The Fayum portraits (100 - 300 AD) No images of Hypatia are known. In the Fayum depression, a region of land reclaimed from swamps about 1850 BC, the Egyptian people had taken to the custom of covering the faces of mummies with portraits in the Roman style. This portrait can give an idea what Hypatia might have looked like when she started her career at the Museum and at her death. Despite Eurocentric belief she most probably looked very Egyptian and swarthy in skin colour. “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all” Hypatia of Alexandria (Υπατία η Αλεξανδρινή) (c. 350-370? – 415) AD - Egyptian Philosopher and mathematician; b. 355 (Alexandria), d. March 415 (Alexandria)
Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, a mathematician and head of the Mouseion (Museum) of Alexandria. Her exact date of birth is not known; some researchers place it at 370, others at 355. She learned the basics of mathematics and astronomy from an early age. Being extremely gifted and beautiful she soon matched her father in understanding and insight. There is thus no doubt that Hypatia was an outstanding philosopher, scientist and mathematician, who was held in high esteem and received students from places as far as Syria and Cyrene. She was an excellent Egyptian Afrikan scientist, an outstanding mathematician and a most eminent human being with a clear mind.
She also had an interest in philosophy and became the acknowledged head of the school of philosophers who followed the scientific tradition of Plato, and was unjustly denounced as pagan by the growing Christian community of Alexandria. The hydrometer (also called an aerometer) an instrument used to determine the density of fluids is considered an invention of Hypatia. It is said that she lectured from behind a screen to save the students from distraction.
During the third century AD, politics of religion had begun its assault on the intellectual process. The absolutism of the Christian church, coupled with the expectation of the Second coming of Christ, made intellectual pursuits a waste of time. Who needed intellect if Christ was return? Alexandria was under constant uproar at the time, caused by attempts of the evil Bishop Cyril (later Saint Cyril) to wrest control of the city's administration from the secular rule of the imperial prefect Orestes. Hypatia, whose wisdom was cherished by the municipal administration, tried to mediate by promoting discussion, tolerance and separation of religion and state. But the followers of the church did not shy away from violence. In 415 monks assaulted Orestes and injured him severely. Orestes ordered the execution of the leader, and despite attempts by Cyril to style him into a martyr the public supported the decision. Cyril then claimed that Orestes was under the spell of Hypatia and said that she had studied magic and worked with the Satan.
An inflamed crowd grabbed Hypatia, who was on her way home from lectures, killed her, dismembered her and burned the pieces outside the city walls. According to Gibbon [2]: “On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader (alias Peter the Lector) and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames.” Her murder coincided with the death of the pagan world. In 391 A.D., the largest repository of knowledge in the ancient world, the Library of Alexandria, was burned by a crowd of fanatic monks under the leadership of the Christian Archbishop Theophilus. Orestes gave up his resistance and left Alexandria, which now fell into the hands of the church.
Hypatia holds a place of high honour in the history of science for upholding rational thought against religious zeal and paying for it with her life. Over the centuries she has been the object of much rumour and speculation. The historian Socrates Scholasticus described her murder in his "Ecclesiastical History", which he wrote only decades after her death, as the killing of an outstanding woman by "bigoted zeal".
When the Italian renaissance painter Raphael submitted a draft of his School of Athens fresco to a Bishop he was asked who is the woman depicted between Heraclitus and Diogenes. Raphael replied: “Hypatia, the most famous student of the School of Athens.” The response of the Bishop was: “Remove her. Knowledge of her runs counter to the belief of the faithful! Otherwise, the work is acceptable.”
