ALEXANDRIA: A TRIBUTE TO ALEXANDER THE GREAT

With Alexander the Great in Alexandria, Egypt

Today is a very special date. The trip along the Nile River has a very special stop in Alexandria the ancient city which was witness of the most splendorous ages. Symbol of culture and knowledge, Alexandria is a modern city nowadays which tries to find the ruins of its wonderful past.

Claire Fontaine is very interested in the history of the Lighthouse of Alexandria while Tina Picotes wants to visit the Pompey's Pillar. Joseph de Ca'th Lon loves Archaeology and he wants to dive in the Mediterranean Sea to contemplate the ancient ruins of Alexandria and discover more things about the Cleopatra's Palace.

Before arriving to the Egyptian city, The Grandma has studied two new lessons of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 11 & 12). She is very happy with this visit because she loves the Ancient Library of Alexandria and she considers a great privilege to visit this place which once was considered the capital of knowledge and learning. She also wants to visit the Saint George's Church in Sporting.

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Alexandria is the second-largest city in Egypt and a major economic centre, extending about 32 km along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country. Its low elevation on the Nile delta makes it highly vulnerable to rising sea levels.

Tina Picotes at the Pompey's Pillar, Alexandria

Alexandria was founded around a small, ancient Egyptian town c.332 BC by Alexander the Great.

It became an important center of Hellenistic civilization and remained the capital of Ptolemaic (Greek) Egypt and Roman and Byzantine Egypt for almost 1,000 years, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641, when a new capital was founded at Fustat, later absorbed into Cairo. Hellenistic Alexandria was best known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (Pharos), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its Great Library, the largest in the ancient world; now replaced by a modern one; and the Necropolis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages. 

Alexandria was at one time the second most powerful city of the ancient Mediterranean region, after Rome. Ongoing maritime archaeology in the harbor of Alexandria, which began in 1994, is revealing details of Alexandria both before the arrival of Alexander, when a city named Rhacotis existed there, and during the Ptolemaic dynasty.

More information: Ancient

From the late 18th century, Alexandria became a major center of the international shipping industry and one of the most important trading centers in the world, because it profited from the easy overland connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, and the trade in Egyptian cotton.

The Grandma at Stanley Bridge, Alexandria

Alexandria is believed to have been founded by Alexander the Great in April 332 BC. Alexander's chief architect for the project was Dinocrates. Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis as a Hellenistic center in Egypt, and to be the link between Greece and the rich Nile valley. Although it has long been believed only a small village there, recent radiocarbon dating of seashell fragments and lead contamination show significant human activity at the location for two millennia preceding Alexandria's founding .

Alexandria was the intellectual and cultural center of the ancient world for some time. The city and its museum attracted many of the greatest scholars, including Greeks, Jews and Syrians. The city was later plundered and lost its significance.

In the early Christian Church, the city was the center of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which was one of the major centers of early Christianity in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the modern world, the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria both lay claim to this ancient heritage.

More information: UNESCO

Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism, but was also home to the largest urban Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek version of the Tanakh, was produced there. The early Ptolemies kept it in order and fostered the development of its museum into the leading Hellenistic center of learning, Library of Alexandria, but were careful to maintain the distinction of its population's three largest ethnicities: Greek, Jewish, and Egyptian.

Alexandria underwater

By the time of Augustus, the city walls encompassed an area of 5.34 sq.kilometres, and the total population in Roman times was around 500-600,000.

In AD 115, large parts of Alexandria were destroyed during the Kitos War, which gave Hadrian and his architect, Decriannus, an opportunity to rebuild it. In 215, 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. On 21 July 365, Alexandria was devastated by a tsunami, 365 Crete earthquake, an event annually commemorated years later as a day of horror.

Due to the constant presence of war in Alexandria in ancient times, 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 in AD 365, and the rest has been built over in modern times.

Pompey's Pillar, a Roman triumphal column, is one of the best-known ancient monuments still standing in Alexandria 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.

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Alexandria's catacombs, known as Kom El Shoqafa, 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 in 1900.

The Grandma and Claire visit the Qaetbay Castle

Temple of Taposiris Magna was built in the Ptolemy era and dedicated to Osiris, which finished the construction of Alexandria. It is located in Abusir, the western suburb of Alexandria in Borg el Arab city. Only the outer wall and the pylons remain from the temple. There is evidence to prove that sacred animals were worshiped there. 

Archaeologists found an animal necropolis near the temple. Remains of a Christian church show that the temple was used as a church in later centuries. Also found in the same area are remains of public baths built by the emperor Justinian, a seawall, quays and a bridge. Near the beach side of the area, there are the remains of a tower built by Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The tower was an exact scale replica of the destroyed Alexandrine Pharos Lighthouse.

The most famous mosque in Alexandria is El-Mursi Abul Abbas Mosque in Bahary. Other notable mosques in the city include Ali ibn Abi Talib mosque in Somouha, Bilal mosque, al-Gamaa al-Bahari in Mandara, Hatem mosque in Somouha, Hoda el-Islam mosque in Sidi Bishr, al-Mowasah mosque in Hadara, Sharq al-Madina mosque in Miami, al-Shohadaa mosque in Mostafa Kamel, Al Qa'ed Ibrahim Mosque, Yehia mosque in Zizinia, Sidi Gaber mosque in Sidi Gaber, and Sultan mosque. Alexandria is the base of the Salafi movements in Egypt.

More information: Lonely Planet

After Rome and Constantinople, Alexandria was considered the third-most important seat of Christianity in the world. The Pope of Alexandria was second only to the bishop of Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire until 430. The Church of Alexandria had jurisdiction over most of the continent of Africa. After the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, the Church of Alexandria was split between the Miaphysites and the Melkites. The Miaphysites went on to constitute what is known today as the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. The Melkites went on to constitute what is known today as the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria.

Saint George's Church in Sporting

Today, the Patriarchal seat of the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church is Saint Mark Cathedral in Ramleh. The most important Coptic Orthodox churches in Alexandria include Pope Cyril I Church in Cleopatra, Saint George's Church in Sporting, Saint Mark & Pope Peter I Church in Sidi Bishr, Saint Mary Church in Assafra, Saint Mary Church in Gianaclis, Saint Mina Church in Fleming, Saint Mina Church in Mandara and Saint Takla Haymanot's Church in Ibrahimeya.

Alexandria's once-flourishing Jewish community declined rapidly following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, after which negative reactions towards Zionism among Egyptians led to Jewish residents in the city, and elsewhere in Egypt, being perceived as Zionist collaborators. Most Jewish residents of Egypt fled to the newly established Israel, France, Brazil and other countries in the 1950s and 1960s. The community once numbered 50,000 but is now estimated at below 50. The most important synagogue in Alexandria is the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue.

More information: The Planet D

The Royal Library of Alexandria or Ancient Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. It was dedicated to the Muses, the nine goddesses of the arts. It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a major center of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, with collections of works, lecture halls, meeting rooms, and gardens.  

Alexandria was considered the capital of knowledge and learning, in part because of the Great Library. The library was part of a larger research institution called the Musaeum of Alexandria, where many of the most famous thinkers of the ancient world studied.

The library was created by Ptolemy I Soter, who was a Macedonian general and the successor of Alexander the Great. Most of the books were kept as papyrus scrolls. It is unknown precisely how many such scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height.

Claire at The Great Mosque of Muhammad Ali Pasha

Arguably, this library is most famous for having been burned down resulting in the loss of many scrolls and books; its destruction has become a symbol for the loss of cultural knowledge. Sources differ on who was responsible for its destruction and when it occurred. The library may in truth have suffered several fires over many years. 

In addition to fires, at least one earthquake damaged the city and the library during this time. Possible occasions for the partial or complete destruction of the Library of Alexandria include a fire set by the army of Julius Caesar in 48 BC and an attack by Aurelian in the 270s AD.

After the main library was destroyed, scholars used a daughter library in a temple known as the Serapeum of Alexandria, located in another part of the city. According to Socrates of Constantinople, Coptic Pope Theophilus destroyed the Serapeum in AD 391, although it is not certain what it contained or if it contained any significant fraction of the documents that were in the main library.

More information: Ancient History

The real tragedy of the Library 

at Alexandria was not 

that the incendiaries burned immensely, 

but that they had neither the leisure

nor the taste to discriminate.

Arthur Quiller-Couch