Ptolemy II entered the room, wrapped in lustrous sheets of silk with fine stitching befitting a king. His chestnut locks – cut short and combed forward, dressed in a bowl shape – boasted a smattering of venerable white hairs that made him seem wiser than his years.
“Speak of the animals which we have secured, and which have yet to arrive,” Ptolemy said, tucking his robes neatly beneath him as he sat in his throne, carved from cedar wood and upholstered in a rich Tyrian purple fabric.
“Yes, king,” replied Acacius, the Chief Zookeeper, stepping forward, his hands daintily folded at chest height. “Your zoo currently holds two lions, two leopards, two panthers, two antelopes, two giraffes, two black rhinoceroses and one ostrich.”
“A single ostrich?” Ptolemy asked, arching one brow. “Just last week I saw two.”
“Yes, sir, your memory serves you well,” Acacius said, anxiously rolling his hands around one another. “Yesterday eve the ostriches engaged in a vicious quarrel and one tore the others head right off,” he explained with a nervous giggle. “Your men are already hunting for a replacement.”
“Fine,” Ptolemy said, throwing one hand carelessly to the air. “Continue.”
“Yes, king. Two brown bears from Syria have been trapped and are currently en route. They are passing through Judea now and should be arriving in a matter of days, well before the festival of Dionysus in which they shall process.”
“Very well,” Ptolemy said. Acacius bowed his head and tiptoed backwards to rejoin the line.
“Kleitos, what have you to report?” Ptolemy asked. The king’s Chief of Education stepped forward and reported on the status of the famed Library of Alexandria and the men studying in its chambers. He updated the king on the progress being made by its prized scholars who descended upon the city from all reaches of the Ptolemaic Kingdom – Italia, Illyricum, Cappadocia and beyond. Some scribbled furiously upon scrolls, others made observations in the zoological or botanical gardens, while others caught glimpses of the cosmos in the astrological observatory. There were even those who hovered over corpses in the anatomical study, moving organs this way and that in their attempt to deconstruct the human body and uncover its plagues. Each scholar was lured by the king’s offer of a tax-free, want-free life and, in this way, Alexandria would become a city of intellectual greatness.
Next spoke the Chief Huntsman, the Chief Physician, and so on until Ptolemy’s ears became full.
“Before I send you on your way, gentleman, I have an order,” Ptolemy said. “Gather yourselves together and venture into the Jewish quarter. Seek out seventy Jewish elders, the most learned you can find, and bring them here with their sacred Torah in hand. I will greet them at first light tomorrow before the library doors.”
The following morning, when first light broke, Ptolemy opened the doors to Alexandria’s great library and found seventy white-haired, bearded Jewish men before him, each wrapped in beige linen robes with tassels pegged to the corners of their garments, and each clutching dear a copy of the Torah.
“Dear men, you shall each be escorted to a private chamber in the library,” Ptolemy said before swiftly turning his back and walking down the black and white checkered entry hall from which he came. A slight murmur was raised, quickly quieted as the king’s men hustled the Jewish elders into the library, between a row of thick columns whose tops were carved to depict the face of Ptolemy I, who oversaw the completion of the great structure, his head being cast four times on each pillar, creating a square capital. The corridor opened into a great room dotted with long, rectangular wooden tables where famous men were hunched – scientists, philosophers and poets all busily composing brilliant works. The outer walls were lined with simple doors with ornate metal knobs, each one being turned to allow entry of a single Jewish elder. Once the elders were inside their chambers, Ptolemy went to speak with each one individually.
Ptolemy opened the first chamber door. A heavily wrinkled man with rugged cheeks and wide open, unblinking eyes sat in front of a large roll of parchment and a writing pen. “Write for me the Torah of Moses, your teacher,” Ptolemy said. “Write it so the learned of the world can read it in Greek tongue, for Hebrew only your people comprehend. Do you understand your job?” Ptolemy asked.
“Yes, king,” the old man grumbled. “It shall be done,” he said.
And so Ptolemy went into each of the seventy chambers, in such a manner he addressed each of the seventy men, and in such a way he secured seventy copies of the Torah translated to Greek from Hebrew.
After all the translations had been completed and the Jewish elders returned to their quarter, Ptolemy called upon his team of highly reputed editors – a group of twelve men hand-picked by the king and paid a handsome stipend for living inside the library doors and devoting their lives to her needs. “Take these seventy scrolls and compare them, line by line and word for word, and report to me their discrepancies.”
The sun had come and gone countless times before the editors, huddled over the seventy manuscripts, finally raised their heads. And when they did, one exclaimed, “It is remarkable, Lord Ptolemy! There is not a word of difference among them!”
Ptolemy grinned broadly, knowing he had overseen something extraordinary. “This book shall be called the Septuagint,” he said, Greek for the translation of the seventy interpreters. And in this way, the Greek-speaking world was given a copy of the Hebrew Torah whose words spread to every end of the Ptolemaic Empire, and whose translation brought fame to Ptolemy and his great city of Alexandria.
