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Library at Alexandria Discovered?

dustmote writes "According to the BBC, a Polish-Egyptian team believes they may have discovered the Library at Alexandria, including ancient lecture halls or auditoria, in the Bruchion region of the city. It's said by some that the burning of the library set civilization back as much as a thousand years."

2 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Likely to have been late 4th-century by waterbear · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A substantial body of opinion dates the major destruction of the Alexandrian library/museum to the late 4th century AD, i.e. a time when Christians were in charge and very concerned to discourage pagan things, which included the learning of the ancients ........

    It is also worth remembering that much of what did survive out of the destruction of classical learning was eventually preserved and re-transmitted to a deeply ignorant and religiously hidebound Europe several hundred years later through the hands of the relatively liberal and learned muslim arabs ...

    -wb-

  2. Re:For the rest of time by Aardpig · · Score: 4, Interesting

    and among them we have the burning of the library of Alexandria by the Muslim invaders.

    Erm, Muhammad was born in 570 AD. For it to have happened as you claim, he would have had to have gone back in time to before the birth of Christ, founded a new religion, and then compelled his new followers to burn down the library. Occam's razor suggest instead that you're talking out of your arse.

    While we're on this note, let's not forget the contributions made to Mathematics and Science, over the centuries, by countless Muslims. To name but one: Al Khwarizmi, from whose name we get the word 'algorithm', and from whose work on mathematics (Hisab al-jabr wa al-muqabala) we get the word 'algebra'. Tell me, AC, what have you contributed?

    --
    Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.