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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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My first time in Australia for a good decade or so. And it's really exciting to see that tickets are selling. So we've got the shows lined up. We've got the topics, the labours of Hercules and also the myth, the story of Romulus and Remus, and then delving into what's the historical basis, potentially, for these famous mythological stories of ancient Greece and Rome.
Really hope to see you there if you're in either Australia or New Zealand. But back to today's episode, we are delving into the archive to explore the story of one of the greatest educational buildings ever constructed. The Library of Alexandria, this great centre of learning, particularly during the Hellenistic period.
So the time when you have these Greek pharaohs, a Greco-Macedonian dynasty ruling over Egypt, the dynasty of the famous Cleopatra and so many others. Enjoy. Enjoy. The Library of Alexandria, one of those amazing complexes of the ancient Mediterranean world.
More than 2,000 years ago, this was one of the most celebrated buildings of ancient Alexandria, filled with all sorts of literature that helped define this city as one of the greatest centres of knowledge and culture in the Mediterranean. So what's the story behind this great building? Why did Alexandria's rulers, the Ptolemies, become obsessed and fascinated with adding to its collection?
And of course, did it really burn down in a massive fire caused by none other than Julius Caesar? How much information was lost? Well, listen on, there are a lot of myths to bust. Now our guest today is Dr. Islam Issa from Birmingham City University. Islam, he came down to London to do this interview in person in a studio.
I had my Ptolemy shirt to hand and we had a lot of fun recording this chat. I really do hope you enjoy. And here's Islam. Islam, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast. I'm really happy to be here and I'm even happier with your t-shirt. Of course, we're talking about Hellenistic history and the city of Alexandria.
Of course, we cannot not mention the one and only Ptolemy I. But we're talking about the Great Library and I know it's not one of the official wonders but this feels like one of those incredible monumental pieces of architecture from the Greco-Roman world.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of the Library of Alexandria in ancient history?
That's why he invites Greeks and Macedonians and Jews. There's even evidence of people coming from India. Levantines, and so on. So gather these people, give them relative freedom, freedom of worship and so on, and they can turn this place into an economic and trading hub. The second vision is that knowledge equals power.
It's that if you gather the world's knowledge and then you also guard it, disseminate it, then you will have soft power. That's essentially the idea. So the library, from the very outset, is part of the Alexandrian vision. It's also a state endeavour. It's also got political and economic purposes.
What I also find really interesting there is how you highlight that the library is founded very near the start of Alexandria's existence. That's so different to some of the other great monumental pieces of architecture in the ancient world, isn't it? Like the Pantheon or the Colosseum in Rome, created hundreds of years after Rome was first founded. I mean, the Parthenon in Athens, for instance.
But the library, as you say, it's almost quite unique that it's aligned with the very, very early stages of Alexandria as a city. That's right.
Alexander doesn't see a single building go up in the city. He's overexcited and rushes off to his next adventure. But the city begins to be built, and then within a few years, Alexander has died. as a real brush for power. And Ptolemy I takes a nice slice of the cake, which is Egypt. Ptolemy manages to create a kind of cult around Alexandria to make it his capital relatively quickly.
One way of doing so was hijacking the tomb of Alexander the Great and building a mausoleum in the city, so you have that kind of cult. He also created an amalgamated Greco-Egyptian god in Serapis, so that both the Greeks and Egyptians had a common god. and he was the divine protector of Alexandria Serapis.
So it's all very well planned, and that really paves the way for the next project, which is the library. As you say, it's just within a couple of decades of the city's founding.
Absolutely. Ptolemy, a very, very cunning figure. As you highlighted, nicking the corpse of Alexander the Great and so on, setting Alexandria as his new capital. But come on then, who is this figure that Ptolemy instructs for this next great building project, which is the library?
Well, his name is Demetrius, and Demetrius is a governor in Athens for some time. So Alexander's successors did the opposite of what Alexander wanted in terms of fighting for power. One of those was Cassander. Cassander trusts Demetrius, who's only in his early 30s, to be governor of Athens. Cassander's sort of got the Macedonian Empire, if you like.
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Chapter 3: When was the Library of Alexandria constructed and what was its purpose?
On the Egyptian shore where loud the billows roar. Plutarch writes that Alexander gets up startled and rushes to Pharos. Pharos is the little island which he connects with a causeway to the Mediterranean coast to create Alexandria. It's where the lighthouse once stood and where the citadel stands today. Homer is an integral part of the Alexandrian founding myth.
It subverts our ideas of literature and cities and spaces. For example, Shakespeare we associate with Stratford-upon-Avon because he's from there. Alexandria we associate with Homer because Homer instigated the creation of Alexandria. So that was a long way of saying Aristotle and Homer are the key texts that the Alexandrians want to have in the library.
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Is it also important to highlight, because we've been focusing a bit on the Greek literature that they are wanting to bring into their library in Alexandria, but of course, as you highlighted, that open-ended mission of Demetrius and the following Ptolemies is to get books from all across the world.
Can we imagine that they are not just getting Greek texts, they're looking at Mesopotamian texts, Jewish texts, and so on?
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Chapter 4: Who were the Ptolemies and why did they prioritize knowledge acquisition?
Of course, as the Hellenistic period progresses, you get the rise of Rome and Ptolemaic power once a big superpower in the Eastern Mediterranean world, it does start to decline and its influence over neighbouring peoples and in the Mediterranean declines too.
How does this affect the pull and the importance of the Library of Alexandria as we get to the time of the later Ptolemies, let's say the second and first centuries BC?
As I mentioned, there's an element of politicizing the library. And also, Alexandrians have a habit of rebelling by this stage. So if they don't like a leader, they make that known. And also with the rise of the library, there was a rise in poetry. So they wrote satirical poetry about their leaders and so on.
And the Ptolemies also, I mean, the Ptolemies did lots of great things, but they also did a lot of incest. That leads to all sorts of troubles because it's not normal for the local population. And that's for the gods. It's not for humans, for brothers and sisters to marry. But also it means there's a lot of rivalries within the Ptolemaic dynasty. And people have to pick sides.
The Jews would have picked a side. The Egyptians would have picked a side. The Greeks would have picked a side. So there's a lot of that kind of tension. With that rising tension and disappointment in their government, Ptolemy I, II, and III really understood the people, festivals, all that kind of thing. Freedoms get reduced because the Ptolemies fear that people will turn against them.
So scholarly freedoms reduce. Some of the scholars begin to leave the city and head to Athens. Rome is rising where they think they'll have a better chance of philosophizing and inventing. So there's that aspect to it. There's also the aspect of the library representing a kind of high office.
So as a result, by the time we get to Ptolemy VIII, Ptolemy VIII hires a military man as his librarian who probably knew next to nothing about books and about scholarly work. He's a spearman. So he hires a spearman as the librarian and he's followed by Ptolemy IX who hires one of his political allies as the librarian.
So it loses that kind of role that it had in the past where it was really a scholarly endeavour.
The last major thing, of course, I'd love to ask you about the library. You know what I'm going to say. It's got to be its destruction. How does it all come crashing down, quite literally, for the Library of Alexandria?
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