Libraries of Alexandria:: Political uses of memory and forgetting

The study of the Libraries of Alexandria encourages us to think in search of a possibility of understanding, a look at ancient and modern Egypt, in order to examine how the political uses of the myth created in antiquity enabled the process of creating the Alexandrian Library in the 21st century. In other words, the aim is to analyze the web formed around the myth of Alexandria and the political uses of this myth in relation to memory and forgetting, in the production of knowledge, as tactics of domination through knowledge. Memory and forgetting come from social practices that have been historically constituted since the emergence of ancient writing, and can be seen more clearly in the creation of libraries since antiquity, so that the gathering of thousands of tablets or papyrus rolls is related to the need to remember, in other words, to the possibility of using writing against forgetting. The history of the ancient library is shrouded in myths and legends, and to this day inhabits the imagination of researchers and historians from all over the world; despite its importance in antiquity, only a few vestiges have been found.