The pop-legend for the Europeanized Hypatia as a beautiful, young, virgin scientist comes to us through 1,600 years of hearsay, gossip and assumptions legitimized by Voltaire and other Age of Enlightenment anticlerical thinkers.
This tabloid-like legend is summarized in Wikipedia as such:
"Hypatia, born c. 350-370; died 415 AD often called Hypatia of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, inventor, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy. A pagan, Hypatia was murdered by a Christian mob known as the Parabalani after being accused of exacerbating a conflict between two prominent figures in Alexandria: the Prefect, Orestes, and the bishop, Cyril of Alexandria."
The past to which Hypatia of Alexandria belongs, i.e., the 4th and 5th centuries of the Roman Empire of Late Antiquity, is to us today a foreign country. We may study written languages and other artifacts from that period, but not living it we remain tourists in a foreign land. Like all sightseers our assessment of long bygone times and places is often subject to our own beliefs and ignorance. The Wikipedia description above is, in fact, rife with both our modern beliefs and overwhelming ignorance.
We are told, for example, Hypatia of Alexandria was brutally murdered in the year 415 A.D.. Notably, there were no eyewitnesses on record nor was there a corpus delicti nor was there any official inquiry or investigation into the supposed homicide. By modern standards this presumptive crime remains unsolved because it is based solely upon hearsay and rumor well after the putative event. Everything about Hypatia's death, whether in 415 A.D. or any other time, is a mystery. The same is true for the rest of her life before this.
In fact, because Hypatia left scant trace of herself [See my "The Case of Hypatia of Alexandria" presented at the 2018 Hawaii International Conference of Art & Literature] we must conclude the legend is mainly bogus. Until, that is, the discovery of these Alexandria scrolls, which tell the story of Hypatia in her own words, by her own hand!
So, who was Hypatia of Alexandria? This much is clear: She was mixed race; bisexual; and an entrepreneur. Also revealed is she was stalked by a psychopathic serial killer who was a prominent member of the clergy.
Award-winning author Lukman Clark lives with his wife, Dr. Linda Strahan, and two cats in Riverside, California. He works as a fulltime writer and gardener in his own backyard. Long ago, Lukman earned his BA in Communications/English Lit and an MBA in International Marketing. From there he went on to executive positions in banking, finance & investment, petroleum equipment manufacture, art museum management, farmers markets management, and nonprofit strategy & fundraising consulting.
