siege of Alexandria by Julius Caesar, in the destruction of the Bruchium quarter by Aurelian (273 AD), and by the edict of Theodosius for the destruction of the Serapeum (389 AD), until it was finally destroyed by the Arabs (640 AD) (Fraser 1972).
<snip>
[rhinoceros]
500-600 thousands volumes... Handwritten too... That was something.
Anyway, here is a critique of three different stories about the destruction of the ancient Library:
http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm
The Mysterious Fate of the Great Library of Alexandria
<snip>
Stories about its demise have been circulating for centuries and date back to at least the first century AD. These stories continue to be told and embellished today by those who wish to make a moral attack against the alleged vandals. We find that three parties are blamed for the destruction and they correspond to the three occupying powers that ruled Alexandria after it had been lost by the Greeks. Let me first tell those stories as we hear them today - without references, largely inaccurate and used as polemic. Then I will try and establish what, if anything we can know before finally and rather indulgently making my own suggestions.
The suspects respectively are a Roman, a Christian and a Moslem - Julius Caesar, Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria and Caliph Omar of Damascus. It is clear that the Royal Library could not have been burnt down or otherwise destroyed by all three of these characters and so we find we have too many sources for the event of the destruction rather than a paucity. As scholars of the Gospels will vouch, this too can be an embarrassment. How we decide to reconcile the stories will depend almost entirely on how we criticise the sources and which of them we choose to consider most reliable.
<snip>
[rhinoceros]
This paper goes on to present the historical accounts supporting each story and points out the controversies. Was it the Romans, the Christians, or the Moslems? I won't burden your mailbox any more. You can click the link and try to figure it out.
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Hermit
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Re:The Ghost of Hypatia
« Reply #2 on: 2003-03-06 15:01:40 » |
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Repost
Hermit, "RE: virus: Alexandrian Virian Memorial", Reply #1, 1999-03-01
One of the problems with performing research on the net is that you end up reading other peoples misconceptions. I remembered reading something else in Toynbee and did some digging. The "best" information I could find on the net ("best" as in matches mainstream historian's views) was at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/5808/alex_library.html although it does repeat the allegation that the last remnants of the library were burnt by the Arabs in 686, the author of the site notes that the sources she used were not completely authoritive ("Warning: I wrote this as an undergraduate, before I realized that some of the books on Alexandria that I was relying upon were fairly interpretive of the primary sources themselves and often presented guesswork as facts (especially Canfora). Therefore, I cannot be sure all the information presented here is accurate. Use at your own risk!") and as is often the case reported myth as history. I would strongly suggest that if this is read to mean that books or writings were burnt that this is a myth as the Qur'an emphasises the value of Wisdom, knowledge and books and no Muslim would do such a thing. The Muslims even had a tradition of not harming Christian and Jewish places of worship as they recognised the common roots of the religions. This led to the interesting situation where many valuable early Christian and Jewish documents were preserved in the great Muslim universities until the fall of the Moorish empire in the 13th century and the destruction of this material at the hands of the "civilised" Christians. On the other hand, the word "library" is actually a misnomer, as the library actually acted as a cross between a library, a museum, a university and a temple. The Muslim was forbidden to make "images" and as such may well have burnt statues and possibly paintings. This could be the source of the confusion.
Quoting from the document at the above URL, "The Library of Alexandria, in reality two or more libraries in the ancient Egyptian capitol, has achieved an almost mythic stature in the study of classics from the time of the Renaissance. The apocryphal burning of the Library during Julius Caesar's occupation of the city has been described as the greatest calamity of the ancient world, wherein the most complete collection of all Greek and Near Eastern literature was lost in one great conflagration. In reality, the Library and its community of scholars not only flourished during the Hellenistic era of the Ptolemies, but continued to survive through the Roman Empire and the incessant turbulence of the Empire's most volatile and valuable city."
<Big Snip>
Christians Retaliate
It may well be imagined how Alexandria continued to be shaken by social strife during such a period. After a mere twenty years since the abdication of Diocletian, Canstantine became Emperor and declared Christianity Rome's official religion. By 391, the Emperor Theodosius had reversed Diocletian's edict and commanded all paganism to be stamped out, signalling the end of the Museum.[56] For, throughout the fourth century the power of the church grew; an army of Gnostic monks became the main tool of the Patriarch of Alexandria and enforced his will. After the edict of Theodosius, the mob was led by the Patriarch Theophilus to demolish the Serapeum.[57] Perhaps the library at the Caesarium survived; while references to Alexandrian scholars persist a little while longer, no sources actually mention its destruction.
In 412 Theophilus' nephew Cyril succeeded him. The Patriarch exercised ever more control of the city, 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 city. Cyril's army of monks murdered the prefect and were cannonized by him for this deed; marauding through the city they came across Hypatia, daughter of the Museum's last great mathematician Theon. She was a Neoplatonist philosopher 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. Driving home from her own lectures without 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. Cyril was made a saint.[58] After her death Alexandria became steadily less stable, overrun by the monks who evolved into the Copts, who incorporated the old Alexandrian prejudices towards foreigners with the new prejudice towards any scientific or classical knowledge. Too turbulent even to bow to the Emperor, Alexandria eventually revolted against Constantinople, wound up with two factions contending between two Patriarchs, and eventually fell to Arab conquerers, who had the last of the Library burned as fuel in the bath-houses of the city in 686.[59]
A Bibliography:
Canfora, Luciano. The Vanished Library. trans. Martin Ryle. University of California Press. Berkely: 1989.
Forster, E.M. Alexandria: a History and a Guide. Doubleday & Co., Inc.
Garden City: 1961.
Fraser, P. M. Ptolemaic Alexandria. Volume I of III. Oxford University
Press. Oxford: 1972.
Johnson, Emer D. History of Libraries in the Western World. Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen: 1970.
Kamil, Jill. Upper Egypt: Historical Outline and Descriptive Guide to the
Ancient Sites. Longman. New York: 1983.
Milne, J. Grafton. a History of Egypt Under Roman Rule. Methuen & Co., Ltd. London: 1924.
Parsons, Edward Alexander. The Alexandrian Library: Glory of the Hellenic Hellenic World. Elsevier Press. New York: 1952.
Westermann, William Linn. The Library of Ancient Alexandria. lecture given at University of Alexandria's reception hall. University of Alexandria Press. Alexandria: 1954.
My addition > Kline, M., Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Vol. I, Oxford University Press, NY, 1972, p.180-1.
It seems to me that when Kline wrote "In the year 392 C.E. when the emperor Theodosius banned the pagan religions, the Christians destroyed the temple of Serapis, which still housed the only extensive collection of Greek works, it is estimated that 300,000 manuscripts were destroyed. Many other works written on parchment were expunged by the Christians so that they could use the parchment for their own writings. The final blow to Alexandria was the conquest of Egypt by the upsurging Moslems in A.D. 640. The remaining books were destroyed on the ground given by Omar, the Arab conqueror: 'Either the books contain what is in the Koran, in which case we do not have to read them, or they contain the opposite of what is in the Koran, in which case we must not read them.' And so for six months the baths of Alexandria were heated by burning rolls of parchment." that he based this on Canfora (as the quotation attributed to Omar is phrased in the same words) and that these two sources are largely responsible for the view that the Arabs were responsible for the final destruction of the library.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Hermit
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Re:The Ghost of Hypatia
« Reply #3 on: 2003-03-06 15:15:58 » |
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Hermit, "St Hypatia?", 2002-01-24
She has been discussed on multiple occasions on the list. See also http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Hypatia.html
A beautiful lady by all accounts, a philosopher, an engineer, an erudite and eloquent conversionalist, an intellectual leader, and the first woman known to have made a significant contribution to mathematics. Murdered by the Christians in March 415 CE, just a few years after they had burnt down the Library of Alexandria. She taught Neoplatonics and came to represent Science and Mathematics - or as the Christians called it, "paganism," which was why they murdered her. Her death marked the marked the start of the diaspora of the scholars of Alexandria, the loss of much ancient knowledge and technology, and the beginning of the rule of Christianity, appropriately known as the "Dark Ages." Despite her writings having been destroyed, the memory of her has endured through the ages. A life so bright that not even the Dark Ages could supress her memory completely.
One relevant quote and some cross references. The cross references are the posts [ Hermit, "RE: virus: saints", Reply #4, 2001-04-07 ] and [ Mermaid, "virus: re:saints", Reply #2, 2001-04-07 ]. And the
Quote:All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final. Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrong is better than not to think at all! Fable should be taught as fable, myth as myth, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truth is horrifying! Men will fight for superstition as quickly as for truth -- even more so, since a superstition is intangible you can't get at it, but truth is a point of view, and is so changeable!
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Hypatia 370-415 C.E.
Few would make better candidates for sainthood in the Church of Virus. It gives me pleasure to nominate her.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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