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Egypt To Open Its "Fourth Pyramid" Next Year
By Emad Mekay
CAIRO, May 4 (IslamOnline) - Although the new building that sits a few meters off of Alexandria's shores resembles a solar disc slanting toward the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt has called it a pyramid.
The resemblance, officials say, is not in shape. It is in value.
The new building of the Alexandria Library, the most famous library of ancient times, is an imposing structure that authorities here hope will restore Alexandria's old glory as the world's focal cultural point.
The country's first lady, Suzzan Mubarak, has announced the country will open its cultural pet project next year. The Library of Alexandria, which was originally built in the 330s BC by Alexander the Great, has now been completely reincarnated at the hands of Egyptian workers and international donors.
A modern day replica of the ancient library, where a copy of every existing scroll known to the then library's administrators was found, now exists a few yards from the shores of the southern Mediterranean with the scholarly world anticipating the long-awaited inauguration.
The Bibliotheca Alexandria, destroyed by a fire started by Crusading Christian believers, which also ravaged the entire Mediterranean city, will be reborn after the Egyptian government, in close cooperation with UNESCO, UNDP and several other Arab and Western countries, poured more than $175 million into the new archeological masterpiece.
The total cost is estimated to be around $300 million by the time the library opens its doors to the public in April 2002.
Scholars say the library was a gigantic storehouse of every Greek work of the classical period that could be found. Had all the texts survived, it would have presented to modern scholars nearly every ancient book for study.
The Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC, was the outstanding center of Greek culture. It also attracted a large Jewish population, making it the largest center for Jewish scholarship in the ancient world.
Today, several diggings where the library stood have revealed scientific and historical documents that would have resulted in the Industrial Revolution occurring 1500 years earlier.
Among the lost documents were methods used to build the pyramids, alchemy, natural plant medicine and utopian philosophy.
Mrs. Mubarak has reportedly told the Egyptian press that the library, dubbed Egypt's fourth pyramid, to play on Egyptians' notorious pride for the Three Pyramids of Giza, one of the world's ancient wonders, will open next year with exactly the same number of books that existed before the library's destruction: 400,000.
The number will eventually come to some staggering 48 million volumes.
There are dozens of official and private book donation drives sweeping cultural centers in different parts of the world to collect books, funds and information for the new library.
During a press conference held Thursday, the architects of the grand new building, which lies beside the city's serpentine waterfront known as the Corniche on the exact site of the original library, said the completed library will be a 13-floor, approximately 48,000 square yard (40,000 square-metes) circular structure, designed to represent the sun.
The façade will slope downward to a point partly below sea level to suggest motion suspended in time. One third of the solar façade is underground while two thirds are above ground to also suggest that Future lies ahead. The streetside exterior is sheer, while the other walls will be engraved with hieroglyphics, ideograms and letters from the world's alphabets.
A seven-day long opening ceremony will be thrown and is designed to emulate the 19th century fabled opening of the Suez Canal when world leaders, royalty and noblemen and women, from different parts of the world came for the inauguration.
Authorities say they want to make Alexandria yet again an important focal point for culture, education and science, as it will not only be a library, but also a cultural complex with a 3,200 seat conference center, planetarium, science museum, a museum for manuscripts, lecture halls, and calligraphy institute.
So committed are authorities that they went out of their way and made the administration of the library directly affiliated to President Hosni Mubarak's office, a signal to the world that the library would remain of an international nature and that it would bypass the government's infamous red tape.
"This time books will not be lost," said the library's director Ismail Serrageddine, referring to meticulous humidity and air-conditioning system which will operate around the clock to keep heat and humidity levels stable.
Mrs. Mubarak said the library would contain "the best a human brain ever produced both in modern and ancient times...It deserves the title of the 'fourth pyramid.'"
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