Press
Release No.2002-74
INAUGURATION
OF THE BIBLIOTHECA ALEXANDRINA:
FROM PAPYRUS TO DIGITALIZATION
Paris, October 9 - The Bibliotheca
Alexandrina, the largest library in the Middle East and Africa,
will be officially inaugurated next October 16, marking the rebirth
of the institution founded over 2,000 years ago by Ptolemy I in
northern Egypt. The ceremony, which was due to take place on April
23 was delayed because of events in the Middle East. It consecrates
an exceptional architectural complex, equipped with state-of-the-art
information technologies.
Hosni Mubarak, the president of the Arab Republic of
Egypt, will inaugurate the library, in the presence of other heads
of state and government, and Ismail Serageldin, the director of the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina. At the request of Director-General, Koïchiro Matsuura,
Ahmed Jalali, president of UNESCO's General Conference, will
represent the Organization.
Convinced of the need to endow
the City of Alexandria and the Mediterranean region with a centre
of cultural and scientific excellence, UNESCO contributed its
expertise from the outset to confer an international dimension
to the Library. "With the inauguration of the Alexandria
Library, it is worth recalling that the revival of this renowned
institution goes to the heart of UNESCO's mission to promote the
development and sharing of knowledge for mutual understanding
and the affirmation of cultural identity, diversity and dialogue
among civilizations. The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina will constitute
a dynamic educational and cultural centre where inter-cultural
understanding will flourish and thrive," said Mr Matsuura.
The Alexandria Library is a remarkable
architectural achievement in its own right, with a distinct character,
like the Sydney Opera House or the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
The library currently holds 240,000 books, but has space for eight
million. Visitors can consult the library's catalogue via 500
computers and access the Internet sites of leading learning centres
around the world, pre-selected by the librarians.
The reading room is unique: an
open space of 70,000 m2 spread over eleven levels, that can accommodate
1,700 visitors. According to Mr Serageldin, it is not only the
"largest reading room in the world," but also "the
most beautiful." Soft natural light reaches all parts of
the room, and the high ceiling elevated on columns creates a stimulating
atmosphere akin to a "cathedral of knowledge," he adds.
The partly sunken building, conceived
as a solar disc rising from the earth and tilted towards the sea,
measures a total height of 160 metres. Its Aswan granite wall
forms a half crescent and is engraved with letters from the alphabets
of 120 languages. The edifice symbolizes the openness and vastness
of knowledge. It was designed the Norwegian Snøhetta firm
which, in 1989, won a competition organized by UNESCO.
Work was supervized by Egyptian
engineer Mamdouh Hamza, who had to deal with the challenge of
building part of the edifice 18 metres below sea level.
Apart from the library, the complex
houses a conference centre for 3,200 people, a planetarium, the
Taha Hussein library for the blind containing electronic and Braille
books, a Young People's Library and five research institutes,
including the International School for Information Studies (ISIS)
and the Laboratory for the Restoration of Rare Manuscripts. The
Library also includes an Internet centre, three museums - for
manuscripts, calligraphy and science - and four art galleries.
For Mr Serageldin, the ensemble represents a "large international
cultural complex."
Some of the 10,000 rare books and
manuscripts in the Library's collection have been digitalized.
By simply touching a computer screen, visitors can turn the electronic
pages of an ancient Koran, for example. This enables documents
of priceless historical value to be conserved while making them
available to researchers and to the general public. In a first
stage, they will be on view in the Manuscripts Museum, and further
down the line, on the Internet.
A top priority is to turn this
grand international cultural centre into a meeting place for thinkers,
artists and scientists from across the world. Mr Serageldin also
hopes that, thanks to the Library, more tourists will visit Alexandria,
"famous not only for its lighthouse, but also as an intellectual
lighthouse of humanity for six centuries, inspiring great writers
like Callimachus, Cavafy and Lawrence Durrell."
The project cost $220 million,
of which $100 million came from foreign donations and the remainder
from the Egyptian government. "For a country with a population
of 67 million, $120 million over a ten-year period isn't an unreasonable
investment for a centre of excellence," says Mr Serageldin.
UNESCO's involvement in the endeavour
dates back to 1986, when the idea of reviving the spirit of the
ancient library with a modern learning and research centre started
to crystallize. One year later, UNESCO launched an international
appeal to support the resurrection of the ancient Alexandria library
and commissioned a feasibility study, which endorsed the need
for a large library in the Mediterranean region. Consequently,
one of the library's vocations is to offer a rich collection of
works on Mediterranean civilizations.
Along with the International Union
of Architects (IUA) and UNDP, UNESCO organized in 1988 an international
competition to design the library. The Norwegian agency Snøohetta
was selected from among 1,400 projects from 77 countries. In 1990,
UNESCO helped to organize the Aswan meeting, during which $65
million were collected, mainly from Arab States, constituting
the first international funding for the project.
UNESCO also provided an Internet
server and financial resources to develop the Library's website.
It gave support to the Library for the Blind, the Restoration
Laboratory, and resources for the training of librarians, bibliographical
formats, assistance to prepare technical documents and guidelines
for the Library's information systems, its maintenance and the
purchasing of equipment, as well as a curriculum for the International
School of Information Studies (ISIS), which is based at the Library.
The Ancient Library of Alexandria,
founded in 288 BC, formed part of the Mouseion, or Shrine of the
Muses, which included the university of Alexandria, one of the
first in the history of humanity, to which Ptolemy I invited poets,
scientists and artists. The ancient library collected some 700,000
manuscripts, all of which were catalogued from the third century
BC. Under the Ptolemys, the institution enjoyed "legal deposit
rights," thereby being entitled to make a copy of any book
that entered the country. The ancient library disappeared over
four and a half centuries, destroyed by fires and attacks. The
first occurred in 48 BC when Julius Caesar supported Cleopatra
against her brother Ptolemy XIII. An estimated 40,000 to 400,000
books were lost on this occasion.
The ancient library boasted more
than one claim to fame: on its premises, the Old Testament was
translated for the first time from Hebrew to Greek, Aristarchus
suggested that the earth rotated around the sun, Erastosthenes
calculated the circumference of the Earth, Herophilus discovered
that the brain controlled the body and Euclid invented geometry.
The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina
respects the spirit of the fabled institution. "It's wonderful
that amid so many wars, when people are talking about the 'clash
of civilizations,' that in Egypt, a few metres away from where
the ancient library stood, a new institution has arisen, dedicated
to universal understanding, tolerance and dialogue," said
Mr Serageldin.
To download high
resolution pictures: www.unesco.org/bpi/alexandrina
Official Internet Site: http://www.bibalex.org
UNESCO site on the Alexandria Library
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/alexandria_new/
Bibliography: Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria,
by Mustafa El-Abbadi, UNESCO, 1990 (available in English, French
an Spanish).
Interview with Ismail Serageldin, director of the Alexandria Library,
in The New Courier, May 2002, pages 23 to 25 (www.unesco.org/courier)
****
Contact:
Asbel López
Bureau of Public Information - Editorial section
Email: a.lopez@unesco.org
Tel: (+33) (0)1 45 68 17 07
Fax: (+33) (0)1 45 68 56 59
