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A city of northern Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea at the western tip of the Nile Delta. It was founded by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. and became a repository of Jewish, Arab, and Hellenistic culture famous for its extensive libraries. Its pharos (lighthouse) was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Population: 4,110,000.
For more information on Alexandria, visit Britannica.com.
Alexandria, city on the north coast of Egypt, near the Canopic or western mouth of the Nile, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC on a virtually virgin site, occupied only by a village and fort called Rhacotis; it was the first of his many foundations, and the first city known to have been named after its founder rather than a god or mythological figure. According to the historian Arrian, Alexander himself established where the main points of the city, the agora and the temples, should be, and drew the line of the city walls with the meal which his soldiers were carrying, a good omen for the city's future prosperity. After Alexander's general Ptolemy had established his authority in Egypt, the seat of government was transferred from the ancient city of Memphis to Alexandria. The new city grew rapidly and soon became the first city of the Hellenistic world, a centre of learning as well as of commerce and industry. By 200 BC it was the largest city in the world, and in the Roman period it counted as the second city of the empire, after Rome itself. It did not decline until the Arab conquest in the seventh century caused Egypt to look towards Asia rather than towards Europe.
Coastal city and Hellenistic capital in the northwestern area of the Nile Delta, established by Alexander the Great in 331 bc. It soon replaced Memphis as the capital of Egypt, establishing itself as a hub of eastern Mediterranean trade with its famous double harbour and favourable position at the natural intersection of shipping routes. Important buildings within this trading port included the tomb of Alexander, the temple of Serapis, the great library, and the Pharos which rates as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Built of white limestone, the Pharos had three tiers and is estimated to have been 110m high. It was destroyed by an earthquake in the 14th century ad.
[Sum.: G. L. Sheen (ed.), 1993, Alexandria: the site and its history. New York: New York University Press]
Much of ancient Alexandria is covered by modern buildings or is underwater; only a few landmarks are readily accessible, including ruins of the emporium and the Serapeum and a granite shaft (88 ft/27 m high) called Pompey's Pillar. Nothing remains of the lighthouse on the Pharos (3d cent. B.C.), which was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and the site of the royal palace lies under the older (east) harbor.
History
Alexandria, founded in 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, was (304–30 B.C.) the capital of the Ptolemies. The city took over the trade of Tyre (sacked by Alexander the Great), outgrew Carthage by c.250 B.C., and became the largest city in the Mediterranean basin. It was the greatest center of Hellenistic civilization and Jewish culture. The Septuagint, a translation of the Old Testament into Greek, was prepared there. Alexandria had two celebrated royal libraries, one in a temple of Zeus and the other in a museum. The collections were said to contain c.700,000 rolls. A great university grew around the museum and attracted many scholars, including Aristarchus of Samothrace, the collator of the Homeric texts; Euclid, the mathematician; and Herophilus, the anatomist, who founded a medical school there.
Julius Caesar temporarily occupied (47 B.C.) the city while pursuing Pompey, and Octavian (later Augustus) entered it (30 B.C.) after the suicide of Antony and Cleopatra. Alexandria formally became part of the Roman Empire in 30 B.C. It was the greatest of the Roman provincial capitals, with a population of about 300,000 free persons and numerous slaves. In the later centuries of Roman rule and under the Byzantine Empire, Alexandria rivaled Rome and Constantinople as a center of Christian learning. It was (and remains today) the seat of a patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The libraries, however, were gradually destroyed from the time of Caesar's invasion, and suffered especially in A.D. 391, when Theodosius I had pagan temples and other structures razed. When the Muslim Arabs took Alexandria in 642, its prosperity had withered, largely because of a decline in shipping, but the city still had about 300,000 inhabitants. The Arabs moved the capital of Egypt to Cairo in 969 and Alexandria's decline continued, accelerating in the 14th cent., when the canal to the Nile silted up.
During his Egyptian campaign, Napoleon I took the city in 1798, but it fell to the British in 1801. At that time Alexandria's population was only about 4,000. The city gradually regained importance after 1819, when the Mahmudiyah Canal to the Nile was completed by Muhammad Ali, who developed Alexandria as a deepwater port and a naval station.
During the 19th cent. many foreigners settled in Alexandria, and in 1907 they made up about 25% of the population. In 1882, during a nationalist uprising in Egypt spearheaded by Arabi Pasha, there were antiforeign riots in Alexandria, which was subsequently bombarded by the British. During World War II, as the chief Allied naval base in the E Mediterranean, Alexandria was bombed by the Germans. In a 1944 meeting in Alexandria, plans for the Arab League were drawn up. The city's foreign population declined during the 20th cent., particularly after the 1952 Egyptian revolution.
Egypt's second largest city and main port.
Modern Alexandria stands on the site of the ancient city of the same name, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C.E. It is located on a narrow spit of land with the Mediterranean Sea to the north and Lake Mariut to the south. The climate is temperate and averages 45°F during the winter months. Summer weather, although not as hot as in Cairo, is significantly affected by seaborne humidity and reaches 90°F.
Alexander the Great's general Ptolemy I made the new port city his capital, and his Greek-speaking dynasty ruled until Cleopatra VII's suicide in 30 B.C.E. as Octavian's Romans invaded the country. Famed for its lighthouse, museum (primarily a research institute), and library, Hellenistic Alexandria continued as a great Mediterranean center of commerce and learning through Roman times. Eratosthenes, Euclid, and Claudius Ptolemy were among its mathematical and scientific luminaries, and Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius stood out as Greek poets. Alexandria declined in importance under Islamic rule as Egypt's center of gravity returned inland to the Cairo area, where it remains today.
Contemporary Alexandria is the site of oil refineries, food-processing plants, and car-assembly works. The port is the main point of export for cotton and other agricultural products and is one of Egypt's major venues for imports. Because of its significance to the commercial activity of the city, the harbor underwent major expansions in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Its size and position made it the headquarters of the British Royal Navy's Mediterranean squadron until the end of World War II.
The history of modern Alexandria begins in 1798 when the French occupied it until 1801 as part of Napoléon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign. By then the city's population had shrunk to under 10,000. Alexandria experienced a remarkable revival in the early nineteenth century when Muhammad Ali connected it to the Nile River by the Mahmudiyya Canal, dredged its long-neglected harbor, and made it the site of his naval building program and arsenal. By 1824, because of Muhammad Ali's agricultural policies, Egypt was experiencing the first of two significant cotton exporting booms. Both booms led to the arrival of numerous European entrepreneurs involved with cotton, a combination that was to govern Alexandria's commercial and political fortunes until the advent of Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Suez Crisis of October 1956.
During the U.S. Civil War and the ensuing Union naval blockade of the Confederacy, Alexandria experienced a resurgence of its commercial and urban fortunes as well as a population explosion, reaching more than 180,000 inhabitants. With the
disappearance of cotton from the southern United States, European - especially British - mills turned to Egypt as the closest source of acceptable cotton. This in turn led to feverish economic activity aimed at improving agriculture and increasing urban development, manufacturing, and transport, and culminated in the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The Egyptian viceroy had embarked on an ambitious program of modernization, heavily indebting his country to Europe. European financiers and entrepreneurs settled in Alexandria, transforming it from a marginal seaside town into the major entrepôt of the eastern Mediterranean. The seaport also became the financial and political center of the country while Cairo remained the political capital of Egypt. By World War I, Alexandria's population had grown to nearly half a million and had reached a million when King Farouk abdicated in 1952.
Unable to repay or service its debt, in 1876 Egypt came under the supervision of Anglo-French financial advisers. This helped fuel a nationalist reaction that culminated in the revolt led by Ahmad Urabi. In 1882 the British bombarded and then occupied Alexandria in order to crush the nationalist insurrection. The town was then rebuilt along European lines with clearly demarcated areas for business, industry, and residence. The new city grew into nearly separate European and indigenous sections reflecting, like much colonial urbanism, the demographic dichotomies of its population.
Thus from the middle of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, Alexandria was home to a polyglot population representing the Mediterranean littoral and comprising different national, ethnocultural, and religious backgrounds. The Greeks were the most numerous of the European communities, followed in number by Italians, British subjects (many of whom were actually Maltese), and Frenchmen. Poet Constantine Cavafy stood out in the vigorous Greek cultural scene; British residents gathered at the Sporting Club and in 1901 imported the English public school model for Victoria College. Today Alexandria still presents a unique mixture of architectural styles, blending Venetian rococo, turn-of-the-century Beaux Arts, Bauhaus, Mediterranean stucco, and, more recently, postmodernist high-tech, although it lacks Cairo's rich Islamic architectural heritage.
Extensive beaches and the moderate summer climate turned the city into a seaside resort where the well-to-do and a growing middle class escaped the heat of the interior. Raʾs al-Tin and especially al-Muntaza Palace became the royal family's summer residences. In 1934 the construction of the fourteen-mile-long Corniche along the city's coast began.
The vast and disproportionate wealth and commercial influence of Egypt's foreign population was still particularly glaring in Alexandria when Nasser's Free Officers seized control in 1952. It was no coincidence that Nasser chose Alexandria, that most European of Egypt's cities, to deliver a speech in July 1956 announcing the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company. The Suez Crisis, the ensuing Arab - Israel War of 1956, and expropriation of foreign-owned property and businesses led to a mass exodus of Alexandria's foreign residents in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Those developments also encouraged Nasser to Arabize and Egyptianize the city's ethos.
Until the 1960s Pompey's Pillar (actually dating from the reign of Diocletian), the Roman-era Kom al-Shuqafa catacombs, the Mamluk Qaitbay Fort, and the Greco-Roman Museum attracted cursory attention from Western tourists passing on their way to the richer antiquities of the interior. The shift from steamship to air travel, however, put Alexandria off the beaten path as Western tourists flew directly into Cairo. This often reduced Alexandria to an optional day trip from Cairo for Westerners on a nostalgic quest for the lost (and highly imaginary) city of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. The UNESCO-sponsored Bibliotheca Alexandrina opened in 2002, an attempt by the city to regain something of its cosmopolitan glitter by invoking the glories of ancient Alexandria. With perhaps five million people today, greater Alexandria sprawls westward toward El Alamein and Marsa Matruh, with beachside resorts devouring the once pristine desert coastline.
Bibliography
Aciman, André. Out of Egypt: A Memoir. New York: River-head Books, 1995.
Forster, E. M. Alexandria: A History and a Guide. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Owen, E. R. J. Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820 - 1914. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Reimer, Michael J. Colonial Bridgehead: Government and Society in Alexandria, 1807 - 1882. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.
— JEAN-MARC R. OPPENHEIM UPDATED BY DONALD MALCOLM REID
Port city of northern Egypt, located where the Nile River empties into the Mediterranean Sea.
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The country code is: 20
The city code is: 3
| Alexandria Ἀλεξάνδρεια Ⲣⲁⲕⲟⲧⲉ الإسكندريه |
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| Country | Egypt | ||
| Founded | 334 BC | ||
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Alexandria (in Greek, Ἀλεξάνδρεια; in Coptic, Ⲣⲁⲕⲟⲧⲉ Rakotə, in Arabic, الإسكندريه Al-Iskandariya, in Egyptian Arabic, اسكندريه Eskendereyya), with a population of 3.5 to 5 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and its largest seaport.
Alexandria extends about 20 miles (32 km) along the coast of the Mediterranean sea in north-central Egypt. It is home to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the New Library of Alexandria, and is an important industrial centre because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez.
In ancient times, Alexandria was one of the most famous cities in the world. It was founded around 331 BC by Alexander the Great, and remained Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years, until the Arabs conquered Egypt in 641 AD and set up a capital at Fustat (later absorbed into Cairo). Alexandria was known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), the Library of Alexandria (the largest library in the ancient world) and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa (one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages). Ongoing maritime archaeology in the harbour of Alexandria (which began in 1994) is revealing details of Alexandria both before the arrival of Alexander, when a city named Rhakotis existed there, and during the Ptolemaic dynasty.
The city of Alexandria was named after its founder, Alexander the Great, and as the seat of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, quickly became one of the greatest cities of the Hellenistic world — second only to Rome in size and wealth. However, it fell to the Arabs in 641 AD, and a new capital of Egypt, Fustat, was founded on the Nile. After Alexandria's status as the country's capital ended, it fell into a long decline, which by the late Ottoman period, had seen it reduced to little more than a small fishing village. The city was revived by Muhammad Ali as a part of his early industrialization program. The current city is Egypt's leading port, a commercial and transportation center, and the heart of a major industrial area where refined petroleum, asphalt, cotton textiles, processed food, paper, plastics and styrofoam are produced.
Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC (the exact date is disputed) as Ἀλεξάνδρεια (Aleksándreia; see also List of traditional Greek place names). Alexander's chief architect for the project was Dinocrates. Ancient accounts are extremely numerous and varied, and much influenced by subsequent developments. One of the more sober descriptions, given by the historian Arrian, tells how Alexander undertook to lay out the city's general plan, but lacking chalk or other means, resorted to sketching it out with grain.
A number of more fanciful foundation myths are found in the Alexander Romance and were picked up by medieval Arab historians. The 14th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun ridiculed one where sea-monsters prevented the city's foundation, but were thwarted when Alexander descended below the sea in a glass box, and armed with exact knowledge of their appearance, goes on to erect metal effigies on the beach which succeed in frightening the monsters away.
Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis as a Hellenistic center in Egypt, and to be the link between Greece and the rich Nile Valley. If such a city was to be on the Egyptian coast, there was only one possible site, behind the screen of the Pharos island and removed from the silt thrown out by the Nile. An Egyptian townlet, Rhakotis, already existed on the shore and was a resort filled with fishermen and pirates. Behind it were five native villages scattered along the strip between Lake Mareotis and the sea, so told according to a history of Alexander attributed to the author known as Pseudo-Callisthenes.
A few months after the foundation, Alexander left Egypt for the East and never returned to his city. After Alexander departed, his viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the expansion of the city.
A story goes that Homer appeared to Alexander the Great in a dream and described a city he would build as "An island set in ocean deep, lies off far Egypt's rich and fertile land, and the name of the island called Pharos".
In a struggle with the other successors of Alexander, his general, Ptolemy (later Ptolemy I of Egypt) succeeded in bringing Alexander's body to Alexandria, where it became a famous tourist destination for ancient travelers (including Julius Caesar).
Though Cleomenes was mainly in charge of seeing to Alexandria's continuous development, the Heptastadion and the main-land quarters seem to have been mainly Ptolemaic work. Inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the center of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a generation to be larger than Carthage. In a century, Alexandria had become the largest city in the world and for some centuries more, was second only to Rome. It became the main Greek city of Egypt, with an extraordinary mix of Greeks from many cities and backgrounds.[1] Nominally a free Hellenistic city, Alexandria retained its senate of Roman times and the judicial functions of that body were restored by Septimius Severus after temporary abolition by Augustus.
Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism but was also home to the largest Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was produced there. The early Ptolemies kept it in order and fostered the development of its museum into the leading Hellenistic centre of learning (Library of Alexandria) but were careful to maintain the distinction of its population's three largest ethnicities: Greek, Jewish, and Egyptian.[2] Alexandrian Greeks placed an emphasis on Greek culture in part to exclude and subjugate non-Greeks. There were two institutions in Alexandria that were devoted to the preservation and study of Greek culture and which helped to exclude non-Greeks. In literature, non-Greek texts could only be kept in the library once they had been translated into Greek and notably, there were few references made to Egypt or native Egyptians in Alexandrian poetry; one of the few references to native Egyptians presents them as "muggers."[2] There were large ostentatious religious processions in the streets that displayed the wealth and power of the Ptolemies, but also celebrated and affirmed Greekness. These processions were used to shout Greek superiority over any non-Greeks that were watching, thereby widening the divide between cultures.[3] From this division arose much of the later turbulence, which began to manifest itself under Ptolemy Philopater who reigned from 221–204 BC. The reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon from 144–116 BC was marked by purges and civil warfare (including the expulsion of Apollodorus) as well as intrigues associated with the king's wives and sons.
One of the earliest well-known inhabitants of Alexandria during the Ptolemaic reign was the geometer and number-theorist Euclid.
The city passed formally under Roman jurisdiction in 80 BC, according to the will of Ptolemy Alexander but only after it had been Roman influence for more than a hundred years. Julius Caesar dallied with Cleopatra in Alexandria in 47 BC and was mobbed by the rabble. His example was followed by Mark Antony, for whose favor the city paid dearly to Octavian. Following Anthony's defeat at Alexandria, Octavian took Egypt for his own, appointing a prefect who reported personally to him rather than to the Roman Senate. While in Alexandria, Octavian took time to visit Alexander's tomb and inspected late king's remains. On being offered a viewing into the tombs of the pharaohs, he refused, saying, 'I came to see a king, not a collection of corpses'.
From the time of annexation and onwards, Alexandria seemed to have regained its old prosperity, commanding, as it did, an important granary of Rome. This fact, doubtless, was one of the chief reasons which induced Octavian to place it directly under imperial power .
In 115 AD Alexandria was destroyed during the Jewish-Greek civil wars which gave Hadrian and his architect, Decriannus, an opportunity to rebuild it.
In 215 AD the emperor Caracalla visited the city and, because of some insulting satires that the inhabitants had directed at him, abruptly commanded his troops to put to death all youths capable of bearing arms. This brutal order seems to have been carried out even beyond the letter, for a general massacre ensued.
Even as its main historical importance had sprung from pagan learning, Alexandria now acquired new importance as a center of Christian theology and church government. There, Arianism was formulated and there also Athanasius, the great opponent of both Arianism and pagan reaction, triumphed over both, establishing the Patriarch of Alexandria as a major influence on Christianity for the next two centuries.
As native influences began to reassert themselves in the Nile valley, Alexandria gradually became an alien city, more and more detached from Egypt and losing much of its commerce as the peace of the empire broke up during the 3rd century AD, followed by a fast decline in population and splendor.
In the late 4th century, persecution of pagans by newly Christian Romans had reached new levels of intensity. Temples and statues were destroyed throughout the Roman empire: pagan rituals became forbidden under punishment of death, and libraries were closed. In 391, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all pagan temples, and the Patriarch Theophilus, complied with his request. One theory has it that the great Library of Alexandria and the Serapeum were destroyed about this time. The female mathematician and neoplatonist philosopher Hypatia was a prominent victim of the persecutions.
The Brucheum and Jewish quarters were desolate in the 5th century, and the central monuments, the Soma and Museum, fell into ruin. On the mainland, life seemed to have centered in the vicinity of the Serapeum and Caesareum, both which became Christian churches. The Pharos and Heptastadium quarters, however, remained populous and were left intact.
In 616, it was taken by Khosrau II, King of Persia. Although
the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius recovered
it a few years later, in 641 the Arabs, under the general Amr ibn
al-As during the Muslim conquest of Egypt, captured it decisively after
a siege that lasted fourteen months. The city received no aid from Constantinople during
that time; Heraclius was dead and the new Emperor
The Library of Alexandria and its contents were destroyed in 642 during the Arab invasion.[4] Some deny this and claim that the library was destroyed much earlier, in 3rd century, due to civil war in the time of the Roman Emperor Aurelian.[5] The Lighthouse was destroyed by earthquakes in the 14th century,[6] and by 1700 the city was just a small town amidst the ruins.
Mohammed Ali, the Ottoman Governor of Egypt, began rebuilding the city around 1810, and by 1850, Alexandria had returned to something akin to its former glory. In July 1882 the city came under bombardment from British naval forces and was occupied (see Egypt under Muhammad Ali and his successors).
In July 1954, the city was a target of an Israeli bombing campaign that later became known as the Lavon Affair. Only a few months later, Alexandria's Manshia Square was the site of the famous, failed assassination attempt on the life of Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Mayors of Alexandria (since the implementation of the local-government act of 1960)[1] :
The Greek Alexandria was divided into three regions:
Two main streets, lined with colonnades and said to have been each about 60 metres (200 feet) wide, intersected in the centre of the city, close to the point where the Sema (or Soma) of Alexander (his Mausoleum) rose. This point is very near the present mosque of Nebi Daniel; and the line of the great East–West "Canopic" street, only slightly diverged from that of the modern Boulevard de Rosette. Traces of its pavement and canal have been found near the Rosetta Gate, but better remnants of streets and canals were exposed in 1899 by German excavators outside the east fortifications, which lie well within the area of the ancient city.
Alexandria consisted originally of little more than the island of Pharos, which was joined to the mainland by a mole nearly a mile long (1260 m) and called the Heptastadion ("seven stadia" — a stadium was a Greek unit of length measuring approximately 180 m). The end of this abutted on the land at the head of the present Grand Square, where the "Moon Gate" rose. All that now lies between that point and the modern "Ras Al Teen" quarter is built on the silt which gradually widened and obliterated this mole. The "Ras Al Teen" quarter represents all that is left of the island of Pharos, the site of the actual lighthouse having been weathered away by the sea. On the east of the mole was the Great Harbour, now an open bay; on the west lay the port of Eunostos, with its inner basin Kibotos, now vastly enlarged to form the modern harbour.
In Strabo's time, (latter half of 1st century BC) the principal buildings were as follows, enumerated as they were to be seen from a ship entering the Great Harbour.
The names of a few other public buildings on the mainland are known, but there is little information as to their actual position. None, however, are as famous as the building that stood on the eastern point of Pharos island. There, the The Great Lighthouse, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, reputed to be 138 meters (450 ft) high, was sited. The first Ptolemy began the project, and the second Ptolemy completed it, at a total cost of 800 talents. It took 12 years to complete and served as a prototype for all later lighthouses in the world. The light was produced by a furnace at the top and the tower was built mostly with solid blocks of limestone. The Pharos lighthouse was destroyed by an earthquake in the 14th century, making it the second longest surviving ancient wonder next to the Great Pyramid of Giza. A temple of Hephaestus also stood on Pharos at the head of the mole.
In the first century, the population of Alexandria contained over 180,000 adult male citizens (from a papyrus dated 32 CE), in addition to a large number of freedmen, women, children and slaves. Estimates of the total population range from 500,000 to over 1,000,000, making it one of the largest cities ever built before the Industrial Revolution and the largest pre-industrial city that was not an imperial capital.
Very little of the ancient city has survived into the present day. Much of the royal and civic quarters sank beneath the harbour due to earthquake subsidence, and the rest has been rebuilt upon in modern times.
"Pompey's Pillar" is the most well-known ancient monument still standing today. It is located on Alexandria's ancient acropolis — a modest hill located adjacent to the city's Arab cemetery — and was originally part of a temple colonnade. Including its pedestal, it is 30 m (99 ft) high; the shaft is of polished red granite, roughly three meters in diameter at the base, tapering to two and a half meters at the top. The structure was plundered and demolished in the 4th century when a bishop decreed that Paganism must be eradicated. "Pompey's Pillar" is a misnomer, as it has nothing to do with Pompey, having been erected in 293 for Diocletian, possibly in memory of the rebellion of Domitius Domitianus. Beneath the acropolis itself are the subterranean remains of the Serapeum, where the mysteries of the god Serapis were enacted, and whose carved wall niches are believed to have provided overflow storage space for the ancient Library.
Alexandria's catacombs, known as Kom al Sukkfa, are a short distance southwest of the pillar, consist of a multi-level labyrinth, reached via a large spiral staircase, and featuring dozens of chambers adorned with sculpted pillars, statues, and other syncretic Romano-Egyptian religious symbols, burial niches and sarcophagi, as well as a large Roman-style banquet room, where memorial meals were conducted by relatives of the deceased. The catacombs were long forgotten by the citizens until they were discovered by accident in the 1800s.
The most extensive ancient excavation currently being conducted in Alexandria is known as Kom al Dikka, and it has revealed the ancient city's well-preserved theatre, and the remains of its Roman-era baths.
Persistent efforts have been made to explore the antiquities of Alexandria. Encouragement and help have been given by the local Archaeological Society, and by many individuals, notably Greeks proud of a city which is one of the glories of their national history.
The past and present directors of the museum have been enabled from time to time to carry out systematic excavations whenever opportunity is offered; D. G. Hogarth made tentative researches on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1895; and a German expedition worked for two years (1898–1899). But two difficulties face the would-be excavator in Alexandria: lack of space for excavation and the underwater location of some areas of interest.
Since the great and growing modern city stands right over the ancient one, it is almost impossible to find any considerable space in which to dig, except at enormous cost. Also, the general subsidence of the coast has sunk the lower-lying parts of the ancient town under water. This underwater section, containing much of the most interesting sections of the Hellenistic city, including the palace-quarter, is still being extensively investigated by the French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio and his team [2] and [3]. It raised a noted head of Caesarion. These are even being opened up to tourists, to some controversy [4].
The spaces however, that are most open are the low grounds to northeast and southwest, where it is practically impossible to get below the Roman strata.
The most important results were those achieved by Dr. G. Botti, late director of the museum, in the neighbourhood of “Pompey's Pillar”, where there is a good deal of open ground. Here substructures of a large building or group of buildings have been exposed, which are perhaps part of the Serapeum. Nearby immense catacombs and columbaria have been opened which may have been appendages of the temple. These contain one very remarkable vault with curious painted reliefs, now lighted by electricity and shown to visitors.
The objects found in these researches are in the museum, the most notable being a great basalt bull, probably once an object of cult in the Serapeum. Other catacombs and tombs have been opened in Kom el-Shuqafa (Roman) and Ras et-Tin (painted).
The German excavation team found remains of a Ptolemaic colonnade and streets in the north-east of the city, but little else. Hogarth explored part of an immense brick structure under the mound of Kom el-Dika, which may have been part of the Paneum, the Mausolea or a Roman fortress.
The making of the new foreshore led to the dredging up of remains of the Patriarchal Church; and the foundations of modern buildings are seldom laid without some objects of antiquity being discovered. The wealth underground is doubtlessly immense; but despite all efforts, there is not much for antiquarians to see in Alexandria outside the museum and the neighbourhood of “Pompey's Pillar”. The native tomb-robbers, well-sinkers, dredgers and the like, however, come upon valuable objects from time to time, most of which find their way into private collections.
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Modern Alexandria is divided into 6 blocks:
There are also two cities under the jurisdiction of the Alexandria governarate:
←===Neighborhoods===
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The Royal Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest
It has been reasonably established that the Library, or parts of the collection, were destroyed by fire on a number of occasions (library fires were common and replacement of handwritten manuscripts was very difficult, expensive and time-consuming). To this day the details of the destruction (or destructions) remain a lively source of controversy. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was inaugurated in 2003 near the site of the old Library.
