Egypt. Land of the Pharaohs ... Gift of the Nile ... Awesome legacies of grandeur and achievement ... Monuments that defy time and reach to us across the millennia ...

To this land, 2300 years ago, in 331 BCE, Alexander the Great, Aristotle’s pupil, brought his dream of culture and conquest, of uniting the world and launching a new era. Alexander selected the site for a new capital: Alexandria. His successors in Egypt, the Ptolemies, built Alexandria, and made it the intellectual capital of the world.

The history of Alexandria is a record of the ongoing civilizations with all the cultural implications that the word means: art, music, literature and science, politics—all humanities. From the beginning, Alexandria developed rapidly into one of the world’s greatest and most influential cities and remained so for 1000 years during three successive periods of history: Ptolemaic, Roman, and Byzantine. It became Egypt’s new capital and was destined to grow into a cosmopolitan city.

Its lighthouse, the Pharos, was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

A greater legacy was the Ancient Library of Alexandria. Launched in 288 BC by Ptolemy I (Soter) under the guidance of Demetrius of Phaleron, the Mouseion, or temple to the muses, was part academy, part research center, and part library.

The great thinkers of the age, scientists, mathematicians, poets from all cultures came to study and exchange ideas.

The 700,000 scrolls, an equivalent of more than 100,000 modern printed books, filled the shelves. The Library was open to scholars from all cultures. Girls and boys studied regularly at the Ancient Library. On this very spot:

• Aristarchus, the first to state that the Earth revolves around the Sun, a full 1800 years before Copernicus.
• Eratosthenes proved that the Earth was spherical and calculated its circumference with amazing accuracy, 1700 years before Columbus sailed on his epic voyage.
• Callimachus, the poet, described the scrolls in the Library organized by subject and author, becoming the Father of Library Science.
• Euclid wrote his elements of geometry, the basic text studied in schools all over the world to this day.
• Herophilus identified the brain as the controlling organ of the body and launched a new era of medicine.
• The Septuagint, the first translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, was created.
• Manetho chronicled the pharaohs and organized our history into the dynasties we use to this day.

They, and many others, were all members of that amazing community of scholars, who mapped the heavens, organized the calendar, established the foundations of science and pushed the boundaries of our knowledge as they unleashed the human mind on myriad quests.

They opened up the cultures of the world, established a true dialogue of civilizations, promoted rationality, tolerance and understanding and organized universal knowledge.

For over six centuries the Ancient Library of Alexandria epitomized the zenith of learning. To this day it symbolizes the noblest aspirations of the human mind, global ecumenism, and the greatest achievements of the intellect. The library was destroyed over sixteen hundred years ago ... but it continues to inspire scientists and scholars everywhere.

It disappeared slowly, suffering a gradual decline from the time of Caesar and Cleopatra. Indeed, the first disaster was in 48 BCE, when part of the Library was accidentally set a fire during the Alexandrian War of Julius Caesar.

Marc Anthony offered Cleopatra 200,000 scrolls to make amends for the losses. Yet, subsequent upheavals within the Roman Empire resulted in the gradual neglect and ultimate destruction of the Library.

By 400 CE, the Library had vanished, and the era of Alexandrian scholarship came to an end a few years later. Yet, the memory of the Ancient Library of Alexandria lived on.