Penthesilea's Wish [Vol.1]

Chapter Eighteen

(Alexandria, Egypt c. 405 CE)

Being of Greek origin, and the daughter of the last mathematician of the great Museum of Alexandria, the young Hypatia excelled under her father's early teachings, eventually becoming the most prominent female mathematician of her time-an age when the Roman Empire had included this celebrated center of learning into it's expanded territories. This precocious girl, while still only a child, took on the most sophisticated theories of inquiry, not only in the field of mathematics, physics and astronomy but also religion and medicine.

By adulthood she could hold her own discussing the most progressive philosophies against a backdrop of the older ones, and was able to debate religious scholars from the known world-all of them, of course, men. The Alexandrian Library was famous for attracting exceptional thinkers to engage in such dialogues of the most open-minded and diverse opinions. Such ideas were considered for their merits by learned individuals of the day and often originated from the Classical world's most advanced schools of thought-found in Athens and Rome.

The Alexandrian Library was considered the jewel of knowledge for its time in the ancient world. Its famous museum complex and the city itself had been founded by the fearless and ambitious Alexander the Great in 331 BCE. A thousand years later, in the time of Hypatia, this remarkable city was held within the jurisdictions of Rome's authority, but still it had been able to maintain its renown position among the 'cognoscenti' of Egypt, Rome, Classical Greece and the Persian Empire, as well. It had become the premiere repository for much of the world's greatest written work. Scrolls upon scrolls in texts translated into Greek were housed in the museum library and freely examined by the scholars of many empires.

Hypatia is said to have studied and eventually taught there, elevating herself, by cognitive reputation alone, to being the first woman accepted as a lecturer of mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and medicine. By 400 CE, she had become the director of the Neo-PlatonistSchool of Philosophy at the Library in Alexandria. This youthful teacher was revered by her many male students, as females were categorically forbidden to study at any such repositories of learning in those times. Nevertheless, she was invited to study in Athens and lecture abroad there and in Rome, carrying with her an open-mindedness and freshness of ideas admired by the many writers and thinkers of her day.

Her tolerance of various religions-Christianity, Judaism, and the polytheistic beliefs of her countrymen haling from the Egyptian culture and further east, eventually led her into dangerous waters, as the tide of Christian fanaticism was rising throughout the Roman Empire. In response to her championing observation and empirical thought, her defense of philosophies not consistent with Christian dogma, eventually demonized her in the eyes of the Church whose austere authorities were vocal and had become particularly restive in the city of Alexandria by 410 CE.

Following an unprecedented peaceful millennium of academic flair and religious harmony in this city, tensions between the Christians, who were quickly becoming the dominant political element, and the local holders of pagan beliefs, erupted into a revolt. This insurrection resulted in the sacking and burning of the museum's library, the destruction of thousands of texts from the ancient world, some of which Hypatia was able to save, in fleeing the burning complex. This radical movement also manifested itself decisively through the murder of Orestes, the local civic leader who had been vocal in opposing Cyril, the Christian bishop of the region.

Angry mobs, who in their celebrative mayhem wished to deplete the city and library of any lasting pagan ideas or followers, went about murdering and terrorizing locals and foreign students with violent intolerance. These zealous monks and dogmatic thinkers, who threatened to put out the light of wisdom and knowledge forever in favor of their blind faith, eventually targeted the fair Hypatia as a symbol of what they despised.