Treasure

A NOTE TO THE READER

Please forgive the inconvenience of converting measurements from what most Americans are used to. But in 1991 the United States finally became the last nation on earth to convert to the metric system.

It's easy.

1 kilometer roughly equals a little more than 1/2 Mile.

1 meter is slightly more than a yard, about 39 inches.

THE ALEXANDRIA LIBRARY truly existed, and if it had remained unravished by wars and religious zealots it would have given us not only the knowledge of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman empires, but those little-known civilizations that rose and fell far beyond the shores of the Mediterranean.

In A.D. 391 Christian Emperor Theodosius ordered all books and art depicting anything remotely pagan, which included the teachings of the immortal Greek philosophers, burned and destroyed.

Much of the collection was thought to have been secretly saved and spirited away. What became of it, or where it was hidden, remains a mystery sixteen centuries later.