The point of this exhibit is, as with many of the other exhibits in the Knowledge Museum, to provide some background to the whole area of knowledge research. We feel that it is important to look to the beginnings of civilisation and the development of knowledge in order to better understand the way in which we view knowledge today.
The Renaissance model of the continual and linear advancement of Knowledge and Civilisation generally places beginnings with a Greco-Roman bias. This is hardly surprising as the Greeks were the first civilisation to record the knowledge in a format that the renaissance mind could understand; written and translatable. The model celebrated the ancient Greek and Roman cultures and philosophies yet denied the Greeks own admission that they were not the first civilisation to reach that stage of development; a Golden Age that predated historical records was referred to. These Golden Age references have been used to propose and even justify the existence of the mythical continent of Atlantis, however they were just have likely to have referred to an earlier civilisation closer to home, i.e. Egypt.
The Egyptians recorded much of the things that were important to them but much of their hieroglyphic texts , such as the "Pyramid texts" lay undiscovered at the time of the Renaissance. Those portions of hieroglyphics that were available to them were mostly undecipherable. It was only centuries later with the late C19th and early C20th Egyptology boom and subsequent discoveries such as the invaluable Rosetta Stone that enabled modern scholars to translate comprehend the sophistication of Egyptian society.
Since those first excavations in Egypt, conventional Egyptology has helped to revise the Renaissance model and for almost a century that model has managed to accommodate the role of the Egyptians in the history of Knowledge.There are some however that The question that remains unanswered by Egyptology is that of how a civilisation so relatively technically advanced as the Eyptians could suddenly appear out of nowhere at such an early time in human development.
Recent speculations and research into the origins of Egyptian society have seen the emergence of a different model of the history of knowledge. This model proposes that:
Chief proponents of these theories are Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval who have both had several books and TV programmes released to mixed and strong reactions. Some tend to categorise Hancock and Bauval with the sensationalist and discredited Von Daniken (Chariots of the Gods et al.) whilst others treat then as welcome heretics who are not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom and thinking. However they are perceived, they are always thought provoking...
As a layperson with a long-standing interest in Ancient Civilisations and Ancient Knowledge I can see validity in both models. I think the main issues come down to the recording and communication of knowledge. Knowledge is a fundamental corner stone of a culture. If the culture all but disappears then it follows that a great deal of its knowledge will also disappear unless that knowledge is somehow encoded or captured in format that a later civilisation can decipher. The knowledge of ancient peoples was passed down through the generations orally, and would would often die with if for instance that culture were destroyed by a natural cataclysm or were wiped out in war. [See Lost Tribes: Lost Knowledge]. Cultures that did have a recorded knowledge source would often use that form to record what was culturally significant to them: the culture of the Egyptians was preoccupied with astronomy and the afterlife and much of their recorded knowledge reflects this. Of course most of hieroglyphics that Archeaology has discovered in Egypt has been found inside tombs and therefore concerns both these themes in great detail. There was also the selection process of deciding which knowledge should be recorded to take into consideration. The castes of priests and scribes as guardians and recorders of knowledge in ancient Egypt would have understood well the "Knowledge is Power" adage and tried to keep the knowledge esoteric in order to protect their own privileged status.
The main thing to be aware of when considering the history of any field seems to be that history is a fluid concept; it is continually being rewritten and rehashed as new evidence comes to light and trends in thinking change. It is until relatively recently that many people believed the Rev Ussher's biblical reckoning that the Earth was created on Sunday 23 October 4004 BC...
There have been numerous instances of anachronistic artefacts being excavated that indicate that ancient civilisations were more technologically developed than history gives them credit for. The following examples should serve to illustrate the point that the absence of recording does not disprove existence...
In 1936 Iraqi railway labourers digging near Baghdad at Khujut Rabu discovered a small clay pot with an asphalt stopper. The 15 cm high by 9 cm wide vessel was found to be hollow apart from an iron rod surrounded by a cylinder of copper, in many ways resembling a modern electrical cell or battery. The artefact was dated as 250 BCE to CE 250; 2000 years old.
Noticiing this resemblance Willard F.M. Gray of the General Electric High Voltage Laboratory in Pittsfield, Massachusetts crafted replicas which he filled with an acidic electrolyte. Each ancient cell produced a voltage of around 2 volts.
The Khujut Rabu region around Baghdad where the find was made is known to have been settled by the Parthians around the time of the dating. It has been speculated that the electricity it generated was used for electroplating.
In 1901, sponge collectors pulled a corroded metal object in an ancient wooden case out of a ship wreck off the island of Antikythera in Greece. After undergoing X-raying it was found to contain a complex structure of gears, cogs and wheels in an arrangement that suggested an analogue astronomical calculator for working out the postion of the planets. It was estimated to be 2000 years old. There were 32 brass circular gears all connected together that could be put into movement by a hand crank. A differential gearing system was discovered on the calculator unlike anything that appeared until the 19th century. Its discovery has caused science to reassess the technological level of Ancient civilisations such as the Greeks.
Convincing evidence that Egyptian knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes was encoded into the measurements of the Great Pyramid at Giza has been put forward recently by Bauval and Hancock. Egypt was a star worshipping culture and it is thought by Bauval & Hancock that they attempted to make a representation of the heavens on the ground at Giza. The area of the sky they tried to map onto the land seems to be that of the constellation of Orion, the three Gizan pyramids correlating with Orions belt and the River Nile mirroring the Milky Way.
Theories postulating that the dimensions of the Earth itself have been encoded into the very dimensions of the Great pyramid are also in existence.
Many theories concerning how the Egyptians constructed their massive monuments have been postulated and even applied. The NOVA /Channel 4 TV series "Secrets of Lost Empires" showed how teams of modern day archaeologists and engineers attempted to replicate construction methods and techniques of ancient civilisations. One episode showed how the Ancient Egyptians could have raised an Obelisk using only the materials they found around them. After experimenting and failing with a complex "hand of God" rig made of timber and rope they tried successfully with a sandpit method that had been hinted at in an ancient text. They also proved that it was possible to produce precise cuts in solid granite without using iron tools which we presume the Ancient Egyptians had no access to.
All this points to knowledge that the Egyptians were technically more superior and ingenious in some areas that modern science gives them credit for.
Link : The Ark of the Covenant : An interesting diversion into a biblical phenomena...
The Great Library at Alexandria was the first recorded attempt at making a collection of all the world's recorded knowledge. Records report that it was connected to the Mouseion, or Museum, the "Temple of the Muses" which an academy of learned men dedicated to preservation, copying, cataloguing of knowledge.
The Great Library probably contained a lot of the knowledge of Ancient Egypt that was then taken to be Greek. It also contained works from the Jewish, Babylonian and Zoroastrian and the newly emergent Roman traditions. It probably housed about 40,000 publically available works out of a possible 5 million.
It was founded by the Pharaoh Ptolemy I Soter around 300 BCE and was greatly embellished by Ptolemy II Philadelphus who gave it the mission of procuring a copy of every book that existed. Ptolemy III Euregetes wrote to all the world's sovereigns asking to borrow their books in order to copy them. The Greeks lent him the texts to Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles; he copied them, kept the originals and sent the copies back. In doing so he forfeited the rich deposit he had laid down but he had the originals. Any ships that came into Alexandria were searched for books and the same copying and return procedure was inflicted. Works were not accepted as originals without rigorous textual criticism and comparison to other copies of the same work. In this way scribal mistakes could be routed out.
Demetrius of Phaleron was the 1st recorded librarian at Alexandria between 290 - 282 BCE. Demetrius began the translation of many works into Greek, his first job was the translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek for which the Library hired 72 rabbis.
Kallimachos of Kyrene was the most famous librarian, implementing a subject index or Pinakes divided into 8 major subject categories; Oratory, History, Laws, Philosophy, Medicine, Lyric Poetry, Tragedy and Miscellany. Some fragments of the Pinakes remain showing details of authors life, works and number of lines in each work.
There are records of the library's existence until around 300 CE although there are three main stories of its destruction before this date.
The library caught fire when Julius Caesar set fire to the Ptolemaic fleet in 48 BCE. However there are records of the library functioning after this date.
Took Alexandria for the Persian caliph Omar whose instructions have been recorded as:
"As for the books you mention, here is my reply. If their content is in accordance with the book of Allah, we may do without them, for in that case the book of Allah more than suffices. If on the other hand, they contain matter not in accordance with the book of Allah, there can be no need to preserve these. Proceed, then, and destroy them."
The books were then allegedly taken to the public baths where they were burnt in the stoves that heated the water. This took 6 months.
However, it has been argued that by the time the Arabs got to Alexandria the Library had already declined to a shadow of its former self and the logistics of burning so much parchment (which apparently doesn't burn very well) were fairly infeasible.
Patriarch of Alexandria and patron saint of Arsonists. Said to have razed the Library around 391 AD in an attempt to destroy symbols of paganism and get everyone to be a Christian.
Reading between the lines of the different accounts of the destruction of the library it would seem that it fell into disrepair over the 600 or so years that it was in existence and was also subject to several major catastrophes. As the coastline of Alexandria has changed so radically, its position is now on the sea floor.
Bede's Library - The Mysterious Fate of the Great Library of Alexandria
Applied Knowledge & Innovation