they went up in flames thousands of
original works by some of the world’s
greatest thinkers not a single scroll
survived today sixteen hundred years
after the destruction of the great
library Alexandria has built a new
library the bibliotheca alexandrina in
the spirit of the original Ishmael Sarah
gelding is its first director it is
certainly a dream that most of humanity
has cherished the celebration of
universal knowledge rationality
tolerance respect for science and for
the contrarian view all of these values
are values that have lived with us to
this day this port city is at the
crossroads of three continents a natural
place for people and cultures to
converge just as it was when it was
founded in 332 BC for 700 years ancient
Alexandria flourished as a center of
learning but the library saw its share
of troubles in 48 BC Julius Caesar
invaded the city and accidentally
torched part of the library over the
next few centuries
Alexandria’s glory faded and historians
are still not sure how the library
vanished completely that event may have
helped usher in the dark ages by erasing
centuries of precious knowledge the loss
still haunts us today the thing you can
never have again is the literature and
the poetry suppose all the works of
Shakespeare had been and disappeared
except for two or three in the late
1980s the Egyptian government along with
the United Nations decided to build the
new library as a center for research and
the open exchange of ideas
when the library open Greeks helped with
Antiquities the French with a Science
Museum and Americans with some of the
most advanced computer systems in the
world italians work with egyptians to
preserve rare manuscripts this one’s
about 500 years old
ultimately the original library
collected some 500000 scrolls
although tens of thousands of books line
the shelves
today’s library isn’t trying to gather
the entire intellectual legacy of
humankind under one roof instead it’s
building special collections on Egypt
the Middle East and Islam and in the
ancient tradition the biblioteca is try
to attract researchers and scholars and
anyone eager to learn in this so-called
capital of memory the spirit of the
ancient library is alive and well and
this time it’s fireproof
original works by some of the world’s
greatest thinkers not a single scroll
survived today sixteen hundred years
after the destruction of the great
library Alexandria has built a new
library the bibliotheca alexandrina in
the spirit of the original Ishmael Sarah
gelding is its first director it is
certainly a dream that most of humanity
has cherished the celebration of
universal knowledge rationality
tolerance respect for science and for
the contrarian view all of these values
are values that have lived with us to
this day this port city is at the
crossroads of three continents a natural
place for people and cultures to
converge just as it was when it was
founded in 332 BC for 700 years ancient
Alexandria flourished as a center of
learning but the library saw its share
of troubles in 48 BC Julius Caesar
invaded the city and accidentally
torched part of the library over the
next few centuries
Alexandria’s glory faded and historians
are still not sure how the library
vanished completely that event may have
helped usher in the dark ages by erasing
centuries of precious knowledge the loss
still haunts us today the thing you can
never have again is the literature and
the poetry suppose all the works of
Shakespeare had been and disappeared
except for two or three in the late
1980s the Egyptian government along with
the United Nations decided to build the
new library as a center for research and
the open exchange of ideas
when the library open Greeks helped with
Antiquities the French with a Science
Museum and Americans with some of the
most advanced computer systems in the
world italians work with egyptians to
preserve rare manuscripts this one’s
about 500 years old
ultimately the original library
collected some 500000 scrolls
although tens of thousands of books line
the shelves
today’s library isn’t trying to gather
the entire intellectual legacy of
humankind under one roof instead it’s
building special collections on Egypt
the Middle East and Islam and in the
ancient tradition the biblioteca is try
to attract researchers and scholars and
anyone eager to learn in this so-called
capital of memory the spirit of the
ancient library is alive and well and
this time it’s fireproof
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