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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."
It's kind of embarrasingly, really. They knew which building it was in for ages, but it took them years to figure out they just had to smash through the big Roman numeral 10 on the floor.
"Derp de derp."
Afterwards, PHB got a raise for keeping it "reasonably" under budget. Imagine the loss if both copies were destroyed!!!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Okay.
.. Arab doctors were busy doing medicine when Christian doctors were busing being butchers. Take your blinkers off. Look around you. And when you've recovered from that, look behind you to see the damage that was done to others in the Churches history.
I'm going to be gerenal here as my SPLUTTERING RAGE is making it hard to type.
The Catholic Church has done these things, and they were the major force in doing these things not because they're wonderful, all-singing, all-dancing modern thinkers. They did it because they wiped out their competition.
We would have vastly more and wider knowledge within collective civilisation if the Church (and not just the Church, true enough, but this is a response) did destroy modes of thinking that clashed with their own. From the crusaides to the witch-hunts.
Oh, one last point
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom. On reading that previous comment, I have a bad taste in my mouth.
Robert Anton Wilson
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 ........
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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-
Uhh.. it was the Arabs who preserved the knowledge of the ancient world through the dark ages. The Cathlolic church was too busy persecuting people like Galileo for finding truth to preserve much of anything.
As another poster pointed out, they were pretty much the only game in town. The Cathlic church hardly deserves credit for doing the little they did. Also, it's hardly the invention of Christianity to believe the world is understandable. The Cathlolics can't lay claim to that any more than we can.
AccountKiller
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.
A quick google found the library in Alexandria
Douglas County Public Library
720 Fillmore St
Alexandria, MN 56308
(320) 762-3014
Thats about 50 miles from where I live.
Of all of the modern and current libraries that are around, the Vatican Library (yes, the Pope's own book stack) is probabally the most comprehensive collection of medeval and ancient texts that is in existance. For more technical volumes there are other places that are more extensive, but if you are trying to study history or philosophy, this is the place to go.
To suggest that Christians deliberately burn books simply to hide knowledge is totally wrong. That from time to time bullheaded idiots sometimes get control of ecclesiastical authority and abuse that same political and spiritual power to evil ends is not disputed. This happens in most religions (including atheism) or even political movements. (This is in response to the grandpartent article. I agree with you dasunt.)
The problem that happened at Alexandria, and what caused the "Dark Ages" was a total breakdown of the political & social framework of Europe due to the collapse of the Roman Empire. It didn't burn down earlier simply because the Roman Legions would have massacred anybody that tried to challenge Roman authority. By 400 A.D. the Roman government had all but stopped existing in any form, and the citizens of Rome itself were fighting off invaders into the city itself from the Vandals, Goths, and other germanic tribes that routinely sacked Rome for what was left of wealth from being an imperial capital. This was almost like the "Mad Max" movies by Mel Gibson in terms of a total lack of control by governments, except in silly irrelavent symbolism that doesn't keep my neighbor from raping my wife and killing my kids.