Alexandria in White Moon Colours, by Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
In our Alexandrian travel in time, we meet high personalities that stamped irreversibly the cosmopolitan city's character throughout the ages. The famous Alexandrian Nights in White Moon Colours!
The nocturnal custodian of the City – Cosmos of Alexander is dressed in its regular apparel; it is time for evening walkings and endeavours. Alexandria reflects all its magic in white nights. Inhabitants and travelers meet the Unknown in the lengthy, curvy Corniche, a highly personified location that resembles the passionate, naked body of a Sea Lady.
As the wind blows, millions of Mediterranean Sea drops are thrown on the faces of the buildings and on the eyes of the wanderers. In some spots, like Shatby beach in front of the Library or the rocky edges before Mustafa Kamel hospital, an unusually strong odour of iodium suggests to us which the correct location is for ideal homeopathy. This is a place for meditation and nocturnal contemplation of the Alexandrian stars.
And as you are about to forget the 4th century CE Coptic massacres of the followers of Ancient Egyptian rites, the Muslim massacres of Copts in the Mamelouk and the Ottoman times, the terrible strives and clashes between the Greeks and the Jews that highlighted Alexandria's exasperations during the Ptolemaic and the Roman times, you come to meet Eratosthenes, the great Geographer and wise librarian. In the beginning of the second half of the third pre-Christian century, he concluded in a groundbreaking study that the (flat) Earth's Equator (Isemerinos) crosses Syene, today's Aswan, no less than 1080 km south of Alexandria!
It was the first time a wise scholar stipulated that there was south of Egypt's southernmost city (Aswan) as much surface to cross as from that point to the northernmost confines of the then known world. To the eyes of the Egyptians, who under Nechao had arranged the first circumnavigation of Africa, to the eyes of the Phoenicians who had been famous and unmatched in sailing in the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, to the eyes of the Aramaeans who had already organized the land trade through Central Asia up to China, and to the eyes of the Greeks, who had reached as far as India (thanks to Alexander King of Macedonia) and Thule (Iceland – with the famous trip of Pytheas of Marseille), it must have sounded incredible!
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Music accompaniment:
PartⅡ-Allegro—Molto allegro—Allargando
Part Ⅲ-Allegro risoluto alla marcia
Rimsky Korsakov: Symphony No. 2 in F sharp minor. "Antar"
Ernest Ansermet (Conductor)
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Antar is a composition for symphony orchestra in four movements by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He wrote the piece in 1868 but revised it in 1875 and 1891. He initially called the work his Second Symphony. He later reconsidered and called it a symphonic suite. It was first performed in 1869 at a concert of the Russian Musical Society.
The nocturnal custodian of the City – Cosmos of Alexander is dressed in its regular apparel; it is time for evening walkings and endeavours. Alexandria reflects all its magic in white nights. Inhabitants and travelers meet the Unknown in the lengthy, curvy Corniche, a highly personified location that resembles the passionate, naked body of a Sea Lady.
As the wind blows, millions of Mediterranean Sea drops are thrown on the faces of the buildings and on the eyes of the wanderers. In some spots, like Shatby beach in front of the Library or the rocky edges before Mustafa Kamel hospital, an unusually strong odour of iodium suggests to us which the correct location is for ideal homeopathy. This is a place for meditation and nocturnal contemplation of the Alexandrian stars.
And as you are about to forget the 4th century CE Coptic massacres of the followers of Ancient Egyptian rites, the Muslim massacres of Copts in the Mamelouk and the Ottoman times, the terrible strives and clashes between the Greeks and the Jews that highlighted Alexandria's exasperations during the Ptolemaic and the Roman times, you come to meet Eratosthenes, the great Geographer and wise librarian. In the beginning of the second half of the third pre-Christian century, he concluded in a groundbreaking study that the (flat) Earth's Equator (Isemerinos) crosses Syene, today's Aswan, no less than 1080 km south of Alexandria!
It was the first time a wise scholar stipulated that there was south of Egypt's southernmost city (Aswan) as much surface to cross as from that point to the northernmost confines of the then known world. To the eyes of the Egyptians, who under Nechao had arranged the first circumnavigation of Africa, to the eyes of the Phoenicians who had been famous and unmatched in sailing in the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, to the eyes of the Aramaeans who had already organized the land trade through Central Asia up to China, and to the eyes of the Greeks, who had reached as far as India (thanks to Alexander King of Macedonia) and Thule (Iceland – with the famous trip of Pytheas of Marseille), it must have sounded incredible!
..............................................................
Music accompaniment:
PartⅡ-Allegro—Molto allegro—Allargando
Part Ⅲ-Allegro risoluto alla marcia
Rimsky Korsakov: Symphony No. 2 in F sharp minor. "Antar"
Ernest Ansermet (Conductor)
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Antar is a composition for symphony orchestra in four movements by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. He wrote the piece in 1868 but revised it in 1875 and 1891. He initially called the work his Second Symphony. He later reconsidered and called it a symphonic suite. It was first performed in 1869 at a concert of the Russian Musical Society.