…and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing
This just in from the BBC: archaeologists think they’ve found the site of the Library of Alexandria. Yup, that one.
That is just so cool. My youthful fantasies of becoming an archaeologist just resurfaced after a decade and a half of dormancy.
[Title of this post from the last line of C. P. Cavafy’s "The God Abandons Antony," translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.]
Oh, wow and double wow. That’s so cool. For any library nerd, I strongly recommend Lionel Casson’s eminently readable Libraries in the Ancient World. He talks about Alexandria, of course, but also other great centers of learning. It’s really entertaining.
Book news
The Diamond Sutra, “the earliest printed book to bear a date,” is on display at the British Library. Go…