102 SCIENCE IN ALEXANDRIA. 



a business as mechanics. But this was corrected at 

 Alexandria by the practical tendencies of Egyptian 

 science. The Suez Canal was reopened, and Archi- 

 medes taught the Alexandrians to apply his famous 

 screw to the irrigation of their fields. These Egyptian 

 pumps, as they were then called, were afterwards used 

 by the Romans to pump out the water from their 

 silver mines in Spain. 



No doubt most of the museum professors were 

 pitiful " Grseculi," narrow-minded pedants, such as are 

 always to be found where patronage exists : parasites 

 of great libraries who spend their lives in learning the 

 "wrong things. No doubt, much of the astronomy was 

 astrological, much of the medicine was magical, much 

 of the geography was mythical, and much of the 

 chemistry was alchemical, for they had already begun 

 to attempt the transmutation of metals, and to search 

 for the elixir vitae and the philosopher's stone. No 

 doubt physics were much too metaphysical in spite of 

 the example which Aristotle had given of founding 

 philosophy on experiment and fact ; and the alliance 

 between science and labour, which is the true secret of 

 modern civilization, could be but faintly carried out in 

 a land which was under the fatal ban of slavery. Yet 

 with all this, it should be remembered that from 

 Alexandria came the science which the Arabs restored 

 to Europe, with some additions, after the Crusades. 

 It was in Alexandria that were composed those works 

 which enabled Copernicus to lay the keystone of 

 astronomy, and which emboldened Columbus to sail 

 across the western seas. 



The history of the nation under the Ptolemies re- 

 sembles its history under the Phil-Hellenes. Egypt 

 and Asia were again rivals, and again contested for 



