In the midst of various other things, I’m preparing now for a trip to Turkey (9 days, starting in Antalya and ending in Istanbul). Something I read tonight made me cry, even though I’ve heard it before:<\/p>\n
\nThe library of Pergamum survived into Roman times, when it was given by
\nAntony to Cleopatra. She had it transported to Alexandria, where it
\nremained more or less intact until the 7C. There is an unsubstantiated
\naccount that it was destroyed on the orders of the fanatical Caliph Omar after
\nthe capture of Alexandria by the Arabs in AD 640. He ruled that if the
\nbooks were in accord with the Koran, they were unnecessary, and if they
\ncontained matter which disagreed with the Koran, they should be destroyed.
\nSo, it is said, the books from Pergamum were amongst those that fed the fires of
\nAlexandria’s 4000 public baths! (source: Blue Guide Turkey, p. 154).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the midst of various other things, I’m preparing now for a trip to Turkey (9 days, starting in Antalya and ending in Istanbul). Something I read tonight made me cry, even though I’ve heard it before: The library of Pergamum survived into Roman times, when it was given by Antony to Cleopatra. She had\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}