The Rise and Fall of Alexandria (13 page)

In it he tells the remarkable, indeed largely fabulous story of how one of the most important books in history came to be translated into Greek and from there spread across the world. Aristeas, the author, tells us that Demetrius was called before Ptolemy to give an account of the progress with collecting books for the library. Demetrius told the king that twenty thousand books had been collected so far and that he had set a target of increasing this to fifty thousand as quickly as possible. He then added, almost as an aside: “It has also been notified to me that the customs of the Jews are worthy of transcription and of a place in your library” (Eusebius,
Praeparatio Evangelica,
book 8, chapter 2).

The king was intrigued, as Demetrius no doubt knew he would be, and demanded to know more. Demetrius obliged and told him that the Hebrew books of law would be a valuable addition to the library, as the law they contained was divine and hence “very full of wisdom and sincerity.” There was, however, a problem, Demetrius told him:

 
The king was certainly not going let a little problem like translation get in the way of his obtaining a copy of such a vital text, so Demetrius was given the job of not just finding but arranging for the translation of the Jewish holy books. In a memorandum to the king, also recorded by Aristeas, he then tells us how he intended to go about this:

 
In short, Demetrius was suggesting gathering a group of the finest Hebrew scholars from Jerusalem to come to Alexandria, where each would produce his own translation, all of which could then be compared to produce one synthesized and corrected Greek version. Ptolemy duly wrote the letter to the high priest Eleazar in Jerusalem:

 
So far this seems like a plausible, if extraordinary, hint at how Ptolemy and Demetrius worked together, but now the tale begins to take on a more mythical tone. Aristeas tells us that these seventy-two wise men did come to the city, and the king wept with joy at their arrival. For a week he put philosophical questions to them before ordering them taken to the island of Pharos. Here they were placed in seventy-two separate cells, and each was told to make his own translation of this great work—the first five books of the Bible (known as the Pentateuch). Being kept apart would ensure that no one scholar copied or consulted another, and so the work each produced would be entirely his own.

After exactly seventy-two days all of these scholars then emerged simultaneously with their Greek translations. Each one was identical. And so the legend of the creation of the awesomely authentic Septuagint, as it is still known, was born.

It seems almost incredible that we have the actual correspondence which would lead to translation of the first five books of the Bible into Greek, and alas, it is too good to be true. It is a wonderful story, but in it credibility is stretched to breaking point as we are asked to believe a literary miracle as hard fact. And this is not the only problem with the text—there is a problem with the mention of Demetrius in the first place.

Other reliable sources state clearly that Demetrius had indeed dedicated himself to establishing the library and museum for Ptolemy I, but he also recommended that a different son should succeed his father to the Egyptian throne. When Ptolemy II succeeded, he had Demetrius sent into exile in Upper Egypt—some claim he was even imprisoned there—where he died just a year later, possibly from the bite of an asp. Yet this correspondence purports to be between Demetrius and Ptolemy II. In his letter to the high priest Eleazar of Jerusalem, the king states quite clearly: “Whereas it happens that many Jews who were carried away from Jerusalem by the Persians in the time of their power, have been settled in our country, and many more have come with my father into Egypt as prisoners of war” (Eusebius,
Praeparatio Evangelica,
book 8, chapter 4).

Aristeas claims that Ptolemy I was writing to the high priest, but the letter was clearly from Ptolemy II. The authenticity of this correspondence must hence be seriously challenged by the apparent conflation of two Ptolemies into one. In fact the veracity of the “Letter of Aristeas” was questioned as early as the seventeenth century, where it was pretty conclusively shown to be the work of a much later Hellenistic Jew from Alexandria who wished to stress the authenticity of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament and its miraculous translation as described by Aristeas.

However, it does seem that the letter dates from between 200 and 90 BC and, despite its errors, may contain, at least in its less mythical passages, a memory of the zeal of those early years of collecting books in Alexandria. Certainly the version we have today has been wildly embroidered by later Christian writers such as Saint Augustine, Eusebius, and Irenaeus. But in summing up the putative dialogues of Demetrius and Ptolemy, Aristeas, whoever he was, was making a point that both men would have understood: that the mysteries of the world lie not, as Alexander thought, over the horizon in yet unconquered territories, but in the minds of his own subjects.

Ptolemy II, if not his father, did oversee the first translation of the first sections of the single most important book in the history of the world—the Bible—during the first half of the third century BC in Alexandria. In truth, what is far more extraordinary than Aristeas’s miraculous translation story is the fact that the religious books of the Jews were translated in the first place. However inaccurate Aristeas’s words are and whatever his real purpose in writing, the sentiment is entirely of the period. The Ptolemies wanted to know everything, not just their own history or their own religious texts, and in wanting to know what lay outside their world they were stepping into the unknown.

So in its first seventy years or so, Alexandria acted as host to the greatest mathematician in the world and published his finest work, a book destined to become the second most successful book of all time. It also saw the establishment of the ancient world’s most successful school of anatomy, physiology, and medicine, along with the finest library and museum to be found anywhere in the ancient world. And there its scholars began to undertake the enormous task of copying, editing, translating, and cataloging the entire compendium of written knowledge as it existed at that time, including the first translations of what would become the most published book the world has ever known: the Bible.

With the spirit of scientific inquiry firmly enshrined here, Alexandria’s scholars were set to push the boundaries of knowledge way beyond the limits recorded in all those ancient scrolls. And this was barely the beginning.

CHAPTER SIX

GREEK PHARAOHS

Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Holy Grail,”
Idylls of the King

 
 
B
y 285 BC Ptolemy I felt that his work building his kingdom was coming to an end. To ensure a smooth dynastic transition, in that year he appointed his son Ptolemy II as joint ruler, charged with taking over the day-to-day affairs of state. It was time to concentrate on the project that had begun it all, his own firsthand account of the life and campaigns of Alexander the Great.

It’s a clear indicator of the intellectual tide of the times that Ptolemy I, one of the most powerful individuals in the world, chose to crown his achievements not by basking in luxury, but by writing a book. Sensing the enormous power which the foundation of the museum and library was engendering, Ptolemy formulated his swan song in writing his own version of the momentous events he had lived through. His book survived for centuries, and its eventual loss is one of the greatest literary tragedies of all time. Yet the very fact that he, a divine king, should dedicate his last years not to statecraft but to literature was a near-perfect sign of the times.

The nation he left in his son’s care was the strongest of any of those seized by the successors of Alexander. His attempts to stabilize the regional situation had involved not just fighting but subtle and effective diplomatic campaigns which saw many of his children married to neighboring, often rival heads of state. It was an extraordinary achievement and one which might have received more recognition both in his time and today if it had not been a life lived in the very long shadow of his old master. And yet it was a life that in many ways was far more successful. Alexander had no heirs, his empire was fragmented, his generals were alienated, his family was dead. Ptolemy had created a new state, a new dynasty, a new religion, a new form of government, and a miraculous new city. The terrible irony of his reign is that his own great work, in which he told the story of the conquest of the world through his own eyes, has not survived. In that we might have seen a more personal side to Ptolemy, and hence history might well have weighed the two men’s contributions differently.

Three years after appointing his son co-regent Ptolemy I died, aged eighty-four, and the fledgling dynasty faced its first crucial test. Following his father’s lead, Ptolemy II acted swiftly and decisively. He was crowned pharaoh of Egypt in the ancient capital of Memphis on January 7, 282 BC, without any real challenge; yet with the cold calculation that his family would become famous for, he promptly had two of his half brothers murdered, probably with the connivance of his sister and future wife, Arsinoe. In this way the prospect of sibling rivalry was nipped in the bud.

But if Ptolemy II was ruthless he was certainly not uncultured. His father had been keen to ensure that his son enjoyed an education as privileged as his own. So, like Alexander, he could claim to have had two fathers, one for his body—Ptolemy I—and one for his mind—Strato of Lampsacus. Just as Ptolemy I had seen the flaws in his old master’s reign, so his more educated son began to see the flaws in his father’s. Ptolemy I had enjoyed the wealth of Egypt and used it both to shore up his position militarily and to fund a revival in Greek learning, but the actual administration of Egypt had remained largely a mystery to him. The details of how Egypt operated economically were of little interest, provided that it operated smoothly. It had been left to others, mainly the Egyptian temples, actually to administer the collection and sale of the grain upon which his wealth was founded. So it was to the great good fortune of Alexandria and the forthcoming Ptolemaic dynasty that the second Ptolemy would turn out to be one of the greatest and most able administrators in the ancient world.

The young Ptolemy threw himself into the development of the Egyptian economy with gusto and in the process created the most sophisticated planned economy until the formation of the Soviet Union more than two thousand years later. The first step in this process, repeated several times in his reign, was to understand just what it was that he had inherited. To do this he ordered a comprehensive census of all his domains. Typically, a survey would cover all water sources, the position and irrigation potential of all land, the present state of cultivation, crops grown, and the extent of priestly and royal landholdings. Armed with what was, in effect, an ancient Domesday Book, Ptolemy and his ministers set to work.

Their first problem was trade. For centuries in Egypt there had been no true currency with which to buy and sell goods. Most markets operated on a barter-and-exchange system. For very large-scale transactions it was possible to pay in gold or other precious metals, but the idea of coinage was still relatively new. True monetary economies had emerged in the city-states of the Mediterranean beginning around 650 BC, probably first in Lydia, whose later king Croesus had made himself a byword for fabulous wealth. Ptolemy I had made some attempts to follow suit, issuing coins called staters just as Alexander had, but outside Alexandria these were as much demonstrations of royal power as they were useful coins. His son, however, now massively extended this scheme with the creation of a state-run banking system with local branches throughout the towns and villages of the country, all reporting back to the central bank in Alexandria. From these banks a coin-based currency was introduced, backed up by a system of written “bills of exchange”—promissory letters which could be exchanged for real money, or, as we would call them, banknotes. The entire rural economy was to be centered on these local branches, which provided the capital—seed grain and tools—that the farmers needed. They also provided massive state-aided infrastructural schemes such as the creation of a reservoir in the Southern Fayyum oasis which held 360 million cubic yards of water and irrigated 60 square miles of arable land. This was not pure largesse, however. Nearly all the grain produced by farmers was taken into the royal treasury in the form of tax. More land under cultivation meant more grain, and more grain meant more money in the Alexandrian coffers.