The Scribes from Alexandria :: Historical Background

Ancient Alexandria

Some interesting facts about Alexandria:

I. FOUNDED ON A DREAM - About 330 years before the birth of Christ, the Greek poet Homer appeared to Alexander the Great in a dream and told him to build a city at a spot called Rhakotis near an island called Pharos. With its solid rocky ground and sheltered harbour formed by the offshore island, it was the perfect place for a port.

II. PLANNED WITH FLOUR - When Alexander’s architect Dinocrates was marking out the street grid, he ran out of chalk and had to use flour drizzled from a bag. A myriad of birds rose up from a nearby freshwater lake – Lake Mareotis – and they began to devour the ‘streets’. Alexander was very upset, as this seemed to be a very bad omen. However, his soothsayers assured him that this was a good omen. Many people from many nations would flock to Alexandria to be nourished. They were right. Alexandria was the world trade centre in the centuries around the birth of Christ. As one ancient writer said: ‘Alexandria is situated at the cross-roads of the world.’

III. SUMMER BREEZE - Dinocrates laid out the street grid so that it perfectly caught the cooling northwesterly summer sea breeze, the Etesian Winds. This, combined with its coastal location, made Alexandria the most temperate place in all of Egypt. Alexandria had at least five saltwater harbours and at least one freshwater harbour in Lake Mareotis.

IV. ALPHABET DISTRICTS - We know that Alexandria had several quarters named after the first few letters of the Greek alphabet. However we only know the exact location of one of these. The Delta Quarter, where most of Alexandria’s million Jews lived, was near the Canopic Gate to the east of town. (I have made a guess at the positions of the other districts on the map below)

V. MASSIVE STREETS - The two main streets of Alexandria were over one hundred feet wide. The side streets were fifty feet wide. No street in Rome or Athens was as broad as Alexandria’s side-streets! The streets were lined with obelisks and sphinxes and arcades with expensive shops.

VI. THE PHAROS - Alexandria boasted one of the Seven Sights of the world, the great lighthouse. It was called the pharos, after the island of Pharos, on which it stood. To this day, the word for lighthouse in French is le phare. The lighthouse of Alexandria was between 400 and 600 feet high, and nobody knows exactly how it worked. Some coins show a roof or even a statue of Jupiter on top, but if there was a roof then how could a fire be kept burning night and day?

VII. MUSEUM - The Museum was a kind of University and research centre dedicated to the Muses, the twelve Greek goddesses who presided over the arts. We get our word ‘museum’ from the famous Alexandrian institution. There were lectures, zoological and botanical gardens, baths and refectories. The Museum was one of the few places where a doctor could examine a dead body.

VIII. HIDDEN LIBRARY - The great Library of Alexandria was probably not a separate building but rather a huge collection of scrolls and codices located throughout the Museum, the Serapeum ‘annex’, and warehouses on the docks. Contrary to myth, Julius Caesar did not burn down the Library. He probably only accidentally burned a few thousand scrolls in warehouses by the harbour. They were duplicates anyway.

IX. THE SERAPEUM - The Serapeum was a shrine to a made-up Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis. Pompey’s Pillar, one of the few remaining bits of ancient Alexandria, was probably just one of many similar pillars of the Serapeum. The Serapeum held a huge number of scrolls and codices, making it a king of massive annex to the Library at the Museum. The Serapeum was considered by ancient writers to be one of the most magnificent buildings in the world.

X. ALEXANDER’S BODY - The body of Alexander the Great was kept in a glass or rock crystal sarcophagus in a magnificent building called the Soma, which literally means ‘The Body’. When Octavian Augustus was in Alexandria he ordered men to remove the glass lid so that he could have a better look. He touched Alexander’s nose… and broke it! Today, nobody knows where Alexander’s sarcophagus and body lie. It is probably still somewhere below the modern city of Alexandria.

XI. CAESARIUM - The Caesarium was another magnificent building. Originally begun by Cleopatra as a monument to her lover Mark Anthony, it was finished by Anthony’s enemy, Octavian Augustus, who then dedicated it to himself. One ancient writer says that it was ‘wonderfully high and large, full of precious paintings and statues, and beautiful all over with gold and silver…’ Two massive obelisks (of Tuthmosis III) had been shipped up the Nile to stand on either side of it. Today, one of these obelisks stands beside the banks of the Thames in London and the other is in New York.

XII. CATHEDRAL-SIZE CISTERNS - Underneath the city of Alexandria are hundreds of cathedral-size cisterns, with columns, walkways and vaults. These held the fresh water that flooded in from the Canopic branch of the Nile every summer when the great river flooded. Most modern Alexandrians know nothing about the cisterns beneath their feet.

below: Alexandria as it might have looked in AD 81
ancient alexandria