The Director of the Foundation ‘Anastasios G. Leventis’ of Nicosia, Mr. Charalambos Bakirtzis, expressed his pleasure while visiting the Patriarchate of Alexandria and closely observing the significant progress of the programme of restoring the one hundred ancient manuscripts.
A programme which the Leventis Institute supports financially with all it strength, yet at the same time, joins its strength both with the Patriarchate of Alexandria, as well as with the renowned Alexandrian Library, which has offered its best staffing potential for this unique programme.
In statements made to the CMFA Mr Bakirtzis expressed his warm congratulations to those who put their scientific knowledge and training to retrieve from the past and maintain and restore manuscripts which measure a history of hundreds of centuries.
The “Leventis Institute” of Nicosia undertakes many programs for European civilization in general, but this program at the Patriarchate of Alexandria is very important, stressed the Director of the Foundation, who was warmly welcomed by the Alexandrian Primate, Theodoros.
Receiving the preserved manuscripts and flipping through the volumes, the Primate warmly thanked the Leventis Foundation, a fact which was expressed in statements, by the Chief Secretary of the Holy and Sacred Synod, Fr. Nicodemus Totkas, extending his thanks and gratitude to the specialist Greeks who choose the manuscripts for restoration, in particular Professor Agamemnon Tselikas, Head of the National Bank of Greece’s Historical and Palaeographic Archive who provided his services for this project, assisted by the historian Mrs. Leoni Thanasoula.
Note that the Patriarch of Alexandria warmly thanked all the contributors and the Library of Alexandria for their contribution to the preservation of a great cultural treasure.
‘Already, we have preserved 75 of the hundred manuscripts we had planned,’ said Program Coordinator Mr. Michalis Solomonisis, visiting the premises of the Patriarchal Library yesterday, together with the heads of the Preservation Department, of whom Mr. Wael Mohamed emphasized to the CMFA the important principle that Biblioteca Alexandrina follows, which is the preservation of the world cultural heritage. And with that in mind, he warmly welcomes this collaboration to preserve the hundred manuscripts of the Patriarchal Library, which – after all – is a natural continuation of the ancient Library of Alexandria and which, with the help of the Leventis Foundation, can continue to be the Lighthouse of Hellenism in Egypt.
