How do we know what we know about the past? Since the advent of modern technology, the sum total of human knowledge has been spread over a dizzying array of computer systems, databases, and library archives, all of which are difficult to destroy. And so we can feel fairly confident that our descendants will have a pretty clear picture of who we are and what we did. There's too much data for uncertainty. But stretch back before European Enlightenment and we have a much different picture of history. Literacy is confined to a tiny, privileged minority which means that, in the absence of a strong, oral history to pass on the knowledge of the common folk, what we do know of the past is determined by those rich enough, or religious enough, to have had the time and or the passion to write down and preserve, for posterity, the events of their times. Take a moment and grasp this notion. How much of what we know is skewed by bias, by false testimony, by deliberate deception? Not only that, what giants of history have come and gone, their accounts lost to us through misfortune? Because a book didn't get translated, or a church decided the story was inappropriate, or a fire burned off the material with which we could have constructed a history. Everything we know is filtered through a few thousand accounts of events we can barely relate to, but it didn't have to be this way.
Alexandria, the center of human knowledge. Named after the great conquerer, it was popularized by Ptolemy, an Alexandrian general with aspirations of greatness, to follow in his master's footsteps. And though he was somewhat successful in his goal, creating a line of kings and queens that lasted for centuries, his greater gift, at least to those who came after him, was his capital city, to which scholars, philosophers, mathematicians and dreamers all flocked. We know from modern day examples that places of knowledge have a kind of magnetism, that they draw in talent from far and wide. Look no further than the some 80 colleges ringed about Boston, Massachusetts for proof of that. Alexandria was no exception. At the height of the city's power, its library alone may have held tens of thousands of books procured from ships that would come into Alexandria's port, or bought at book fairs from all over the learned world. It is perhaps the gravest human travesty that the library burned, no doubt taking with it heroes now forever lost to us.
Knowledge may well be the most powerful human force, making the shaping of knowledge a close second. This is a theme that runs clear through Mr. Pollard's biography of Alexandria: the city, its rulers, its thinkers, and its great library. It chronicles the city's rise to prominence, which seems almost a beacon of knowledge in the night of ignorance, and its fall, an event which might well have plunged the western world into centuries of intellectual stagnation. This book is as thought provoking as it is edifying, asking us to wonder how our world might have been different had the light of knowledge been allowed to burn for awhile longer. Well told and with some fascinating, historical figures I'd never heard of. (4/5 Stars)
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