An archive of knowledge said to be so expansive, so awe-worthy, that upon its ruin the Queen of Egypt cried. As smoke took to the skies of Alexandria, Cleopatra lamented the ancient world’s most adorned library: Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Bibliotheca Alexandrina – less formally known as the Library of Alexandria, Museum of Alexandria, or the Royal Library – was a colossal academic complex, comprising anything from 300,000 to 500,000 archived documents and several scholarly institutions (medical, astronomical, religious). It was considered the most significant bed of knowledge in the ancient world, gathering the greatest minds and re-defining the Hellenistic age. Today, it is still considered one of “the greatest intellectual achievements of mankind,” a library that was pure in its pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. One of its remarkable developments is the bilingual marriage of Egyptian hieroglyphics and Greek; histories were translated, books exchanged, and unprecedented access to cultural mines otherwise unexplored was granted. As its name suggests, the library was a fixture of Alexandria, the Ptolemaic ad-hoc capital of Egypt (supplanting Memphis). Much like the rest of Alexandria, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina was intended as a node of cultural, political, and…
