ABSTRACT
The Bibliotecha Alexandrina project – which aims to revive the ancient Alexandria Mouseion/Library– represents a very specific intervention and engagement with the use of ancient Egyptian architectural motifs and constructions. The revival of the ancient Alexandrina marks an inversion or reversal of the usual flow of translations and transmissions from Egypt across the world. The Alexandrina's 'Westernization' has been well-rehearsed and relates to what the cultural theorist Foucault articulates as Alexandria's "Myth of Return". The ancient Alexandrina occupies a central position within this mythologization as a potent locus of modernity's memory-work. Both the lack of historical details of the institution and the relative poverty of archaeological evidence have allowed the institution to re-emerge as an object of the imagination. Contemporary 'Egyptianization', therefore, exacts a challenge to the academic purchase on the old Alexandrina paradigm. There are sympathies, resonancies and correspondences between postcolonial theory's reinvestment in cosmopolitanism and the contemporary process of 'Egyptianization's' own reinvestment of the Alexandrina/cosmopolitan paradigms.
