 Bibliotheca - The New Library in Alexandria Egypt by freddie18 | new Library of Alexandria tips and photos posted by real travelers and Alexandria locals.
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 by sayedaburas
It is a modern glass-and-steel structure with giant exterior grey granite walls carved with hieroglyphs and symbols from every known alphabet worldwide.
In fact it is an architectural showpiece that symbolises the sun rising out of the Mediterranean and the rebirth of Alexandria in the late 1990s.
The new library includes three museums and five specialised research institutes. Its shelves contain 200,000 books on every field of science and information. The Bibliotheca has room for about five million books.
It also includes a digital library of books manuscripts and papyri written before the invention of printing, allowing all researchers to obtain copies of these valuable documents. Leave a Comment Directions: Shatby / Silsila
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 by sayedaburas
1) In 47 B.C., when Caesar was in Alexandria, some 40,000 volumes which were stored near the arsenal -perhaps with the view to theri shipment to Rome, were accidentally burtnt.
2) The Royal Library
The Royal Library was an unfortunate casualty of war. In 48 B.C., Caesar found himself involved in a civil war between Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII. Caesar sided with Cleopatra and was soon besieged by land and sea by the Ptolomaic forces. He realised that his only chance lay in setting fire to the enemy fleet and it was by this drastic measure that he managed to gain the upper hand. But the fire, in the words of Plutarch, spread from the dockyards and destroyed the "Great Library".
The Daughter Library
As regards the Daughter Library, it continued to function throughout the Roman period under the protection of the Sarapeum. Nevertheless, with the end of paganism and the ascendancy of Christianity in the fourth century, the Sarapeum lost its sanctity. In 391, when the Emperor Theodisius ordained the destruction of all pagan temples, contemporary eyewitnesses assert that the Sarapeum, together with all its contents, suffered complete annihilation.
3) The story that it was finally burnt by Arabs is now discredited; since, when the Arabs conquered Egypt in 642 A.D., the Alexandria Library no longer existed. It is noteworthy that no historians of the conquest, whether Byzantine or Arab, ever mention any accident that could have occurred to the Library. It was not until six centuries later, during the time of the Crusades, when all of a sudden a story emerges, claiming that the Arab general Amr Ibn Al-As, had destroyed the books by using them as fuel for the baths! [Ref. my Professor Dr. Mustafa El-Abbady]. Leave a Comment Directions: Alexandria, Egypt
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 Alexander the Great by sayedaburas
Around 295 B.C., the scholar Demetrius of Phalerum convinced the new pharaoh, Ptolemy I Soter, that Alexandria could rival Athens as a center of culture and learning—by establishing a library that would house all the books in the world.
History says that the Ptolemies became so hungry for knowledge that they seized books from every ship that came into harbour. They made a copy for the ship but kept the originals for themselves.
The library housed the masterpieces of classical civilization: the works of Aristotle and Plato; original manuscripts of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides; Egyptian treatises on astronomy and medicine; Buddhist texts; and the first translations of the Hebrew scriptures. Eventually historians believe Alexandria amassed 700,000 scrolls Leave a Comment Directions: "Dum spiro spero" = "As long as I breathe, I keep on hoping" Excavations will one day discover its traces... Let us hope.
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 by sayedaburas
Here, I find myself willing to beg your attention for a few seconds! .... May I?
As you are quite aware nations use the names or sounds of the first letters of their alphabet to name it. e.g. Greeks used [ Alpha+Beta : ALPHABET]. The Arabs used the names [Aleph+Ba : ALEPHBA], or the sounds of the first four letters [ Aleph + Ba + Gim + Dal : ABGaDyeah].
But How Greeks got such characters and relevant sounds?
Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiforms were the only known forms of writing in ancient times. Both scripts, though separately created, used picture writing. Eventually, pictures or signs represented sounds. By about 1200 B.C., the Phoenicians had developed symbols which in time became a real alphabet from which the Greeks derived theirs. The characters represent in all probability an early forking from the Sinaitic, which constitutes the connecting link between the Phoenician alphabet and its Egyptian ancestor.
The Egyptian symbol for the ox head was given the Semitic name Aleph and was sounded as "A", to get it: Flip ‘A’ vertically ! Imagine an ox head with its two horns! The symbol for house became Bet and was sounded as "B". The symbol for Camel’s head and neck became Gamal and was called Gamma and sounded as “G” ….
…and so on:
for door Dalet and sounded D,
for water Mem, Myah and sounded M to get it imagine the water waves*,
for teeth Sin and sounded S, compare Greek Sigma and the teeth*. Leave a Comment Directions: Shatby / Silsila
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 The Library Complex Entrance by sayedaburas
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is located on a magnificent site in the Eastern Harbor, facing the sea on the north, and Alexandria University Complex on its southern side.
It overlooks the Silsilah Peninsula. It is very close to the location of the Old Library in the Brucheion (the Ancient Royal Quarter), as verified by the 1993 archeological survey.
The Library of Alexandria complex includes: the Main Library, Young Peoples' Library, Library for the Blind, Planetarium, Science Museum, Calligraphy Museum, Alexandria Archeological Museum, International School of Information Studies (ISIS), Conservation and Restoration Laboratory, Conference Center of Alexandria and Ancillary Services, Multipurpose Rooms and Exhibition areas. Leave a Comment Directions: Shatby / Silsila
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The Alexandria Library has now risen from the ashes of antiquity so that it might once more lead the world as a cultural center and a focal point for knowledge not only in Egypt, bur for the world as a whole. The revival of the Alexandria Library is a huge international project which cost millions of dollars. The library contains more than 8 million books and a reading area with two thousand seats. This library possess about 400000 volumes in hard and electronic copies. It is designed to hold 4 million volumes. In the future its capacity will reach 8 million using the compressed storage system.
The design concept is a simple circle inclined towards the sea, partly submerged in a pool of water, the image of the Egyptian sun, which in contemporary terms will illuminate the world and human civilization.
Moreover, an inclined roof allows indirect daylight and a clear view of the sea. Designed as an arrow, an elevated passageway links the University of Alexandria to the Corniche, the building is surrounded by a wall clad with Aswan granite engraved with calligraphic letters and representative inscriptions from the world civilizations.
The museum is housed in section B1 of the Library complex on the ground floor of the main building. After passing through the security gate of the Library, take the stairs that lead down to the ground floor. On the right side of the stairs is the ticket office. General admission costs 10 LE ($2) for foreign tourists.
You may watch my high resolution photos on Google Earth in Alexandria Library according to the following coordinates: 31º 12' 31.42" N 29º 54' 27.35" E
or on my Google Earth Panoramio Photo 1 , Photo 2 . Directions: take tram to drop you in Shatby tram station
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Once the largest library in the world could be found in Alexandria. The ancient library was founded in early 3rd century BC. When I was in Bergama (Pergamum) in Turkey 2003 I read that many of the manuscripts there were taken to the library in Alexandria by Mark Antony, as a gift from him to Cleopatra.
Also today the new and modern library is big. It is the largest in the Arab world and can hold as much as 8 million books, but so far there are only a few hundred thousand volumes there.
The library was opened in 2002. It looks like a big discus tilted into the ground, and it is covered with glass panels. Inside there is a big hall with several terraces, where people can read and study. There are also computers and exhibition rooms.
Bags are not allowed to be taken inside, but you have to leave them where you buy the ticket (not by the entrance. The admission was 10 pounds. I have heard there are English-speaking guides that can show you around (it doesn’t cost extra), but I didn’t see any when I visited.
The library is on the Cornish, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Leave a Comment
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 Alexandria Library by uglyscot
Inside it is spacious and clean.
A guided tour is a must. Most languages are catered for, though the information given varies from a list of facts and figures [English], to interesting information [Spanish] depending on which guide you are allotted to.
There is an excellent exhibition on the lowest level with rocks and minerals from all over the world
Cost of admission 10 EPounds Leave a Comment Directions: about the middle of the main corniche road
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Bibliotheca - The New Library
in Alexandria Egypt by freddie18, 1 more photos
The Bibliotheca is open everyday but closed on Tuesdays. The schedule on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday is 11AM to 7PM. Friday and Saturday it opens at 3PM. Entrance Fee is 10 Egyptian Pounds for Non-Egyptian visitors. Directions: take tram to drop you in Shatby tram station
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 by lotharlerch
About 1700 years after this old library vanished a great new library was built not far from the place of the original one to remind of the glorious past. This new library is intended to host finally 5 millions of books and I do not remember how many Terabytes of data. The library provides also many hundreds of up to date multimedial working places for the users and all other facilities you can expect today in a perfect leading modern library. But I was shocked, there were only extremely few users. Leave a Comment
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