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It was October 16th 2002 when, during a grandiose ceremony with exponents from all over the world, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was opened. A massive construction, the result of seven years of work and 28 of planning, it was born from the ashes of one of the most important cultural centers of the ancient age: the Library of Alexandria.
The latter has a very long history: founded three hundred years before the coming of Christ, it has seen around it more than eight centuries of dominations, wars, splendors and decline, until it was totally destroyed in 642 AD. But what happened during these years? Why was this ancient wonder destroyed, and how? What are the future developments concerning the Bibliotheca Alexandrina?
The Library of Alexandria: the early years
The birth of the largest cultural center in the ancient world is due to a dynasty, that of the Greek-Egyptian Ptolemies, of whose numerous rulers, especially in the contemporary era, we remember the last to sit on the throne of Egypt: Cleopatra. It was Ptolemy I, probably, who gave the order for the construction of what would become a cultural center of monumental dimensions: this was how the Library of Alexandria was born, in 305 BC.
In less than a century, the Library was filled with almost half a million original writings: in fact, by Pharaonic edict, all the books that arrived in Alexandria were copied by the scribes, who sent back copies, keeping the original volumes. Since it was full of thousands of books, it was necessary to build a second library: this was how the Serapeum was born, inside the Temple of Serapis, which was distinguished from the first by the possibility of public consultation.
The Library, in fact, was built inside the Royal Palace and allowed the vision of the volumes only to scholars; the Serapeum, on the other hand, was located outside the court, giving the possibility to all who wished to approach the, albeit smaller, remarkable multitude of books, about 50 thousand.
The Library of Alexandria went through the years in its maximum splendour, until, with the growing internal and external unrest, which followed one another towards the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty, numerous events, intentional and accidental, took place which brought the imposing cultural center towards decline and ever-widening destruction.
The end of the Library of Alexandria
According to historical sources, the immense treasures of the Library of Alexandria were destroyed on several occasions. The first of all is linked to the famous historical figure of Julius Caesar: in 46 BC, in fact, as a consequence of the numerous riots created during the Egyptian campaign of the Roman consul, a fire broke out and destroyed at least 40,000 books. However, despite the many testimonies of the time, it is not yet clear whether it was a warehouse in the port area, where volumes were kept, or a section of the Library that was burned.
The cultural center, however, although damaged, seems to have survived this accident. However, there are various hypotheses that see the total destruction of the Library as a consequence; among these, it must certainly be mentioned the edict of the emperor Theodosius which, in the fourth century, ordered the total destruction of the culture he considered pagan. Another possible end of the Library of Alexandria is to be dated in the seventh century AD, due to the Arab invasion of Egypt.
There are several versions of the end of the precious heritage of the cultural center: one of these is that it could have been destroyed by order of the caliph Omar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, who considered the arguments of the volumes superfluous if already contained in the Quran or dangerous if not contained within it; or by the soldiers themselves, who used the leather bindings to patch their boots, selling the rest of the tomes, thus making them disappear.
The birth of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina
The Library of Alexandria remained a reminder of a bygone era at least until the twentieth century: supported by academics and politicians, from 1974 onwards the planning of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina began, a structure that would have inherited the legacy of a massive landmark culture in the world.
The construction of the structure started in the mid-90s: in October 2002, finally, with the presence of personalities from different parts of the world, it was opened to the public. Divided into numerous sections, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina can hold up to eight million books; in this massive structure there are, among other things, a planetarium, art galleries and offices for the restoration of ancient manuals.
The great strength of the Bibliotheca is the donation: in this way, it has quickly become one of the largest libraries in the world, containing multilingual texts, especially in French, English and Arabic.
In its “first” twenty years, therefore, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina established itself as an important point of reference for world culture: only the years to come will show whether it will be able to rise from the ruins of past eras, reviving in contemporary years the dream of the largest library in the ancient world, whose history has got through the centuries.
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