The glory of the Alexandrian Library is a dim memory. Its last remnants were destroyed soon after Hypatia’s death. It was as if the entire civilization had undergone some self-inflicted brain surgery, and most of its memories, dis-coveries, ideas and passions were extinguished irrevocably. The loss was incalculable. In some cases, we know only the tantalizing titles of the works that were destroyed. In most cases, we know neither the titles nor the authors. We do know that of the 123 plays of Sophocles in the Library, only 7 survived. One of those seven is Oedipus Rex. Similar numbers apply to the works of Aeschylus and Euripides. It is a little as if the only surviving works of a man named William Shakespeare were Coriolanus and A Winter’s Tale, but we had heard that he had written certain other plays, unknown to us but apparently prized in his time – works entitled Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet.
Of the physical contents of that glorious Library not a single scroll remains. In modern Alexandria few people have a keen appreciation, much less a detailed knowledge, of the Alexandrian Library or of the great Egyptian civilization that preceded it for thousands of years. More recent events, other cultural imperatives have taken precedence. The same is true all over the world. We have only the most tenuous contact with our past…
Our achievements rest on the accomplishments of 40,000 generations of our human predecessors, all but a tiny fraction of whom are nameless and forgotten. Every now and then we stumble on a major civilization, such as the ancient culture of Ebla, which flourished only a few millennia ago and about which we knew nothing. How ignorant we are of our own past! Inscriptions, papyruses, books time-bind the human species and permit us to hear those few voices and faint cries of our brothers and sisters, our ancestors. And what a joy of recognition when we realize how like us they were!
We have in this book devoted attention to some of our ancestors whose names have not been lost: Eratosthenes, Democritus, Aristarchus, Hypatia, Leonardo, Kepler, New-ton, Huygens, Champollion, Humason, Goddard, Einstein – all from Western culture because the emerging scientific civilization on our planet is mainly a Western civilization; but every culture China, India, West Africa, Mesoamerica has made its major contributions to our global society and had its seminal thinkers. Through technological advances in communication our planet is in the final stages of being bound up at a breakneck pace into a single global society. If we can accomplish the integration of the Earth without obliterating cultural differences or destroying ourselves, we will have accomplished a great thing.”
So we see what the people blinded by religion are capable of. I will add that few modern people know what the Library of Alexandria was, and even fewer realize the greatness of the civilization reigning in Egypt for thousands of years. It was the greatest, the most enduring culture in antiquity. The ancient Greeks and Romans borrowed a lot from it. Without it there would be no Christianity, because the foundations of the Christian doctrine were laid, not by simple Jewish fishermen and artisans, but by the chroniclers and writers who lived in Alexandria and other parts of the Mediterranean.
The history of the Library of Alexandria is another proof that the truth should be sought, as I have mentioned, primarily in what once was, rather than in what now is, or will be tomorrow. Treating the works and achievements of the past generations like a pile of rubbish is a certain way to self-destruction. Civilizational burden, the legacy of past eras, has a large bearing on our future. Mainly this factor will determine the shape of the future world, the fate of our planet, rather than modern inventions. So far, the Mother Earth has sent us many signals that we do not respect her and are going in the wrong direction. Global warming, widely viewed as an ecological imbalance, worries the modern world. Living in harmony with nature is the key to our survival. Probably this Campbell had in mind, saying: “Our computers, our tools, our machines are not enough. We have to rely on our intuition, our true being.