Alexandria, 415 A.D. known to the entire enlightened world of the Alexandria library goes Ipatii - woman-mathematician, astronomer, philosopher. She doesn't know what more you never come back here, - on the road waits for her bunch of religious fanatics. The crowd throws the Ipatov stones. Especially zealous women living sacrifices they have sharp edges and shells skin.

But Ipatius was well known, in what place and in what time she lives. Alexandria was one of the centers of early Christianity. Fanatics during the life of Ipatii, in 391 ad, tried to destroy the library of Alexandria. Then destroyed much of her manuscripts.

Alexandria, as the name implies, founded in 332-331 BCE Alexander the great. After him, when the Ptolemaic dynasty, it became the capital of Egypt and the largest port on the Mediterranean. The Alexandria library was founded at the beginning of the III century B.C. According to various sources, it was kept from 100 thousand to one million manuscripts. Despite the fires and the barbarism of fanatics, the library has existed for over a thousand years! But in the seventh century BC, came the Arabs, which completed its destruction.

View of the Alexandria lighthouse

For a long time historians believed that an invaluable treasure house of ancient knowledge irrevocably perish, but gradually in different countries of Europe and Asia began to appear in historical documents, clearly once belonged to the library. Her guardian, the people in those days very educated, could not fail to see the threat of the Treasury by religious fanatics and took measures to save the manuscripts. The assassination of Ipatii accelerate this work. Secret rulers of the caste of custodians with numerous writers produced a copy of the most important historical documents, originals small batches were sent to other countries. According to some reports, some of the manuscripts had settled even in the monastery library of Tibet.

One of the centers of storage of ancient manuscripts became Echmiadzin - the place of residence of the head of the Armenian Church. Gradually, Armenia has a repository of ancient scrolls - the Matenadaran. on December 17, 1920, after the establishment of Soviet power in Armenia, the building was declared a national treasure. In 1939, the authorities transferred store in Yerevan, and in 1960 was placed in a specially constructed building.

In 1939 the number of persons appointed responsible for transportation in Yerevan manuscripts from the residence of the Catholicos, was a young historian from Moscow Viktor Harutyunyan, actually was a member of the NKVD. On further events diary tells the story of Victor, which he led at that time. In particular, it States that a superficial reading of the scrolls in one of them Harutyunyan was astonished to find map... the surface of Mars! Moreover, around Mars was drawn a circle with depicted with a circle, undoubtedly meant satellite of the planet!

Stunned by the discovery, Victor did as a boy: carefully removed the card and hid it in her bosom, hoping to show his school teacher, and then return to the place. Unfortunately, the only piece of card gave very little information. The text was in Latin and, apparently, it was late translation of ancient Egyptian text. Been away from him for the most important - who and when has made map? Although optical lenses were known in Ancient Egypt, even Galileo failed to see the satellites of Mars in his telescope. This had not been done in the XIX century and in the largest in Europe Pulkovo Observatory. It took latest buymovie telescope Naval Observatory US to discover them in 1877, But on the map, found Victor, was depicted only one satellite!

Unfortunately, this incredible story remained without any further. Victor sent the card in the Armenian Academy of Sciences, indicating where it was taken. Then the war, he went to the front, where he disappeared. After the war, no information about the amazing card and about the manuscript from which it was taken, were not published. Rather, it lies in the archives of the Matenadaran. Indirect evidence for the existence of a unique document is information of candidate of historical Sciences A. Gorbovsky that in the Explanatory dictionary of the well-known Georgian scientist and writer Saba Orbeliani (1658-1725) contains a mention of a satellite of Mars, and even specify the radius of its orbit - 24 019 km (present value 25 459 km). It is not excluded that Orbeliani visited Echmiadzin and got this information from being stored there ancient manuscripts. Anyway to find it, although it is quite a difficult task: in the funds of Matenadaran at the time of the move to the new building there were about a thousand ancient manuscripts, 1850 fragments, 2 thousand pages from different books and about 200 thousands of documents on the history of the East. But I think that the mystery of the map of Mars is the most laborious and time-consuming effort.