Alexandria Library

Suggested Link:

When they set out to accomplish a world wonder in ancient Egypt you could hardly question the work ethic They could rally an awesome group effort and knock up an engineering marvel like the pyramids in the time it takes a modern tradesman to quote for second story extension.

But when it came to the world beating effort behind the great library in Alexandria , it wasn’t so much the stonework, rather the substance … the contents - reputed to be all the knowledge of the ancient world.

And that’s when papyrus was the software … imagine what those can-do Egyptians could achieve in micro-processed here and now.

Well, Alexandria library mark II --with the original lost to a watery grave – a new 300 million dollar library aims to re-establish Egypt as a global centre of research and learning.

But is it all show … here’s Dominique Schwartz.

Music

Crowded beach scene

Schwartz: Alexandria lies along a 20-kilometre stretch of Mediterranean coast. It’s Egypt’s Riviera. You won’t find any bikinis here. But the sun, sea and cafes still pull in a million extra bodies every summer. There’s more to this city, though, than meets the eye. Its treasures are largely hidden – under the ground, and beneath the sea.

00+00

Map - Egypt

Music

00+33

Underwater archaeological find

Schwartz: More than two thousand years after it was built, archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be the royal quarters of the Ptolemies – the Greek dynasty whose golden rule over Alexandria ended in 30 BC with the death of its most famous daughter – Cleopatra.

00+51

Some of the riches from that time have surfaced – but so far, not a trace of what is arguably the Ptolemies’ greatest creation - the ancient library. Its collection of papyrus scrolls was said to have contained the knowledge of the entire world.

Empereur

Empereur: Alexandria was the capital of the Hellenistic world…

01+31

Schwartz: Jean-Yves Empereur is one of Alexandria’s leading archaeologists. The ancient library, he fears, may never be discovered. Most of the city’s ruins are buried under tonnes of concrete – or highway bitumen, as is now the case with this necropolis.

Schwartz: What was Ptolomy’s aim in building the library?

Empereur

Empereur: I think, first of all, it was to collect all the knowledge of the world in any language from any origin to know who were the people living in Egypt and the surrounding countries.

01+56

To have the knowledge of the world meant to have the power.

Ruins

Music

Schwartz: Power, of course, rarely goes unchallenged. The history of Alexandria and its library is one of repeated invasion, pillaging and burning. The Romans reputedly destroyed thousands of the library’s manuscripts – while creating their own edifices for posterity.

02+19

Schwartz to camera

Super:

Dominique Schwartz

Schwartz: Alexandria has built its reputation on its glorious ancient past, but in the new millennium, it doesn't want to be recognised not only for what was,

02+40

but for what is… and you can’t miss this – the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the new library which Egypt hopes will be the next wonder of the world.

Shots of new library

Music

03+02

Schwartz: No expense has been spared in creating the new Alexandria library. The construction bill alone is likely to reach 300 million dollars. It’s an international project - sponsored by the United Nations’ cultural body, UNESCO. Countries from around the world have donated money, services and materials.

Schwartz with Zahran

Zahran: We are looking at the famous Pharaoh's lighthouse, one of the wonders of the ancient world where the fortress is located now since the 15^th century. Of course you are in the same place where the ancient library was created at one time…

03+35

Schwartz: Mohsen Zahran is the project manager for the new library.

03+57

He believes it doesn’t really matter where the old library lies – or if it’s found. It’s the legacy which is important.

Zahran: The legend is more of a propulsion for us to be the level of excellence that it was, and to even do better because we have more resources and better capabilities today.

04+09

Schwartz with Kapellar outside library

Kapellar: The circular shape of the library symbolises the myth that says that the ancient library had contained all the knowledge of the western world at that time.

04+27

Kapellar

Schwartz: Christoph Kapellar is an architect with the Norwegian firm Snoehetta, which designed the library He says the angled roof – an aluminium-sheeted disc – is meant to resemble a microchip.

04+38

Kapellar: It is a perfect example of something that is not just a repository for books and storage room, but it is an active element, it has influences to the outside and it is like an exchange of ideas and…

Schwartz: Conductor of knowledge and ideas.

Kapellar: Exactly.

04+51

Interior of library

Schwartz: Egypt wants this to be more than just a library. The complex includes a large conference centre, and a planetarium. The aim is to attract academics from all disciplines to develop a centre of debate, discovery and invention -- one which mirrors the ancient library, whose scholars calculated the circumference of the globe, the length of the year, and laid much of the foundations for geometry, astrology and mathematics. The engine room for this new intellectual powerhouse will be the stepped, public reading hall.

05+14

Bigger than a football stadium, it will accommodate 2,000 people at any one time – and eventually, it’s hoped, eight million books, and an array of manuscripts and audio-visual material.

05+50

Man sorting books

The library will be struggling to open with any more than a few hundred thousand books on its shelves – five percent of capacity.

06+06

Under lights, in a back room, a team of workers is busy sorting and cataloguing the available books. Forty percent have been donated by other countries, including Australia. Pre-loved seems the best definition for a lot of them.

Drawings of ancient library

Music

06+34

Schwartz: But Rome wasn’t built in day and even the ancient library had to resort to dubious means to fill its halls with half a million papyrus scrolls.

Empereur

Empereur: Ptolemy the Second was very fond of papyrus to collect for his library, so he stopped all the ships entering the harbour and the customs seized the papyrus and they made copies of them.

Schwartz: Book piracy?

Empereur: Yes exactly, and they said - the ancient authors - that many times Ptolemy the Second gave back the copies and took the original to his library.

06+50

Grombirg

Grombirg: King Ptolemy tried to collect all books which were published all over the world and to keep them here. With the digital age, it is not necessary for any library to do that today.

07+13

Grombirg with Schwartz in library

Schwartz: French librarian and project consultant, Gerald Grombirg, says the worldwide web is today’s most comprehensive source of information. Modern libraries, he says, must specialise. In Alexandria’s case the focus will be Egypt and the Mediterranean. Its collection includes five thousand rare manuscripts from the 10^th to 18^th centuries

07+36

Grombirg

Grombirg: But what is done by the library is to try to get copies of all the other very important Arabic manuscripts which are in other countries. And for example, Spain gave the complete collection of the manuscripts of the ** library.

08+02

Students at university

Music

08+23

Schwartz: While the Alexandria library worries about what works it can acquire, some writers and academics worry about what it might reject.

The American University of Cairo is one of Egypt’s premier tertiary institutions; its library, one of the country’s biggest.

Library at American University of Cairo

But over the past couple of years, Islamic protest and government censors have forced this library to pull one hundred titles from its shelves. One book, on the public racks for thirty years, was removed after being accused of blaspheming the Prophet Mohamed

08+51

Dr. Saad

Dr. Saad: There is a battle in Egypt today between forces of progress, enlightenment and openness and forces of control, oppression, reaction, of conservatism.

09+08

I have been at AUC for 25 years -- never until 2 years ago had we had these controversies over books that had been on our shelves for so many years.

Schwartz: Dr Saad Eddin Ibrihim is a sociology professor at the University. He’s not shy of speaking his mind. In Egypt, that can get you into trouble - jail even - as he knows from experience. He says writers who don’t want to fall foul of the censors must follow some basic rules.

09+35

Dr. Saad: They call the red line, don't step over that line, don’t attack the President or his family for example, don’t get involved in religious issues or theological issues, because that is always an explosive thing.

09+54

Schwartz: How important is it that the Alexandria library is a place where there is freedom of speech and thought?

10+11

Dr. Saad: Unless there is total freedom of thinking, expression and so on. it will just be a building with books or with desks, or with whatever, but to have a spirit, to have a soul, to have life, to have dynamism, it has to be free.

10+17

Schwartz: Those who work at the Alexandria library say censorship is simply not an issue.

Grombirg

Grombirg: I have been here now for three years and a half. What I can say is that until now I have never heard about censorship.

10+45

Schwartz with Zahran

Schwartz: Project manager Mohsen Zahran says the Egyptian government is committed to building a library for all of humankind.

10+54

Zahran

Zahran: The aim is not only to benefit our time, our time and beyond as the ancient scholars of the library have done for themselves and for ourselves. Our present civilisation is based on the giving of these scholars. We owe the coming generations this commitment as our grand grandfathers have done to us.

11+03

Schoolchildren

FX: Drums

11+31

Schwartz: Providing for future generations is not just a lofty ideal. The library’s patron and prime mover is Suzanne Mubarak – the wife of the Egyptian President.

FX: Kids singing

Schwartz: This new school in Alexandria is one of the products of her drive to boost literacy across the country.

11+59

The first lady has called her campaign “Reading for All”. And what better crown than a glorious new public library in Alexandria.

Alexandria at sunset

Music

12+21

Schwartz: Egypt hopes the new library will herald a new cultural dawn for Alexandria. One which puts it back where it was in antiquity – at the centre of the known world. But even if it doesn’t quite achieve that – it’s still won over those closest to it.

Kapellar

Schwartz: Do you think you’ll ever come back and use it as a library?

Kapellar: I might, why not – yeah of course.

12+50

Grombirg

Grombirg: As a reader I would like to come here to read in here – it’s not the case in many libraries.

12+56

Worker

Schwartz: And you've helped build it – how long do you think this library will stay standing?

Worker: For good, for good. Forever.

13+04

Music

Credits:

Reporter: Dominique Schwartz

Camera: Andrew Sadow

Editor: Stuart Miller

Research: Guy Lynn