{"id":2420,"date":"2007-03-22T19:07:41","date_gmt":"2007-03-22T19:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html"},"modified":"2007-03-22T19:07:41","modified_gmt":"2007-03-22T19:07:41","slug":"aquilina-on-alexandria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html","title":{"rendered":"Aquilina on Alexandria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike Aquilina has some things to say about Smithsonian Magazine’s cover piece on ancient Alexandria:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

I was thrilled to see the cover story in April\u2019s Smithsonian. \u201cWonders of Alexandria: Rediscovering the Fabled City of Cleopatra,\u201d reads the headline below a beautiful undersea shot of a statue standing amid fallen columns. My heart sank, though, as I read the story inside. The author\u2019s potted history of the city pretty much skips over the Christian period, moving from the Ptolemies to the Muslims in a blink. He briefly returns to the Alexandrian Church as he discusses the murder of Hypatia. Christianity is present only as an undertow of anti-intellectualism that dragged away Alexandria\u2019s culture. I\u2019m not making this up. Here\u2019s the transition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe go-go era of the Ptolemies ended with the death, in 30 B.C., of the last Ptolemy ruler, Cleopatra \u2026 Rome turned Egypt into a colony after her death, and Alexandria became its funnel for grain. Violence between pagans and Christians, and among the many Christian sects scarred the city in the early Christian period.\u201d New paragraph: \u201cWhen Arab conquerors arrived in the seventh century A.D., they built a new capital at Cairo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christianity, you see, brought violence and a seven-century Dark Ages upon the land.<\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

We can, perhaps, take some consolation because we\u2019re not alone in this author\u2019s neglect. The Alexandrian Jews fared little better. There\u2019s no mention of Philo (!), the Septuagint, the Thereapeutai.<\/p>\n

I see a trend here. This article is a worthy successor to the silliness that Smithsonian published on Mary Magdalene amid the Da Vinci Code hype. Don\u2019t buy this month\u2019s issue. If you want to encounter ancient Alexandria, read something good instead, something that\u2019s relatively true to the history of Egypt\u2019s Christian era. For instance \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Get the list!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike Aquilina has some things to say about Smithsonian Magazine’s cover piece on ancient Alexandria: I was thrilled to see the cover story in April\u2019s Smithsonian. \u201cWonders of Alexandria: Rediscovering the Fabled City of Cleopatra,\u201d reads the headline below a beautiful undersea shot of a statue standing amid fallen columns. My heart sank, though, as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAquilina on Alexandria - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Aquilina on Alexandria - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mike Aquilina has some things to say about Smithsonian Magazine’s cover piece on ancient Alexandria: I was thrilled to see the cover story in April\u2019s Smithsonian. \u201cWonders of Alexandria: Rediscovering the Fabled City of Cleopatra,\u201d reads the headline below a beautiful undersea shot of a statue standing amid fallen columns. My heart sank, though, as…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-03-22T19:07:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Aquilina on Alexandria - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Aquilina on Alexandria - Via Media","og_description":"Mike Aquilina has some things to say about Smithsonian Magazine’s cover piece on ancient Alexandria: I was thrilled to see the cover story in April\u2019s Smithsonian. \u201cWonders of Alexandria: Rediscovering the Fabled City of Cleopatra,\u201d reads the headline below a beautiful undersea shot of a statue standing amid fallen columns. My heart sank, though, as…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-03-22T19:07:41+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html","name":"Aquilina on Alexandria - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-03-22T19:07:41+00:00","dateModified":"2007-03-22T19:07:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/aquilina-on-alexandria.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Aquilina on Alexandria"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}