تويت
A Brief Tour to Ancient Egypt........Alexandria
Alexandria
This is the perfect harbor of Ancient Egypt.
There, on the little island of Pharos, when Ancient Egypt was very old, Sostratus built his great lighthouse of white marble, five hundred feet high, as a beacon to all ancient mariners of the Mediterranean, and as One of the seven wonders of the world.
Time and the nagging waters have washed it away, but a new lighthouse has taken its place, and guides the steamer through the rocks to the quays of Alexandria.
Here that astonishing boy-statesman, Alexander, founded in Ancient Egypt the subtle, polyglot metropolis that was to inherit the culture of Egypt, Palestine and Greece. Alexandria.
In this harbor Caesar received without gladness the severed head of Pompey.
As we move through the city of Ancient Egypt, Alexandria, glimpses come of unpaved alleys and streets, heat waves dancing in the air, workingmen, black-garbed women bearing burdens sturdily, white-robed and turbaned Muslims of regal dignity, and in the distance spacious squares and shining palaces, perhaps as fair as those that the Ptolemies built when Alexandria was the meeting-place of the world.
Then suddenly it is open country, and the Ancient Egypt city of Alexandria recedes into the horizon of the fertile Delta that green triangle which looks on the map like the leaves of a lofty palm-tree held up on the slender stalk of the Nile.
Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt
Alexandria (Arabic: الإسكندرية al-Iskandariyya; Coptic: Rakotə; Greek: Ἀλεξάνδρεια; Egyptian Arabic: اسكندريه Eskendereyya), with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports. Alexandria is also an important tourist resort.
Alexandria extends about 32 km (20 miles) along the coast of the Mediterranean sea in north-central Egypt. It is home to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the new Library of Alexandria), and is an important industrial center because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez, another city in Egypt.
Alexandria was also an important trading post between Europe and Asia, because it profited from the easy overland connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.
In ancient times, Alexandria was one of the most famous cities in the world. It was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 334 BC by Alexander the Great.
It remained Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 AD when a new capital was founded at Fustat (Fustat was later absorbed into Cairo).
Alexandria was known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), the Library of Alexandria (the largest library in the ancient world) and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa (one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages).
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 Rhakotis existed there, and during the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Alexandria Egypt Centeral
Climate Alexandria has a Mediterranean climate: mild rainy winters and hot dry summers. January and February are the coldest months with high temperatures ranging from 12°C (53°F) to 18°C (64°F). Alexandria experience violent storms, rain and sometimes hail. July and August are the hottest months of the year with a monthly average high temperature of 31°C (87°F). While autumn and spring are the ideal time to visit Alexandria with temperatures averaging 22°C (71°F).
Alexandria Egypt at Night
History
Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC as Ἀλεξάνδρεια (Alexándreia). 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.
An Egyptian townlet, Rhakotis, already existed on the shore and was a resort filled with fishermen and pirates. A few months after the foundation, Alexander left Egypt for the East and never returned to his city.
After Alexander departed, his viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the expansion. Following a struggle with the other successors of Alexander, his general Ptolemy succeeded in bringing Alexander's body to Alexandria.
Though Cleomenes was mainly in charge of seeing to Alexandria's continuous development, the Heptastadion and the mainland quarters seem to have been primarily Ptolemaic work.
Inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the center of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a generation to be larger than Carthage.
In a century, Alexandria had become the largest city in the world and for some centuries more, was second only to Rome. It became the main Greek city of Egypt, with an extraordinary mix of Greeks from many cities and backgrounds.
Alexandria, sphinx made of pink granite, Ptolemaic.Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism but was also home to the largest Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, 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.
From this division arose much of the later turbulence, which began to manifest itself under Ptolemy Philopater who reigned from 221–204 BC. The reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon from 144–116 BC was marked by purges and civil warfare.
The city passed formally under Roman jurisdiction in 80 BC, according to the will of Ptolemy Alexander but only after it had been under Roman influence for more than a hundred years.
It was captured by Julius Caesar in 47 BC during a Roman intervention in the domestic civil war between king Ptolemy XIII and his advisors, and usurper queen Cleopatra VII. It was finally captured by Octavian, future emperor Augustus on August 1, 30 BC, with the name of the month later being changed to august to commemorate his victory.
In 115 AD, vast parts of Alexandria were destroyed during the Jewish-Greek civil wars which gave Hadrian and his architect, Decriannus, an opportunity to rebuild it.
In 215 AD 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),[3] an event two hundred years later still annually commemorated as "day of horror".
In the late 4th century, persecution of pagans by newly Christian Romans had reached new levels of intensity. In 391, the Patriarch Theophilus destroyed all pagan temples in Alexandria under orders from Emperor Theodosius I.
The Brucheum and Jewish quarters were desolate in the 5th century. On the mainland, life seemed to have centered in the vicinity of the Serapeum and Caesareum, both which became Christian churches. The Pharos and Heptastadium quarters, however, remained populous and were left intact.
The ancient Roman Amphitheatre in Alexandria
Historic map of Alexandria by Piri ReisIn 619, Alexandria fell to the Sassanid Persians.
Although the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius recovered it in 629, in 641 the Arabs under the general Amr ibn al-As, captured it after a siege that lasted fourteen months.
Alexandria figured prominently in the military operations of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798. French troops stormed the city on July 2, 1798 and it remained in their hands until the arrival of the British expedition in 1801.
The British won a considerable victory over the French at the Battle of Alexandria on March 21, 1801, following which they besieged the city which fell to them on 2 September 1801.
Mohammed Ali, the Ottoman Governor of Egypt, began rebuilding the city around 1810, and by 1850, Alexandria had returned to something akin to its former glory.
In July 1882 the city came under bombardment from British naval forces and was occupied. In July 1954, the city was a target of an Israeli bombing campaign that later became known as the Lavon Affair. Only a few months later, Alexandria's Mansheyya Square was the site of a failed assassination attempt on Gamal Abdel Nasser.
The capital of the Ptolemies was Ancient Alexandria.
Until the time of Alexander's conquest, Egypt had no sea-port.
There were several landing-places along the coast, but no proper harbor. In fact Egypt had then so little commercial intercourse with the rest of the world, that she scarcely needed any.
Alexander's engineers, however, in exploring the shore, found a point not far from the Canopic mouth of the Nile where the water was deep, and where there was an anchorage ground protected by an island.
Alexander founded a city there, which he called by his own name. Thus was the birth of Ancient Alexandria.
He perfected the harbor by artificial excavations and embankments.
A lofty light-house was reared, which formed a landmark by day, and exhibited a blazing star by night to guide the galleys of the Mediterranean in.
A canal was made to connect the port of ancient Alexandria with the Nile, and warehouses were erected to contain the stores of merchandise.
In a word, Ancient Alexandria became at once a great commercial capital.
It was the seat, for several centuries, of the magnificent government of the Ptolemies; and so well was its situation chosen for the purposes intended, that it still continues, after the lapse of twenty centuries of revolution and change, one of the principal emporiums of the commerce of the East.
Many things conspired to make it at once a great commercial emporium.
Ancient Alexandria became, in fact, very soon after it was founded, a very great and busy city. Many things conspired to make it at once a great commercial emporium.
In the first place, it was the depot of export for all the surplus grain and other agricultural produce which was raised in such abundance along the Egyptian valley.
This produce was brought down in boats to the upper point of the Delta, where the branches of the river divided, and thence down the Canopic branch to the city.
The city was not, in fact, situated directly upon this branch, but upon a narrow tongue of land, at a little distance from it, near the sea.
It was not easy to enter the channel directly, on account of the bars and sand-banks at its mouth, produced by the eternal conflict between the waters of the river and the surges of the sea.
The water was deep, however, as Alexander's engineers had discovered, at the place where the ancient Alexandria was built, and, by establishing the port there, and then cutting a canal across to the Nile, they were enabled to bring the river and the sea at once into easy communication.
The produce of the valley was thus brought down the river and through the canal to the city.
Here immense warehouses and granaries were erected for its reception, that it might be safely preserved until the ships that came into the port were ready to take it away.
These ships came from Syria, from all the coasts of Asia Minor, from Greece, and from Rome.
They brought the agricultural productions of their own countries, as well as articles of manufacture of various kinds; these they sold to the merchants of Alexandria, and purchased the productions of Egypt in return.
The port of Alexandria presented thus a constant picture of life and animation.
Merchant ships were continually coming and going, or lying at anchor in the roadstead.
Seamen were hoisting sails, or raising anchors, or rowing their capacious galleys through the water, singing, as they pulled, to the motion of the oars.
Within the city there was the same ceaseless activity.
Here groups of men were unloading the canal boats which had arrived from the river.
There porters were transporting bales of merchandise or sacks of grain from a warehouse to a pier, or from one landing to another The occasional parading of the king's guards, or the arrival and departure of ships of war to land or to take away bodies of armed men, were occurrences that sometimes intervened to interrupt, or as perhaps the people then would have said, to adorn this scene of useful industry;
Now and then, for a brief period, these peaceful vocations would be wholly suspended and set aside by a revolt or by a civil war, waged by rival brothers against each other, or instigated by the conflicting claims of a mother and son.
These interruptions, however, were comparatively few, and, in ordinary cases, not of long continuance.
It was for the interest of all branches of the royal line to do as little injury as possible to the commercial and agricultural operations of the realm.
In fact, it was on the prosperity of those operations that the revenues depended.
The rulers were well aware of this, and so, however implacably two rival princes may have hated one another, and however desperately each party may have struggled to destroy all active combatants whom they should find in arms against them, they were both under every possible inducement to spare the private property and the lives of the peaceful population.
This population, in fact, engaged thus in profitable industry, constituted, with the avails of their labors, the very estate for which the combatants were contending.
Seeing the subject in this light, the Egyptian sovereigns, especially Alexander and the earlier Ptolemies, made every effort in their power to promote the commercial greatness of Alexandria.
They built palaces, its true, but they also built warehouses.
Your Guide to Alexandria
Tourist Information
Egyptian Tourist Authority (ETA) Ramleh Station, Saad Zaghlul Street Alexandria Tel: +203 807 985
Marine Passenger Station, Alexandria Port Alexandria Tel: +203 803 494
Airports
Most travellers fly into Cairo International Airport (CAI), which is well served by Egyptair as well as British Airways, Air France and most major
airliners.
From Cairo there are cheap and frequent flights to Alexandria Airport (ALY) 8km/5 miles to the south east of Alexandria, and Borg el Arab Airport
(HBE) which is 60km/38 miles south west.
Olympic Airlines fly to Alexandria Airport (ALY) from all over the world with a little change/connection at Athens Airport on the way.
Getting Around
From the airport
Taxi. Burg al Arab airport is 60km west of Alexandria. Taxis will charge between EGP50 and EGP60 to take you downtown.
Bus. An air-conditioned bus leaves every hour and charges EGP6 per person plus an extra EGP1 per bag. The bus terminal is in front of Cecil Hotel on El Raml Square. Buses leave for the airport two hours before all departures.
Limousine. You could also call for a Limousine Car Rental and Limousine Services (tel: 575 0705 or mobile 012 287 9971) and Digital Car Rental and Limousine Service (tel: 573 2944 or mobile 012 325 0528).
Around town
Tram. There are three terminal stations: El Raml Square, San Stefano and Sidi Bishr. Services run from 5.30am to midnight (1 am in summer), with fares between EGP0.20and EGP0.25.AII trams running east are painted blue, while those on the western line are yellow and red.
Buses and minibuses cross Alexandria on two main roads, Corniche Road and Abu Keer / Horiyya Boulevard.Tickets range from EGP0.25 up to EGP2 for air-conditioned buses - usually the ones that go from El Raml to Montazah (east).
Taxi. Alexandria taxis are black and orange.They seldom use meters and will charge whatever they think they can get away with. Charges range from EGP5 to EGP25 for the furthest tip of Alexandria City.
Car rental. Avis (tel:+20 3 485 7000) is located at the Cecil hotel and is open daily from Sam to 8pm. A Toyota Corolla costs about $50 per day and a 4x4 Cherokee is about $100 per day. You can also try Alex Limousine (25Talaat Harb Street, tel:+20 3 82 5253), which hires out luxury cars with drivers.
Places To Stay
Budget
San Giovanni Hotel (205 El Corniche Road, tel:+20 3 546 7774) has been recently restored to its original splendour and has a restaurant serving fine food and a coffee shop, open 24 hours a day.There's also a night club and bar. Private bathrooms in the rooms.
Mid-range
Metropole Hotel (52 Saad Zaghloul Street, tel: +20 3 482 1465). Located in the heart of Alexandria's business district, this heritage hotel has 66 classic rooms and suites and French and Middle Eastern restaurants.
Luxury
Marriott Renaissance (544 El Geish Street, Sidi Bishr,tel:+20 3 549 7690). Located 20 minutes from the airport and 20 minutes from downtown, the Renaissance boasts Chinese and Italian restaurants, a coffee shop, breakfast buffet, swimming pool, disco and billiards room. Back rooms overlook the Mediterranean Sea.
Eating Out
Local
Mohamed Ahmed (Shakor Pasha Street).This place has a reputation for serving the best Egyptian bean and falafel dishes and sandwiches in the city.There are menus in English and meals cost approximately EGP 10 per person. The Queen of Spain and many famous Egyptian actors have eaten here.
Qadoura (33 Bairam al-Tounsi Street, tel:+20 3 480 0405) has long been regarded as Alexandria's premier fish restaurant.There is no menu,you just choose your favourite seafood and ask to have it grilled, baked or fried. Price is determined by weight and type of fish.
Fine dining
Santa Lucia (40 Safiyya Zaghloul Street,tel:+20 3 486 0332). Recently renovated, this restaurant dates back to the 1940s. Classic interiors, excellent seafood, French and Greek cuisine and service.
The Greek Club by the Sea this is the most secret restaurant in Alexandria and is certainly my favourite. When I spend two weeks in Alexandria, I visit this restaurant at least every other day. It is in reality my "Local".
This restaurant by the island of Pharos is owned by a Greek who lived in Egypt all his life but adores his home country, he also owns Santa Lucia restaurant.
But his Greek club restaurant, will serve you authentic Greek food and the best OUZO money can buy. I couldn't believe it when they served me Sans Rival and Plomari Ouzo; certainly the best, along with dishes from Greece while sitting and watching the sea view from the Pharos Island. Please try it (no advertising here - I promise you)
After Hours
Alexandria has a decent selection of nightclubs that serve alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic beverages. With live music, famous singers, oriental dancers and world famous show stars, the San Giovanni Night Club and adjoining San Giovanni Kings Bar in the San Giovanni Hotel is one of the best places to go for a good time.
Similarly Most hotels in Alexandria have good night time entertainments, and a selection of lounges and bars. Spitfire Bar and Havana Bar are also both excellent watering holes.
Trendy bar
Spitfire (7 Rue de I'Ancienne Bourse off Saad Zaghloul Street) almost feels like being in Bangkok. It has a reputation as a sailor's bar and the walls are plastered with stickers for shipping lines, oil companies, warships and overland travel groups and photos of drunk regulars. Domestic and imported liquor is served.
The Qatr El-Nada Garden which overlooks the sea serves a variety of breezy cocktails, and stays open until 3.00am.
Live Music
Al Fouad Bar (Al Salamlek Palace - Montazah Area, tel: +20 3 547 7999). Background piano music. Famous alcoholic and non-alchoholic cocktails. Late-night club. It is also one of the finest resturants in town.
San Giovanni (205 El Geish Avenue, Stanley tel: +20 3 546 7775). Live music, belly dancing and an international show.
Retail Therapy
Mall
Carrefour Mall (20 minutes south of downtown Alexandria). Local and international clothes, accessories, eyewear and more.The supermarket also carries local and international brands of food.
Zahran Mall is excellent and has a good selection of cinemas, which show a good selection of films.
Mina Mall and Deeb Mall are also worth a mention.
San Stefano a Grand Plaza, An excellent selection of shops. Just opened in 2006 and the whole complex is now becoming the landmark of Modern Alexandria.
For those hoping for a more traditional experience, the city also has many markets in the traditional Islamic style, and trinket stores tucked away in the dusty back alleys.
There are many street vendors, although they can sometimes be slightly intimidating.
If you are up for a good bargain, there is no one better to haggle with though! The city also has a particularly good range of bookshops, some of which specialise in international books and magazines in a variety of languages.
Market
El Atareen (Fouad Street). Although Atareen is known for its selection of antique furniture and accessories, shoppers should beware they don't end up with a recently made reproduction. Ask for verification.
Boutique
Trianon (56 Midan Saad ZaghloulJ.Trianon was a favourite of the poet Cavafy, who worked in the offices above. It's still popular and a good place for a continental-style breakfast too.
Culture Vultures
Alexandria has been the setting for events revolving around some of the most important figures in history. From Alexander and the Ptolemaic dynasty, to Cleopatra and Julius Caesar,
then later Augustus, the city has an extremely rich heritage.
To this day, monuments to a distant and ancient time still stand to be admired.
Attractions
Pompeii Pillar was built 1800 years ago in honour of the Emperor Diocletian, the first ruler of the Byzantine Empire after its formal split with Rome.
the limestone Tombs of Al-Anfushi date back to 250 B.C. and are decorated in exquisite engravings of ancient Egyptian Gods and the rituals of daily life.
Museum
The Graeco Roman Museum (Mathaf El Roman! Street, tel:+20 3 486 5820, www.grm.gov.eg). The museum contains hundreds of precious antiques. From Graeco-Roman and Pharaonic religions mingled with the cult of Serapis, to Christian exh and early Christian antiquities.
For a city with such a strong cultural history, it is no surprise that Alexandria also has a fine selection of museums. It is housed in a historical building that is host to an impressive collection of remnants from the Roman Age
Art gallery
The Museum of Fine Arts (18 Menasce Street, Moharrem Bey). A spectacular collection of sculptures, paintings and architectural work.
Modern
Modern Alexandria also contains many marvels of more recent times.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a massive and world famous library and research centre. It was constructed on the site of the former Library of Alexandria which was, under the Ptolemaics, the largest library in the world. It was destroyed in c. 400 A.D.
The city also has an impressive array of palaces, which were occupied by the former Egyptian royal family.
Montaza Palace and Ras Al-Teen Palace are examples of some of the most impressive architecture in the country. Built in 1892 by Abbas Hilmi Pasha, the last khevive (lord) of Egypt, Montaza Palace is a sight to behold on the water’s edge.
Other
Sayed Darwish Opera House (22 Fouad opposite Cinema Royale,tel:+20 3 486 51 Cultural activities include classical conce plays and modern dance.
Going Places
Inside the city
Fort Qaitbay. The fort was built in the 1480s at ti site of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria, one 01 the seven wonders of the ancient world. Remnants of the lighthouse can be seen in the construction of the fort.
Outside the city
El Alamein.
This is where the Allied forces gained a decisive victory against the Axis powers in World War II.
Local Tip
For a delightful ride on the Corniche overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, try a horse-drawn carriage (caleches or carita). You'll have to negotiate the price, which is roughly from EGP15 to EGP20 per hour. Find them across from the Cecil Hotel.
It was situated upon the island of Pharos, opposite to the city of ancient Alexandria, and at some distance from it. There was a sort of isthmus of shoals and sand-bars connecting the island with the shore.
Over these shallows a pier or causeway was built, which finally became a broad and inhabited neck.
The principal part of the ancient Alexandria city, however, was on the main land.
The curvature of the earth requires that a light house on a coast should have a considerable elevation, otherwise its summit would not appear above the horizon, unless the mariner were very near.
To attain this elevation, the architects usually take advantage of some hill or cliff, or rocky eminence near the shore.
There was, however, no opportunity to do this at Pharos; for the island was, like the main land, level and low.
The requisite elevation could only be attained, therefore, by the masonry of an edifice, and the blocks of marble necessary for the work had to be brought from a great distance.
The ancient Alexandria lighthouse was reared in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the second monarch in the line.
No pains or expense were spared in its construction.
The edifice, when completed, was considered one of the seven wonders of the world.
It was indebted for its fame, however, in some degree, undoubtedly to the conspicuousness of its situation, rising, as it did, at the entrance of the greatest commercial emporium of its time, and standing there, like a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, to attract the welcome gaze of every wandering mariner whose ship came within its horizon, and to awaken his gratitude by tendering him its guidance and dispelling his fears.
The light at the top of the tower was produced by a fire, made of such combustibles as would emit the brightest flame.
This fire burned slowly through the day, and then was kindled up anew when the sun went down, and was continually replenished through the night with fresh supplies of fuel.
In modern times, a much more convenient and economical mode is adopted to produce the requisite illumination.
A great blazing lamp burns brilliantly in the center of the lantern of the tower, and all that part of the radiation from the flame which would naturally have beamed upward, or downward, or laterally, or back toward the land, is so turned by a curious system of reflectors and polyzonal lenses, most ingeniously contrived and very exactly adjusted, as to be thrown forward in one broad and thin, but brilliant sheet of light, which shoots out where its radiance is needed, over the surface of the sea.
Before these inventions were perfected, far the largest portion of the light emitted from by the illumination of lighthouse towers streamed away wastefully in landward directions, or was lost among the stars.
Of course, the glory of erecting such an edifice as the Pharos of ancient Alexandria, and of maintaining it in the performance of its functions, was very great; the question might, however, very naturally arise whether this glory was justly due to the architect through whose scientific skill the work was actually accomplished, or to the monarch by whose power and resources the architect was sustained.
The name of the architect was Sostratus.
He was a Greek. The monarch was, as has already been stated, the second Ptolemy, called commonly Ptolemy Philadelphus.
Ptolemy ordered that, in completing the lighthouse tower, a marble tablet should be built into the wall, at a suitable place near the summit, and that a proper inscription should be carved upon it, with his name as the builder of the edifice conspicuous thereon. Sostratus preferred inserting his own name.
He accordingly made the tablet and set it in its place.
He cut the inscription upon the face of it, in Greek characters, with his own name as the author of the work.
He did this secretly, and then covered the face of the tablet with an artificial composition, made with lime, to imitate the natural surface of the stone.
On this outer surface he cut a new inscription, in which he inserted the name of the king.
In process of time the lime moldered away, the king's inscription disappeared, and his own, which thenceforward continued as long as the building endured, came out to view.
The lighthouse at Pharos was said to have been four hundred feet high.
It was famed throughout the world for many centuries; nothing, however, remains of it now but a heap of useless and unmeaning ruins.
Ancient Alexandria Library - The Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Alexandria Library - The Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Besides the light that beamed from the summit of this lofty tower, there was another center of radiance and illumination in ancient Alexandria Library.
which was in some respects still more conspicuous and renowned, namely, an immense library and museum established and maintained by the tolemies.
The Museum, which was first established, was not, as its name might now imply, a collection of curiosities, but an institution of learning, consisting of a body of learned men, who devoted their time to philosophical and scientific pursuits.
The institution was richly endowed, and magnificent buildings were erected for its use.
The king who established Alexandria Library began immediately to make a collection of books for the use of the members of the institution.
This was attended with great expense, as every book that was added to the collection required to be transcribed with a pen on parchment or papyrus with infinite labor and care.
Great numbers of scribes were constantly employed upon this work at the Museum.
The kings who were most interested in forming this Alexandria library would seize the books that were possessed by individual scholars, or that were deposited in the various cities of their dominions, and then, causing beautiful copies of them to be made by the scribes of the Museum.
They would retain the originals for the great Alexandrian library, and give the copies to the men or the cities that had been thus despoiled.
In the same manner they would borrow, as they called it, from all travelers who visited which they might have in their possession, and, retaining the originals, give them back copies instead.
In process of time the Alexandria library increased to four hundred thousand volumes.
There was then no longer any room in the buildings of the museum for further additions.
There was, however, in another part of the city, a great temple called the Serapion. This temple was a very magnificent edifice, or, rather, group of edifices, dedicated to the god Serapis.
The origin and history of this temple were very remarkable.
Let's hear Carl Sagan introduces the library of Alexandria
This is the perfect harbor of Ancient Egypt.
There, on the little island of Pharos, when Ancient Egypt was very old, Sostratus built his great lighthouse of white marble, five hundred feet high, as a beacon to all ancient mariners of the Mediterranean, and as One of the seven wonders of the world.
Time and the nagging waters have washed it away, but a new lighthouse has taken its place, and guides the steamer through the rocks to the quays of Alexandria.
Here that astonishing boy-statesman, Alexander, founded in Ancient Egypt the subtle, polyglot metropolis that was to inherit the culture of Egypt, Palestine and Greece. Alexandria.
In this harbor Caesar received without gladness the severed head of Pompey.
As we move through the city of Ancient Egypt, Alexandria, glimpses come of unpaved alleys and streets, heat waves dancing in the air, workingmen, black-garbed women bearing burdens sturdily, white-robed and turbaned Muslims of regal dignity, and in the distance spacious squares and shining palaces, perhaps as fair as those that the Ptolemies built when Alexandria was the meeting-place of the world.
Then suddenly it is open country, and the Ancient Egypt city of Alexandria recedes into the horizon of the fertile Delta that green triangle which looks on the map like the leaves of a lofty palm-tree held up on the slender stalk of the Nile.
Alexandria (Arabic: الإسكندرية al-Iskandariyya; Coptic: Rakotə; Greek: Ἀλεξάνδρεια; Egyptian Arabic: اسكندريه Eskendereyya), with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport, serving about 80% of Egypt's imports and exports. Alexandria is also an important tourist resort.
Alexandria extends about 32 km (20 miles) along the coast of the Mediterranean sea in north-central Egypt. It is home to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the new Library of Alexandria), and is an important industrial center because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez, another city in Egypt.
Alexandria was also an important trading post between Europe and Asia, because it profited from the easy overland connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.
In ancient times, Alexandria was one of the most famous cities in the world. It was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 334 BC by Alexander the Great.
It remained Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 AD when a new capital was founded at Fustat (Fustat was later absorbed into Cairo).
Alexandria was known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), the Library of Alexandria (the largest library in the ancient world) and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa (one of the Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages).
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 Rhakotis existed there, and during the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Climate Alexandria has a Mediterranean climate: mild rainy winters and hot dry summers. January and February are the coldest months with high temperatures ranging from 12°C (53°F) to 18°C (64°F). Alexandria experience violent storms, rain and sometimes hail. July and August are the hottest months of the year with a monthly average high temperature of 31°C (87°F). While autumn and spring are the ideal time to visit Alexandria with temperatures averaging 22°C (71°F).
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History
Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC as Ἀλεξάνδρεια (Alexándreia). 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.
An Egyptian townlet, Rhakotis, already existed on the shore and was a resort filled with fishermen and pirates. A few months after the foundation, Alexander left Egypt for the East and never returned to his city.
After Alexander departed, his viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the expansion. Following a struggle with the other successors of Alexander, his general Ptolemy succeeded in bringing Alexander's body to Alexandria.
Though Cleomenes was mainly in charge of seeing to Alexandria's continuous development, the Heptastadion and the mainland quarters seem to have been primarily Ptolemaic work.
Inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the center of the new commerce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a generation to be larger than Carthage.
In a century, Alexandria had become the largest city in the world and for some centuries more, was second only to Rome. It became the main Greek city of Egypt, with an extraordinary mix of Greeks from many cities and backgrounds.
Alexandria, sphinx made of pink granite, Ptolemaic.Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism but was also home to the largest Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, 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.
From this division arose much of the later turbulence, which began to manifest itself under Ptolemy Philopater who reigned from 221–204 BC. The reign of Ptolemy VIII Physcon from 144–116 BC was marked by purges and civil warfare.
The city passed formally under Roman jurisdiction in 80 BC, according to the will of Ptolemy Alexander but only after it had been under Roman influence for more than a hundred years.
It was captured by Julius Caesar in 47 BC during a Roman intervention in the domestic civil war between king Ptolemy XIII and his advisors, and usurper queen Cleopatra VII. It was finally captured by Octavian, future emperor Augustus on August 1, 30 BC, with the name of the month later being changed to august to commemorate his victory.
In 115 AD, vast parts of Alexandria were destroyed during the Jewish-Greek civil wars which gave Hadrian and his architect, Decriannus, an opportunity to rebuild it.
In 215 AD 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),[3] an event two hundred years later still annually commemorated as "day of horror".
In the late 4th century, persecution of pagans by newly Christian Romans had reached new levels of intensity. In 391, the Patriarch Theophilus destroyed all pagan temples in Alexandria under orders from Emperor Theodosius I.
The Brucheum and Jewish quarters were desolate in the 5th century. On the mainland, life seemed to have centered in the vicinity of the Serapeum and Caesareum, both which became Christian churches. The Pharos and Heptastadium quarters, however, remained populous and were left intact.
The ancient Roman Amphitheatre in Alexandria
Historic map of Alexandria by Piri ReisIn 619, Alexandria fell to the Sassanid Persians.
Although the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius recovered it in 629, in 641 the Arabs under the general Amr ibn al-As, captured it after a siege that lasted fourteen months.
Alexandria figured prominently in the military operations of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798. French troops stormed the city on July 2, 1798 and it remained in their hands until the arrival of the British expedition in 1801.
The British won a considerable victory over the French at the Battle of Alexandria on March 21, 1801, following which they besieged the city which fell to them on 2 September 1801.
Mohammed Ali, the Ottoman Governor of Egypt, began rebuilding the city around 1810, and by 1850, Alexandria had returned to something akin to its former glory.
In July 1882 the city came under bombardment from British naval forces and was occupied. In July 1954, the city was a target of an Israeli bombing campaign that later became known as the Lavon Affair. Only a few months later, Alexandria's Mansheyya Square was the site of a failed assassination attempt on Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Until the time of Alexander's conquest, Egypt had no sea-port.
There were several landing-places along the coast, but no proper harbor. In fact Egypt had then so little commercial intercourse with the rest of the world, that she scarcely needed any.
Alexander's engineers, however, in exploring the shore, found a point not far from the Canopic mouth of the Nile where the water was deep, and where there was an anchorage ground protected by an island.
Alexander founded a city there, which he called by his own name. Thus was the birth of Ancient Alexandria.
He perfected the harbor by artificial excavations and embankments.
A lofty light-house was reared, which formed a landmark by day, and exhibited a blazing star by night to guide the galleys of the Mediterranean in.
A canal was made to connect the port of ancient Alexandria with the Nile, and warehouses were erected to contain the stores of merchandise.
In a word, Ancient Alexandria became at once a great commercial capital.
It was the seat, for several centuries, of the magnificent government of the Ptolemies; and so well was its situation chosen for the purposes intended, that it still continues, after the lapse of twenty centuries of revolution and change, one of the principal emporiums of the commerce of the East.
Many things conspired to make it at once a great commercial emporium.
Ancient Alexandria became, in fact, very soon after it was founded, a very great and busy city. Many things conspired to make it at once a great commercial emporium.
In the first place, it was the depot of export for all the surplus grain and other agricultural produce which was raised in such abundance along the Egyptian valley.
This produce was brought down in boats to the upper point of the Delta, where the branches of the river divided, and thence down the Canopic branch to the city.
The city was not, in fact, situated directly upon this branch, but upon a narrow tongue of land, at a little distance from it, near the sea.
It was not easy to enter the channel directly, on account of the bars and sand-banks at its mouth, produced by the eternal conflict between the waters of the river and the surges of the sea.
The water was deep, however, as Alexander's engineers had discovered, at the place where the ancient Alexandria was built, and, by establishing the port there, and then cutting a canal across to the Nile, they were enabled to bring the river and the sea at once into easy communication.
The produce of the valley was thus brought down the river and through the canal to the city.
Here immense warehouses and granaries were erected for its reception, that it might be safely preserved until the ships that came into the port were ready to take it away.
These ships came from Syria, from all the coasts of Asia Minor, from Greece, and from Rome.
They brought the agricultural productions of their own countries, as well as articles of manufacture of various kinds; these they sold to the merchants of Alexandria, and purchased the productions of Egypt in return.
The port of Alexandria presented thus a constant picture of life and animation.
Merchant ships were continually coming and going, or lying at anchor in the roadstead.
Seamen were hoisting sails, or raising anchors, or rowing their capacious galleys through the water, singing, as they pulled, to the motion of the oars.
Within the city there was the same ceaseless activity.
Here groups of men were unloading the canal boats which had arrived from the river.
There porters were transporting bales of merchandise or sacks of grain from a warehouse to a pier, or from one landing to another The occasional parading of the king's guards, or the arrival and departure of ships of war to land or to take away bodies of armed men, were occurrences that sometimes intervened to interrupt, or as perhaps the people then would have said, to adorn this scene of useful industry;
Now and then, for a brief period, these peaceful vocations would be wholly suspended and set aside by a revolt or by a civil war, waged by rival brothers against each other, or instigated by the conflicting claims of a mother and son.
These interruptions, however, were comparatively few, and, in ordinary cases, not of long continuance.
It was for the interest of all branches of the royal line to do as little injury as possible to the commercial and agricultural operations of the realm.
In fact, it was on the prosperity of those operations that the revenues depended.
The rulers were well aware of this, and so, however implacably two rival princes may have hated one another, and however desperately each party may have struggled to destroy all active combatants whom they should find in arms against them, they were both under every possible inducement to spare the private property and the lives of the peaceful population.
This population, in fact, engaged thus in profitable industry, constituted, with the avails of their labors, the very estate for which the combatants were contending.
Seeing the subject in this light, the Egyptian sovereigns, especially Alexander and the earlier Ptolemies, made every effort in their power to promote the commercial greatness of Alexandria.
They built palaces, its true, but they also built warehouses.
Your Guide to Alexandria
Tourist Information
Egyptian Tourist Authority (ETA) Ramleh Station, Saad Zaghlul Street Alexandria Tel: +203 807 985
Marine Passenger Station, Alexandria Port Alexandria Tel: +203 803 494
Airports
Most travellers fly into Cairo International Airport (CAI), which is well served by Egyptair as well as British Airways, Air France and most major
airliners.
From Cairo there are cheap and frequent flights to Alexandria Airport (ALY) 8km/5 miles to the south east of Alexandria, and Borg el Arab Airport
(HBE) which is 60km/38 miles south west.
Olympic Airlines fly to Alexandria Airport (ALY) from all over the world with a little change/connection at Athens Airport on the way.
Getting Around
From the airport
Taxi. Burg al Arab airport is 60km west of Alexandria. Taxis will charge between EGP50 and EGP60 to take you downtown.
Bus. An air-conditioned bus leaves every hour and charges EGP6 per person plus an extra EGP1 per bag. The bus terminal is in front of Cecil Hotel on El Raml Square. Buses leave for the airport two hours before all departures.
Limousine. You could also call for a Limousine Car Rental and Limousine Services (tel: 575 0705 or mobile 012 287 9971) and Digital Car Rental and Limousine Service (tel: 573 2944 or mobile 012 325 0528).
Around town
Tram. There are three terminal stations: El Raml Square, San Stefano and Sidi Bishr. Services run from 5.30am to midnight (1 am in summer), with fares between EGP0.20and EGP0.25.AII trams running east are painted blue, while those on the western line are yellow and red.
Buses and minibuses cross Alexandria on two main roads, Corniche Road and Abu Keer / Horiyya Boulevard.Tickets range from EGP0.25 up to EGP2 for air-conditioned buses - usually the ones that go from El Raml to Montazah (east).
Taxi. Alexandria taxis are black and orange.They seldom use meters and will charge whatever they think they can get away with. Charges range from EGP5 to EGP25 for the furthest tip of Alexandria City.
Car rental. Avis (tel:+20 3 485 7000) is located at the Cecil hotel and is open daily from Sam to 8pm. A Toyota Corolla costs about $50 per day and a 4x4 Cherokee is about $100 per day. You can also try Alex Limousine (25Talaat Harb Street, tel:+20 3 82 5253), which hires out luxury cars with drivers.
Places To Stay
Budget
San Giovanni Hotel (205 El Corniche Road, tel:+20 3 546 7774) has been recently restored to its original splendour and has a restaurant serving fine food and a coffee shop, open 24 hours a day.There's also a night club and bar. Private bathrooms in the rooms.
Mid-range
Metropole Hotel (52 Saad Zaghloul Street, tel: +20 3 482 1465). Located in the heart of Alexandria's business district, this heritage hotel has 66 classic rooms and suites and French and Middle Eastern restaurants.
Luxury
Marriott Renaissance (544 El Geish Street, Sidi Bishr,tel:+20 3 549 7690). Located 20 minutes from the airport and 20 minutes from downtown, the Renaissance boasts Chinese and Italian restaurants, a coffee shop, breakfast buffet, swimming pool, disco and billiards room. Back rooms overlook the Mediterranean Sea.
Eating Out
Local
Mohamed Ahmed (Shakor Pasha Street).This place has a reputation for serving the best Egyptian bean and falafel dishes and sandwiches in the city.There are menus in English and meals cost approximately EGP 10 per person. The Queen of Spain and many famous Egyptian actors have eaten here.
Qadoura (33 Bairam al-Tounsi Street, tel:+20 3 480 0405) has long been regarded as Alexandria's premier fish restaurant.There is no menu,you just choose your favourite seafood and ask to have it grilled, baked or fried. Price is determined by weight and type of fish.
Fine dining
Santa Lucia (40 Safiyya Zaghloul Street,tel:+20 3 486 0332). Recently renovated, this restaurant dates back to the 1940s. Classic interiors, excellent seafood, French and Greek cuisine and service.
The Greek Club by the Sea this is the most secret restaurant in Alexandria and is certainly my favourite. When I spend two weeks in Alexandria, I visit this restaurant at least every other day. It is in reality my "Local".
This restaurant by the island of Pharos is owned by a Greek who lived in Egypt all his life but adores his home country, he also owns Santa Lucia restaurant.
But his Greek club restaurant, will serve you authentic Greek food and the best OUZO money can buy. I couldn't believe it when they served me Sans Rival and Plomari Ouzo; certainly the best, along with dishes from Greece while sitting and watching the sea view from the Pharos Island. Please try it (no advertising here - I promise you)
After Hours
Alexandria has a decent selection of nightclubs that serve alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic beverages. With live music, famous singers, oriental dancers and world famous show stars, the San Giovanni Night Club and adjoining San Giovanni Kings Bar in the San Giovanni Hotel is one of the best places to go for a good time.
Similarly Most hotels in Alexandria have good night time entertainments, and a selection of lounges and bars. Spitfire Bar and Havana Bar are also both excellent watering holes.
Trendy bar
Spitfire (7 Rue de I'Ancienne Bourse off Saad Zaghloul Street) almost feels like being in Bangkok. It has a reputation as a sailor's bar and the walls are plastered with stickers for shipping lines, oil companies, warships and overland travel groups and photos of drunk regulars. Domestic and imported liquor is served.
The Qatr El-Nada Garden which overlooks the sea serves a variety of breezy cocktails, and stays open until 3.00am.
Live Music
Al Fouad Bar (Al Salamlek Palace - Montazah Area, tel: +20 3 547 7999). Background piano music. Famous alcoholic and non-alchoholic cocktails. Late-night club. It is also one of the finest resturants in town.
San Giovanni (205 El Geish Avenue, Stanley tel: +20 3 546 7775). Live music, belly dancing and an international show.
Retail Therapy
Mall
Carrefour Mall (20 minutes south of downtown Alexandria). Local and international clothes, accessories, eyewear and more.The supermarket also carries local and international brands of food.
Zahran Mall is excellent and has a good selection of cinemas, which show a good selection of films.
Mina Mall and Deeb Mall are also worth a mention.
San Stefano a Grand Plaza, An excellent selection of shops. Just opened in 2006 and the whole complex is now becoming the landmark of Modern Alexandria.
For those hoping for a more traditional experience, the city also has many markets in the traditional Islamic style, and trinket stores tucked away in the dusty back alleys.
There are many street vendors, although they can sometimes be slightly intimidating.
If you are up for a good bargain, there is no one better to haggle with though! The city also has a particularly good range of bookshops, some of which specialise in international books and magazines in a variety of languages.
Market
El Atareen (Fouad Street). Although Atareen is known for its selection of antique furniture and accessories, shoppers should beware they don't end up with a recently made reproduction. Ask for verification.
Boutique
Trianon (56 Midan Saad ZaghloulJ.Trianon was a favourite of the poet Cavafy, who worked in the offices above. It's still popular and a good place for a continental-style breakfast too.
Culture Vultures
Alexandria has been the setting for events revolving around some of the most important figures in history. From Alexander and the Ptolemaic dynasty, to Cleopatra and Julius Caesar,
then later Augustus, the city has an extremely rich heritage.
To this day, monuments to a distant and ancient time still stand to be admired.
Attractions
Pompeii Pillar was built 1800 years ago in honour of the Emperor Diocletian, the first ruler of the Byzantine Empire after its formal split with Rome.
the limestone Tombs of Al-Anfushi date back to 250 B.C. and are decorated in exquisite engravings of ancient Egyptian Gods and the rituals of daily life.
Museum
The Graeco Roman Museum (Mathaf El Roman! Street, tel:+20 3 486 5820, www.grm.gov.eg). The museum contains hundreds of precious antiques. From Graeco-Roman and Pharaonic religions mingled with the cult of Serapis, to Christian exh and early Christian antiquities.
For a city with such a strong cultural history, it is no surprise that Alexandria also has a fine selection of museums. It is housed in a historical building that is host to an impressive collection of remnants from the Roman Age
Art gallery
The Museum of Fine Arts (18 Menasce Street, Moharrem Bey). A spectacular collection of sculptures, paintings and architectural work.
Modern
Modern Alexandria also contains many marvels of more recent times.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a massive and world famous library and research centre. It was constructed on the site of the former Library of Alexandria which was, under the Ptolemaics, the largest library in the world. It was destroyed in c. 400 A.D.
The city also has an impressive array of palaces, which were occupied by the former Egyptian royal family.
Montaza Palace and Ras Al-Teen Palace are examples of some of the most impressive architecture in the country. Built in 1892 by Abbas Hilmi Pasha, the last khevive (lord) of Egypt, Montaza Palace is a sight to behold on the water’s edge.
Other
Sayed Darwish Opera House (22 Fouad opposite Cinema Royale,tel:+20 3 486 51 Cultural activities include classical conce plays and modern dance.
Going Places
Inside the city
Fort Qaitbay. The fort was built in the 1480s at ti site of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria, one 01 the seven wonders of the ancient world. Remnants of the lighthouse can be seen in the construction of the fort.
Outside the city
El Alamein.
This is where the Allied forces gained a decisive victory against the Axis powers in World War II.
Local Tip
For a delightful ride on the Corniche overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, try a horse-drawn carriage (caleches or carita). You'll have to negotiate the price, which is roughly from EGP15 to EGP20 per hour. Find them across from the Cecil Hotel.
It was situated upon the island of Pharos, opposite to the city of ancient Alexandria, and at some distance from it. There was a sort of isthmus of shoals and sand-bars connecting the island with the shore.
Over these shallows a pier or causeway was built, which finally became a broad and inhabited neck.
The principal part of the ancient Alexandria city, however, was on the main land.
The curvature of the earth requires that a light house on a coast should have a considerable elevation, otherwise its summit would not appear above the horizon, unless the mariner were very near.
To attain this elevation, the architects usually take advantage of some hill or cliff, or rocky eminence near the shore.
There was, however, no opportunity to do this at Pharos; for the island was, like the main land, level and low.
The requisite elevation could only be attained, therefore, by the masonry of an edifice, and the blocks of marble necessary for the work had to be brought from a great distance.
The ancient Alexandria lighthouse was reared in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the second monarch in the line.
No pains or expense were spared in its construction.
The edifice, when completed, was considered one of the seven wonders of the world.
It was indebted for its fame, however, in some degree, undoubtedly to the conspicuousness of its situation, rising, as it did, at the entrance of the greatest commercial emporium of its time, and standing there, like a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, to attract the welcome gaze of every wandering mariner whose ship came within its horizon, and to awaken his gratitude by tendering him its guidance and dispelling his fears.
The light at the top of the tower was produced by a fire, made of such combustibles as would emit the brightest flame.
This fire burned slowly through the day, and then was kindled up anew when the sun went down, and was continually replenished through the night with fresh supplies of fuel.
In modern times, a much more convenient and economical mode is adopted to produce the requisite illumination.
A great blazing lamp burns brilliantly in the center of the lantern of the tower, and all that part of the radiation from the flame which would naturally have beamed upward, or downward, or laterally, or back toward the land, is so turned by a curious system of reflectors and polyzonal lenses, most ingeniously contrived and very exactly adjusted, as to be thrown forward in one broad and thin, but brilliant sheet of light, which shoots out where its radiance is needed, over the surface of the sea.
Before these inventions were perfected, far the largest portion of the light emitted from by the illumination of lighthouse towers streamed away wastefully in landward directions, or was lost among the stars.
Of course, the glory of erecting such an edifice as the Pharos of ancient Alexandria, and of maintaining it in the performance of its functions, was very great; the question might, however, very naturally arise whether this glory was justly due to the architect through whose scientific skill the work was actually accomplished, or to the monarch by whose power and resources the architect was sustained.
The name of the architect was Sostratus.
He was a Greek. The monarch was, as has already been stated, the second Ptolemy, called commonly Ptolemy Philadelphus.
Ptolemy ordered that, in completing the lighthouse tower, a marble tablet should be built into the wall, at a suitable place near the summit, and that a proper inscription should be carved upon it, with his name as the builder of the edifice conspicuous thereon. Sostratus preferred inserting his own name.
He accordingly made the tablet and set it in its place.
He cut the inscription upon the face of it, in Greek characters, with his own name as the author of the work.
He did this secretly, and then covered the face of the tablet with an artificial composition, made with lime, to imitate the natural surface of the stone.
On this outer surface he cut a new inscription, in which he inserted the name of the king.
In process of time the lime moldered away, the king's inscription disappeared, and his own, which thenceforward continued as long as the building endured, came out to view.
The lighthouse at Pharos was said to have been four hundred feet high.
It was famed throughout the world for many centuries; nothing, however, remains of it now but a heap of useless and unmeaning ruins.
Ancient Alexandria Library - The Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Besides the light that beamed from the summit of this lofty tower, there was another center of radiance and illumination in ancient Alexandria Library.
which was in some respects still more conspicuous and renowned, namely, an immense library and museum established and maintained by the tolemies.
The Museum, which was first established, was not, as its name might now imply, a collection of curiosities, but an institution of learning, consisting of a body of learned men, who devoted their time to philosophical and scientific pursuits.
The institution was richly endowed, and magnificent buildings were erected for its use.
The king who established Alexandria Library began immediately to make a collection of books for the use of the members of the institution.
This was attended with great expense, as every book that was added to the collection required to be transcribed with a pen on parchment or papyrus with infinite labor and care.
Great numbers of scribes were constantly employed upon this work at the Museum.
The kings who were most interested in forming this Alexandria library would seize the books that were possessed by individual scholars, or that were deposited in the various cities of their dominions, and then, causing beautiful copies of them to be made by the scribes of the Museum.
They would retain the originals for the great Alexandrian library, and give the copies to the men or the cities that had been thus despoiled.
In the same manner they would borrow, as they called it, from all travelers who visited which they might have in their possession, and, retaining the originals, give them back copies instead.
In process of time the Alexandria library increased to four hundred thousand volumes.
There was then no longer any room in the buildings of the museum for further additions.
There was, however, in another part of the city, a great temple called the Serapion. This temple was a very magnificent edifice, or, rather, group of edifices, dedicated to the god Serapis.
The origin and history of this temple were very remarkable.
Let's hear Carl Sagan introduces the library of Alexandria
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