Google celebrates birthday of late Egyptian historian Mostafa El-Abbadi

Google on Monday celebrated the birthday of the late Egyptian historian Mostafa el-Abbadi, considered a leading Egyptian scholar of the Greco-Roman world.

Cairo-born El-Abbadi - who would have been 94-years-old today - died aged 88 in 2017, and was celebrated with a Google doodle.

Doodles are changes made to the Google logo "to celebrate holidays, anniversaries and the lives of famous artists, pioneers and scientists".

The historian successfully pushed for a revival of the Great Library of Alexandria, in the form of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina - which today is a major cultural centre in Egypt.

El-Abbadi was also the former president of the Archaeological Society of Alexandria and received the Order of the Nile, which is considered Egypt's highest state of honour.

Aged 22, El-Abbadi graduated with honours from the University of Alexandria, and the Egyptian government awarded him a scholarship to attend the University of Cambridge for a doctorate in ancient history.

After achieving his degree he returned to Egypt as a lecturer and later convinced the governor of Alexandria, the Egyptian government, and UNESCO to support his project to recreate and enhance Alexandria's famed ancient library.

The library - which also now functions as a research institute - was inaugurated in 2002 as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, after almost 15 years of conception and construction, and is home to over eight million books, spanning seven floors and four museums.

El-Abbadi also wrote a book titled 'The Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria', which was published by UNESCO in 1990.