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RECALLING ANCIENT MARVEL,

EGYPT OPENS LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt: President Hosni Mubarak and other dignitaries from around the world descended on this port Wednesday to inaugurate what has been nicknamed the Fourth Pyramid, a long-awaited successor to one of the classical world’s great and lamented intellectual marvels, the library of Alexandria.

The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, as it is called to evoke its ancient predecessor, cost $225 million, took nearly 30 years to create and is freighted with metaphor. Some see it as an assertion of Egyptian pride at a time when the Arab world feels under siege by the West. For others, it shows Egypt’s openness to the West and contribution to world culture.

On the whole, however, Egyptians from most walks of life were happy to have some good news in a country suffering from a faltering economy and unnerved by American threats of war against Iraq, even though there are no more than 250,000 books, many donated, in a library built for 4 million.

The ancient Alexandrian library may have had as many as 700,000 items. It was founded by Ptolemy I, Alexander the Great’s successor, in 306 B.C. with the mandate to acquire every scroll of its time. Any ship at the harbor could have its scrolls seized, with copies returned.

It helped make Alexandria a glorious center of learning, attracting scholars like Archimedes and Euclid. The main library is said to have been destroyed by fire in 47 B.C., though parts of the collection are believed to have survived for centuries.

Designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta, the 11-story, 2,880-square-meter library is more than a repository of books. It has a conference center, museum space and a planetarium.

THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, Oct. 18, 2002