PART I.

HISTORY.

SECTION I.

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GRECO-EGYPTIAN PERIOD.

THE LAND AND THE WATERS.

The situation of Alexandria is most curious. To understand it we must go back many thousand years.

Ages ago, before there was civilization in Egypt, or the delta of the Nile had been formed, the whole of the country as far south as Cairo lay under the sea. The shores of this sea were a limestone desert. The coastline was smooth as a rule, but at the north-west corner an extraordinary spur jutted out from the main mass. It was not more than a mile wide, but many miles long. Its base is not far from the modern Bahig. Alexandria is built half-way down it, and its tip is the headland of Aboukir. On each side of it there used to be deep salt water.

Centuries passed, and the Nile, issuing out of his crack above Cairo, kept carrying down the muds of Upper Egypt, and dropping them as soon as his current slackened. In the north-west corner they were arrested by this spur, and began to silt up against it. It was a shelter not only from the outer sea, but from the prevalent wind. Alluvial land appeared; the huge shallow lake of Mariout was formed; and the current of the Nile, unable to escape through the limestone barrier, rounded the headland of Aboukir, and entered the outer sea by what was known in historical times as the “Canopic” Mouth.

This explains one characteristic of Alexandrian scenery—the long narrow ridge edged on the north by the sea and on the south by a lake and flat fields. But it does not explain why Alexandria has a harbour.

To the north of the spur, and more or less parallel to it, runs a second limestone range. It is much shorter than the spur and much lower, being often below the surface of the sea in the form of reefs. It seems unimportant. But without it there would have been no harbour (and consequently no town), because it breaks the force of the waves. Starting at Agame it continues as a series of rocks across the entrance of the modern harbour. Then it reemerges to form the hammer-headed promontory of Ras-el-Tin, disappears into a second series of rocks that close the entrance of the Eastern Harbour, and makes its final appearance at the promontory of Silsileh, after which it rejoins the big spur.

Such are the main features of the situation; a limestone ridge, with harbours on one side of it, and alluvial country on the other. It is a situation unique in Egypt, and the Alexandrians have never been truly Egyptian.

BEST SURVEY POINTS ON RIDGE ARE:

QUARRIES BEYOND MEX: p. 171 HILL OF ABOU EL NAWATIR: p. 165 MONTAZAH: p. 175 HEADLAND OF ABOUKIR: p. 182

PHAROS, RHAKOTIS, CANOPUS.

Who first settled on this remarkable stretch of coast? There seem to have been three early centres.

(i). Homer (Odyssey, Book iv) says:—

“There is an island in the surging sea, which they call Pharos, lying off Egypt. It has a harbour with good anchorage, and hence they put out to sea after drawing water.”

Homer’s island is now the promontory of Ras-el-Tin; the intervening channel has silted up. There are no traces of any early settlement on its soil, but in the sea to its north and west the masonry of a prehistoric harbour has been found. Homer goes on to tell how Menelaus was becalmed on Pharos as he returned from Troy, and how he could not get away until he had entrapped Proteus, the divine king of the island, and exacted a favourable wind. A similar legend has been found in an ancient Egyptian papyrus. There the King is called the “Prouti” or “Pharaoh”. “Prouti” is probably the original of Homer’s “Proteus,” “Pharaoh” of his “Pharos.” It is significant that our first glimpse of the coast should be through the eyes of a Greek sailor.

(ii). But our historical survey must begin with Rhakotis. Rhakotis was a small Egyptian town built on the rise where “Pompey’s Pillar” stands now, and it existed as long ago as 1,300 B.C., for statues of that time have been found here. The people were coast guards and goat herds. Their chief god was Osiris. Rhakotis was never important in itself. But it is important as an element in the great Greek city that was built up round it. It was a little lump of Egypt. Compare it to the Arab villages and slums that have been embedded in the scheme of the modern town—to Mazarita or to Kom-el-Dik. Rhakotis was like one of these. The native and conservative element naturally rallied to it, and it became the site for Alexandria’s great religious effort—the cult of Serapis.

(iii). At the tip of the limestone ridge, where the Nile once entered the sea, was another early settlement. It also appears in Greek legend. In historical times, it was known as Canopus.

RAS-EL-TIN (Homer’s Pharos): p. 129 PREHISTORIC HARBOUR: p. 130 POMPEY’S PILLAR (Rhakotis): p. 144 CANOPUS: p. 180

ALEXANDER THE GREAT (B.C. 331).

Few cities have made so magnificent an entry into history as Alexandria. She was founded by Alexander the Great.

When he arrived here he was only twenty-five years old. His career must be sketched. He was a Macedonian and had begun by destroying the city-civilization of ancient Greece. But he did not hate the Greeks, no, he admired them immensely and desired to be treated as if he was one, and his next exploit was to lead a crusade against Greece’s traditional enemy, Persia, and to defeat her in two tremendous battles, one at the Dardanelles and one in Asia Minor. As soon as he conquered Syria, Egypt fell into his hands, and fell willingly, for she too hated the Persians. He went to Memphis (near modern Cairo). Then he descended the Nile to the coast, and ordered his architect Dinocrates to build round the nucleus of Rhakotis a magnificent Greek city. This was not mere idealism on his part, or rather idealism was happily combined with utility. He needed a capital for his new Egyptian kingdom, and to link it with Macedonia that capital had to be on the coast. Here was the very place—a splendid harbour, a perfect climate, fresh water, limestone quarries, and easy access to the Nile. Here he would perpetuate all that was best in Hellenism, and would create a metropolis for that greater Greece that should consist not of city-states but of kingdoms, and should include the whole inhabited world.

Alexandria was founded.

Having given his orders, the young man hurried on. He never saw a single building rise. His next care was a visit to the temple of Ammon in the Siwan Oasis, where the priest saluted him as a god, and henceforward his Greek sympathies declined. He became an Oriental, a cosmopolitan almost, and though he fought Persia again, it was in a new spirit. He wanted to harmonise the world now, not to Hellenise it, and must have looked back on Alexandria as a creation of his immaturity. But he was after all to return to her. Eight years later, having conquered Persia, he died, and his body, after some vicissitudes, was brought to Memphis for burial. The High Priest refused to receive it there. “Do not settle him here,” he cried, “but at the city he has built at Rhakotis, for wherever this body must lie the city will be uneasy, disturbed with wars and battles.” So he descended the Nile again, wrapped in gold and enclosed in a coffin of glass, and he was buried at the centre of Alexandria, by her great cross roads, to be her civic hero and tutelary god.

COIN OF ALEXANDER: Museum, Room 3. STATUES OF HIM: Museum, Rooms 12 and 16. HIS TOMB (Soma): p. 105 TOMBSTONE OF MACEDONIAN OFFICER: Museum, Room 20.

THE FOUNDATION PLAN.

(_See Map of Ancient City p._ 98).

Before dissecting Alexander’s plan we must remember three differences in the configuration of the soil as it existed in his day.

(i). As already pointed out, Ras-el-Tin was then an island. He thought of building here, but rejected the site as too cramped. A shrine to his dead friend Hephaestion rose here, that was all.

(ii). Lake Mariout was much deeper then than now, and directly connected with the Nile. Consequently it was almost as important a water-way as the sea, and a lake harbour was an integral part of the plan.

(iii). There was then through water-connection between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The ancient Egyptians had cut a canal from the Nile at Memphis down to the salt lakes that begin by the modern Ismailia. Thus Alexandria stood in the position of Port Said to-day; a maritime gateway to India and the remoter east.

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The city was oblong, and filled up the strip between the Lake and the sea; she was laid out in rigidly straight lines. Her main street (the “Canopic”) still exists in part as the Rue Rosette. It ran almost due east and west—a bad direction because it was cut off from the cool north wind that is the real tutelary god of Alexandria, but, owing to the site, nothing else could be contrived. Westward it terminated in the sea; eastward it proceeded to Canopus (Aboukir). It was the natural highway along the limestone spur, and no doubt existed long before Alexander came.

Crossing the Canopic Street, and following the line of the present Rue Nebi Daniel, was the second main artery, the street of the Soma. It started at the Lake Harbour and ran northward to the sea. Where it intersected the Canopic Street stood the Soma, or burial place of Alexander—close to the present Mosque. Parallel to these two streets ran others, dividing the city into blocks of an American regularity. It could not have been picturesque, but the Greeks did not desire picturesqueness. They liked to lay their towns out evenly—Rhodes and Halicarnassus had just been laid out on the same lines—and the only natural feature they cared to utilise was the sea. The blocks were labelled according to the letters of the Greek alphabet.

Of the sea front magnificent use was to be made. Only one feature shall be mentioned here: the dyke Heptastadion (seven stades long) which was built to connect the island of Pharos and the mainland. It performed two functions; it enlarged the city area, and it broke the force of the currents and created a double harbour—the Great Harbour to the east and the Eunostos (“Safe Return”) to the west. In the Arab period the Heptastadion silted up and became the neck of land that leads to Ras-el-Tin.

The course of the walls is uncertain. Perhaps their eastern course was from the promontory of Silsileh to the lake, and their western from the modern Gabbari to the lake. Their foundations were accompanied by a portent of the usual type. There was not enough chalk to mark the outlines, so meal had to be substituted, and a number of birds flew out of the lake and ate it all up. The Greeks interpreted the portent satisfactorily: to the Egyptians it might well have symbolised the advent of the hungry foreigner. We are not told what was substituted for the meal, but somehow or other the walls were built and were studded at frequent intervals with towers.

LAKE MARIOUT: p. 190 RUE ROSETTE, (Canopic Street): p. 104 RUE NEBI DANIEL (Street of Soma): p. 104

THE FIRST THREE PTOLEMIES.

PTOLEMY I., SOTER, 323-285. PTOLEMY II., PHILADELPHUS, 285-247. PTOLEMY III., EUERGETES, 247-222.

(_See Genealogical Tree p._ 12).

When Alexander died the empire was divided among his generals, who ruled for a little in the name of his half-brother or of his son, but who soon proclaimed themselves as independent kings. Egypt fell to the ablest and most discreet of these generals, a Macedonian named Ptolemy. Ptolemy was no soaring idealist.

GENEALOGICAL TREE OF THE PTOLEMIES

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PTOLEMY I Satrap of Egypt, 323 King (Soter), 304