The famous city of Alexandria is built on the strip of land which separates the Mediterranean from Lake Mareotis and on a T-shaped peninsula which forms harbors both east and west. The stem of the "T" was originally a mole (breakwater), leading to the island of Pharos which formed the cross-piece. Founded personally by Alexander the Great in 331 BC when he took Egypt from the Persians, Alexandria was developed principally by the first two Ptolemies, who made it Egypt's great port on the Mediterranean.

Designed by Alexander's personal architect, Dinocrates, the city incorporated the best in Hellenic planning and architecture. Within a century of its founding, its splendours rivaled anything known in the ancient world.

The Greek Alexandria was divided into three regions: (a) The Jews' quarter, forming the northeast portion of the city near the western Gate of the Sun; the Rhacotis District, on the west, occupied chiefly by Egyptians and near the Gate of the Moon; and the Brucheum, the Royal or Greek quarter, forming the most magnificent portion of the city and situated close to the royal palaces. In Roman times, the Brucheum was enlarged by the addition of an official quarter, making up four regions in all. The city was laid out as a grid of parallel streets, each of which had an attendant subterranean canal for drainage.

Alexandria lies north-west of the Nile delta and stretches along a narrow land strip between the Mediterranean Sea and Lake Mareotis, site of the city's fresh water. From the first, Alexandrian Greeks assumed the leadership of the city-state, remained its richest and most prestigious citizens, followed by a large Jewish community and the native Egyptians who largely worked under the Greek leaders. In the last dynastic struggles of the Ptolemies, many of the Greek representative structures, such as the boule and ekklesia, apparently were minimized or removed.

It was to Alexandria that Julius Caesar came after the Battle of Pharsalus for his fateful meeting with the last of the Ptolemies, Queen Cleopatra - Alexandria where his successor in her affections, Marc Antony, made the "Donations of Alexandria" which would have made their children kings and queens of the East. It was Octavian Caesar who put a stop to an independent Romano-Egyptian world in the east, and took Egypt firmly under Rome's control as a province famous for its grain and gold.

When Alexandria came under Roman rule, the citizens retained most of their existing rights, although fuller citizen participation would wait until 200 AD, when the Emperor Septimus Severus (himself an African) granted the citizens, once again, a representative boule. In the meantime, Alexandria flourished as the rest of Egypt declined. Its citizens alone could win Roman citizenship. With over 500,000 citizens, Alexandria was the second-greatest city of the Roman world, after Rome itself. It was unquestionably the greatest port on the Mediterranean, straddling the great trade routes between Indian and Rome, famous for its luxury goods, ivory, gold, silks, gems, and fine manufactured goods. Beautiful public and private buildings continued to be erected and arts, crafts, and intellectual dispute flourished. The great Library at Alexandria, which contained the greatest wealth of learning from the entire ancient world, was a beacon for scholars, scientists, physicians, and scholars world-wide. Alexandria became famous for the manufacture of exquisite glassware and for highly competitive medical research.

By the third century A.D., the See of St. Mark in a Christian Alexandria became the site of a revitalized Christian Romano-Egyptian culture which continued its intellectual superiority until long after the fall of the Roman west.

Unlike almost all ancient cities, Alexandria was planned, designed and built within a century and thus its broad, open avenues and grid-like city planning made it unique in the ancient world. Two main streets, lined with colonnades and said to have been each about 60 meters (200 feet) wide, intersected in the centre of the city, close to the point where rose the great Sema (or Soma) of Alexander, the glittering tomb built to house his remains. For centuries, his body lay in state in a catafalgue of solid gold - later, the Ptolemies allegedly melted down the gold and replaced the coffin with one of cut crystal, permitting Romans like Julius Caesar and Pompey to gaze upon the preserved body of the conquerer even more famous than they. The Heptastadion (seven stades long) was a marching walkway built to connect the Island of the great Pharos - Alexandria's world-famous lighthouse - with the city itself.

Farther off, lay the Palace complex (now almost entirely under water, having sunk late in the Roman period) where the Ptolemies had their extraordinary walled living quarters and temples. During the long centuries of Roman peace, Alexandria - peculiarly built in a long strip between the Mediterranean and the waters of its Lake - remained defensible.

The Roman City (30 BC - AD 641)

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:

1. The Royal Palaces, filling the northeast angle of the town and occupying the promontory of Lochias, which shut in the Great Harbour on the east. Lochias has almost entirely disappeared into the sea, together with the palaces, the "Private Port" and the island of Antirrhodus.

2. The Great Theater, used by Caesar as a fortress, where he stood a siege from the city mob after the battle of Pharsalus

3. The Poseideion, or Temple of the Sea God, close to the Theatre known as "The Timonium" built by Mark Antony;

4. The Emporium (Exchange), the great trading market;

5. The Navalia (Docks), lying west of the Timonium, along the sea-front as far as the mole;

6. Behind the Emporium rose the Great Caesareum, by which stood the two great obelisks, each later known as "Cleopatra's Needle," This temple became, in time, the Patriarchal Church of Alexandria;

7. The Gymnasium and the Palaestra are both located inland, in the eastern half of the town; they have never been rediscovered;

8. The Temple of Saturn; site unknown.

9. The Mausoleum of Alexander (Soma) and the Ptolemies in one ring-fence, near the point of intersection of the two main streets of the city;

10. The Museum or Mouseion with its Library and theatre in the same region; site unknown.

11. The Serapeum, the most famous of all Alexandrian temples. Strabo tells us that this stood in the west of the city; and recent discoveries go far to place it near "Pompey's Pillar" which, however, was an independent monument erected to commemorate Diocletian's siege of the city.

There were not only Greeks and Italians, but also Syrians, Libyans, Cilicians and yet others from farther countries - Ethiopians, Arabs, as well as Bactrians, Scythians, Persians, and a few Indians. Dion Chrysostum the Orator held world-famous lectures at the Great Theatre.

By the time the Romans conquered Egypt, Alexandria had already attracted immigrants from the Mediterranean and beyond. There was the Egyptian community, centered around the old site of Rhakotis, the Greek community downtown, and the Jewish community occupying the eastern districts near the Gate of the Sun.

Octavian, the new Roman Emperor, having had bitter memories about Alexandria, Cleopatra, and Mark Antony, founded a new town, Nicopolis, just east of Alexandria, but it was eventually absorbed into the great city itself. Higher taxes were imposed, may be as a sort of "punishment" to the Egyptians, and were collected by the local appointee who served as the regional ruler of the new Roman province. Octavian's successors were less harsh and more appreciative. Matters improved further when the Red Sea Canal was recut to link the Nile to the Red Sea, serving the purpose of the modern Suez Canal.

During the early rule of the Romans in Egypt, Christianity became an important influence in this most polyglot of cities. The new religion was allegedly introduced into Alexandria by St. Mark, who was martyred in AD 62 for protesting against the worship of Serapis in Alexandria. Early Christian centers, such as the oratory of Saint-Mark, and, later, the Catechetical School, were among the first of their kind in the world. The already turbulent people of Alexandria - famous for their ability to riot at the drop of a toga - now broke into Christian, anti-Christian, and anti-Jewish factions. When, in 312 AD, the Emperor Constantine began moving to recognize Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, Alexandria was ready for the change, as one of the oldest Christian capitals.

Towards the end of the fourth century, events took a tragic turn with conflicts growing, again, between the Christian community and the Pagans - the Catechetical School and the Mouseion. In AD 389, the Temple of Serapis at Canopus fell. Sentiments reached a peak during the eventful year of AD 391, when the Roman Emperor Theodosius issued a decree which authorized the destruction of the Temple of Serapis at Alexandria, the last refuge of the Pagans and home of the Mouseion. Fourteen years later, the famous female Neo-Platonist mathematician, Hyptaia, the last person known known to have taught at the world-famous Mouseion, was torn apart by an Alexandrian mob in riots marking the end of Paganism in Alexandria. The mob has also been blamed for the destruction of the Great Library, encouraged by Christian monks who loathed its collection of Pagan knowledge.

Most of the religious and architectural imagery used in the building of the great city was a creative amalgamation of Graeco-Roman architecture with artistic touches deriving from Egypt's long and sensuous visual past. Cleopatra VI was shown both as a Greek queen and in the traditional Egyptian sculptural styles of the pharoahs.

To learn more, read about Roman Alexandria and the Library of Alexandria

The Articles of Alexandria:

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