An 'university' in ancient Alexandria?

In May 28 last year, I had a posting about an announcement about some Polish scholars who claimed to have un-earthed the remains of an ancient university of Alexandria. I have been looking for some following up on that announcement, but in vain. Untill today I see Jim Davila (who beats me again...) has a posting that seems to bring some further news.

This new information is taken from Al Ahram Weekly, and contain some pictures and an assessment by Jill Kamil.

The lecture Halls mentioned above now turns out to be late 6th to 7th century CE, and thus several decennies after the ancient Library and Philo of Alexandria. I snip below some of the more interesting sections of this article: The Polish mission at Kom Al-Dikka in Alexandria has made several exciting finds over the years, but their latest discovery hard on the heels of the establishment of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has set tongues buzzing.
Grzegorz Majcherek, director of the Polish-Egyptian mission which has been excavating at Kom Al-Dikka for the past 40 or more years, insists that overzealous journalists have rather too hastily linked this latest discovery in Alexandria to the ancient library.
"In fact, the newly-excavated complex of lecture halls brings us no closer to determining the actual position of the famous library of antiquity," he says.
Majcherek admits that no physical traces of the renowned institution had yet come to light. "We are still unable to answer questions of key importance such as where it originally stood, and what was its ultimate fate," he says.


However, Majcherek hastened to add, the discovery Al- Dikka did throw new light on key issues such as the nature of academic life in the Alexandria of late antiquity. It also provided astonishing evidence that the intellectual vitality and tradition of Alexandrian science -- as symbolised by the library and mouseion -- continued well into the seventh century. "Alexandrian scholarship did not end with the murder of Hypatia, the famous female philosopher and mathematician," Majcherek says. "The lecture halls in fact bridged the gap between classical antiquity with the emerging Arab civilisation."

The Roman ruins at Kom Al-Dikka, which lie at the very heart of Alexandria not far from the intersection between Nabi Daniel and Hurriya streets, have yielded surprises ever since the Polish mission in Egypt was first asked to evaluate the antiquities that came to light when an artillery position built by Napoleon's troops was being cleared for development. It soon became clear that the site was far too important to be sacrificed to progress. Excavations commenced, and although the area constitutes the only fragment of the ancient urban layout, discoveries made there season after season have been accompanied by impressive reconstruction.

More recent excavations have revealed a vast complex of well-preserved lecture halls of late Roman (fifth to seventh century) date. Some of them had been explored in the 1880s, but their total number has now grown to 13 and Majcherek says that only now has their purpose become apparent. The auditoria have similar dimensions to, and stretch along, the theatre portico, which is also the eastern colonnade of a large public square in the centre of the city. In all the rooms rows of stepped benches run along the walls in a horseshoe shape, with an elevated seat for the lecturer at the rounded end. When new rows of seats appeared in place of the lateral parodoi (passageway separating the stage from the auditorium), the classical semicircular plan of the cavea (auditorium) was changed into a horseshoe-shaped arrangement that archaeologists immediately recognised as similar to that found in the auditoria or lecture halls. The discoveries have shed new light on the function of the theatre, which was excavated back in the 1960s.

This discovery has caused great excitement, since it has become clear that the Polish mission has actually put a finger on the very hub of intellectual life in late Roman Alexandria. The important issue now, according to Majcherek, is to understand what exactly this complex of auditoria represented. He claims that the entire evidence so far indicates that we are dealing with an academic institution that operated in late antique Alexandria. The central location of the complex in the ancient town, and the characteristic arrangement of particular halls, corroborates the conclusions drawn on their function."
I encourage you to read the whole of this article by yourself at Al-Ahram Weekly. The excavators emphasize that there are several unresolved questions inherent in their findings, but they are so interesting that they surely deserve some further investigations. I'm looking forward to further investioogations and assessments of this site.