When Alexander the Great founded a settlement at the junction of three continents in 331 BC, he created a metropolitan powerhouse that would shape global history. Islam Issa hails the genius of ancient Alexandria.
When the Macedonian king Alexander the Great arrived at the barren island of Pharos in 331 BC, he was still in his mid-twenties and barely five years into his reign.
The ambitious young warrior had been drawn to this spot on Egypt’s Mediterranean shore after reading about it in the epic poetry of Homer, most revered of the ancient Greek writers. A lover of literature, Alexander had even styled his hair in long locks to emulate Homer’s hero, Achilles.
What he found was a tiny, lifeless island facing a series of small fishing villages scattered across a windswept coast. A few miles to the south on the mainland spread a vast freshwater lake, around which the ancient Egyptians had constructed a canal network.
In his unceasing quest for world domination, this was just the location for which Alexander had long searched – at the intersection of Africa, Europe and Asia.
And when he arrived at this strategic hotspot, he dropped to his knees in a state of ecstasy and began scattering barley across the sandy ground, roughly designing the layout of what would soon become the world’s first modern city – a magnificent capital that would change the course of history.
Named in honour of its founder, Alexandria was established that very same year, with a causeway measuring seven stadia (around 1.2km) built to connect Pharos to the coast. Alexander himself was soon on his way eastward in search of his next adventure; he didn’t even wait to watch his new city being built. But its fate was now set, associated with a founding myth and a living hero, and with both Alexander’s city plan and a trusted architect to enact it.
The design Alexander had drawn on the sand included harbours, palaces, temples, markets – and a library dedicated to the muses. Within decades, this once-desolate place had undergone an incredible transformation into a city that transported its visitors into the future. When the Greek geographer Strabo visited Alexandria three centuries later, he gasped at its grandeur, comprising “building upon building”.
The promenade, designed by the renowned Greek architect Dinocrates, was angled to encourage a welcome breeze from the ocean that infused the streets with the scents of cinnamon and honeysuckle; even five centuries after Alexander’s fateful visit, Roman civil servant Herodian described “billows of perfume” and “sweet aromas throughout the city”.
Horses and chariots traversed eight-lane- wide roads, while marbled colonnades provided shade for pedestrians. Grand courts and statues – including many depicting the city’s founder – dotted the paths. Around a main square, locals drove mules and donkeys to bustling markets where stalls were stacked high with fruits, vegetables, loaves of bread and barrels of cloudy beer.
Artisans showed off colourful, decorative mosaics of glass, stone and clay. There were bathhouses, tree-studded gardens and a gleaming temple dedicated to Alexandria’s very own god, Serapis, looming over the city at the top of the hill.
Shrines to learning
In the complex called the Museum (the ‘shrine of muses’), scholars gathered to think and to debate, to read and to write. At its heart stood the Biblion (the ‘shrine of books’) housing ceiling-high book- shelves brimming with scrolls stacked on top of one another like wooden logs.
But the real focus of energy was the dock, at the exact spot where Alexander had arrived on Pharos. The previously lifeless island now boasted one of the tallest man-made structures in the world: the three-tiered Pharos Lighthouse. This extraordinary building was well over 100 metres high, made of reflective white limestone – a lofty beacon of light that symbolised the power and grandeur of the city.
It also served a practical purpose, guiding ships into the two busy harbours on either side – “beautifully enclosed both by the embankment and by nature”, as Strabo put it. In the light- house’s top storey, mirrors reflected the sun’s bright rays during the day and, by night, fire from its furnace created a magnificent glow.
The city of Alexandria was an idealistic endeavour, intended from the very start to be a global capital. Though conceived by its founder, it was implemented by his childhood friend and general, Ptolemy I, and his successors. Alexandria’s founders had a unique and innovative vision of what makes a city successful – and it was nothing short of radical.
They imagined and enacted two outrageous theories. First, that bringing together diverse people from far and wide in a strategically located spot would produce economic prosperity and make the city a world trade capital. Second, that gathering and generating knowledge – via the Library and Museum – would consolidate the city as a global powerhouse. Within a single century, these two premises had combined to make Alexandria the global capital of both trade and knowledge.
Built from scratch
Alexander knew that taking control of such a prime location could play a part in expanding and strengthening his realm, bolstering his grand plan to build a unified empire that stretched as far east as Persia and India.
To do so, he envisioned roads and ports connecting Europe with Asia. However, unlike most cities, Alexandria was born not from war or geographical division but was created from scratch. Rather than developing organically, Alexandria was purposely visualised, conceived, shaped and expanded.
People from across the region were invited to populate the new city. With trade a key aspect of its identity, welcoming rather than othering citizens was part of the economic plan. This was to be a polis (city state) founded on the notion that it is possible to harmonise different cultures and traditions in order to achieve a greater goal.
At a time when the Hellenistic world regarded non-Greeks as barbarians, and when Egyptians were highly protective of their own traditions, this was a brave new ideology. Drawn by the Alexandrian dream, thousands of people flocked to the new city from every direction. Egyptians travelled north through the desert, Europeans sailed across the Mediterranean, and Jews made their way west from the Holy Land, to be joined by many more groups including Ethiopians, Levantines, Romans and Indians.
The first-century Jewish historian Josephus, who married a woman from Alexandria, wrote that Jews moved to the new city “invited by the goodness of the soil, and by the liberality” of its early leaders. Indeed, it’s said that, in his very first design, Alexander allocated a district for Jews in his new city. In an attempt to grow the populace, Jews were exempted from tax and promised freedom of worship, with grand synagogues and special theatres built here.
And during the reign of Ptolemy II, the Hebrew Bible was translated into Alexandria’s very own dialect of Koine Greek. Thanks to Serapis, the newly amalgamated Greco-Egyptian god championed by the Ptolemies, the Greeks and Egyptians were also able to find common ground.
Migration and multiculturalism were effective ways of increasing the city’s population and, in turn, its military, commercial and economic power. Before long, Alexandria became a significant regional trading centre and transport hub that welcomed merchants and travellers from east and west. It imported goods from as far as Persia and India, and exported a range of items to Europe – even the British Isles – that included art, oils, spices, wine and grain, becoming Rome’s key breadbasket.
Alexander’s successors also put his second priority – gathering and generating knowledge – into action. A second-century BC letter, the earliest reference to the Library of Alexandria, tells us that the Ptolemies gave the first chief librarian, Demetrius of Phalerum, an unprecedented budget “in order to collect… all the books in the world” – a seemingly impossible task. The Library nonetheless came to house hundreds of thousands of works – by far the biggest collection of writing ever gathered up to that point in history.
The Museum, too, became the world’s leading research centre, with scholars coming from across the region to work here, given stipends, food and accommodation by the state. They created novel philosophies and pioneered original inventions in a range of fields, from astronomy to geography and from mathematics to poetry. Alexandria’s medical school made huge advances and, unlike its Greek counterpart, welcomed women through its doors.
Knowledge capital
To Alexandria’s leaders, knowledge equalled power. They put into place various policies to ensure that this authority was maintained, and that the city’s library would outshine all others. Books were not allowed to leave the city and ships docking at the harbour were searched for written materials, which would be confiscated immediately. The export of papyrus was even banned to stop rival cities and libraries from increasing their stocks.
By gathering hundreds of thousands of books from around the world (there were half a million scrolls, according to the second librarian, Callimachus), and by researching and disseminating new philosophies, theories and inventions, Alexandria’s rulers became the global custodians of knowledge.
Coupled with the city’s economic success, the Great Library brought Alexander’s burgeoning capital incredible influence.
Alexandria’s architects successfully executed its founder’s radical vision of how to create a city – and, more, how to make it a global power. By utilising a strategic location to build a metropolis from scratch, by gathering diverse people to live and prosper together in harmony, and by collating and generating knowledge, Alexandria redefined what it means to successfully construct and maintain a city and society.
As the centuries went on, Alexandria’s fame and status made it a key target for the most powerful empires, from the Romans and Ottomans, to the French and British, attracting the likes of Julius Caesar, Saladin, Napoleon and Admiral Nelson. As migration to its shores continued, its various residents brought with them a wide range of traditions, values and faiths, and developed the philosophies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
When 15th-century explorer Vasco da Gama arrived at Asia by sailing all the way around Africa, Alexandria’s unique claim to linking the east and west began to diminish. Nonetheless, the city continued to attract different groups and by the 19th and 20th centuries, Armenians, Greeks, Italians and Turks called it home. With the rise of Arab nationalism in the mid-20th century, many of these departed.
Today, Alexandria is a bustling metropolis with a population exceeding 6 million and responsible for 40 per cent of Egypt’s industrial capacity. Its founder died at 32, eight years after he first set foot on Pharos. He never returned to see Alexandria in all its glory. More than two millennia later, the city that Alexander the Great envisaged during a brief visit to a barren island off the windswept coast of north Africa still stands proud.
The seven wonders of Alexandria
The landmarks that helped make the city a masterpiece of the ancient world.
1. Knowledge bank
“The place of the cure of the soul.” So, according to ancient sources, read the inscription above the shelves of Alexandria’s vast book collection: the Great Library. The Library was probably architecturally very grand, with several halls and ceiling-high wooden cabinets filled with scrolls.
This impressive building was sited inside Alexandria’s extensive Museum complex. The Museum’s entrance had a grand porch reminiscent of Greek temples, while expansive gardens and colonnaded walkways led to private study rooms, lecture halls and a banquet room. There was an outdoor seating space with a semi-circular arrangement of stone benches, as well as small theatres.
2. Leisure gardens
From its initial design in the fourth century BC, Alexandria featured vast gardens. The most famous of these was the Park of Pan, a pleasure garden that included such amenities as a marble-seated amphitheatre and a public bath.
That century also saw the construction of the Eleusis (Advent) Park. Now in the centre of the modern city, it is the oldest surviving garden in the world.
3. The glowing god
“The most magnificent building in the whole world.” That’s how the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus described Alexandria’s Serapeum. This suitably splendid temple was constructed on the city’s highest hill for Alexandria’s divine protector, Serapis, in the third century BC.
A staircase in the temple complex led down to a nilometer, a device to measure the level of the Nile’s waters; placing it here enabled Serapis to protect the river from drying up or overflowing.
More than 100 marble steps led up to the Serapeum. In the centre stood a vast statue of Serapis, covered with ivory and gold. Windows were positioned so the sun’s rays made the god glow.
The Serapeum was used to store thousands of books that couldn’t fit into the library. It was damaged during a second-century AD Jewish revolt before Christians destroyed it in the late fourth century.
4. Sky and thunder
By the early third century BC, after 14 years of construction, Alexandria’s harbour was guarded by the Pharos Lighthouse, soaring over 100 metres high.
One of the seven ancient Wonders of the World, it was built from white limestone that reflected the sunlight, and comprised three tiers resting on a 10-metre-wide cylindrical base.
At the top stood a sculpture of Zeus, the god of sky and thunder, holding a thunderbolt.
The 12th-century explorer Ibn Jubayr from Al-Andalus (the Islamic state then ruling the Iberian peninsula) wrote that “description falls short of it and the eyes fail to comprehend it; relating it [in words] is inadequate, and the spectacle is vast”.
5. Lost in translation
When Roman emperor Diocletian visited Alexandria at the turn of the fourth century AD, he created a triumphal monument to himself: an armour-clad statue atop one of the largest monolithic columns in history.
Pompey’s Pillar was a 27-metre-high column of rose granite, with a grey granite capital and a sparkling porphyry statue. The sculpture no longer stands atop the pillar but in the 18th century a fragment of Diocletian’s thigh was discovered, suggesting a statue 7 metres high.
But it had nothing to do with Pompey the Great. When the crusaders arrived in Alexandria, they misread the pedestal’s inscription of Egypt’s governor Publius as ‘Pompey’ – and the name stuck.
6. A heavenly poet
The role of Greek writer Homer was pivotal in the city’s founding: lines about this location in his poetry had come to Alexander the Great in a dream, driving the king to make the journey here to found his city.
In the third century BC, Ptolemy IV Philopator built a shrine in Alexandria dedicated to Homer – the Homereion, representing the first deity-like veneration of a western poet.
Writing sometime around the turn of the third century AD, Roman author Aelian described a magnificent statue of Homer seated in a semi-circular arc in the shrine, with an inscription confirming Alexandria as the universalising home of the greatest writer.
7. Cleopatra’s love affair
In the first century BC, Alexandria’s most famous queen, Cleopatra VII, began constructing a temple in honour of her lover, Julius Caesar.
The Caesareum of Alexandria was completed by Octavian – later the emperor Augustus – who defeated Cleopatra. The contemporary philosopher Philo of Alexandria described the harbour- side temple as “huge and conspicuous… embellished with porticoes, libraries, chambers, groves, gateways and wide open courts” and decorated with “pictures and statues in silver and gold”.
Octavian also transferred two enormous 15th-century BC obelisks from the temple of the sun-god Re 200 miles away to be re-erected in front of the Caesareum.
In the 18th century, the French called these obelisks Cleopatra’s Needles; today, one stands on London’s Victoria Embankment, the other in New York City’s Central Park.
This article was first published in the March 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine