Founding of Alexandria
No archaeology has ever been found to support the traditional accounts of Alexander the Great founding Alexandria (Egypt). This, despite the very many modern histories repeating the tradition as a proven fact - which raises a question as to what historians and archaeologists are actually doing.
More than 2,000 years after Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, archaeologists are discovering its fabled remains
By Andrew Lawler
Raising Alexandria - Smithsonian magazine April 2007
French archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur:
“I’m not interested in mysteries, but in evidence,” Empereur says later in his comfortable study lined with 19th-century prints. Wearing a yellow ascot and tweed jacket, he seems a literary figure from Forster’s day. But his Center for Alexandrian Studies, located in a drab modern high-rise, bustles with graduate students clacking on computers and diligently cataloging artifacts in the small laboratory.
You'd perhaps like to think that the writer of the above piece - and those who helped compile and publish it - know something, wouldn't you? That when they claim Alexandria was founded by Alexander and the archaeology for this is being discovered, they know this as a fact. Such is not the case.
Let us now look at the amazing work undersea of Franck Goddio, leader of a team of archaeologists studying Portus Magnus and associated sites in Alexandria.
When in time?
Alexandria was founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great. After the last Egyptian queen, Cleopatra VII, took her own life in 30 B.C., Egypt became nothing more than a Roman province. The royal quarters sank beneath the sea after a series of earthquakes and tidal waves. They had led to gradual subsidence in the 4th century A.D.
- Alexandria, Franck Goddio Society
Everybody seems to do this - Wikipedia: It was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great.
Now, do not misunderstand me, I am not claiming anything for either Alexandria or Alexander. Maybe he did found this city - I do not know. And neither does anyone else, which is my point.
What do we know of the ancient remains of this city? The archaeology has been studied for a long time:
Greek (Ptolemaic) Alexandria was divided into three regions:
The underwater section, containing many 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. It raised a noted head of Caesarion. These are being opened up to tourists, to some controversy. The spaces 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 artificially lit and open 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 al-Shoqqafa (Roman) and Ras al-Tiin (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 al-Dikka, which may have been part of the Paneum, the Mausolea, or a Roman fortress.
In Strabo’s time, (latter half of 1st century BCE) the principal buildings were as follows, enumerated as they were to be seen from a ship entering the Great Harbour.
Ptolemy II Philadelphus
He is the son of the founder of the Ptolemaic kingdom, Ptolemy I Soter and Berenice, and he ruled Egypt from 283 to 246 BCE.
Ptolemy's first wife, Arsinoë I, daughter of Lysimachus, was the mother of his legitimate children. After her repudiation he married his full sister Arsinoë II, the widow of Lysimachus.
We looked at these relationships in The Lysimachus Dynasty.
Ptolemy is recorded by Pliny the Elder as having sent an ambassador named Dionysius to the Mauryan court at Pataliputra in India:
"But [India] has been treated of by several other Greek writers who resided at the courts of Indian kings, such, for instance, as Megasthenes, and by Dionysius, who was sent thither by Philadelphus, expressly for the purpose: all of whom have enlarged upon the power and vast resources of these nations." Pliny the Elder, "The Natural History", Chap. 21
He is also mentioned in the Edicts of Ashoka as a recipient of the Buddhist proselytism of Ashoka, although no Western historical record of this event remain.
This the beginning of the East-West trade from Alexandria to Greco-India. In the Roman period tax on this trade financed the emperor. Contacts between the Alexandrian cities of Gandhara and Egypt carried the mythologies associated with trade goods and the philosophies of the Alexandrian School.
Ptolemy II laid the foundations of a world culture as well as those of this great city port. Both went on to develop over the centuries, transforming themselves and the Greco-Roman world of the Mediterranean.
The traditional tales of Alexander and Alexandria are now part of our cultural heritage, though - so far at least - its is not supported very much, if at all, by the archaeological record.
Note: I have asked a number of archaeologists, numismatists and museums to provide either data or advice on where I can examine data for the founding of Alexandria, and none replied.
More than 2,000 years after Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, archaeologists are discovering its fabled remains
By Andrew Lawler
Raising Alexandria - Smithsonian magazine April 2007
French archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur:
“I’m not interested in mysteries, but in evidence,” Empereur says later in his comfortable study lined with 19th-century prints. Wearing a yellow ascot and tweed jacket, he seems a literary figure from Forster’s day. But his Center for Alexandrian Studies, located in a drab modern high-rise, bustles with graduate students clacking on computers and diligently cataloging artifacts in the small laboratory.
You'd perhaps like to think that the writer of the above piece - and those who helped compile and publish it - know something, wouldn't you? That when they claim Alexandria was founded by Alexander and the archaeology for this is being discovered, they know this as a fact. Such is not the case.
Let us now look at the amazing work undersea of Franck Goddio, leader of a team of archaeologists studying Portus Magnus and associated sites in Alexandria.
When in time?
Alexandria was founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great. After the last Egyptian queen, Cleopatra VII, took her own life in 30 B.C., Egypt became nothing more than a Roman province. The royal quarters sank beneath the sea after a series of earthquakes and tidal waves. They had led to gradual subsidence in the 4th century A.D.
- Alexandria, Franck Goddio Society
Everybody seems to do this - Wikipedia: It was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great.
Now, do not misunderstand me, I am not claiming anything for either Alexandria or Alexander. Maybe he did found this city - I do not know. And neither does anyone else, which is my point.
What do we know of the ancient remains of this city? The archaeology has been studied for a long time:
Greek (Ptolemaic) Alexandria was divided into three regions:
- Brucheum: the Royal or Greek quarter, forming the most magnificent portion of the city. In Roman times Brucheum was enlarged by the addition of an official quarter, making four regions in all. The city was laid out as a grid of parallel streets, each of which had an attendant subterranean canal.
- The Jewish quarter: forming the northeast portion of the city.
- Rhakotis: The old city of Rhakotis that had been absorbed into Alexandria. It was occupied chiefly by Egyptians. (from Coptic Rakot? "Alexandria").
The underwater section, containing many 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. It raised a noted head of Caesarion. These are being opened up to tourists, to some controversy. The spaces 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 artificially lit and open 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 al-Shoqqafa (Roman) and Ras al-Tiin (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 al-Dikka, which may have been part of the Paneum, the Mausolea, or a Roman fortress.
In Strabo’s time, (latter half of 1st century BCE) the principal buildings were as follows, enumerated as they were to be seen from a ship entering the Great Harbour.
- 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 (the modern Pharillon) has almost entirely disappeared into the sea, together with the palaces, the “Private Port” and the island of Antirrhodus. There has been a land subsidence here, as throughout the northeast coast of Africa.
- The Great Theatre, on the modern Hospital Hill near the Ramleh station. This was used by Caesar as a fortress, where he stood a siege from the city mob after the battle of Pharsalus
- The Poseideion, or Temple of the Sea God, close to the Theatre
- The Timonium built by Mark Antony
- The Emporium (Exchange)
- The Apostases (Magazines)
- The Navalia (Docks), lying west of the Timonium, along the sea-front as far as the mole
- Behind the Emporium rose the Great Caesareum, by which stood the two great obelisks, each later known as “Cleopatra’s Needle,” and now removed to New York City and London. This temple became in time the Patriarchal Church, some remains of which have been discovered; but the actual Caesareum, so far as not eroded by the waves, lies under the houses lining the new sea-wall.
- The Gymnasium and the Palaestra are both inland, near the Boulevard de Rosette in the eastern half of the town; sites unknown.
- The Temple of Saturn; site unknown.
- The Mausolea of Alexander (Soma) and the Ptolemies in one ring-fence, near the point of intersection of the two main streets
- The Musaeum with its famous Library and theatre in the same region; site unknown.
- 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.
- We know the names of a few other public buildings on the mainland, but nothing as to their position.
- On the eastern point of the Pharos island stood the Great Lighthouse, one of the “Seven Wonders,” reputed to be 122 meters (400 feet) high. Tradition tells us that the second completed it, at a total cost of 800 talents. It is the prototype of all lighthouses in the world. The light was produced by a furnace at the top. It was built mostly with solid blocks of limestone. The Pharos lighthouse was destroyed by an earthquake.
- A temple of Hephaestus also stood on Pharos at the head of the mole. In the Augustan age the population of Alexandria was estimated at 300,000 free folk, in addition to an immense number of slaves.
Ptolemy II Philadelphus
He is the son of the founder of the Ptolemaic kingdom, Ptolemy I Soter and Berenice, and he ruled Egypt from 283 to 246 BCE.
Ptolemy's first wife, Arsinoë I, daughter of Lysimachus, was the mother of his legitimate children. After her repudiation he married his full sister Arsinoë II, the widow of Lysimachus.
We looked at these relationships in The Lysimachus Dynasty.
Ptolemy is recorded by Pliny the Elder as having sent an ambassador named Dionysius to the Mauryan court at Pataliputra in India:
"But [India] has been treated of by several other Greek writers who resided at the courts of Indian kings, such, for instance, as Megasthenes, and by Dionysius, who was sent thither by Philadelphus, expressly for the purpose: all of whom have enlarged upon the power and vast resources of these nations." Pliny the Elder, "The Natural History", Chap. 21
He is also mentioned in the Edicts of Ashoka as a recipient of the Buddhist proselytism of Ashoka, although no Western historical record of this event remain.
This the beginning of the East-West trade from Alexandria to Greco-India. In the Roman period tax on this trade financed the emperor. Contacts between the Alexandrian cities of Gandhara and Egypt carried the mythologies associated with trade goods and the philosophies of the Alexandrian School.
Ptolemy II laid the foundations of a world culture as well as those of this great city port. Both went on to develop over the centuries, transforming themselves and the Greco-Roman world of the Mediterranean.
The traditional tales of Alexander and Alexandria are now part of our cultural heritage, though - so far at least - its is not supported very much, if at all, by the archaeological record.
Note: I have asked a number of archaeologists, numismatists and museums to provide either data or advice on where I can examine data for the founding of Alexandria, and none replied.