perfidy

An international team of archaeologists have discovered the location of the University of Alexandria, one of the seats of all Western learning. Notable alumni include: Archimedes, Ptolemy, Euclid, Eratosthenes, and Testicles.

The team has found 13 individual lecture halls, or auditoria, that could have accommodated as many as 5,000 students, according to archaeologist Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The classrooms are on the eastern edge of a large public square in the the Late Antique section of modern Alexandria and are adjacent to a previously discovered theatre that is now believed to be part of the university complex, Hawass said.

All 13 of the auditoria have similar dimensions and internal arrangements, he added. They feature rows of stepped benches running along the walls on three sides of the rooms, sometimes forming a joined “U” at one end.

The most conspicuous feature of the rooms, he added, is an elevated seat placed in the middle of the “U,” most likely designed for the lecturer.

“It is the first time ever that such a complex of lecture halls has been uncovered on any Greco-Roman site in the whole Mediterranean area,” Hawass said. This is “perhaps the oldest university in the world.”

Sometimes I think archaeologists have the coolest job in the world.