On The Hellenistic Period, Alexandria's Cultural Characteristics And Historical Status

In world history, Hellenistic Age is the great time in which eastern and western culture have their first extensive communication. In this period, Alexandria becomes the cultural center of Mediterranean world, depending on its superior position, liberal cultural policy and great sponsorship of royal family. As carriers of Hellenistic Culture, Alexandria provides us a window through which we can see the best part of Hellenistic Culture. This paper starts from the formation of Hellenistic Age and the establishment of Alexandria, and then expounds the academic institutions, achievements and cultural exchange results which represent the cultural traits of Alexandria. In the last part, we explore the historical role of this city and its profound influence to later ages.This paper is divided into two parts:preface and main body.The preface gives an introduction of studying history and research achievements on this field, states the writing objective and significance, research methods and innovative points of this article.The text consists of three chapters. The first chapter starts from historical background of this thesis and mainly researches the conquest of Alexander the Great and formation of Hellenistic Age. This chapter also includes principle characters on politics, economics and culture of Hellenistic Age in order to researching this thesis entirely. The author then describes the history of city establishment and its general situations, from which we can research this city macroscopically. The author considers Alexandria as a great international metropolis whose location is selected by Alexander the Great and then chosen to be the capital of Ptolemaic Dynasty. Because of these qualities, this city has the great potential on cultural development.The second chapter is the core chapter in this paper, in which it expounds the cultural traits of Alexandria. The author summarizes cultural traits into three points, which is divides into three parts in this chapter. The first part researches the academic institutions in Alexandria-the Mouseion and the Library, discusses the creation course and basic functions of them, analyses their historical role and importance in cultural development of Alexandria. The second part is about the academic achievements in Alexandria, which are mainly made by the scholars of Alexandrian School. Therefore, this part researches Alexandrian School in detail, includes the rise of this School and its representative scholars and their cultural achievements. The third part discusses the important role played by Alexandria in the exchange and integration of eastern and western culture. This part starts from the complicated residents situation of Alexandria, analyses the class situation and the relationship between residents from different nations. Greeks, Egyptians and Jews are the most important nations resides in Alexandria, so the author researches the communication situations between Greek culture and Egyptian culture and Jewish culture in order to prove that there are many diversifying cultural communication and integration exists in Alexandria, which consists the very important aspects of cultural traits of Alexandria.The third chapter, as the summative chapter in this text, analyzes the historical status of Alexandria. Alexandria is the largest city in Hellenistic period, also is the most important city because of its grand scale, its leading academic institutions and its prosperous academic achievements and active cultural communication. The author considers the historical status of Alexandria as cultural center in Hellenistic period because of its excellent position, good social environment and fully supports of the rulers. Although its historical position has declined because of the change of cultural policy, the destruction of Library and the conquest of Roman Empire, Alexandria has left us a lot of precious cultural heritages, which have a far-reaching impact on the development of later cultures.In the epilogue, the author argues the important significance of researching the culture of Alexandria:to go on to study more about Hellenistic culture, to learn some successful experience from Alexandria's culture development, in order to improve culture development of modern world.