them. Yes, there was sometimes room to doubt.
There were hard cases. That was what scholarship was for. The Greeks knew well that there had been many past confusions, that
gods and heroes, different types of beings, had once wandered among humanity on earth. But that was then. In Alexandria’s
library truth and the fiction might usefully, and most of the time, be kept apart.
There was also a substantial history section. And history, like fiction, was also defined by lists of names. The classical
Greeks had invented chronology by listing the annual magistrates of Athens by their names, the holders of priestly offices,
the winners of the Olympic games. That was how they separated the years for those who saw themselves as Greek.
Catalogues were the key to existence, to a man or woman having existed and continuing to exist. Inclusion in the first Olympic
lists became a key, a kind of membership card, for belonging to the history of the Greeks. When one of Alexander’s ancestors
wanted to compete in the games, he was rejected as not Greek enough. As soon as Macedonians were accepted for the running
races and their names were on the winners’ list, they became part of measured time. They were members of the club. They were
part of civilisation. In Alexandria’s library many membership lists became permanent, a source of reference for ever.
Dead bodies needed to keep their names. Preserved bodies especially needed names. Otherwise what was the point of the preservation?
Many of the biscuit-coloured bundles under the streets here were once called Cleopatra. In life that had been their name.
After death a corpse might be dried, drenched in scent and wrapped in linen. The coffin might be marked with a thousand messages
to the gods, surrounded by water pots lest its occupant needed a drink, and leaves of bronze and berries of clay lest it needed
some reminder of other life. None of that was enough. There was nothing as important for survival as a person’s name.
In an ordered society lists are made to last. Alexandria was the first society ordered in what we can recognise as a modern
way, ordered for women as well as men, for small households as well as large ones, forthe classes that we can for the first time describe as ‘middle classes’. After a death a permanent label would securely be
tied where it could not decay or fall, a red pottery tag on which lines of letters would forever undulate, up and down and
up, as though the hard clay were still the soft scrap of cloth by which living men gave names to their ordinary possessions,
to their travel trunks, laundry and dogs.
In a library, as in a graveyard, life is fixed. I should be moving on now to love affairs and banquets, the stuff of history’s
romances, most especially for histories of Cleopatra. But all in good time. I have not quite finished with the librarians.
For the moment they are making me feel better. I can hardly remember now the colours of last night at the Metropole. The spewings
and explosions have almost passed.
For Alexandria’s ancient cataloguers of the imagination, the greatest subjects were the classical Greek plays. The Ptolemies
wanted the best texts of tragedies and comedies more than anything that entered their harbour. They bribed and cheated for
them. The dramas of the Athenians, written a century or more before the age of Alexander the Great, were a means of maintaining
life itself in upstart Alexandria when Athens was past its prime. In little lidded library boxes, where papyrus scrolls were
stored, there were many plays, many more than survive today. In those plays there were many names of mythical heroes and heroines,
many mythical Cleopatras.
Who were they? Before I begin the rest of the day I will choose just one. Among the tens of thousands of boxes that once lined
the walls here, there was once only one truly celebrated character called Cleopatra. This was not a living Egyptian
There were hard cases. That was what scholarship was for. The Greeks knew well that there had been many past confusions, that
gods and heroes, different types of beings, had once wandered among humanity on earth. But that was then. In Alexandria’s
library truth and the fiction might usefully, and most of the time, be kept apart.
There was also a substantial history section. And history, like fiction, was also defined by lists of names. The classical
Greeks had invented chronology by listing the annual magistrates of Athens by their names, the holders of priestly offices,
the winners of the Olympic games. That was how they separated the years for those who saw themselves as Greek.
Catalogues were the key to existence, to a man or woman having existed and continuing to exist. Inclusion in the first Olympic
lists became a key, a kind of membership card, for belonging to the history of the Greeks. When one of Alexander’s ancestors
wanted to compete in the games, he was rejected as not Greek enough. As soon as Macedonians were accepted for the running
races and their names were on the winners’ list, they became part of measured time. They were members of the club. They were
part of civilisation. In Alexandria’s library many membership lists became permanent, a source of reference for ever.
Dead bodies needed to keep their names. Preserved bodies especially needed names. Otherwise what was the point of the preservation?
Many of the biscuit-coloured bundles under the streets here were once called Cleopatra. In life that had been their name.
After death a corpse might be dried, drenched in scent and wrapped in linen. The coffin might be marked with a thousand messages
to the gods, surrounded by water pots lest its occupant needed a drink, and leaves of bronze and berries of clay lest it needed
some reminder of other life. None of that was enough. There was nothing as important for survival as a person’s name.
In an ordered society lists are made to last. Alexandria was the first society ordered in what we can recognise as a modern
way, ordered for women as well as men, for small households as well as large ones, forthe classes that we can for the first time describe as ‘middle classes’. After a death a permanent label would securely be
tied where it could not decay or fall, a red pottery tag on which lines of letters would forever undulate, up and down and
up, as though the hard clay were still the soft scrap of cloth by which living men gave names to their ordinary possessions,
to their travel trunks, laundry and dogs.
In a library, as in a graveyard, life is fixed. I should be moving on now to love affairs and banquets, the stuff of history’s
romances, most especially for histories of Cleopatra. But all in good time. I have not quite finished with the librarians.
For the moment they are making me feel better. I can hardly remember now the colours of last night at the Metropole. The spewings
and explosions have almost passed.
For Alexandria’s ancient cataloguers of the imagination, the greatest subjects were the classical Greek plays. The Ptolemies
wanted the best texts of tragedies and comedies more than anything that entered their harbour. They bribed and cheated for
them. The dramas of the Athenians, written a century or more before the age of Alexander the Great, were a means of maintaining
life itself in upstart Alexandria when Athens was past its prime. In little lidded library boxes, where papyrus scrolls were
stored, there were many plays, many more than survive today. In those plays there were many names of mythical heroes and heroines,
many mythical Cleopatras.
Who were they? Before I begin the rest of the day I will choose just one. Among the tens of thousands of boxes that once lined
the walls here, there was once only one truly celebrated character called Cleopatra. This was not a living Egyptian
Similar Books
Scandalous Heroes Box Set
Serenity King, Pepper Pace, Aliyah Burke, Erosa Knowles, Latrivia Nelson, Tianna Laveen, Bridget Midway, Yvette Hines
