The movie starts off interesting, but by the end is a screed against Christianity. It was the Muslims who destroyed the city and its library, not Christians, but the narrator says nothing about that. She also says nothing of the many invasions and attacks on the library by the Romans. (See the wikipedia entry "Library of Alexandria.") To hear her tell the story of the city it was a peaceful utopia of higher learning for thousands of years until the evil Christians came along and ruined everything. What a disappointment.

The documentary is interesting mainly because of the photography and the interesting people interviewed. I was a little shocked to see that the end of the documentary becomes a thinly veiled warning against Christians who are politically active! The destruction of the famous Alexandrian library is laid clearly at the feet of a Christian mob stirred up to murder Hypatia, an innocent pagan scientist. I thought this unlikely so I did some research and came up with a good site that considers the three perpetrators alleged throughout history to have destroyed the library: Caesar, Theosophilus and Omar (a Muslim conqueror). The relevant documentation is examined and the author believes that Caesar is guilty party. He says that Gibbon (author of Rise and Fall of the Roman Emperor) was the first to claim it was a Christian bishop and that Carl Sagan popularized it, adding the story of Hypatia's murder, which has no relevance to the library, to the mix. To check it out for yourself, go to http://www.bede.org.uk/library.htm.

"Alexandria: The Greatest City" is another show about the ancient world hosted by Bettany Hughes. You can tell she really loved talking about the city and her excitement permeated the show. During the course of the show, she discussed the city's founding during the time of Alexander the Great (it was one of many cities named after him),the multinational aspects of the town, the university, the work of Galen and the great library--the greatest repository of knowledge in the ancient world. She also, sadly, discusses some of the city's downfall--but only some. Oddly, she never mentioned the great earthquake during the 4th century after which much of the town fell into the sea. This odd omission is one of the reasons I scored it a 7 and not higher. However, like her other wonderful documentaries, it is STILL well worth seeing.