Day 112: Book Excerpt: Library: An Unquiet History

To John the Grammarian, a Coptic priest living in Alexandria at the time of the Arab conquest in A.D. 641, the Muslim conqueror Amr must have seemed something of a novelty. When John was named adviser to the general, he was delighted to discover that the city’s new governor was not so bored with music, poetry, and learning as barbarians are supposed to be. Soon John grew bold (and hopeful) enough to ask Amr what might be done with the “books of wisdom” held in the “royal treasuries”—the famous library contained in the palace of the Ptolemies. No doubt, he hoped the general would entrust the library to his hands. The general replied, however, that he could not decide the fate of the books without consulting Caliph Omar. The caliph’s answer, quoted here from Alfred J. Butler’s Arab Conquest of Egypt, is infamous:“Touching the books you mention, if what is written in them agrees with the Book of God, they are not required; if it disagrees, they are not desired. Destroy them therefore.” According to tradition, the scrolls were bundled up and delivered as fuel to the city’s baths, where it is said they fueled the furnaces for six months.

It’s too bad that such a colorful tale, fit as it is for the Thousand and One Nights, carries only the rudiments of truth. In fact, the story as we know it may have been invented by one Ibn al-Qifti, a twelfth-century Sunni chronicler. According to the Egyptian classicist Mostafa el-Abbadi, al-Qifti may have invented the story to justify the sale of books by the twelfth-century Sunni ruler Saladin, who sold off whole libraries to pay for his fight against the Crusaders. Despite its possible Islamic origin, however, the story has been handed down in the West as an Orientalist lament for the fate of Hellenic learning in the heathen East.

In fact, by the time the caliph’s army arrived at Alexandria in the seventh century A.D., the city’s storied library had seen at least one major fire already, and perhaps more. There had been not only one library but two: a great library founded in the third century B.C. within the Mouseion, or temple of the Muses, and a smaller “daughter” library. Built in the following century, the latter was placed in the temple of Serapis, a Hellenized Egyptian deity and divine patron of syncretistic Alexandria, whom the theologically resourceful Ptolemies had conjured for themselves. Both collections were housed in the royal precinct, the Brucheion, and are often spoken of as a single entity. Outside the royal quarter, books would have been found throughout the city in great quantities: home of the papyrus industry, Alexandria was the center of the book trade throughout the Mediterranean almost from its founding to the third century A.D.

When Julius Caesar came to the aid of Cleopatra in her war against young Ptolemy XIII in 48 B.C. (by which time the libraries were already nearly three hundred years old), he burned the ships in Alexandria’s harbor to prevent his enemy from taking the city by sea. According to Seneca, some forty thousand books were lost in the ensuing conflagration, though other authorities hold that only a few books, stored in the warehouses awaiting shelving, were burned. These books, in fact, were probably waiting for shipment to Rome on Caesar’s orders. Even if Seneca’s estimate is correct, it is dwarfed by the seven hundred thousand scrolls thought to have been in the main library of the Mouseion alone. There are rumors of subsequent fires, too; but visitors to Alexandria in the period following Caesar’s death leave evidence of great libraries’ continued existence. Strabo, who wrote in the time of Augustus and the birth of Jesus, seems to have been acquainted with a working Alexandrian library. Legend holds that Marc Antony offered Cleopatra the books of Pergamum (Alexandria’s great rival, located in what is now the Turkish province of Izmir) as compensation for the loss of her library, though Plutarch doubts the truth of this tale. Suetonius writes that Domitian, Roman emperor of the second century A.D., employed Alexandrian scholars to replace the texts of Augustus’s Palatine Library after it was destroyed in a fire; this would seem to indicate the ongoing presence of an intellectual community at Alexandria, holding precious texts from which copies could be produced. It is likely that what remained of the libraries was destroyed utterly in the third century A.D., when the Brucheion was razed during the emperor Aurelian’s war against the notorious Zenobia, queen of Palmyra. By this time, however, the libraries surely were in decline under Christians who, following their cultural triumph over pagans, Jews, and Neoplatonists, found the Hellenic riches of the libraries discomfiting. Their ire reached a fever pitch in the fourth century A.D.: Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, desired the site of the temple of Serapis for a church; he set loose a mob of Christians, who destroyed the pagan temple and, perhaps, the books of its library as well. Whatever the truth of the tale of the caliph’s decree three hundred years later, it seems clear that the flimsy papyrus of Alexandria burned more than once.

~~Library: An Unquiet History -by- Matthew Battles

Day 71 : Book Excerpt : Cleopatra The Great

Following the couple’s return to Alexandria after their cruise south, Caesar began preparations for his return to Rome where Pompeius’ sons were still at large and their supporters growing in strength. Although his failure to return immediately after the Alexandrian War was criticised by those in Rome who blamed his protracted stay on Cleopatra, accused of ensnaring the noble Roman with her feminine wiles, factors beyond even his control had been at play, from the onslaught of the Alexandrians to the onset of unfavourable coastal winds which made sailing hazardous for several months, and all of which he described himself in his own accounts. Caesar had therefore used the winter and spring of 48-47 BC to maximise support in the East, replacing an uncooperative regime with a loyal ally and guaranteeing himself a potential heir, a steady cash flow and a reliable source of grain for the people of Rome, whose backing would be vital if he was to push his policies through the Senate.

To ensure Cleopatra’s safety and maintain her position, he left three legions in Alexandria under the reliable command of his favourite freedman, Rufio. Their presence would also demonstrate to his critics back in Rome that he had made Egypt a Roman protectorate. Not only that, it would offset any suggestion of seizing the country and simply making it a province, something which Caesar would certainly have done had he not been romantically involved with its persuasive monarch.

Although theoretically Cleopatra still ruled alongside her remaining half-brother Ptolemy XIV and had the twelve-year-old firmly under her control, her half-sister Arsinoe IV was still causing problems. By declaring herself monarch in Cleopatra’s place when the Alexandrians were besieging the palace she had committed a treasonable act which Cleopatra would not forget. Yet, rather than imprison her in Alexandria as a focus of potential resistance, or risk the backlash that her execution would cause, it was decided that Caesar should take Arsinoe back to Rome as his prisoner.

Having presumably said their farewells in private, the heavily pregnant monarch in her golden carrying chair must have accompanied him in procession the short distance from the palace to the Great Harbour keen to demonstrate their alliance in the full glare of the Alexandrian public. Perhaps they clasped each other’s right hands in the formal gesture of farewell, as Caesar finally boarded ship and left Egypt. The occasion surely affected Cleopatra. Since him had given her her throne, her heir and indeed her life, she decided to create a suitably impressive monument to honour him — the Caesar-eum which in Greek was ‘Kaisaros Epibaterios’, ‘Embarking Caesar’, hinting at its inspiration.

Sailing out of Alexandria’s Great Harbour past the palaces, the Pharos and the colossus of Isis, Caesar did not go straight back to Rome. Needing to shore up Jewish support for his forthcoming struggles against Pompeius’ sons, he sailed along the coast to Acre to reward Pompeius’ former supporters Antipatros and Hyrcanus for their valuable help in the Alexandrian War. As Rome’s representative, he confirmed their regime, excused them all tribute, allowed them to rebuild Jerusalem and gave them the port of Joppa (Jaffa) which Cleopatra had wanted herself as part of her plans to regain the Ptolemies’ former territories. Caesar had instead restored Cyprus to her, and the revenues from that island allowed her to relax the heavy taxes she had been forced to impose at the beginning of her reign in order to keep Egypt afloat.

With the economy gaining ground and Roman troops available for military support if needed, Cleopatra was in an increasingly secure position as she finally prepared to give birth to her first child on 23 June 47 BC. Yet a pharaoh in labour was no everyday occurrence. Her own life and that of her successor were of such paramount importance to the future of the country that the birth would have been accompanied by every form of protection that the gods of Egypt and the rest of the ancient world could bestow. Isis the Great Mother was repeatedly invoked along with Hathor — her classical equivalents Greek Aphrodite and Caesar’s own ancestor the Roman Venus. Artemis was another vital member of the divine birth team. As the ‘Reliever of the birth pangs of women’ and revered as Artemis ‘Polymastica’ (meaning ‘the Many Breasted’), Artemis had left her own great temple in Ephesus to attend Alexander’s birth in Macedonia. She was linked to the Greek goddess Eileithyia, and portrayed like Isis with a torch to help mother and child in the darkness. The combined Artemis-Eileithyia declared, ‘I have brought forth the new-born baby at the tenth orbit of the moon — fit light for the deed that is consummated’.

~~Cleopatra The Great -by- Dr. Joann Fletcher