Ptolemaic Alexandria

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Ptolemaic Alexandria
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Ptolemaic Alexandria
Presented by Roger Weir
Saturday, July 31, 1982

Transcript:
Pearls of wisdom, the grappling for the static evidence is a flaw. And we should rather flow with our creative natures. We can reconstruct from nothing itself all of the forms that civilization need have expressed for our purposes.

In fact, perhaps a more clear beginning might be to preempt in terms of discursive exposition by about ten minutes and just introduce the fact that one of the great minds of early Alexandria, a personal friend of Ptolemy I Soter, was the great mathematician Euclid. And Euclid great, his great book on the Elements has been given to school children ever since. In Alexandrian times, in Roman times, through Medieval times, right up into our own day. I was given Euclid to study geometry as a youth.

But where does Euclid begin his discourse on the structure of perceivable shape. He begins, of course, with the very first axiom about a point. And he says, rightly so, a point is that which has no parts, and which has no magnitude. What an incredible intellectual achievement to be able to think of a phenomenal focus that has no parts and no magnitude. It preempts by 400 years the great Asian idea of Śūnyatā, the void, nothingness, emptiness. And it shows the acumen of the early founders of the city of Alexandria that they didn't begin with ABC's, but they began as inheritors of at least 6 or 700 years of very sophisticated civilization.

And of course, the great, great grandfather of it all was Homer. And because of the two great complementary cycles of human understanding, The Iliad, speaking of wrath and the labyrinthian entanglements in phenomenal form which the human spirit is liable to encounter. Because of wrath and its encumbrances and the extrication of wrath by the great journey fleeing from the scene of wrath back through its vicissitudes home. And because of this great spiritual clear sightedness expressed in Homer after 6 or 700 years, we should be greatly surprised that the true inheritors of Homer should not have begun their city with great comprehension and final purposes already in mind.

It is, of course, an apocryphal story related by Plutarch, related also by Arrian, of Alexander the Great, who considered Homer the most single important treasure of his life. For instance, when he had defeated the armies of Darius and all of the treasures of the Royal Persian Empire were displayed, as was their want in that day, on great fabrics in front of Alexander. And he roaming through this museum treasure house chose for himself the choicest of all objects. This incredible bejeweled box which Darius had kept under his throne. And Alexander holding this box up with his boyish mannish enthusiasm asked all of his great generals and wise men, his entourage of fine people, what shall I keep in this box? And after all of their suggestions on mundane levels, Alexander informed them, none of those things. I will keep in this box my copy of Homer's Iliad, because it is the relational structure of the reality which we are now expressing in our lives, in our doing and in our purposes. And he placed his copy of The Iliad given to him by Aristotle in the great treasure box of Darius and holding it under his arm proceeded into Egypt. And it was on the beaches, camped out within sound of the surf that Alexander had a tremendous dream. And in the dream an old white-haired man approached him, and holding out his finger in an arc of design, as Homer says, “within the foaming sea there lies a certain island right against the shore of Egypt, which of ancient Pharoah's height.” And upon waking early in the dawn hours, Alexander getting his entourage out rushed down closer to the beach and looked out. And there about three quarters of a mile beyond the beach the pounding surf was the low-lying island of Pharos. And through this visionary visitation of Homer to Alexander the Great was the point with no magnitude founding of Alexandria. And being in somewhat of a strait to lay out a city, having no chalk for marking, they use the meal of the soldiers. You must understand that soldiers in battle in classical times ate barley meal and not meat. It was only when they were reduced to circumstances that they ate meat. And so, they took the barley meal and began laying out a possible outline and design on the shoals and beaches of the future site of Alexandria. And off from Lake Mareotis, which lay just to the south of this spit of land, about two miles across. This great flock of birds, hungry because it was a sort of swampy corner of the Egyptian delta and ate the meal that had been laid out. And Alexander thunderstruck, turning to his wise counselors, and they conferring immediately with themselves, came to the conclusion, probably rightly so, in retrospect, and rightly so for their political lives, and said, oh, but, Alexander, this is not a bad sign, but rather a good sign. Alexandria, your future capital will feed the world with ideas and wealth.

And Alexander taking their interpretation, which had been timely, proceeded. He commissioned a man named Dinocrates to conceive of a design for Alexandria. And in those days architects did not work by committee. They rather worked by envisioning the shape. Because it was the shape that gives intelligence to human purpose in doing. Just so Euclid's Geometry teaches us the genesis of all shapes. And of course, Euclid's Elements goes from a point of no magnitude to the development of a 20 faced solid. And once one has understood that in terms of imagination and memory, and intellectually and able to envision shapes that complex, the doors are wide open of the universe. One can think of any shapes of any complexity anywhere in time or space.

This Dinocrates thinking of what would be the royal shape of the city of Alexandria. Being steeped in Homer and the ancient Athenian development suddenly came to the exclamation that it was the royal cloak, the peplos of the statue of Athena and the Parthenon, which when spread across the land would make the wonderful shape of Alexandria. And so, this idea of the Royal Peplos of Athena. And you have to understand that in the Parthenon the statue of Athena was about 40 feet high of ivory inlaid and carved with various appropriate elements gold and electrum and so forth. And once in the year a great ceremony of all the nobles of the city of Athens would make a parade and take this enormous 40- or 50-foot embroidered cape, embroidered with all the mythological images that comprise the Greek universe into a pattern which fit the cloak of the Lady of Wisdom. Took it down to the ocean and washed it in Piraeus, and then brought it back to the temple, to the Parthenon on the Acropolis, and clothed with their efforts and their diligence, the great statue of Athena. And the ceremony was considered the most sacred in the Greek world. And in fact, what were the great friezes around the Parthenon but the sculptural exposition of this procession. And if you look at the friezes of the Parthenon and its sculptures, this is the action that they declaim. This great procession of carrying the peplos to Athena.

So, it was this cloak that was given the shape of the city of Alexandria. The robe of state. The robe of state. And of course, this ceremony would happen in mid-summer, usually around the 21st to the 28th of the month of what we would call June today. And on each of the days there was a certain ceremony. And just before the cloaking there was an all-night ceremony around what we would call Midsummer Night's Eve. So again, we see the reverberations all the way back to the beginnings.

The first man in charge of developing Alexandria was a man named Cleomenes. Because Alexander had to move on. He went from Alexandria from the site into the great Libyan desert several hundred miles to consult at the great ancient one might almost say archaic shrine, the Oasis of Siwa. It was a shrine of Amun-Ra. But before it was a shrine of Amun-Ra some 10 to 12,000 years ago, when the Great Qattara depression was a lake, it was the great capital of an empire at the end of this fantastic lake of the Great Qattara depression. The lake has since filtered through the sands throughout time and there's an enormous semi-inland ocean of fresh water under the Libyan desert there at that region. It is also a site where in the heat of summer one would be able to see certain shapes and forms in the Nile Valley reflected by mirage off the Qattara depression and would be visible from Siwa. Which is why the reflective surfaces of the Great Pyramids were so polished and burnished so that they would reflect and transpose themselves by mirage into a visible site in the midst of the desert. And so that the Oracle of Siwa had an incredible position of the geometry of meaning and reality for the foundations of civilization at that place. So, it was quite natural for Alexander to take himself to the temple of Amun-Ra. And he went in alone to hear whispered to him the confirmation that he was in fact the point with no magnitude coming into form and expression. And thus, he was in fact the true son of the God.

So, Alexander moved on. All of the Generals moved with him onto the conquest in Asia. And Cleomenes, a very adept administrator, was left in charge of the project of commencing with the building of the city of Alexandria.

Now this area down below is a lake, Lake Mareotis. Mariout today. So that Alexandria actually was a finger of land in between two bodies of water. And from the beginning the conception was that Alexandria would be a double port. It would have harbors on Lake Mareotis connecting to the inland of Egypt through canals which were dug linking Lake Mareotis with the branches of the Nile River. So that Alexandria would be a seaport for the whole land of Egypt. And that the inception of the royal boat of state, which traditionally was brought from the Great Pyramid up the Nile River. And I'll show you a slide of that great ship of state which was found buried a few years ago right in front of the Great Pyramid. I'll show you a photograph of that. But the idea was that Alexandria then as the capital port would have access by direct shipping lanes and for commerce and by direct shipping lanes for religious ceremonies to the entire inland, hinterland, of Egypt. And at the same time as if it were like the central plate in electrolysis transformative process, it would be able to convey the wealth of Egypt to the other world by ports on the Mediterranean Ocean side. So that it had double ports, and it would be the interface between the entire Mediterranean world and the entire Egyptian world. So that there were ports made.

In order to ensure that the Mediterranean side ports would be viable for some time. Remember, now, most of the coast of Egypt silts because of the deposits of the Nile. Alexandria is far enough to the west of the canopic branch so that it does not silt. So Cleomenes, under the instructions of Alexander and Dinocrates, made a connection between Pharos and the mainland. And because of the distance it was called the Heptastadion. The seven, hepa. Stadia, seven. Seven stadium. Heptastadion, which is about 1400 yards.

And this Heptastadion eventually included an arch. Some put it on both sides of the Heptastadion, but I rather think they were together. Two arches which allowed ships to pass in between the two harbors. This harbor was known as the great harbor. The great harbor. And in Ptolemaic Alexandrian times it was in fact the focus. In Roman Alexandria times and after the other harbor known as the harbor of Eunostos, the harbor of happy return. Eunostos was a son of one of the Ptolemies. This was the prominent harbor in Roman and later times. And I think today is rather the harbor which is used. But in Ptolemaic Alexandria it was the great harbor.

And in order to ensure that this part of the great people's cloak, where the head of Athena would be in the cloak, they placed a structure which on one level was the center of the harbor. On another level was the torch of the imaginative Eye of Athena. And on yet another level was the integrating structure and the whole design of the city of Alexandria. What was that structure? It was the great lighthouse of Pharos. Pharos was said in many classical references to be 400 ells high, which is about 500 feet or as tall as a 50-story building. And it was out of white marble. And on the very top was kept a sacred fire and flame with reflective mirrored glass constructs. So that the light from the Pharos lighthouse was visible 35 miles out into the Mediterranean Ocean. But anyone who's been on the ocean at night you can tell the glow long before you can see the fact, the light. And so, the glow of Pharos was seen perhaps even 50 miles out into the Mediterranean. And also, inland.

The great refinement of Egyptian glass and Alexandrian Science produced a quality of mirroring surface so great that in the siege of Syracuse, one time one of the Alexandrian savants who lived in Syracuse, the Great Archimedes, designed some mirrors which reflected sunlight so powerfully that they began to set Roman ships on fire out in the harbors. These were powerful individuals. We'll get to them.

So that Pharos occupied this tremendous height. And it was one of the wonders, classical wonders of the ancient world. But it integrated the entire design of the plan of the city of Alexandria as the sacred peplos or cloak of the Goddess Athena. The Heptastadion then connecting Pharos, the island of Pharos, with the mainland. And in this region just to the west had been for some time an Egyptian fishing village, which was suddenly enlarged and refurbished. And its name was Rhacotis. And beyond Rhacotis was the cemetery region called the Necropolis. And in from Lake Mareotis just somewhat to the East an inlet was made and on for shipping for docks coming right up. And in this region, just to the west of the Heptastadion, there was a little construct here, which in classical times formed a watertight harbor and it was called the box. Or the Setebos. The box. And in this great harbor region there was a very small island shaped somewhat like a boomerang upside down. and it was given the name of Antirhodos. Because Rhodes had become a great civilization at that time, the island of Rhodes, and this little, tiny island in Alexandrian humor was the Antirhodos. And the Antirhodos had a very private little harbor. And there was a palace which was built on here. And there was a little linking up here with the land.

And later on, much later on, when Marc Antony was feeling the pressures of the loss of empire, he had another spit of land made out here that went out just past Antirhodos and on the very tip of this he built the Timonium. Remember, Timon of Athens was the man who so hated human life and complications that he lived in a little hut cursing all men except for Alcibiades, who he used to hug a lot and even shower with kisses. And people said, why are you doing this to Alcibiades? And he would say, this man is going to cause a lot of trouble for humankind. So, Shakespeare's Timon of Athens is a play about this very Timon. And Mark Antony, in order to scourge himself built his hermit's hut, the Timonium, on the end of this bit of land out in the great harbor, saying that he would have nothing more to do with mankind.
This peninsula, which was just to the west of Antirhodos, the [inaudible] peninsula, was the site of the royal palaces. They were placed here on the tip for beauty's sake. The Mediterranean in that region at that time was so clear that it was said that ships coming into the great harbor could look down and see the stones on the bottom of the ocean. And that the clearness of the, the water just scintillated and sparkled. And you can imagine in the Egyptian sunshine and this enormous city of white marble and alabaster. And it was all interspersed with gardens and trees and great groves. I mean elegant. The main street of Alexandria, which came from the western gate here, and ran across to the Canopus gate over here. This street was 136 feet wide, about 14 lanes. And it had a huge arcade on each side of it running all along, and great trees and so forth. So that the very major street, the Canopus Street here, was of unbelievable proportions and excellence.

So, the great palace was located here on the [inaudible] peninsula. And near to it, near to the shore here was where the great theater was kept. And there was a special high ground, high level road, that ran from the palaces direct to the theater and the museum complexes, which were nearby. And this road was called the Royal Road. And that's the origin of that phrase. The Royal Road. Of course, our great friend Doctor Heller wrote a book called The Royal Road about cabalistic tarot meditations. He'll be lecturing here tomorrow on Sunday. But the Royal Road was the designation from ancient Alexandria from the palaces direct to the entertainment and the wisdom.

And in fact, it was used in a metaphor once when Ptolemy Philopator asked about some brief summary of sciences. He was told by one of the savants, master there is no royal road to wisdom. We have to work for it patiently day after day. And that was the meaning of the phrase.

We have, in our experience, a great description of entering this great harbor from the classical geographer Strabo, who was in Alexandria about 24 B.C. So, he was there at the end of the Ptolemaic era. And I have a paragraph here of Strabo's description, as one would enter the great harbor and scan with the eye across to the Heptastadion. He says, “And the city has very fine public sanctuaries and the palaces which form a quarter or even a third of the entire city.” A third or a quarter of the entire city was the huge palace complex.

For each of the kings added some adornment to the public dedications and also added privately further residential blocks to those already existing. So that now, in the words of the poet, from others, others grow. But all these buildings are contiguous to each other and to the harbor and what lies outside.

And within the palaces lies the museum. And so, the palace section would be an enormous area here, all contiguous with arcades and gardens and walkways. So that it was enormous and massive. It staggers us until we review some of the ancient structures.

For instance, if you review the great reconstruction of Knossos by A.J. Evans and his monumental five volumes, The Palace of Minos at Knossos [The Palace of Minos: A Comparative Account of the Successive Stages of the Early Cretan Civilization as Illustrated by the Discoveries at Knossos]. By 2000 BC. Knossos covered the area of what a city would have covered the previous generation. So, they were used to, long used to in this part of the world, of having grandeur on a colossal scale. Why? Because it showed the expressive power of their connection with the universe. This was the flowering of it. Therefore, it should be grand and great.

Strabo goes on to say that “within the palaces lies the museum, which has a covered walk,” and the Greek word for the covered walk is the peripatos, from which we get the peripatetic, the Aristotelian philosophic schools. The peripatetic schools were those that walked under the arcades and so forth. As opposed to the Platonic, which were the academies, those academicians who would study in one sort of garden area. the Aristotelian would move out structurally. There was a difference. Incidentally, there was a difference in the handling of the scholars at the great museum in the library. They would sit at dining arranged by the schools of philosophy to which they were dedicated. So that all the Peripatetics would eat together. All the academicians would eat together. Whatever schools of philosophy were represented, and there were quite a few different ones, that would be the dining order. There was no other structure. It was the eating together, the communing, which made them a whole. But they were totally free as individuals to investigate whatever area they were investigating.

And in terms of the eating arrangements, each group would elect from themselves some principal or president who would represent that group in a colloquial or a Senate. So that decisions that had to be made enmasse could be made by representatives and the presiding officer or priest. We should use that term. The presiding priest of this Senate of the library was appointed by the Ptolemies. So that the royal decree was in charge of the decision of the direction of it all. But the suggestions and the development came from the body, which were representatives of the entire individual whole. And this idea of the priesthood of the library, I think, should be emphasized. Even though there were a lot of what we would call secular purposes in the Alexandrian learning savant circle, there was always the notion that this was a divine occupation. The exercise of man's wisdom mind was in itself a religious endeavor.

The name museum comes from a building dedicated to the muses. It is the temple of the muses. And what do the nine muses teach man but the arts and sciences of his expressive blossoming in the phenomenal world. The muse of epic poetry, Calliope, of course, being one of the major ones, because this was Homer's muse. Terpsichore, the muse of dance, and so forth. There are many. Clio, the muse of history. There are nine of them
So that the museum lay within the palace structure. And Strabo goes on to say that, “There was a covered walk of Peripatetics that runs in and throughout all around the museum and the library. And that an exedra in a block in which are the refectory and the mass of the scholars,” that is where they eat, “who belong to the museum. This body,” the museum, “possesses corporate funds.” That is, they had their own funding to do with what they would. They were able to invest these funds. And because of the great wealth of Egypt and the great business acumen of the Alexandrians in the Mediterranean world their investments blossomed, and they were able to be very, very wealthy indeed.

“The head priest in charge of the museum, previously appointed by the kings and now by Caesar Augustus.” Remember, Strabo is writing this in 24 B.C. Octavian had taken over everyone's show by then. The lecture next Thursday is about that incidentally, if you're curious how he did that.

“The monument,” Strabo goes on to say, “The monument known as the Sima.” Sima, or sometimes it's called the Soma. Better for us to say Soma, because we realize Soma means body. And the Soma in this case was the body of Alexander the Great. And Ptolemy Soter had literally, by force of design will taken the body of his chieftain Alexander from out under all the other Generals who were still arguing in Babylon over what was to be done with the Empire and with the body. And Ptolemy knowing very well. Very gritty individual. Kind of a hooking large nose. Pursed lips. Deep set eyes. Flowing kind of a hair. A little bit of a burly individual. But still all athletic. Ptolemy Soter was one of the closest individuals to Alexander, and he realized more than anyone that the key to the entire empire was the city of Alexandria. So, he brought the body to Alexandria and had built there a special temple, the Sima or the Soma, to house the body of Alexander. And the body was placed into a solid gold sarcophagus. So huge and so enormous that one of the later degenerate Ptolemies, who fell into great debt, paid it off by melting down the sarcophagus of Alexander the Great and substituted an alabaster or a glass coffin in its place. But you can imagine that the enormity of wealth in the original tomb of Alexander the Great enough to pay off an emperor's ransom.

So, Ptolemy Soter had the Soma built, and it was in this general palace area. “The monument known as the Sima is also a part of the palaces. This was an enclosure containing the tombs of the kings and of Alexander.”

As each Ptolemy passed on, they were added to the area where Alexander's body was placed. And this was like a visual representation of a growing puzzle of physical complication and expression coming into manifestation and finding its final form in this geometry of the tombs of the Gods as they increased. And of course, each of the Ptolemies, as they came into prominence and flourished styled themselves as Gods.

Ptolemy Soter I being a very rough yet eloquent Greek, did not like the idea of being deified so much. He liked the idea of Alexander being deified because he had seen so many wondrous things with him. So it was not until the next generation that he was given this full deification. But still in all, there wasn't much of a contrast between the veneration of the founder of the dynasty and the God savior, Ptolemy Soter. Soter means savior.

And they were called Ptolemy I and his wife. All the Ptolemies had a special relationship with their wives. And Ptolemy Soter and Berenice, who was his second wife. His first wife had been a woman named Thaïs, who had accompanied the traveling Generals and the armies on their battles. [inaudible] is the classical designation of her, that is, she was not a proper royal wife, but was a woman taken and kept for many years, and thus a wife in virtue of a common law marriage. That sort of thing. They had a child. But his second wife, Berenice, a very elegant woman, exquisite woman.

Ptolemy Soter and Berenice were styled as the Theoi Seteria, the savior Gods. And their descendants, the next generation, Philadelphus and his second wife Arsinoe II were styled as the Theoi Adelphoi. That is to say, these are the savior Gods. These are the brother Gods. Brother. Brother Gods a man and a woman as brothers. Arsinoe was his sister as well as his wife. But they were men and women only in the physical incarnation of that particular phenomenal era. But they were spiritually brothers. They were a bifurcation of the divine energy. Just as the Theoi Seteria formed a harmonized duet. So, the Theoi Adelphoi came along.

And the next generation styled themselves as the Theoi [inaudible]. The good doing Gods. And in fact, they were so proud of the fact that they had understood this declension of the divine manifestation that when it came to Euergetes and his wonderful wife, they made sure that it would be understood by everyone in no uncertain terms. They raised a wonderful Stella. And this Stella was placed in a very conspicuous part of the Nile Delta. I think I have it here. Yes, here it is. It's called The Decree of Canopus. And it is the third book in a series by E.A. Wallis Budge.

The first two volumes concerned the Rosetta Stone. And equal to the Rosetta Stone in its expression in both Egyptian hieroglyphics, in hieratic Greek writing, and the Demotic Egyptian writing, in three different language structures, the royal purposes, the fulcrum upon which the royal purposes of life were expressed were declaimed. And this great Stella, The Decree of Canopus was about 7.5 feet high, and when it was on its pedestal it was probably about ten feet high. And it has the characteristic rounded arch at the top, which is the beginning shape, arch shape of the ankh. And on the very top were the wings of Horus and the red sun of Amun-Ra and the two royal serpents. One wearing the crown of the south and one wearing the crown of the North. And inside the hieroglyphics for eternal life and the flyswatters of Royals sitting on the throne. So that the imagery on the top declared that this was a royal decree of enormous magnitude. And it was presented in three languages so that in the hieroglyphics which only the Gods could read and, in the Greek, which only the masters of the land could read, and then on the side in the demotic Egyptian, which everyone could read, was declaimed simply the fact that they were now recognizing themselves as the good doing Gods in a line from their ancestors. And therefore, were a part of this DNA of empire, which was decreed from the beginnings of time. From the beginnings of those points of no magnitude from which the geometry of meaning has always spun itself out for mankind.

And in this wonderful text, maybe I'll give you a little bit, you can find the wonderful syntax that they had that,

And for the 25th day of the same month, whereupon he received the sovereignty from his father, having assembled on this day in the temple of the good doing Gods in Canopus spake thus, inasmuch as King Ptolemy, the son of Ptolemy and Arsinoe the brother Gods,

the Theoi Adelphoi, “the brother Gods, are at the queen Berenice, his sister and wife. The good doing Gods are at all times performing very many and great deeds of benevolence to the temples throughout the country.” That is to say, they do the benevolence to the temples and the temples generate this divine connective energy and pass it on to the people. That sort of thing. And the people, of course, by their diligence and excellence, pass it on to the land. And the land sings its fruitfulness back to the creator. And the whole cycle of existence may be harmonized. And boy, was it harmonized. The first three Ptolemies were so adept at the economic construction that they proceeded with throughout Egypt, that Egypt literally became the breadbasket of the Mediterranean.

One project that was initiated under Soter and then completed magnificently under his son, his… He had several sons. But the great son was named Philadelphus, from which we get the term Philadelphia. Philadelphus. And beloved of the Gods.

The character of Ptolemy Philadelphus is probably one of the most suave, energetic, kindly, loving individuals that has ever manifested. He was an extraordinary individual. And he realized that Egypt in ancient times, back 1500 years or so before his time, that Egypt had been a tremendous provider of food. And in taking a personal survey of Egypt realized that because of the changing geography, especially of the Nile River. and especially because in one portion of Egypt called the Fayyam, that the Nile had silted up and no longer flooded into this enormous valley, much like think of the San Joaquin Valley here in California. This enormous Fayyam which had been fertile in antiquity to their times, was now somewhat barren and degraded. So, Philadelphus had a whole reclamation project initiated with connecting canals dug and refurbishing of the soils and plots of land and so forth. So that the entire farm, this whole area, much like our San Joaquin Valley, was suddenly brought back into fruition in one generation. And of course, with all the tremendous facilities that they had and the wondrousness of the land they very soon began to produce more food than Egypt could possibly eat themselves. And this formed the basis of a lot of their economic wealth.

Rome later on, of course, coveted Egypt for its wealth. And you have to understand that the basis of the wealth was the capacity to make foodstuff. To understand that the population of the Roman Empire was an asymptotic jump over what had previously obtained, say in the Greek world. There were no large collections of people until the Roman Empire. Enormous collections of people. Even though they are dwarfed by today's monstrosity. At the time, it was an unheard-of situation. Athens, in its heyday under Pericles never had more than 200,000 people tops, including all the slaves. Alexandria had more than a million people. And Rome had close on to 2 million people. So, you can understand that these were metropolises even in our terms. And in the classical world, they were of unheard-of proportions. They were not cities. They were prodigies. So that the good doing Gods then have set themselves up as the Theoi [inaudible].

Ptolemy I had done such a wonderful job on setting up the city of Alexandria, taking it over from Cleomenes when he'd come in with the body of Alexander and his troops and his personality and his designs. He remembered that he had also received instructions as a youngster with Alexander from Aristotle. And Aristotle had urged many improvements. First of all, he had urged then that knowledge and learning was the core of any successful undertaking. So that Aristotle's notion that one should have a library, a personal library of some extent, influenced Ptolemy Soter. And it was under his aegis and his understanding that began the great collection of manuscripts. The Alexandrian Library at its height had somewhere near 900,000 papyrus rolls. And this doesn't give a true indication of the number of volumes, because many of the rolls were mixed. That is, there were 4 or 5 or 6 books on a huge roll. So that the number of volumes in the Library of Alexandria in terms of book volumes, like we would think of, were several millions, really.

So, we have to think of the beginnings of this library of Ptolemy Soter coming from the idea of Aristotle. And coming also from the idea that the muses who are the patron spirits of learning for man, should have their temple, the museum, associated physically with the library. And in fact, when we look at the ancient evidence and refer to it in quite detail, we're hard pressed to say that the library was a separate building. We find no discussion by any classical author of a building separate from the museum as the library. So that we are to understand and even with all of the inspection, that the library formed an integral part of the museum. That the museum was not just simply a building, but like the palace structure was an interconnected courtyard affair with groves and arcades and fountains and other structures. And that the library, the great Library of Alexandria was a part of the museum complex. As it should have been by its intellectual genesis, as a part of the worship of learning really, we can use that phrase. The worship of learning.

This library was, from the beginning, cast to be of unbelievable proportions, and became an integral part of the ambition of all of the Ptolemies. Almost to the level of a fetish. So that they passed laws that any books found in any ships would be requisitioned immediately. They would make copies for the individual, but the original books would be kept in the library. And in fact, they went about this in Ptolemaic style. They borrowed the great edition from Athens of the three tragedians, made beautiful, sumptuous copies in papyrus and sent the copies back and kept the originals. And so, they became known in the Mediterranean world as bibliophiles with a vengeance.

And in fact, later on, after the great library, a lot of it was destroyed through the Alexandrian War of Julius Caesar in 48 B.C. The first thing that Cleopatra demanded of Antony when she had a source of power again, was the Royal library of Pergamum, that had 200,000 volumes. And that was given to her as a gift. And she refurbished the great library at Alexandria.

There were, in fact, though, two libraries in Alexandria. There was the great library, which was in the museum. But there was a second library, which was of enormous proportions, even so, above a third of a million volumes, which was in the Serapeum, which was the great temple for the God Serapis. Which was up on a mound in this section of the city. The Serapeum was connected to the Heptastadion by a road that came down. And the Serapeum, the columns of which were so huge that they could be seen out to sea as ships were coming into the harbor. And in connection with the Serapeum was the daughter library to the great library in the museum. You want a few more details?

How about this description by Strabo of the great harbor. And then we'll have tea. And then we'll talk about what was this God Serapis. Strabo says,

As you enter the great harbor you have Pharos and the lighthouse on the right, and on the other hand are the [inaudible] and the [inaudible] promontory on which there is the palace. As you sail in, there are on the left then, in continuation of the buildings on [inaudible] the inner palaces, which contain many and varied dwellings and groves. Below these is the artificial closed harbor, which is the private harbor of the royal family. And Antirhodos, the small island in front of the artificial harbor, which has both a palace and a small mole.

This up here.

“And they call it by this name as if it were a rival to Rhodes. The theatre overlooks the island.” The great theatre. “Next is the Posidium. The temple to Poseidon.” Poseidon, the God of the sea. Poseidon was Neptune in Latin. “Next is the Posidium, which is an arm projecting from the so-called Emporium to the next building on which the temple of Poseidon is stretched out.” So that it was the theatre, the Temple of Poseidon, and then the Emporium. Sort of an interchange place for goods on a colossal scale.

Strabo, because he lived in Roman times, also adds

Antony added to this promontory so that it projected into the middle of the harbor, and constructed a royal pavilion on the extremity, which he called the Timonium. This was one of his last acts after which, being abandoned by his friends he sailed to Alexandria after the defeat at Actium. Judging that the rest of his life, which he would pass without such friends would be like that of Timon. Next there are the Caesarion, a huge temple built to the daughter of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. Or to the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, the Caesarion.

And of course, when Augustus took over the show in typical, typical Augustan action, he would destroy things and then rebuild them about five times what they had been just to show that his was the power to destroy and to create. And so there was a Caesarian, the emporium, and then a whole string of warehouses coming up to the Heptastadion. So that this entire area here, from the Heptastadion onto the promontory of [inaudible] was the scene of most of the activity for Alexandria. The great Canopus way here, from the western gate to the Canopus Gate and outside of the Canopus Gate, here was the Hippodrome and the great suburb area of Eleusis. And I'll get into why Eleusis should be a suburb of Alexandria.

You get the idea as you get into Alexandria and you study it more and more, that Alexandria has the flavor of almost a colony taken off the planet of Earth and placed on another planet. You get almost the same feeling of looking at the geography of Alexandria as you would get about looking upon a map of Mars. That what they had done was of the proportion of taking themselves off the traditional growth pattern of the planet Earth and placed themselves into a space colony mentality. Where they were in a completely different world from the one which had obtained without break throughout antiquity. That is to say, that man had developed from Neolithic times up to a certain level of civilization and then had literally leaped off the planet in terms of his mystical insight and intellectual capacities, and that Alexandria literally floated in mid-air upon the realized dreams of its science, its religion, and its understanding of life.

And I think it can be epitomized by the fact that after Philadelphus’ wife died, Arsinoe wife and sister. He loved her very dearly. After she died, he undertook a project to have the roof of the [inaudible] made over with a magnetic lodestone. So that the metal statue of Arsinoe would be suspended in mid-air and floating by magnetic properties. These were the kinds of dreams and capacities which they had.

Unbelievably none of this exists anymore. Great natural subsidences in this area of the Mediterranean has sunk a lot of Ptolemaic Alexandria under the waves. And the silt and debris from several thousand years covered it. And two years ago, when some friends of mine went to the harbors of Alexandria to do archeology they found that they had to penetrate some 30 feet of water and mud and silt in order to find certain monuments, traces. And it was declared time and time again by 19th century travelers before the modern huge metropolis of Alexandria got refurbished and built, that one could look out into the harbors on clear days and see the progressive floorings and walls of ancient buildings on out into the level of the of harbor. Probably still true today. Even more so just 100 years ago. So that the subsidence of materials naturally has decayed.

The Romans changed Alexandria around. Many things were preserved, but many things were refurbished and rebuilt. And we would need a whole other lecture on Roman Alexandria to have the second great flowering of the city, which we'll have some time, I think, maybe next year. Then came the Arab conquest of 646 A.D. And when they came in, of course, the cut and slash technique of the early Islamic armies destroyed a lot of the monuments. But also even in late classical times, in the times of when Plotinus was in Alexandria there were whole sections of the city of Alexandria that were abandoned, depopulated, overgrown.

I was always reminded 10 or 15 years ago when you could go into the area of downtown Los Angeles and see the weeds growing on some of the Bunker Hill slopes. That kind of a feeling tone that right in the very center of the city what had once been the most elegant part was just weed patches and so forth.

And then the vicissitudes of the great drought of the Middle Ages, when the lights of learning were dampened, so that only a few individuals like the tarot card declaims under their cloak of wanderers and travelers, kept the sacred starred light of wisdom burning. Thousand years or more Alexandria lay in ruins and decay.

And then, of course, with the great refurbishing of this area of the world in the 19th century and in the early 20th century, many areas were just filled in and built up on or moved around. So that almost no traces of Ptolemaic Alexandria exist intact. So that we must reconstruct it in our imaginative mnemonic capacity to recall through the facts, through the literary sources, through our intuition of various patterns that always hold true for man and reconstruct in our minds this city.

This great work of reconstructing Ptolemaic Alexandria took place about ten years ago with the publication of three great volumes of P.M. Fraser's Ptolemaic Alexandria, which we took up a collection and bought a set. It's out of print. It went out of print the first year it was put out. They only make maybe 2 or 3000 sets of books like this. And of course, there are enough learned people in the world to immediately sop up a printing like that. We bought this set used for Mr. Hall's 80th birthday. And we are all glad that we did. And it forms the great reconstruction of Ptolemaic Alexandria for the first time since Strabo's time 24 B.C. For the first time in some two millennia, we have a halfway decent idea of the scope, the grandeur, the background of the great Ptolemaic Alexandria.

Perhaps this is a place then to go through the Ptolemaic dynasty, just briefly. The founder, of course Ptolemy Soter and his second son, Philadelphus, who took over. There was an older son who was nicknamed the Thunderbolt. A very violent individual who came of no good. Philadelphus was the second. And usually when they write it, they will write it. Ptolemy I Soter. And then it will be Ptolemy II Philadelphus and III was Euergetes. And IV was Philopator. I can't spell too well, while I, while I think.

The first six Ptolemies largely kept intact through a period of time, which would run roughly from about 320 B.C., would have been about the time that Ptolemy I Soter was positioned in Alexandria in a place of power. Down, Philadelphus came in about 286 B.C. Euergetes was then to about from 245 B.C. Philopator came in about 221. [inaudible] about 205. [inaudible] came down to roughly about 145 B.C. So that from 320 to 145 B.C. was an intact lineage from father to son, father to son, keeping the continuity of the design alive and healthy and keeping the city growing. And even though there were some vicissitudes, there were some foreign wars. Philadelphus set the pattern, the change from his father, Soter, who was a great General. One of Alexander's greatest Generals. Philadelphus learned how to make interfaces by marriages and so forth, with contending powers. So that there would be the idea of family structure knit in so deeply that many of the Hellenistic empires actually were so related that they couldn't bring themselves to conquer each other. It was only later on, when the family ties began to dissolve, that and the threat from Rome came in, that there were these great huge wars.

At 145 B.C., the brother of Epiphanes and brother of Philometor who is known as Physcon. He was known technically as Euergetes, but he's known in history as Physcon, Ptolemy the VIII. He banned the [inaudible] from operating independently in Alexandria and for a period of his generation, the librarianship of Alexandria, which had gone from distinguished person to distinguished person, went to a certain man named Sidus, whose nickname was The Spearman.

And it took a long while, for after 145 B.C. for the energy to come back, for the wisdom to come back, for the energy to come back. And the person who brought it back, and temporarily had it shine again was none other than the much-maligned Cleopatra. Technically known as Cleopatra VII. And she, of course, carried it down to the death of herself and Mark Antony and Alexandria, with Octavian encamped on his couch of millions of men outside the gates of Alexandria, which was about 30 B.C. So that there are about 300 years having about in the middle of those 300 years, a period of a generation or so of total collapse and decline. And then a slow bringing back.

Then, of course, after Augustus took over, Alexandria became Roman. And Roman Alexandria then had its regenerative capacities in the first person in that lineage was the great Jewish philosopher Philo, Philo Judaeus. A large section of, of Alexandria [inaudible] kind of out and put in large Jewish quarter here in Alexandria. And this was the scene of great ecumenical learning. And we fortunately have about 12 volumes of Philo's writings from antiquity. When you put all this collected works together. So, we have an enormous spread of information and material from one of the most elegantly urbane intelligences of all time. Giving us a clear view of the end of Ptolemaic Hellenistic Alexandria and the beginnings of Roman Alexandria, which was equally illustrious.

It produced the great Corpus Hermeticum, which was the nascent beginnings of the Hermetic Tradition. It was the origins of esoteric Christianity. Alexandria, Clement of Alexandria and Origen. And of course, the seed of Neoplatonism with Plotinus and so forth. So, Alexandria flamed into recognition again in its second life. Its second half in Roman Alexandria. And Philo and Augustus really are the dividing line of those two great eras. In my lecture Thursday night covers that event. That fulcrum. And it was indeed a fulcrum in terms of world history, because it's the appearance also of the fruition of the messianic hope through the appearance of Jesus.

Now, the as early as the reign of Philadelphus, that is, about 280 to 270 B.C. Around in that decade. Philadelphus in order to carry on with Soter’s design for the library, decided that it was only half the case to collect books that were available. That in fact, one could make books by making translations originally out of languages that had never been translated. So, Philadelphus being a first-class mind began to commission translations from all the major languages on Earth. All except the Chinese. There were envoys of Philadelphus at Buddhist councils in India. His great contemporary Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya were in constant communication with Alexandria.

But one of the greatest projects of which we know quite a bit because we have the actual evidence. Philadelphus was encouraged by a friend of his fathers at the end of his life, a man named Demetrius of Phalerum. Demetrius had been a soldier. He had been the, the man in charge of the city of Athens for about ten years. So that he was an expert in city constitutional law. But he was also the seed generator for this great library to come into being. And it was his idea that Philadelphus took to make translations. And he also took from him the key idea that there was a tremendous wisdom in the Hebrew language in the kingdom of Judea. And so, Philadelphus sent, the high priest in Jerusalem at that time was a priest named Eleazar. And Eleazar chose for Philadelphus translators six translators from each of the 12 tribes, so that he sent 72 translators to Alexandria. And they were put up in a part of the museum, part of the great library. And they made the first translation of what we would call The Old Testament, The Pentateuch, The Books of Moses, and so forth, the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. And we have, if I can find that book up here, here it is. The Septuagint version of The Old Testament. It is classically said that there were 70 translators, but that's somewhat inaccurate. There were, in fact exactly 72.

Their translation included the for the very first time, the Bible being translated into another language. And as it was translated, the Jewish population of Alexandria began to have again this tremendous capacity to envision on a spiritual level and in terms of a language of its day, the insight into the workings of divinity. So that there began to be written very soon after that time in Alexandria, books which since have become scripture. That are included. Usually there they were included in The Septuagint version they are called Apocrypha in the normal designation. And two of the books of The Apocrypha are worth noting.

The first one was written about 190 B.C. in Alexandria by a man who styles himself as Joshua Ben Sira. And in fact, I have someplace here, the full name. It's a very long designation. Simon Ben Joshua Ben Eliezer Ben Sira. In other words, he's saying that I am as a being, yes the son of my father, but also that I placed myself in this focus of tradition from not only my father but from this motion from the high priest, and also as an individual. Sira actually in Hebrew means thorn. But it can also mean metal. And it has a designation which is indicative of sharp exactness. So, you can think of him as being enormously sophisticated, urbane, Alexandrian Jew. But with the exactness of mind that one would expect after 100 years of Alexandrian refiners at the level that we're talking about. His book usually called Ecclesiasticus in Latin. It's called Ben Sira in the rabbinic tradition. Or you can just call it The Wisdom of Sirach. It's in our time; the normal scholarly translations just would refer to it as The Wisdom of Sirach.

The second book, and I'll get to it in just a minute, is called The Wisdom of Solomon. And it was written in 50 B.C., in the time of Cleopatra, because that was the time of the great revival of bringing back the flame of the wisdom of [inaudible] great torch of freedom back into Alexandria. So that these two Jewish books show us two eras in which the spiritual fire of Alexandrian insight born high on the ecumenical worldview of the tradition of Alexander the Great burned brightest.

So that we have two dates, 190 B.C. roughly and 50 B.C., where these were really high apex points in Alexandrian civilization. And we have the books total because they were preserved as scripture By the Jewish people. And so, we have them whole.

In fact, the Ben Sira was translated around 132 B.C. by his grandson into Greek. And for a long time, people thought that perhaps the book itself had been written in 132 B.C. and referred back out of a spiritual metaphor to his grandfather, and so forth. But in 1896, in a wonderful archaeological discovery, they found the Hebrew text of Ben Sira. And it does in fact go back to 190 B.C. And it's the only apocryphal book for which we have the Hebrew text, The Book of Wisdom it's called sometimes because in the wisdom tradition of Judaism.

The Wisdom of Solomon forms the third book in a trilogy, a triad. Of which the second book is Ben Sira, of which the first book is The Book of Job. So that Job and Ben Sira and The Wisdom of Solomon form a trilogy, or a triumvirate of religious insight texts known as The Wisdom Literature. And this should cause no consternation to Platonic scholars, especially of the Alexandrian persuasion, because it was in Alexandria that one of the great librarians there arranged the Platonic Dialogues into trilogies also. So that we could see that not only were the Greek tragedies written in trilogies, but the Platonic Dialogues and The Wisdom Literature of The Old Testament and many other examples. So that the trilogy aspect of thrice greatest Hermes is an inherent structural part in the way in which human wisdom is written out for the Neuse or the intelligent moving area of the mind to record and understand. We move in triads. And of course, what is that Euclidean shape of triads that the triangle who’s solid form is pyramid.

This wonderful attempt almost 300 B.C. by Philadelphus to make this translation possible, brought this kind of thinking into Alexandria and into Alexandrian society. Let me give you just an example here. This is a one paragraph from Ben Sira. This is the designation would be chapter 50, verses 13 to 22. This is near the end. The end of Ben Sira has a structure known as the last eight chapters of Ben Sira as known traditionally in rabbinic tradition as the praise of famous men. And what it is, of course, is saying that because of the infusion of the fear of the Lord, which is love and graceful thing, and not a terrifying thing, that we now have famous men who exemplify this. And the core of this experience is somewhat like this paragraph. This is written about 190 B.C. in Alexandria.

When I was yet young or ever I went abroad, I desired wisdom openly in my prayer. I prayed for her before the temple and will seek her out even to the end. Even from the flower till the grape was ripe hath my heart delighted in her. My foot went the right way from my youth. Up sought I after her. I bowed down mine ear a little and received from her and got much learning. I profited therein. Therefore, I will ascribe the glory unto him that giveth me wisdom. For I propose to do after her and earnestly I followed that which is good. So shall I not be confounded. My soul hath wrestled with her, and in my doings I was exact. I stretched forth my hands to the heavens above and bewailed my ignorance of her. I directed my soul unto her, and I found her in pureness. I have had my heart joined with her from the beginning. Therefore, shall I not be forsaken. My heart was troubled in seeking her. Therefore, have I gotten a good possession. The Lord hath given me a tongue for my reward and I will praise him therewith.

So, a selection there from the Alexandria of 190 B.C.

This wonderful flowering in development of the original view of Alexander, the Ecumene that man had matured to the point of a single world, a one world. Wherein there should be some hub, some matrix wherein all the focuses of all the traditions could come and not mingle to a schmear but move together in a complementary fashion. So that there should be a sparkle of the wholeness, rather than just a dull glint of some average. And the sparkle of the wholeness is what the Ptolemaic dynasty really preserved probably longer and better than any other single spiritual tradition that came into a manifestation.

When we look at the time period here, we're looking at a very long time period where wisdom was indeed protected to the extent that the whole world was able to glisten together. And one could not only have one's choice, but one could understand the wonderful transcendent capability underneath them all. For a resonance in that area, which Euclid, at the very beginnings of Alexander, had declaimed a point is that which has no parts, or which has no magnitude. A line is length without breadth. The extremities of a line are points. A straight line is that which lies evenly between its extreme points.

So that the geometry of meaning. And Pythagoras said geometry is history. So, the geometry of meaning and of history and of shapes, of forms, comes from seemingly nothing whatsoever. And by saying so it begins to have its shaping capacities. By points of no magnitude, joining into lines of no breadth, making figures of reality and perceptibility and so forth. And so on into phenomenal shape. Wherein we think in our illusory way that we have our only being.

At the end of this development, still keeping with The Septuagint again. Still keeping with The Books of Wisdom. A quotation from The Wisdom of Solomon from 50 B.C., near the time when Cleopatra was, Cleopatra VII, was bringing together Alexandria again. I mentioned Thursday night that she spoke every major language of her time and was one of the reasons why she was so charming to anyone who ran across her, because she could speak to any man in his native language. Egyptian, Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Latin, whatever it was. She was somebody.

So, this from her time, The Wisdom of Solomon in just a paragraph. This is from the very first chapter, verses 4 to 7, about wisdom. It's always personified as a woman you see. Sophia, Sophia. There were lectures on this earlier this year that I gave in the auditorium. There are cassettes of those where I went into it in detail. Here it is.

For into a malicious soul wisdom shall not enter. Nor dwell in the body that is subject unto sin. For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee deceit and remove from thoughts that are without understanding. And will not abide when uprightness coming in. For wisdom is a loving spirit and will not acquit a blasphemer of his words. For God is witness of his reins and a true beholder of his heart and a hearer of his tongue. For the spirit of the Lord filleth the world. And that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice.

And so, you can see that the moving manifestation for our spiritual kind in the phenomenal world is in the realm of language, and language refined to exactness. And this, of course, is the great provenance of wisdom and learning. And where is that wisdom and learning kept as a true focus? In Alexandria. But where? In the museum. In the library itself. In the person of the head librarian. For whom this sacred task was focused.

Now Demetrius of Phalerum had given the original impetus to Ptolemy, reminding him about Aristotle's idea of the library. He had begun thinking about this. One of the earliest tutors, Philotas of Kos. Philadelphus, his son was born on the Isle of Kos in the Aegean, just north of Rhodes, right off the Asia minor coast. But the first great librarian was a man named Zenodotus. And he became librarian roughly around 285 B.C. So that all this time from, say 320 B.C. to 285 B.C. was actually a generation of building the building. Setting it all up. Getting it underway. So that there was, as Gertrude Stein would say, a there, there.

The first act in Alexandria that Ptolemy Soter did, incidentally, was to make coins. There never were coins in Egypt. They always paid by little metal rings. It was a Greek idea of having coins. And of course, the coins came from the old Argive tradition in Greece. Argos. The Argive plain is where Mycenae was and Tiryns in the old Mycenaean civilization. The inheritors of that were the first to make coins in Greece. And so, Ptolemy Soter was the first to make coins in Egypt. And he struck coins as early as 320 B.C. In other words, as soon as he got to Alexandria and was in power, he confirmed it by the way in which a lot of people associate power always. Who made the money? Who owns this money? Well, if you made it and you own it, you've got it. That sort of thinking.

It took all that time, some 35 years, for there to be a position of the head librarian. And thereafter the head librarian usually was the tutor to the royal family. So that the up-and-coming Ptolemaic generations were literally tutored and shown why this library was there. To show them how to manifest their power and vision and keep it intact. And so, they understood, understanding that would add to it, and not only keep it intact, but allow it to grow. All of this kept intact until the time of Philometor, where there was a generational gap. and the next Ptolemy, Ptolemy VII was a youngster and was quickly taken out of the scene. And so there was a break in the tradition. And of course, when you have a break in the DNA, then you have a mutation. And usually, the first mutations are monsters. And this is the tradition.

The second librarian was a man named Apollonius of Rhodes. And he didn't get the designation of Rhodes until later on in his life. He went off to Rhodes in a huff. He went off to Rhodes in a huff because one of the most learned men of the times, who was not the chief librarian, but who was the cataloger of the entire collection, a man named Callimachus, had had a literary dispute with him. So, we can put in Callimachus, even though he wasn't head librarian. He was a big boy of his time. And then Apollonius of Rhodes. Zenodotus, came in about 285 B.C., was librarian for 25 years to about 260 B.C. Then Apollonius of Rhodes was librarian from 260 B.C. to 247 B.C., when he quit the city and went to Rhodes.

The argument, incidentally, was over whether or not there could be epic poetry in Alexandria. I mean, these were serious people. Callimachus, you see, all the great librarians there understood that the central spiritual campfire around which they were collected had for its guiding star Homer. And Homer is, of course, the author of the two great epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Among some other minor works. So, the argument came down and Zenodotus was great because he made big commentaries of Homer. The very first since the days of Pisistratus and Solon, some 300 years before that. Polemarchus said there were no more great epics to be written. They'd been done, and the times were for smaller Poetry. Lyrics and elegies and so forth. And Apollonius said no, because he in fact had written a huge epic called The Argonautica and he wanted a little recognition for this. And he had even tried to upstage Homer a little bit by taking a legend that went back before Troy and included all sorts of people that were kind of dubious as perhaps historical characters. He threw in Orpheus and Hercules and added them to Jason and all the heroes he could think of and then sent them off on this great expedition from Argos to the Black Sea to Colchis, which is about the farthest place that the Greeks of that day could think of going. And of course, the order of the Golden Fleece comes from all that you know that.

It's an interesting thing, because the idea behind The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes is that this was the first time in Greek history that long ships were made that were capable of sailing on the seas. That navigational techniques, astronomical understandings, navigational capacities had joined with the physical capacities to make these long boats. And that they had been, in fact, dovetailed with the psychological strength of character and mind to sail out of sight of land and go on these expeditions. So, the Argonauts were the first spacemen of the Greek era. Way, way back. And so, Apollonius had written this wonderful epic. And Callimachus said, well, it's beside every point that we can think of. You'll just have to shelve it. And Apollonius left, went to Rhodes, and probably ate lemons in the shade, and thinking about posterity.

He was succeeded in his post as librarian by one of the greatest [inaudible] of all time, Eratosthenes. And Eratosthenes was a librarian for quite some time. I think I have on my list that he was a librarian at Alexandria for 53 years. He was just there. And of course, his erudition was oceanic. He catalogued the entire library. Hundreds of thousands of scrolls. And the catalog was called in Greek, The Pinakes. And The Pinakes occupied 120 books themselves. So that there was an enormous wall of books which he had written, which was a detailed bibliographical description of the entire library. That he didn't read every volume perhaps, every papyrus. But he looked at every one of them, and it sized it up so that literally he knew it all if anyone did.

He was a great personal friend of the wife of Philadelphus Arsinoe III, the II. And it's related in one apocryphal story that she was going by one of these great feasts and all this was going on. So, she asked him what was going on in there, and he described the situation, and she said, what a squalid party, and walked out.

Obviously, the Ptolemies hosted a lot of friends whose luxurious ambitions in life they did not share personally. They made courtyards available for them but had their own life on the royal road.

Eratosthenes was one of the great intellects of all time. And he applied himself not only in literature but in the sciences. And he was the man who designed what is known of in history now as the Sieve of Eratosthenes. And Mr. Hall in his great book on page 71, has an outline of the Sieve of Eratosthenes. It's a way of finding the cardinal prime numbers in numerical reality. Of being able to find numbers that are only divisible by themselves or unity. And it was a great intellectual achievement for some near 300 B.C.

He was also the man who made the detailed measurements of the farthest south controllable point in the Ptolemaic Empire was around Syene, which was where the Aswan Dam is today. And the, he determined that at noon on the summer solstice, the sun shone directly down a well in Syene. But on the same day at Alexandria, some 500 miles north, it was off by about seven degrees. And so, Eratosthenes after interviewing travelers to try and get the distance exact between them postulated that the Earth had a diameter and a circumference of such and such a dimension. He was off by 50 miles, but it wasn't bad because he didn't have computers to work with. So, he was really somebody. And being around for 53 years as the chief librarian you can imagine that the place just scintillated.

He was succeeded by a man named Aristophanes of Byzantium. Aristophanes was born in Byzantium but grew up in Alexandria. He had had as his tutors, Eratosthenes and many other individuals. He was the great redactor of Homer. He is the one who really took over from [inaudible] Zenodotus the idea that the Homeric epics belong in 24 separate sections for each letter of the Greek alphabet. There are mystical reasons for this. A mystical geometry for it. But he's the one that did the great editions of the classic authors.

And we receive from antiquity the authors in the rendition that was given to them by Aristophanes, Aristophanes of Byzantium. He made the first collected edition of the poems of Pindar in 17 books. They had never been collected together. Portioned them out as the various odes, The Pythian Odes, The Nemean Odes, The Olympian Odes, and so forth. He made the standard edition of Euripides, the one which we inherit today. He did the first critical edition of Aristophanes old comedy. He grouped the dialogues of Plato into trilogies. Not all of the dialogues, there were 15 of them that grouped so that there were five trilogies of 15 dialogues.

He was succeeded by another Apollonius, whose styled ideographs in Greek. They always say to him, Apollonius ideographs not of a place, but of a capacity. And he was librarian then after Aristophanes of Byzantium, who was there from 194 to 180 B.C. He was librarian from 180 to 53 B.C.
Then a great mind, scientifically and critically, Aristarchus of Samothrace came in not to be confused with another great author of antiquity, Aristarchus of Samos. Aristarchus of Samothrace went one better than Eratosthenes or Callimachus in his nitpicking and received this great long title of what we would call in our colloquial El Grammaticus. You know, the, the grammarian who was a stickler for the final coda. The final surprise. But he also had another Greek nickname, The Mantis. You know, he was so critically nitpicking he was like a mantis. But he was a tremendous individual as a librarian and really called in antiquity the complete critic. He finished up all the fine editing and critical editions. So that by the time of this tremendous travesty of the banishing of the savants temporarily from Alexandria in 145 B.C., and Aristarchus was the librarian, he simply left town. Wouldn't put up with Physcon and his brutality.
And after him, of course, in came Sidus, nicknamed the Spearman. And for several generations they had inferior librarians.

All this time, of course, the development of Alexandrian science and literature, especially in religion, went on apace. Various individuals from all over the Hellenistic world would come and study at Alexandria. Take a great learning from the city, and then go back to their respective cities, and better them. One great example out of hundreds, literally, that could be chosen, Archimedes, the great engineer of antiquity, was from Syracuse. And he went to Alexandria and studied. And he learned the wonderful investigative techniques which they had. And so, when once he was back in Syracuse and the King wanted to determine whether the crown which had been made for him was gold, or whether it was a surrogate. He gave the problem to Archimedes, sort of the court scientist. You have to understand that after Alexandria got going, there were court scientists instead of court magicians all over the Hellenistic world. Science replaced magic because science was more astounding than magic. Archimedes was thinking about this problem and carrying it with him in the old, hermetic questing way of just keeping it suspended and then paying attention to what he was doing in physical reality, in phenomenal time space. Looking for the clue. And he was just easing himself into a tub and suddenly he shouted Eureka! And ran without his clothes on through the streets, shouting Eureka! Eureka! And he got back to the palace stark naked, and showed the king that if you immerse a certain quantity of gold in water, it would displace a certain amount of water. And any other metal would displace a different amount of water, so that he found that the crown was in fact pure gold and proved it by this buoyancy displacement principle. And of course, was rewarded probably handsomely with clothing to help him. Couldn't resist that.

He was the typical Alexandrian sovereign. The individual who could take an unknown situation, start from scratch, and in an orderly procedure by watching scientifically the observation of natural phenomena within the context of tremendous, organized learning. Bring it into focus. Almost like the two eyes coming into focus to see the solution, literally, the solution to the problem. And this was, of course, a technique which Alexandria literally taught the world.

The first real great physicians of antiquity. I know we talk about Hipparchus and so forth. But the first really great physicians in antiquity were from Alexandria. One of the most famous was Herophilus. And you have to understand that usually in antiquity, dissection and vivisection were absolutely forbidden for religious and sacrificial reasons. But in Alexandria a special dispensation was made by the early Ptolemies, especially Philadelphus and his son Euergetes. They made a special dispensation so that Herophilus could make dissections before classes of people, much like the, you know, the paintings of Rembrandt and so forth, showing the ways in which the nerves and the veins and the muscles were there in the body. And Herophilus, in fact, was able to follow the patterns on the brain and come to various parts and knew that there were sensory parts of the brain, and that there were other parts of it. And he was the first to understand the actual physiological mechanism of the eye and the optic nerve, and so forth.

All of these writings existed in antiquity and were known in late antiquity to great physicians like Galen but then were destroyed and lost. So that they were rediscovered literally thousands of years later and considered discovered for the first time. But the Alexandrian doctors and sciences had done this long, long since.

I think that there are just many, obviously many other aspects to Alexandria that could be listed. And I could go on literally for another two hours.

But let me close with a view of the life of Alexandria contemporaneous with Philadelphus. There was a wonderful writer at the time named Theocritus. And he wrote a series of poems called The Idylls. These are the first pastoral poems of history. And they concerned the everyday life of Alexandrians about 270 B.C. And in The 15th Idyll he has in the idol a dialogue between two Alexandrian women. And I'd like to give you portions of that, because it's a clear insight into a level of civilization which we have again become familiar with. And it existed 2300 years ago in this city that has disappeared.

Gorgo arrives and she says, is Praxinoa at home? And Praxinoa yells, Gorgo! Of course I'm home, darling. How long it's been? It's a wonder you got here at all. Eunoa, get her a chair and put a cushion on it. It will do very well as it is. Well, do sit down then. Gorgo says. Well, I'm a helpless thing, Praxinoa. I barely got here alive through all the crowds and chariots, big boots and men and soldiers. Cloaks all over the place and the road going on forever. You really live out too far. Praxinoa says, it's that crazy husband of mine. He comes out here to the ends of the earth and buys a shed, not a house, just so we won't be neighbors. Out of sheer spite, the brute, he's always the same. Gorgo says, darling, don't talk about your man like that when the little one's around. See, woman, how he's staring at you. There, there Zopyrion, honey, she doesn't mean daddy. The other woman says, Heavens, she understands. And the other woman says, nice daddy.

And later on in the dialogue, she says, “But come get on your dress and cloak. Let's go and see the Adonis show at the Kings of Ptolemaeus,” which was this huge building the Ptolemaeus, where they had exhibits and, and rights and so forth. And she says,

Let's go and see the Adonis at the King's Ptolemaeus. I hear the Queen's got up a fine show. And then Praxinoa says, well, everything's fine in fine houses. And Gorgo says, well, what you've seen, you can talk about when you've seen it and others haven't, so it's time to go. And then Praxinoa says, well, every day is a day off for people with nothing to do.

So, they go off.

And as they go along the way, and this crowded way. And you have to imagine Alexandria just teeming with life. She says, Praxinoa says, “They're like ants. You can't even count them. You've done.” And she says in a, in a pan of gracefulness,

Well, you've done many things for us, Philadelphus since your father joined the Immortals. Now, a day at least no ruffian slips up on you in the street, Egyptian style to do you in. What tricks those rascals used to play a nasty lot. One as bad as another. Oh, dear Gorgo what’s become of us? Here come the king's war horses. Oh, dear fellow, don't ride me down. The brown one's rearing. How wild he is! Get back Eunoa, you reckless girl. You'll kill the man leading him. Luckily, I left the baby at home. And Gorgo says it's all right, Praxinoa. Well, we're past them now, and they've gone to their post. And then she says, well, I'm pulling myself together again, too. I've been more scared of a horse or a cold snake than anything since I was a girl. Let's hurry. The crowd is swamping us.

So, they go inside, and they see these wonderful tapestries which the Queen Arsinoe had lined the pearls of wisdom.
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