(Alexandrian Library, Egypt 403 CE)

Hypatia's love of mathematics and philosophy sprang mostly from her father's influence. As last librarian and caretaker of the Museum of Alexandria, it was true that Theon Alexandricus would eventually be considered the last mathematical genius of that incomparable center of learning and repository of thought. While serving as the Museum's "president," he authored many treatises during his tenure of forty years, overseeing the exceptional training of many and none the least, that of his daughter, Hypatia. But there were other academics before him and her who carried this great school to its prominence in the world of mathematics, philosophy and astronomy.

Euclid, the Greek mathematician, considered the father of Geometry, had written his "Elements" there in the 3rd century BC. It was a seminal work which became a primary inspiration to many generations of mathematicians who had come to study in Alexandria from Athens, Rome, and parts of Asia and Africa. Hypatia's father lectured on these principals and contributed to the discovery of the solar and lunar ellipses while in residence, and at the same time handled the Museum's administrative affairs.

In addition, the Library was famous for its PlatonistSchool, originating in Athens some one-thousand years before through the writings and dialectics of Plato. The philosophy was brought to Egypt through the teachings of Ammonius Saccas in the third century AD, and later expanded upon by his own student of eleven years, Plotinus. It was Plotinus's mistrust of the material world, with its many limitations, which led him to embrace the notion of Plato's purely spiritual element to all things, inspiring later religions and philosophies to evolve in this direction through what became Neo-Platonism.

Aligning herself with Alexandria's Platonist school, Hypatia taught these refined theories there on the Nile delta, while her father mentored in mathematics. Through his administrative clout, and her exceptional talents as a philosopher, Hypatia ultimately became the headmistress of the PlatonistSchool of the Alexandrian Library, where she taught until her untimely murder in 415 CE.

Hypatia's attractiveness and engaging discussions became renowned, not only for her open-minded approach to learning and democratic ideas, but for her compelling infusion of the sciences, particularly mathematics and astronomy, into her more philosophical inquires. This produced a fascinating balance for her students, having on the one hand the Aristotelian observation of the physical world-leading to new and dramatic discoveries about nature-and on the other, the Platonic influences of an unseen world. Her approach to attaining truth was often across the nary world between matter and spirit which contained the greater essence of things.

This combination was educationally rich-eliciting mental and spiritual dialogues among her and her internationally-comprised classes of all young males. For Hypatia, and for a time in her incomparable milieu of the Alexandrian Library, these two paradigms of thought complemented many belief systems, religious and scientific, rather than divided them.

It was for this reason that Hypatia naturally embraced mathematics and its application to the heavens. Working with her father's discoveries of the elliptical orbits of celestial bodies, and studying conic sections and parabolas on her own, she is today given credit for at least proposing the first model of the astrolabe, a device which attempted to duplicate the elliptical motion of the sun, moon, and known planets in their relative positions. Moreover, her Platonic underpinnings, in concert with an astute understanding of the most advanced principles of geometry, put her at the cutting edge of philosophical thought and the calculated notions about astronomy at the time of her father's death in 405 CE.

But Hypatia had other heady passions which similarly had no room for romantic dalliances with suitors. She had no need for any future plans with a mate which might circumvent her academic inquiries. Such efforts eclipsed any desires for a relationship or marriage-a path so expected of women in all cultures which formed the unique nexus of ancient Alexandria. Famous was the reported incident of her response upon receiving a poetic interlude by an amorous student. It was said that she brought him her blood-soaked menstrual wrappings-merely to emphasize her stolid position that there was nothing beautiful about sexual maters, nor was her own interest ever there.

Instead were her secret passions about the past and certain legends recorded in Greek mythology which so often preoccupied her. Through her associations with enlightened individuals privy to far-flung regions and events, Hypatia gained much knowledge of the archaic world which so fascinated her. Her interest in a mythical society of all women, living detached from men, and at the edge of civilization, gripped her intellectually when she first heard of the Amazons. She found it fascinating that no other society categorically rejected men nor had formed a union of women unto themselves. For this she approached the subject of the ancient Amazons, as a possible reality, with as much interest and vitality as any of the challenges put before her in mathematics, philosophy or the mysteries of the heavens.

Like many women of the Hellenistic Period and later during the time of the Roman Empire, Hypatia had grown up aware of the Greek iconography of Amazons-their fair images on vases, plates and libation cups, since childhood. Most such decorative arts had been imported from the AtticPeninsula and from Athenian artisans in particular during the flowering of the Classical Age, nearly a thousand years before her. The Amazon motifs Hypatia had seen-depicting the mythological exploits of Greek heroes interacting with them in combat, were immensely popular, even in her own time.

The subject of women warriors was eventually discussed in her lectures and remained a favorite topic among the men of her classes when her issues of gender and power were invoked. She would bring to light their armed furry against men during heated debates for the point of establishing her own personal objections regarding accepted male superiority or dominance. It was particularly poignant when certain of the young men would, in jest, try to spar with her academically-whether in Mathematics, astronomy or medicine. But beyond this entertaining defense of her own exceptional qualities, her Platonic attitudes and limitless mind began to question the parameters of conventional thought about what actually constituted myth, history and truth-particularly as it involved the Amazons.

Why couldn't these lithe females she had seen so often on ceramics-boldly riding into the heat of battle, and created with such conviction by their artists, not have been as much matter as spirit? As entities written about, painted and carved with deep respect and authenticity-could not these women have truly once galloped across the lonely plains of a past age? If seen as such horrific enemies of man, as the Greeks had always depicted Amazons, weren't there also cases of mythical creatures from the sea, once envisioned as phantasmagorical, which actually did wash up on some distant shore at one time or another, proving their existence? And why couldn't these women, Hypatia wondered, with indefatigable energy and a similar individuality to her own, have survived at least temporarily to initiate such intriguing myths?

With these questions in her thoughts, unspoken, but yet as valid as any inquiry into the unexplainable phenomenon of the heavens or mysteries of mathematics, Hypatia kept a token of their existence near her on the elevated podium of the Library lecture hall always. It was an early fourth century, Greek Krater-a large decorative vessel for mixing wine and water-particularly utilized among men at their symposia. But it was also ceremoniously placed at the centre of houses for the guests' libation. This ceramic object was certainly, even for those distant times, a rare antique from its Attic origins, crafted and painted almost a millennium before. It depicted in black paint on a red ground, the exquisite Amazonian motif: 'The Rape of Antiope'.

This was the legend of King Theseas of Athens, accompanying the hero Heracles on his voyage north to the EuxineSea. There Heracles would attempt to bring back the celebrated belt of the Amazon queen Hippolyte, which was believed by the Greeks to have power. In the heat of their sudden and unexpected battle with the Amazon tribe, as the Athenians told it, Heracles and his comrades murdered Hippolyte, stole her charmed belt, and escaped. In their haste to flee the onslaught of avenging Amazon warriors and to ensure their return to Athens, Theseas abducted Hippolyte's younger sister, Antiope, as ransom. Upon arriving in Athens, she was to become Theseas' new wife and new queen of the ancient city, later producing a son with him known as Hypolytus.

The corresponding legend by the Greeks of a later siege of Athens-perpetrated by the revenging Amazons to take back the sister of their queen, remains in text and art today as the Attic War. It was a grand theme, graphically depicted on the western wall of the Parthenon, and one of three of the City's most significant events towards its glorious survival and sovereignty. This 'War with the Amazons,' known in Greek as the 'Amazonamachy,' is featured dramatically in art and legend, particularly during Greece's Classical Period. As a topic of research, scholarship about the Attic War is abundant, though it plies the murky, confluent waters of history and myth. There are on the one hand, doubts if the Amazons could have covered the distance for such a military campaign from their domain to Attica, and on the other, more positive speculation through archaeological evidence of tombs and monuments inscribed to the Amazons who fell in ancient Athens during their heroic attempt to retrieve Antiope.

For the sake of her male students in Alexandria, Hypatia kept this relic of the "Rape of Antiope" in her lecture hall-depicting on its surface Greek male and Amazon female in the heat of battle. She would tell her male students it was only to provide water for those who requested it. But to her, and to those who knew her values well, it was an emblem of fortitude and a subtle symbol of her mistrust of men and their misguided notions about women's purpose and abilities.

Of these, Hypatia herself was an emblem. This ceramic piece, nonetheless, sometimes invoked a lively discussion among the more chauvinistic young men under her tutelage. It was they who often vainly thought of themselves as heroes, and Hypatia their fantasized trophy.

But there were other occasions still, when their mentor could be seen working alone in the lecture room, seated with this illustrious Krater nearby. Its subject mater became animated in the candle light while the fair philosopher would stare transfixed onto its painted motif. On these rare occasions Hypatia was seen deep in thought, as if in some private reverie related obliquely to the object's decoration. It had become obvious to her father and a few others in the museum that this ancient vessel, and the story it told, spoke in some ineffable way to this brilliant and independent woman. By then she had spent half a lifetime celebrating her own brilliant but marginalized existence, in love with knowledge instead of any man.

Over her short lifetime, however, and parallel to her work as a lecturer in mathematics and astronomy, Hypatia would labor singularly on a project devoted to these ancient women warriors, and specifically in celebration of one of them-Penthesilea. This clandestine industry was recorded only in the vestiges of her notebooks, later completely lost to the eventual burning of the library. It was a mission which occupied her thoughts until her tragic death at the age of forty-five. Being fluent in Greek and having at her fingertips the greatest collection of scrolls from antiquity, Hypatia began an intensive study of what had been written by historians and philosophers about these women through the epic legends associated with them. She focused on one of their queens intensely and carried out this fascination to the level of worship. For it was under Hypatia's sole direction that the 'Amazon Sisterhood' (Αδελφες Αμαζονες) was quietly created, preserved, and secretly shared with other exceptional women through history. These efforts were all in honor of the Amazons' greatest and most visionary leader-Penthesilea.

It was a fortuitous connection, then, that one day a detailed schematic drawing was brought to the Library of Alexandria, specifically for Hypatia's mathematical attention. It had been carried by a young man from Athens, a second year student of hers, who was also well versed in his own people's distant history and customs. In private, this Greek youth shared with his teacher a rare architectural interior he himself had observed and inscribed on a large piece of leather. It was the curvilinear plan of a burial chamber, a tholos of the sort used to house the great Mycenaean heroes, so prominent in Greek history and literature. It was from this characteristic and remote epoch, her precocious student reminded her, that the great Greco-Roman historians and commentators of antiquity had placed the actual age of the Amazons.

Seeing this wonderfully measured drawing of an ancient Mycenaean tholos precisely cut in stone, inspired and excited the young Greek's teacher of mathematics. She immediately took to studying its interior dimensions, and marveling at its aesthetic elements while alone in her lecture hall. To Hypatia, there was something indefinably Platonist about the tomb's design.

To her it was in the graceful, curving blocks, each contributing its individual part to the whole of perfection. Its parabolic ceiling seemed somehow metaphysically crafted to confirm the beauty of mathematics in nature, while at the same time there was in it the beautiful curves of a female. Like the equidistant pedals of a flower or the precisely angled sides of a crystal, to this ancient mathematician there was music to the tomb's form. To Hypatia, this design for a final resting chamber was functional in structure, conducive to meditation, while at the same time a monument to a female's grace, essence and strength.

From that day forward she took to the private enterprise of creating the form as the perfect reliquary tomb for her own spiritual sister, Penthesilea, quintessential queen of the Amazons. For should her consecrated remains ever be located and grandly immortalized, it was her wish that Penthesilea would find the peace and immortality she deserved in this design. Her own astute mathematical study of parabolic shapes and solid geometry would be instrumental in this new guarded and unspoken plan. And to this end she worked for years, keeping her efforts recorded on a leather scroll hidden deep within her own private chamber of the Library.

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