Today we’ve visited two major sites. The first was a large three floor private home that now holds ancient antiquities. The second is the new library of Alexandria. The original library was called the Mouseion (museum), which actually meant home of the muses. It housed the knowledge of the ancient world on rolls of the papyrus. These included Indian Sanskrit, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek plays and poetry, and depictions by Persians and Mesopotamians. All but about 25 percent burned when in the 4th century A.D. the Romans abandoned and burned their boats in the harbor near the old museum, which then caught fire. Snohetta, a Norwegian architectural studio, designed the new museum. This 220 million dollar UNESCO project displays a brilliantly innovative design with an exterior circular façade, with multiple eyes of glass which face the Mediterranean, and overlook a watery reflective of moat. The sloping circular exterior has words carved in the Aswan granite from 110 different languages. This symbolizes the learning of the world and the glass eyes the seeking of new knowledge. The interior has massive cathedral-like room 480 by 240 feet reaching three stories high at its rear wall and which encompasses computers at desks, manuscript files and a room dedicated to original ancient handwritten tracts on religious and scientific subjects. I compare the electric feeling from the architectural grandeur of this building to what I felt in and outside of the Opera House in Sydney Australia.
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