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May 24, 2005
The Royal Library of Alexdria
The city of Alexandria was founded on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt by the Alexander the Great at the intersection of three continents(Europe,Asia, and Africa). The library was founded by Ptolemy II Soter, but the library grew because Ptolemy III ordered that all visitors to the city surrender their books to be copied by scribes. Within its walls, all of the entire knowledge of antiquity was stored on papyrus scrolls.
Unfortunately, the city of Alexandria was sacked repeatedly over the next few hundred years, and the library was burned to the ground over 2,000 years ago. In pursuit of his rival Pompey, Julius Caesar occupied the city of Alexandria in 47 - 48 B.C. and moved in with Cleopatra. However, the Pharoah assembled some men and counterattacked. Caesar, in a desperate predicatment, he started a fire which burned the Egyptian fleet, saving himself. Unfortanely, the fire spread to the docks and burned the Royal Library of Alexandria to the ground. Almost nothing was saved from the fire, and an estimated at 400,000 scrolls were incinerated.
That so little of our knowledge of antiquity has survived is what makes the work that archeologists are doing recently so intriguing. At Stanford's Synchrotron Radiation Library(SSRL), they're using a synchrotron x-ray beam to read the writings of the ancient mathematical genius Archimedes, born over two thousand years ago in Sicily.
At Oxford, they're using a technique developed by NASA called Multispectral Imaging to read ancient faded texts unearthed from the rubbish heaps of a vanished city south of Cairo.
In the past few weeks alone, researchers have succeeded in deciphering a 70-line fragment from a lost tragedy by Sophocles and a 30-line fragment from Archilochos, a Greek soldier-poet who chronicled the Trojan War.
So maybe as our technology, we'll recover some of what was lost in the pyres of the Royal Library of Alexandria.
Posted by Peenie Wallie on May 24, 2005 at 5:40 PM
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