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8 Legendary Ancient Libraries
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SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
Alexandria, with its Great Library, was marked as the intellectual capital of the world.
During the third century BCE, the Musaeum, an educational and research institution,...
Alexandria was founded in 331BCE by the Macedonian leader Alexander the Great. Alexander left Egypt a few months later, leaving his viceroy Cleomenes in charge.
Alexander passed away in 323 BCE, and one of his deputies, Macedonian general Ptolemy Lagides, took control of Egypt. Ptolemy executed Cleomenes and declared himself pharaoh. He started the Ptolemaic dynasty and made Alexandria his capital in 305 BCE.
The city's population grew to around 300,000 people. It remained the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, as well as Roman and Byzantine Egypt, for almost a thousand years.
Alexandria was designed by the architect Dinocrates of Rhodes, using a Hippodamian gridiron street plan. The city was cosmopolitan and diverse. It consisted of Greeks, Jew, and Egyptian Arabs.
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Key Ideas
One of the earliest known board games, Senet was played in 3100 BC and loved by Queen Nefertari and the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
Played using a longboard having three rows of ten squar...
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Key Ideas
In ancient Greek, lyric poetry identified the heart with love.
Greek philosophers agreed that the heart was linked to our strongest emotions, including love. Plato thought the heart was re...
The ancient Romans believed there was a vein extending from the fourth finger of the left hand directly to the heart.
In the medieval period in Salisbury, England, the groom was told to place a ring on the bride's fourth finger during a marriage ceremony, because of that vein.
During the 12th and 13th centuries, minstrels in France celebrated a form of love that we call today courtly love. The troubadour was to pledge his whole heart to only one woman and promise to be true to her forever. He'd sing to her and the members of the court to which she belonged.
During this time, artists depicted love between a couple as a fanciful tree that rises to form the outline of a heart. It carries within it a coat of arms bearing the Latin word AMOR (love).