THE MURDER OF HYPATh

A " a spring day in the year 415 c.r., a Pagan noblewoman emerged
\-/ from the lecture hall attached to the great library of Alexandria
and called for her chariot, intending to drive herself home. Although
there were many educated Pagan women of high social standing and
good education in Alexandria in rhat era, Hypatia, as she was called, was
one of the few who owned and drove her own chariot. A familiar sight
to the local populace, she often halted her horses and descended into the
street to chat amiably with local people, or to debate issues of philosophy
with whomever might wish to engage her. Her openness, combined
with her kind and elegant manner, won her the admiration and affec-
tion of the townsfolk. Hypatia was also acrive in an official capacity in
civic affairs normally dominated by men. "Such were her self-possession
and ease of manner, arising from the refinement and cultivation of her
mind, that she not infrequently appeared in public in presence of the
magistrates, without ever losing in an assembly of men rhat dignified
modesty of comportment for which she was conspicuous, and which
gained for her universal respect and admiration."'
Hypatia's beauty was legendary, and equaled only, it was said, by her
intelligence. Tall and confidenr, commanding her charior with ease,
clothed in a long robe and the signature scarf of the teaching class, she
must have cut a striking figure in the thriving streets of that mosr cos-
mopolitan of cities. No realistic image of her survives.
On that March day in 415, as Hypatia entered a public square near the
Caesarean Church where Christian converts were known to gather, she
found her path blocked by a menacing crowd. At the head of the group
stood a rough-looking man called Peter the Reader who roused those
gathered to approach Hypatia and impede her way. "Now this Peter was
a perfect believer in all respects of fesus Christ,"2 a zealous convert who
 CONQUEST AND CONVERSION

admired Cyril, the Christian bishop of Alexandria. Recently, when a

local prefect prosecuted one of Cyril's prot6g6s for openly attacking
Pagan doctrines, Hypatia had sided with the prefect and the man was
severely admonished. Cyril had an axe to grind with Hypatia, although
he could not afford to look bad in the public eye by acting openly against
her. Long after the fateful day, many of the townsfolk wonderecl if Peter
the Reader had not been sent to avenge his master, or perhaps had acted
independently, hoping to win the patriarch's approval. Public opinion
held that Cyril, who was on record for calling Hypatia a sorceress, was
complicit in the attack.
Peter exhorted the crowd to throw tiles at Hypatia, and pull her from
the chariot. Her long robes and scarf proved an advantage to the mob,
consisting mostly of rough-handed workmen. They quickly overpow-
ered her by yanking hard on her loose clothing from all sides. Pulled to
the ground, she struggled in vain to break free and run. The mass of
grappling hands now began to strip off her robes. Members of the local
populace stood by helplesslv, paralyzed by the horror unfolding before
their eyes.
The violence of the mob escalated rapidly, its intensity f-ed by the rau-
cous shouts of Peter the Reader. He called Hypatia a vile heretic and a
witch who beguiled people through her beauty and her teachings, which
were nothing but the wiles of Satan. Hypatia protested and cried for help,
but a stiff blow broke her jaw. In a matter of minutes, she was on her
knees in a pool of her own blood. Crushed under a flurry of blows and
kicks, she was rapidly beaten to death. Not content merely to take her
life, the mob pounded her naked body to a pulp and tore her limbs off her
torso. The number of the attackers, and the ferocity of their assault, made
it impossible for anyone witnessing the nrurder to intervene.
When Hypatia was dead, the attitude of the mob shifted abruptly from
outrage to triumph. These men, who were self-declared Christians,
immediately began to exalt in what they had done. The frenzy of victory
was so acute, it could not be satisfied by the beating and dismemberment
of the defenseless woman. As if emanating from their pores, some force
of inhuman inspiration electrified the haze of violence that fumed
around the murderers. Wild-eyed with excitenlent, several members of
the mob ran to the nearby harbor and scooped up the razor-sharp oyster
 THE MURDER OF HYPATIA

shells to be found there in abundance. They returned and passed out

shells, and Peter encouraged his henchmen to scrap every last morsel of
flesh from Hypatia's bones. When rhe men were done, they took the
scraped bones to a place called Cindron and burned them to ashes.

Wrsoov INcRnNnrn

Hypatia (pronounced high-PAY+ha) was the daughter of the mathemati-

cian Theon of Alexandria, the last known reacher in the age-old tradi-
tion of the Mystery Schools, the spiritual universities of antiquity.* The
year and month of her death are known, the year of her birth is less cer-
tain, but 370 c.n. is generally accepted. Thus she would have been
around forty-five when she was murdered. Historians have long
regarded her death as the event that defined the end ofclassical civiliza-
tion in Mediterranean Europe. It signaled the end of Paganism and the
dawn of the Dark Ages. (Paganism, the generic term for pantheistic reli-
gion in the Western classical world, merits capitalization as much as
Christianity.)
Theon was headmaster ar the Museum of Alexandria, the place dedi-
cated to the Muses, daughters of the ancient goddess of memory,
Mnemosyne. Each of the Muses embodied a "sacred art" such as
astronomy, lyric poetry, and history. The nine daughters of Memory pre-
sented a model for the curriculum of the Mystery Schools. Museums
today are merely repositories of relics from the past, bur the Alexandrian
Museum was the setting for a wide range of living traditions, truly a
center of higher education. The campus spread along the horseshoe-
shaped port dominated by its Pharos, the famous four-hundred-foor-
high lighthouse that ranked among the Seven Wonders of the World. It
included many independent academies dedicated to subiects as diverse as
geometry and sacred dance, and training guilds that produced a constant
stream of graduates in fields such as sculpture, botany, navigation, her-
bology, engineering, and medicine. The assemblies and guilds associated
with the Royal Library had their own libraries and teaching faculties.

*For a definiton ofMystery Schools and other special rerms, see the glossary
 CONQUEST AND CONVERSION

In the year 400, when she was about thirty, Hypatia assumed the chair
of mathematics at the university school. This was a salaried position,
equivalent to professorship in a modern university. The daughter of
Theon was noted for her mastery of Platonic philosophy and her skill in
theurgy, literally "god-working," a form of magical invocation that
might be compared to Jungian active imagination, or, more aptly,
advanced practices of visualization in Tantra and Dzogchen. Her dialec-
tical powers were exceptional, honed to a fine edge by her mathematical
training. When it came to debating ideas about the divine, "Hypatia
eclipsed in argument every proponent of the Christian doctrines in
Northern Egypt."' Her expertise in theology typified the Pagan intellec-
tual class of Gnostics,gnostoftoi, "those who understand divine matters,
knowing as the gods know," but she was also deeply versed in geometry,
physics, and astronomy.* Ancient learning was multidisciplinary and
eclectic, contrasting strongly to the narrow specialization of higher edu-
cation and the sciences in our time. The word philosop&y means "love
(philo) of wisdom (sophia)." To Gnostics, Sophia was a revered divinity,
the goddess whose story they recounted in their sacred cosmology.t To
the people of her time and setting, Hypatia would have been wisdom
incarnate.
In addition to their religious function, the Mysteries provided the
framework for education along interdisciplinary lines. The gnosto\oi
were polymaths, savants, and prolific writers. From around 600 s.c.r. to
Hypatia's time-a period of a thousand years-1hey produced the
countless thousands of scrolls stored in the Royal Library of Alexandria
and other libraries attache d to Mystery centers around the
Mediterranean basin. Hypatia is known to have written a treatise on
arithmetic and commentaries on the ,4stronomical Canon of Ptolemy
and the conic sections of Apollonius of Perga. None of her writings sur-
vive, but eight ancient sources describe her murder and her accomplish-
ments; the latter, not always in an approving manner. Cyril, whom pop-
ular opinion implicated in her murder, became an imporranr theologian

*There is no scholarly consensus on the de6nitionof Gnosis or

Gnostic. The above is onc of
several options I propose. See the glossary for definitions ofall special terms.

fI propose the pronunciatiooso-FI-ah for the mythological name of the goddess, as disrinct
from the common name pronounced so-FEE-ah. The ad jective is sophianic.
 THE MTJRDER OF HYPATIA

known for formulating the doctrine of rhe Holy Trinity. He was later
canonized by the Church, along with other early Christian ideologues,
the so-called Church Fathers, men whose theological polemics and his-
tories of the One True Faith celebrate its triumph over "heretics" such
as she.
Hypatia's accomplishments were not confined to theology and didac-
tics. She was also involved in applied science relatecl to geography and
astronomy. Working with a Greek scientist Synesius, who was proud to
be called her student, she invented a prototypeofthe astrolabe, a device
later to prove essential in the navigation of the world oceans for the
twinned purposes of conquest and conversion.

PacnN LEanNtr.rc

Hypatia's birthplace was founded by Alexander the Great on |anuary

20, 331 s.c.n.

For the next 1000 until the coming of Islam, it would look
ye ars,
to the Mediterranean and the wider worid. Alexandria's full
title was "Alexandria by Egypt"-not "in Egypt." It was
founded as an entrep6t through which the weaith of Egypt
would flow; and within two centuries it would become the "the
crossroads of the entire world": the El Dorado of the Hellenistic
Ag.. ... In the first century A.D. Alexandrian merchants sailed
to South India on the monsoon winds, linking up with the trade
to the Ganges, Vietnam, and China; part of the explosion of
ideas and contact initiated by the Age of Alexander.*

In Hypatia's lifetime, her native city was still the greatest cosmopolitan
center of antiquity, the undisputable capital of the Western world, com-
mercially, spiritually, and intellectually speaking, but it belonged to an
empire teetering on the brink of collapse. She r.l'as born around ten years
after the initial wave of barbarians, the Huns, poured into Europe, and six
years after the Roman Empire was divided geographically between east
and west. In her lifetime the Roman legions evacuated Britain, conquered
 CONQUEST AND CONVERSION

by |ulius Caesar four and a half centuries earlier, and the borders of the
Empire shook continually from barbarian assaults. In 410, when Hypatia
would have been forty, Alaric, chieftain of the Visigoths, captured and
sacked Rome, inflicting a mortal blow on the Empire. At that very
moment Augustine of Hippo was writing The City of God, a book des-
tined to become a cornerstone of Catholic doctrine. As the Roman Empire
shattered and burned, another imperial entity, the institution of the
catholic church, was rising in its place. A fateful handover of power was
in progress.
The Hellenistic era lasted from the death of Alexande r in 323 B.c.E. to
30 n.c.t., when Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies' killed herself with
the bite of an asp. After Alexander's death, his empire was dividecl
among three of his generals. The southernmost part, comprising Egypt
and Judea (including Jerusalem), became the Ptolemaic kingdom'
Culture and custom were uniform throughout all three parts of the
,,Natives of Galilee and
empire. fudea wore fhe same sort of clothes as
were worn in Alexandria, Rome or Athens."5 The entire southern
region, including Palestine, was thriving with lvlystery Schools, many of
them founded and directed by Gnostics such as Hypatia." In the twilight
ofthe Egyptian dynasties, cross-cultural exchange reached a fever pitch,
but the death of cleopatra brought a change of political regime that
would permanently darken the skies of learning. f ulius Caesar's arrival
in Egypt in 47 e.c.n. completed the shift that had begun in 63 s.c.r. when
the Roman general Pompey, Caesar's greatest rival, had declared |udea
a Roman province. The transition from Hellenistic haven to Roman
domain affected the entire Near East. In Hypatia's time, the Royal
Library had existed for over seven hundred years, but it fared far less
well in the four centuries of the Roman era than in the preceding three
centuries of high Hellenistic syncretism.
The Royal Library was founded by a general of Alexander the Great,
Ptolemy I, as a center of learning for the vast territories united by the
Greek language following Alexander's campaigns. Ptolemy earned the
title of soter, "savior," a title that would later be applied to Jesus Christ,
because Ptolemy saved the wisdom of the ancient world. His son,
Ptolemy lI (d.246 n.c.n.), commanded that all boats entering the port of
Alexandria be searched for scrolls and papyri. Those found were taken
 THE MURDER OF HYPATIA

to the library and copied, the originals were deposited in the stacks, and
the copies returned in their owners. A staff of librarians, scribes, and cal-
ligraphers worked continuously to maintain an ever-growing collection
that included first editions of Homer and Hesiod, the Greek play-
wrights, Aristotle, and many others. Ptolemy II proudly claimed a pri-
vate collection of the 995 best books of all time.
The vast archives of the Royal Library were not limited to Greek-
language writings. It stocked works in other languages such as Syriac
and Aramaic, and translators labored nonstop to produce Greek edi-
tions. One of these works was the Hebrew Torah (the first five books of
the Bible). Rendered into Greek, it was called the Septuagint because
seventy fewish scholars worked on the translation. Upon founding the
city, Alexander had guaranteed lews the same rights as other citizens of
his empire. In Hypatia's day, it is likely that five to ten percent of the
city's population were fews-around 40,000 people.
Ptolemy I had built a rnassive hall called the Bruchion to house the
ever-expanding collecdons. When it outgrew its capacity, his successor
Ptolemy III erected the Serapeum. G. R. S. Mead notes that the Royal
Library where Hypatia lectured was the hrst great public library in
Egypt, but not the first in Egypt. Each temple had its own in-house
library, and Egypt was a land of many temples. In mainland Greece and
in the Grecian coionies around the Mediterranean basin, temple libraries
housed large and ancient collections. Since the introduction of secular
alphabets to the general public around 600 n.c.r., the adepts of the
Mysteries had been pouring out a vast body of writings on every conceiv-
able subject. In 400 c.n. Hypatia had a thousand-year-old tradition of lit-
eracy and learning to draw upon when she lectured to her classes.
Modern ignorance of history in general, and of ancient history in par-
ticular, makes it difficult to grasp the scope and richness of learning in
the Pagan world. Writing in the 1940s, classical scholar Gilbert Highet
observed:

It is not always understood nowadays how noble and how wide-

it kept Europe, the
spread Greco-Roman civilization was, how
Middle East, and northern Africa peaceful, cultured, pros-
perous, and happy for centuries, and how much was lost when
l0 coNeuEST AND coNvERsIoN

the savages and invaders broke into it. It was, in many respects
until a few generations ago,
a better thing than our civilization
and it may well prove to have been a better thing all in all.
When the Roman Empire was at its height, law and order,
education, and the arts were widely distributed and aimost uni-
versally respected. In the first centuries of the Christian era
there was almost too much literature; and so many inscriptions
survive, from so many towns and villages in so many different
provinces, that we can be sure that many, if not most, of the pop-
ulation could read and write. . Expeditions have found
papyrus copies of Flomer, f)emosthenes, and Plato, fragments
of what were once useful libraries, buried under remote
Egyptian villages now inherited by illiterate peasants.T

In Highet wrote these words (not to excuse the evils of the

1945, the year
Roman Empire, but to indicate the social and cultural achievements it
harbored), a cache of texts was discovered at Nag Hammadi in Upper
Egypt. In ancient times the place of the discovery was named Sheniset,
"the acacias of Seth," indicating what may have been the sanctuary of a
Gnostic sect calling themselves Sethians. The Nag Hammadi library, as
it came to be called, consists of thirteen leather-bound codices, the ear-
liest example of bound books.* These fifty-two documents of fragmen-
tary and muddled content have revolutionized scholars' views on the
origins of Christianity, but the ultimate significance of this rare material,
widely assumed to be original Gnostic writings, has yet to be realized.
"Sethian" was the self-designation of some Gnostic groups who par-
ticipated intimately in the Mystery Schools distributed across Egypt, the
Middie East, around the Mediterranean basin, and into the depths of
Europe. lnThe Gospels and the Gospel (1902), theosophical scholar G. R.
S. Mead noted that "Gnostic forms are found to preserve elements from
the mystery-traditions of antiquity in greater fullness than we find else-
where."t Mead was among the first English-speaking scholars to trans-
late and interpret Gnostic texts known before the discovery at Nag

*C)n the Nag Hammadi Codices-not to be conlused with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which also
6gure in the argument c,f this book-see chapter 7 and "Suggestions for Reading and
Research." The Dead Sea Scrolls are discussed in chapters 4,5,6, and elsewhere.
 THE MURDER OF HYPATIA

Hammadi. His view of the centrality of Gnostic teachings in

the
Mysteries was shared by other scholars of his time, but this connection is
categorically denied today.
Specialists such as Elaine Pagels dismiss any link berween Gnostics
and the Mysteries, due to a perceived lack of rextuai evidence.,' Pagels'
bookThe Gnostic Gospels (1979) introduced the Nag Hammadi materials
to mainstream readers, but the scholarly specialization it represents has
hampered understanding of who rhe Gnostics were, and r,vhy they
protested so vehemently against the rise of Christianity. With their con-
nection to the Mysteries denied, Gnostics are condemned to an obscure
and uncertain place on rhe margins of the history of religion. Flence, the
true message of the Gnostics, and the full impact of their near-complete
destruction, has yet to register on the general public.
If Highet's assessment of the ancient world is correct, we must wonder:
Who devised and directed the institutions of education in antiquityl
Who taught the peoplel Who wrote the books? Who trained the artisrs,
architects, and engineers in the skills required to produce the long-lasting
wonders of the classical Western worldl In his seminal work on
Gnosticism, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, Mead stated that "a persistent
tradition in connection with all the great Myste ry-institutions vvas rhar
their several founders were the introducers of all the arts of civilization;
they were either themselves gods or instructed in them by the gods. . . .
They were the teachers of the infant races." The initiates, as they were
called, "taught the arts, the nature of the gods, the unseen worlds, cos-
mology, anthropology, etc."10 Mead's vierv is echoed by S. Angus, author
of the most cited book on ancient Pagan cults, The Mystery-Religions :

"The Mysteries were the last redoubts of Paganism to fall. Prior to that
their adherents were the educators of the ancient world.""
Locating Gnostics like Hypatia in the Mysteries puts ancienr learning
in a sacred context and points to the Pagan initiates as the educarors ofthe
ancient world, but modern scholarship leaves the Gnostics in a void, and
totally ignores their centuries,long involvement in classical education.