Who was Hypatia and why is Hypatia important?
Hypatia lived in Alexandria, Egypt more than 1500 years ago. She was the first female scientist, and she was among the scholars recruited to do research and keep the intellectual legacy of the famous Library of Alexandria and Moseion of Alexandria.
In Alexandria during Greco Roman period there was a trend to bring scholars from all over the known world to create a high standard intellectual activity. Government was recruiting them and paying them to stay and bring their contribution to the knowledge base represented by Library of Alexandria collection of papyruses.
She was an astronomer, a mathematician and a philosopher and she was giving public lectures. She was a professor and a researcher and was enthusiastic about expanding the knowledge and understanding the world.
What is Hypatia legacy?
She was killed by a mob of ignorants, and she died because her ideas too advanced for her time. She was born in 355 AD in Alexandria Egypt but she became ahead of her time through her studies, ideas, and ideals. At that time Alexandria was a magnificent city of the Roman Empire.
The Library of Alexandria
Its best attractions were the Serapion Temple and the Library of Alexandria. This Library was attracting the best scholars and scientists of the time and Hypatia was one of them. In this library and in the Moseion the best scholars and scientist of the time were brought by the government and Hypatia was one of them.
Her father was also a mathematician and a philosopher named Thanos and he influenced her in studying astronomy and math.
As a child she was taken often by her father to the lighthouse of Alexandria, and she became interested in studying the stars and ways to find navigation routes. Therefore, she perfectioned the Astrolabe which is an instrument used by sailors to navigate. She was using the astrolabe which was invented before her.
The Astrolabe
The Astrolabe is an astronomical instrument used to establish stars position related to its position on Earth. She improved and perfectioned the Astrolabe and the hydrometer. The Astrolabe perfected by Hypatia was used by navigators to determine their position on the sea and to establish the precise time.
As a child she often visited the library of Alexandria which was harboring five million of books which were handwritten on papyruses. Her father was a scholar and a professor of mathematics. He explained her how Eratosthenes demonstrated the Earth was round .In ancient times people believed Earth was flat but he noticed that on the same day of the year June 21st a stick in Alexandria has no shadow at noon but in Syene, (modern Aswan) , 800 miles further South same stick has a big shadow at the same time on the same day.
Based on these observations Eratosthenes demonstrated that Earth was round and measured Earth circumference. Hypatia was convinced that Earth was not in the center of the Universe disagreeing with the Ptolemaic dogma.
She was preceded by another female mathematician in Alexandria named Pandrosion.
Hypatia has often been called the first woman to have contributed to mathematics, but Pandrosion is a candidate for an earlier female contributor to mathematics than Hypatia. Pandrosion was a teacher of mathematics, Hypatia may have even known, Pandrosion.
She has invented her own school and had many followers. She was giving lectures in the agora about mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy.
She liked to ask herself questions and was particularly concerned about where the center of the Universe was.
What is Hypatia legacy?
Hypatia was a feminist
Hypatia opened the path to science and philosophy for women. She demonstrated that ideas are not feminine or masculine but rather they are wrong or right. She has fought for the freedom of thought, and she stood up against those who tried to destroy and restrict it. She was the first woman scientist and she demonstrated that in order to discover the truth one must be free to think and do mistakes.
In an era when very few women were attending school, she was one of the scholars at the Library of Alexandria and she had followers.
Hypatia was a philosopher
Hypatia was a follower of the concept that Earth was not in the center of the Universe and was turning around the Sun more than one thousand years before Copernic or Galileo Galilei. She had many followers for her ideas, and she is one of the founders of the Neoplatonic philosophy current.
Unfortunately, some priests in Alexandria disliked her theories and her popularity, also Christians were growing and tried to intimidate Jews and Serapis followers (pagans). She was ahead of her time, and she was also caught in between tensions among Oreste and Cyril of Alexandria.
Feud with Cyril of Alexandria
Cyril of Alexandria was one of her enemies, he was the bishop of Alexandria, and he was against non-Christians and Hypatia was one of them.
Hypatia had other enemies, she had to confront those who were against allowing women in school to study . At that time , fourth century AD many people still thought women should be stay-at-home spouses and should not study.
Cyril was against the theories of the Universe by Hypatia, and he threatened to burn the library of Alexandria, he sent his followers to interrupt Hypatia’s speeches and was making her life difficult. Her friends advised her to leave the city, but she decided to stay and stand up for her ideas. She claimed the truth is not dictated by religion but rather truth must be proven by science.
Hypatia’s killing
Cyril launched rumors about Hypatia such as the fact she would be a witch, or she would perform satanic acts. Some people started to fear Hypatia and believed she became a threat for Alexandria. Due to these rumors and fear a Christian mob attacked her in 415 AD and Hypatia, who loved and promoted the concept of truth lost her life due to so many lies. Due to this tragedy later after her death , her importance as a scientist was tried to be diminished and many of her works are lost.
She has dedicated her life to science and when one of her students proposed her to marry her, she refused saying her heart was given to the science. She stayed single because she did not meet someone with similar intellectual orientations.
She had respect and admiration from her students, and she was giving public speeches and talks on philosophy. She became very influent in Alexandria. Again, Cyril was displeased with her reputation.
Great teacher and lecturer
Hypatia was remembered in her own lifetime as a great teacher and a wise counselor.
Hypatia constructed astrolabes and hydrometers. She was a pagan because she was one of the followers of Serapis. Hypatia was tolerant to the Christians, and she was beloved by pagans and Christians alike and she established profound influence with the political elite in Alexandria .
Hypatia advised Orestes , the Roman Empire prefect of Alexandria who was in the midst of a political feud with Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. She was wrongly accused of preventing Orestes from reconciling with Cyril and in 415 AD was murdered by a mob. Hypatia’s murder shocked the Roman Empire, and she became a martyr of philosophy leading for the Neoplatonists to continue to be opponents to Christianity.
Hypatia is seen as an icon for women’s rights and a precursor to the feminist movement.
Mouseion of Alexandria
Theon was the head of a school called the “Mouseion”. Theon’s school was exclusive, highly prestigious, and doctrinally conservative, and was teaching a pure, Plotinian Neoplatonism. Although he was widely seen as a great mathematician at the time, Theon’s mathematical work has been deemed by modern standards as essentially “minor” . His primary achievement was the production of a new edition of Euclid’s Elements.
Hypatia was a Neoplatonist, she embraced the original Neoplatonism formulated by Plotinus. The Alexandrian school was renowned at the time for its philosophy, and Alexandria was regarded as second only to Athens as the philosophical capital of the Greco-Roman world. Hypatia taught students from all over the Mediterranean and she lectured on the writings of Plato and Aristotle.
Hypatia became extremely popular with the people of Alexandria and exerted profound political influence.
A violent power struggle over the diocese of Alexandria broke out between Cyril and his rival Timothy. Cyril won and immediately began to punish those who had supported Timothy and Hypatia who had supported Timothy was not well seen. Hypatia’s school seems to have immediately taken a strong distrust towards the new bishop.
In 414, following an exchange of hostilities and a Jewish-led massacre, Cyril closed all the synagogues in Alexandria, confiscated all the property belonging to the Jews, and expelled a number of Jews from the city.
Orestes, the Roman prefect of Alexandria, who was also a close friend of Hypatia and a recent convert to Christianity, was outraged by Cyril’s actions and sent a scathing report to the emperor. The conflict escalated and a riot broke out in which the parabalani, a group of Christian clerics under Cyril’s authority, nearly killed Orestes. As punishment, Orestes had Ammonius, the monk who had started the riot, publicly tortured to death. Cyril tried to proclaim Ammonius a martyr, but Christians in Alexandria were disgusted, since Ammonius had been killed for inciting a riot and attempting to murder the governor, not for his faith.
Prominent Alexandrian Christians intervened and forced Cyril to drop the matter. Nonetheless, Cyril’s feud with Orestes continued. Orestes frequently consulted Hypatia for advice because she was well-liked among both pagans and Christians alike, she had not been involved in any previous stages of the conflict, and she had an impeccable reputation as a wise counselor.
Despite Hypatia’s popularity, Cyril and his allies attempted to discredit her and undermine her reputation. There were rumors accusing Hypatia of preventing Orestes from reconciling with Cyril.
In March 415, a mob of Christians, raided Hypatia’s carriage as she was travelling home. They dragged her into a building, a former pagan temple. There, the mob stripped Hypatia naked and murdered her using ostraka which can either be translated as “roof tiles” or “oyster shells“. They also cut out her eyeballs.
They tore her body into pieces and dragged her limbs through the town to a place called Cinarion, where they set them on fire . this was in line with the traditional way Alexandrians carried the bodies of the “vilest criminals” outside the city limits to cremate them as a way of symbolically purifying the city. The criminals are commonly assumed to have been members of the parabalani.
Maybe this murder was entirely politically motivated and there was no role that Hypatia’s paganism might have played in her death. She fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop.
Her death was also a sign of ignorance and intolerance for scientists and those ahead of their time as far as ideas like Giordano Bruno in his time or many others persecuted for various reasons.
Hypatia crater
No concrete evidence was ever discovered definitively linking Cyril to the murder of Hypatia but it was widely believed that he had ordered it. Even if Cyril had not directly ordered the murder himself, it was self-evident that his smear campaign against Hypatia had inspired it.
After this unhappy event Cyril took political control in Alexandria and was later made a saint.
Hypatia story inspired the legend of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.
There is a crater on the Moon named after Hypatia and there are some long depressions called Hypatia Rymae.