Alexandrin. Death and revival

The solar disk from concrete and glass with the northern rim is bundled to the ground and addressed to the Mediterranean Sea at an angle of 16 degrees. And through the cellular roof in the building of the new Alexandria library, the present sun penetrates the right stream. Photosensitive windows windows in the morning are painted with greenish light, and after a day, the crimsons are discarded.

Fantasy of Norwegian architects, who developed a defiantly modern project, was where to raise. About ancient, who did not reach us Alexandrine we know very little.

Sometimes it is counted for "seven wonders of light", But this title, expressing the language of our days, was not certified by ancient, unlike, let’s say, from the pyramids and here, in Alexandria, the Farosky Lighthouse. About the same as the legendary library looked like, nothing is known. Too narrow was a circle of ancient readers. Visitors to the ancient Alexandria library, lovers of book wisdom, were not interested in the external forms of the main book storage of Okumen, and its contents.

In any case, architects who did not have antique sketches coped with their task. They managed to accommodate a revived library to the project, recently open by the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, the maximum is quite relevant in this case by the allegory.

Possessing some fantasy, the symbolism of an artificial solar disk, rising on the Alexandrian embankment, where the royal quarter of Bruhayon was once located, you can interpret infinitely. The sun, liken to the rays of knowledge, the sea as a space, a binder of civilization, the sunrise of the shone – the personification of the revival of Alexandrina after almost two millennia after her death.

Ancient Alexandrian library was laid in 228 BC, one of the Diarats of Alexander the Great, his successor in Egypt Ptolem I Soter. About 700 thousand manuscripts were saved in this book church, the fund was based on the Book Assembly of the Great Aristotle. In the library, which occupied the whole quarter of Alexandria, the Hellenistic capital of Egypt, worked by the color of the ancient scientific thought.

The library consisted of four parts in which science and religion were intertwined, which made the basis of the knowledge of the ancients around them. Only two departments – Museyon and the main building – stored invaluable papyrus and parchments. Two others – Serapeum and the symbolic grave of Alexander Macedonsky – had a purely cult value. According to the testimony of contemporaries, more than 400 people visited the library every day, which, apparently, with amendment on the era, was an absolute record

With the names of scientists who worked in the library, such achievements are associated as the measurement of the curvature of the earth’s surface with Eratosphen and the first history of the Greeks from the Trojan War to Alexander Macedon. Euclide laid here the basics of geometry, and Dionysius – linguistics. Here, Hermophilica for the first time suggested that the source of thought is the human brain. And here worked Archimedes.

"Alexandrin Library", As the Greeks and Egyptians called her, was replenished for several centuries and entered the story as the largest bookkeeping of the Hellenistic world. Local officials took into its fund all imported Greek parchments. There was a rule: every ship arriving in Alexandria if there were literary works on it, it was supposed to either sell their library, or provide for copying. From day to day, hundreds of owned literacy slaves rewrite all the books. It was believed that there are no valuable work in the world, which would not be in the Alexandria library. In addition to the scrolls, there were stone and waxes with clocks and hieroglyphs. It is known that Mark Anthony presented the Egyptian queen Cleopatre the library of the Pergammian kingdom, which had two hundred thousand manuscripts, the second largest after Alexandria.

If we have some information about the life of the Alexandria library, then almost nothing is known about her death. There is a version that when Legionnaires Julia Caesar burned the Egyptian fleet, the fire shifted to the city covered the library. Her death is sometimes attributed to the successor Caesar – Octavian August. Under the Emperor, Averelian library again suffered. Bloody crossbar, accompanied by fires, destroyed almost the whole quarter Bruheyon, where she was. When the world reigned again, the scientists of Museyon with the residue of books were resettled to the Acropolis, in the premises belonging to Serapeuum. Alexandria was famous for his temples, but Siepeur was considered the most famous.

Practically trusted the destruction of the Alexandria library of Christian fanatics in the IV century of our era. For them she was no more than a symbol of paganism. They also dragged through the streets of Alexandria a disheveled corpse killed by Hipathia Alexandrian, the child’s daughter, the first in the history of an encyclopedist scientist.

The last strokes in the destruction of the temple, apparently, contributed to the VII century warriors of the Arab Caliph Omar, who won Egypt. Then on the streets of Alexandria, two weeks flayed fires, isolated from handwritten scrolls. In a word, the death of an ancient culture of an ancient culture is a collective, stretched by the work of ignorance, obscurantism and religious intolerance.

Back in 1990, the wife of President Egypt Suzan Mubarak gathered in Asuan’s Asuan’s connoisseurs of Egyptian heritage from around the world. The result of their meeting was the signing of the Asuan Declaration, which was promised to help the reconstruction of the library. Among the signatories, the document was the Russian academician Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev.

Many states sacrificed in the library fund invaluable treasures of literature. Spain presented the Egypt of the work of Andalusian scientists, Turkey – 10 thousand volumes from the archives of the Ottoman Empire, and the valuable manuscripts also handed over Italy and Vatican. Japan and Germany decided to provide a recreated library the latest telecommunication equipment.

Construction, the total value of which was 1.5 billion euros, lasted seven years. Financing the project of the Egyptian government, UNESCO and a number of European and Arab states.

Already in the collection of the library there are 500 thousand books, 700 thousand video and audio cassettes and 100 thousand CDs. The volume of funds are planned to bring up to eight million.

The height of the library complex – 33 meters. In it 11 floors, four of which are underground. The useful area exceeds 85 thousand square meters, and the reading room for 2 thousand visitors is the largest in the world. According to UNESCO survey, the new Alexandria library is among "Modern miracles of the world", Along with the new Buundestag building in Berlin, Bilbao Airport in Spain, Museum of Arts in Rio de Janeiro and Tower Hotel in Dubai.

The Director General of the Russian State Library, Viktor Fedorov, who came to Egypt on the celebrations on the occasion of the opening of Alexandrina, told me that this event had a great historical and symbolic meaning. "Essentially, its predecessor was the first library in the history of mankind", — Said Director "Lenninka".

My interlocutor said that the contribution to the expansion of the Library Foundation of the largest Egyptian library also introduces Russia: an agreement was signed on the establishment of the Russian department of Alexandrina. The Delegation of the Russian Federation brought her a gift to her a big batch of books, including the works telling about the modern life of Russia. The Egyptian side was also transferred by a set of microfilms with ancient Arabic manuscripts from RGB funds.

Member of the Russian delegation, Director of the Institute of Asia and Africa, at Moscow State University, Mghail Meyer stressed that the revived Alexandrin is "New Type of Library of the Epoch of the Information Revolution". "There is no doubt that the number of readers in ordinary libraries will decrease, and the value of the libraries of the level of technological equipment, which we see here, on the contrary – to increase", — ON. In addition, the director of Isaa stressed, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Alexandria Library as a meeting place for various civilizations and cultures.