For this week’s Mindlovemysery’s Menagerie Friday Faithfuls challenge, Jim Adams asks us to respond to this challenge by writing about what ancient wisdom means to us.
I recently read a story about King Ptolemy I, a new ruler of Ancient Egypt and a former general of Alexander the Great. At around 300 BC, Ptolemy tasked an adviser with the mission to collect, if possible, all the books in the world in order to create a library of the accumulated human knowledge at the time.
Over the next two centuries, the great library in the Ptolemaic capital of Alexandria would be filled with hundreds of thousands of papyrus scrolls representing an extensive collection of ancient Greek and Egyptian literature along with Buddhist, Jewish, and Zoroastrian texts. Ships would be searched for books when they docked at Alexandria, and royal agents would pay hefty sums for almost any written work.
So, as per human nature, even way back in ancient times, a booming market in fakes and forgeries soon emerged. Entrepreneurial scribes dashed off scrolls of supposed secret wisdom from famous thinkers, while others created books that mixed the authentic with the imagined.
According to historian Islam Issa, in Alexandria’s merchant quarter, stalls that once sold vegetables and baskets were “replaced with those stacking rolls and rolls of books.” Eventually, the library had to hire experts to wade through the sea of bogus texts and identify genuine treasures.
I honestly don’t know if I was disappointed or pleased to learn that “alternative facts” and “fake news” have been around for centuries and didn’t just emerge in the 21st century. But given this realization that what we today call “ancient wisdom” may have validity to it, or may be the work of ancient entrepreneurs who mixed facts and fantasy for profit.
This, That, and the Other 
This was a very interesting post Fandango and I guess that nobody knows for sure about all of those scrolls, but when there is a way to make money, scammers are going to be the first to hop on the bandwagon.
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Thanks. Yes, if there’s money to be made, even the ancient Egyptians will succumb to the temptation, Jim.
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It is more disturbing now that people believe in fake news and alternate facts because now we have the capability to verify them. Back then there was no way to authenticate a piece of news or facts!
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I did a search: what is on the back of Horace’s head
This brought up absolutely nothing related to what I was wondering. Perhaps that’s because it’s Horus.
I have a piece of 3-D art which I don’t know but believe was made by an art student in one of my father’s classes (or could be by a fellow-teacher-friend or even himself). I’ve been trying to decide what to do about this thing on the back if it’s head (like add feathers of *burgundy). It’s kind of ugly compared to the rest of it; sort of a gold-edged red kippah, although that word has just now occurred to me. It wouldn’t be ugly in another context, but nothing else on this thing is red other than two round eyes with transparent gold jewels on top. Is this — new idea now — an eye on the back of its head? I this very minute subsequent went to look at the back of the head and was reminded, reaching down from the hat (as I said I now think from reading) is a brown area unlike the rest of the thing (a colorful bird, yes the kind mentioned at the link, mainly of blue and green and gold and white with also a pharaoh-shaped head plus the beak) with two eyes more like a human’s within the field of brown on the back side. Maybe this is the dude’s hair (and extra sense) peeking out from under his garb.
*I had considered other colors, but settled on burgundy (a more subtle red if I were going to do anything at all) even before I did any research.
Anyway, I admittedly laughed when I read here about getting it right that Horace is the elder rather than the younger (or maybe the other way around as if I’m going to try getting that “straightened“ out).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus
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Some things never change, and when it comes to human nature, it’s doubly true.
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Greed and deceit have been around for quite some time.
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