Xen
May 12, 2004, 01:56 PM
I think this is awesome news :D
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/09/1084041273125.html
A Polish-Egyptian team has unearthed the site of the fabled University of Alexandria, home of Archimedes, Euclid and a host of other scholars from the era when Alexandria dominated the Mediterranean.
The team has found 13 individual lecture halls that could have accommodated as many as 5000 students, according to Zahi Hawass, an archeologist and president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The lecture halls are on the eastern edge of a public square in the Late Antique section of modern Alexandria and are adjacent to a previously discovered theatre that is now believed to be part of the university complex.
All 13 of the auditoriums had similar dimensions and internal arrangements, Dr Hawass said. They feature rows of stepped benches running along the walls on three sides of the rooms, often forming a joined U-shape.
The most conspicuous feature of the auditoriums is an elevated seat placed in the middle of the U-shape, most probably designed for the lecturer.
"It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area," Dr Hawass said. "[It is] perhaps the oldest university in the world".
The discovery was "incredibly impressive", said Willeke Wendrich, an archaeologist at the University of California in Los Angeles. "We knew it existed and was an extremely famous centre for learning, but we knew it only from textual accounts . . . We never knew the site."
Alexandria was a tiny fishing village on the Nile delta called Rhakotis when Alexander the Great chose it as the site of the new capital of his empire.
It became Egypt's capital in 320BC and soon became the most powerful and influential city in the region. Its rulers built a massive lighthouse at Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the famed Library of Alexandria.
It was at the university that Archimedes invented the screw-shaped fluid pump still in use today, that Euclid invented the rules of geometry and the astronomer Eratosthenes calculated the diameter of Earth.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/09/1084041273125.html
A Polish-Egyptian team has unearthed the site of the fabled University of Alexandria, home of Archimedes, Euclid and a host of other scholars from the era when Alexandria dominated the Mediterranean.
The team has found 13 individual lecture halls that could have accommodated as many as 5000 students, according to Zahi Hawass, an archeologist and president of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The lecture halls are on the eastern edge of a public square in the Late Antique section of modern Alexandria and are adjacent to a previously discovered theatre that is now believed to be part of the university complex.
All 13 of the auditoriums had similar dimensions and internal arrangements, Dr Hawass said. They feature rows of stepped benches running along the walls on three sides of the rooms, often forming a joined U-shape.
The most conspicuous feature of the auditoriums is an elevated seat placed in the middle of the U-shape, most probably designed for the lecturer.
"It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area," Dr Hawass said. "[It is] perhaps the oldest university in the world".
The discovery was "incredibly impressive", said Willeke Wendrich, an archaeologist at the University of California in Los Angeles. "We knew it existed and was an extremely famous centre for learning, but we knew it only from textual accounts . . . We never knew the site."
Alexandria was a tiny fishing village on the Nile delta called Rhakotis when Alexander the Great chose it as the site of the new capital of his empire.
It became Egypt's capital in 320BC and soon became the most powerful and influential city in the region. Its rulers built a massive lighthouse at Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the famed Library of Alexandria.
It was at the university that Archimedes invented the screw-shaped fluid pump still in use today, that Euclid invented the rules of geometry and the astronomer Eratosthenes calculated the diameter of Earth.