Download The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World by Luciano Canfora PDF

By Luciano Canfora

The Library of Alexandria, one of many wonders of the traditional global, has haunted Western tradition for over 2,000 years. The Ptolemaic kings of Egypt--successors of Alexander the Great--had a astounding ambition: to deal with the entire books ever written below one roof, and the tale of the common library and its destruction nonetheless has the ability to maneuver us.
But what was once the library, and the place used to be it? Did it exist in any respect? modern descriptions are imprecise and contradictory. The destiny of the dear books themselves is a topic of unending speculation.
Canfora resolves those puzzles in a single of the main strange books of classical historical past ever written. He recreates the area of Egypt and the Greeks in short chapters that marry the craft of the novelist and the self-discipline of the historian. Anecdotes, conversations, and reconstructions provide The Vanished Library the compulsion of an unique story, but Canfora bases them all on ancient and literary resources, which he discusses with nice panache. because the chilling end to this dependent piece of historic detective paintings he establishes who burned the books.
This quantity has benefited from the collegial aid of The Wake woodland college Studium.

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Extra resources for The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World (Hellenistic Culture and Society)

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Cut into the rock . The oric k-built te mple of tbis monum en t is desc ribed in Chapter Five. 161. 161. 163. ~: dw .. l~ PY'llmlds of Egy p t, 2 12. llm 11, P

May then have been retained for u se with the dom e. Whether thi s explana tio n is co rrect or not is hard 10 say ; in any case it seems to ha ve been a short-lived exp erimen t, as dom es on pendenuves do not occ ur again un til Cop tic tim es. It is in the New Kingdom tombs at Th ebes tha t burnt bricks appear in a spec ial usage : stamped with th e name an~ titles o f th e owner they are set in the angles of the py ramid, and above the frieze, as an exte nsion of the use of funmq con es.

2S3 , 25 5 an d PI. 31. I3 R. , 2SS. 1J9. • 157. 140_ Ibi~n "r , G. A-. op. cit . 2 63 "nd ...... 1 9- 30. 13 S. 136. 30 Fig. 19 Sections orx. 781 and S . 20 Sections of N 985. lil 'v Some of the t ombs at Naga ed-Der in the Fourth and Fifth Dynasti es replace th e corbelling seen in the exa mples described above by tru e vaulting. 578- 9, 790 , 792 and 994. e. ty pe x I ). 79 2 was rather irregular; it used two stretchers combined with two bricks on edge to fill up the space. 14 2 Over the arched roof was a coating o f mud.

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