officially inaugurated the largest library of the Earth, that of Alexandria (which may contain up to 8 million volumes, arranged on 11 floors with a total area of \u200b\u200b85,000 square meters and with a reading room of 25,000 sqm), built right on the foundations of the other legendary library, built three centuries before Christ. The library of Alexandria had seven hundred thousand volumes, which touched every branch of human knowledge. Around it, the adjacent amphitheater of anatomy and the astronomical observatory, the greatest men who until then had produced mankind, he studied philosophy, geography, meteorology, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, in full freedom. Alexander the Great - whose tutor was Aristotle - with its military campaigns had succeeded in spreading the language, culture and knowledge of the Greeks for the whole of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, up in the East.
was born on Knowledge, Knowledge, freedom of philosophical speculation: Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates etc.. said: Enough with the myths, enough with the on-perstizioni. We try to explain the phenomena of nature with the most precious asset we have: intellect, reason. Water, fire, earth, air, our body, diseases: let's try to discover the secrets of mother nature with the study, with the investigation. But two events
blocked the path of knowledge taken from Hellenistic culture: Rome first, and later Christianity.
And to think that would be enough that philosophers and scientists who worked around the Library and the Museum of Alexandria in Egypt had been able to continue their work of study and investigation ... and the world would have lost 1500 years. Suffice it to say that Eratosthenes in 244 BC, had calculated the circumference of the earth committed an error of only 70 km ... a total of 40,000.
In 47 BC the legions of Julius Caesar entered Alexandria and set fire to the Library. A third of the 700,000 volumes were destroyed. In 392 AD the Christians burned the remaining two thirds. Remained as the sole custodian of the science of the Greeks a pagan woman, Hypatia, a philosopher, scientist, astronomer. He refused to convert to Christianity. By order of the bishop and patriarch Cyril (St. Cyril, Doctor of the Church) was cut into pieces and burned in a dunghill. It was 415 AD
With the martyrdom of Hypatia, was destroyed not only a more ge-nial of the minds of human history, but one of the most exemplary scientific communities of all ages. We had to wait over 1200 years before the return courageous mind to turn its gaze to heaven and to study astronomy (Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno, the first imprisoned for professing the heliocentric theory first studied by Aristarchus of Samos, the second burned alive by Church of Rome, 17 February 1600 for the Holy Year have theorized an infinite number of universes).
After that they had murdered, no one had the courage to proclaim the-relief of Hypatia, no philosopher - who had applauded when he was her teacher - Had the strength to proclaim his heir. The Si-pupil nesio of Cyrene - benefactor who had called her mother, sister and teacher - betrayed his teaching, he was converted and became bishop of Ptolemais and staunch ally of the Patriarch Cyril.
Of the thirteen volumes of Hypatia comment arithmetic of Diophantus (the father of algebra), the eight volumes on the Conics of Apollonius (explanation of the orbits of the planets) of the Treaty on Euclid and Ptolemy, the Astronomical Corpus - the collection of tables on celestial bodies, texts on mechanics and technology, scientific instruments that had made (astrolabe plate planisphere and hydroscope) ... of all his great scientific work, the bishop and patriarch Cyril will make sure that everything was destroyed to erase even the memory of astronomy and mathematics in Alexandria.
little that was saved, was sacked by Crusaders in the library of Constantinople and is now preserved in Rome, the Vatican Library.
Europe became Christian Knowledge and Science were banned.
Darkness fell on the path of knowledge for over a millennium.
Above the ashes of the largest library of antiquity, just where Hypatia was sacrificed, the masterly astro uncontaminated culture, martyr and prophet of reason, the October 16, 2002 we will see on the outside wall of granite of the new library of Alexandria recordings of 4000 characters that represent all the alphabets of the world .
is alive the dream of Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies, Aristarchus, Euclid, Archimedes, Hypatia today as two thousand years ago, this building stands as the only last hope of mankind appears to have lost its good most valuable: the use of reason.
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