Alexandria Library Redux

The library of Alexandria is being rebuilt, perhaps on the site where the original library once stood. Well, not “rebuilt” exactly. “Even if we wanted to rebuild the old library,” UNESCO spokesman Richard Holmquist says, “we don’t know what it looked like.”

Instead of trying to reproduce the ancient library’s appearance, the Egyptian government, UNESCO, the UNDP (United Nations Development Project) and other sources have raised over $172 million to revive its function—as a vast research and learning center. The new library’s main structure, designed by a Norwegian firm to resemble the sun rising out of the Mediterranean, will consist of a large glass disk inclined toward the sea and partly submerged in a pool of water. It will house about 8 million books (by contrast, the Library of Congress holds about 20 million volumes), along with collections of rare manuscripts and musical recordings, a conference center, a science museum and planetarium, and a calligraphy institute. According to Ihssan Wali, the cultural attaché at the Egyptian embassy in Washington, D.C., the library has now collected about 100,000 volumes.