The Shores of Wisdom: the Story of the Ancient Library of Alexandria

Two thousand three hundred years ago the world's first great Library and international Culture Centre was created by the Pharaoh Ptolemy I Soter. The Shores of Wisdom tells the story of this ancient Library and Mouseion of Alexandria and how it influenced Western thought as much as, if not more than, Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum at Athens. It sketches the portraits of the men and women responsible for the Library's fame, such as Euclid and Archimedes, the astronomers Aristarchus and Claude Ptolemy, the polymath Eratosthenes, the philosopher Philo, not forgetting the early Christian Fathers, Clement and Origen, but also of those involved in its calamities and final destruction. The Shores of Wisdom describes, too, the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina and how it has developed from an ambitious dream into a brilliant reality which will be a worthy successor to the Ancient Library during the coming millennium.