Caliph Omar (A.D. 641), it contained 4,000 palaces, 4,000 baths, 400 theatres or places of amusement, 12,000 shops for the sale of vegetables, and 40,000 tributary Jews. But we are getting on a little too fast. As I said before, it was founded B.C. 332, by Alexander the Great, who is said to have traced the plan of the new city himself, and his architect, Dinarchus or Dinocrates (the builder of the temple of Diana at Ephesus) directed its execution. The city was regularly built, and traversed by two principal streets, each 100 feet wide, and one of them four miles long. Campbell says: “He designed the shape of the whole after that of a Macedonian cloak, and his soldiers strewed meal to mark the line where its walls were to rise. These, when finished, enclosed a compass of 80 furlongs filled with comfortable abodes, and interspersed with palaces, temples, and obelisks of marble porphyry, that fatigued the eye with admiration. The main streets crossed each other at right angles, from wall to wall, with beautiful breadth, and to the length (if it may be credited) of nearly nine miles. At their extremities the gates looked out on the gilded barges of the Nile, of fleets at sea under full sail, on a harbour that sheltered navies, and on a lighthouse that was the mariner’s star and the wonder of the world.”
One-fourth of the area upon which it was built was covered with temples, palaces, and public buildings. Conspicuous upon its little isle was the famous lighthouse of Pharos, the islet being connected with the city by a mole. Under the Cæsars, Alexandria attained extraordinary prosperity; large merchant fleets carried on a reciprocal commerce with India and Ethiopia, and its industrial population were chiefly employed in the weaving of linen, and the manufacture of glass and papyrus.
The Alexandrians were turbulent, and several times revolted under the Ptolemies and the Romans. Cæsar was obliged, in B.C. 47, to put down a terrible insurrection in this city. Under the emperors, Alexandria suffered a series of massacres, which gradually depopulated it. In 611, Chosroës, King of Persia, seized it, but his son restored it to the emperors. In 641, Amru—whom I spoke of just now—took it by storm, after a siege of 14 months, and a loss of 23,000 men. The Turks captured it in 868 and 1517.
So from time to time Alexandria has been the scene of the greatest splendour, adorned by marble palaces, temples, and obelisks, also of great squalor, and covered with mud huts; passing under the sway of Persian, Greek, Roman, and Turk, and at the time I am writing this (March, 1884) I think I may safely say under the sway of Great Britain, although not belonging to this country.
In the early part of this century, under the vigorous, but most unscrupulous, rule of Mehemet Ali (who was appointed Pasha of Alexandria, and afterwards of all Egypt), Alexandria became again a thriving and important place.
It is said that in the character of the population, at least, there still remains a strong resemblance to the ancient city of the Ptolemies. Sullen-looking Copts replace the exclusive old Egyptians, their reputed ancestors. Greeks and Jews, too, swarm as before, both possibly changed a little for the worse. The mass of Levantines and (with, of course, honourable exceptions) Franks, who make up the sum of the population, may, I think, without any exaggeration, be designated as the off-scourings of their respective countries. The streets swarm with Turks in many-coloured robes, half-naked, brown-skinned Arabs, glossy negroes in loose white dresses and vermilion turbans, sordid, shabby-looking Israelites in greasy black, smart, jaunty, rakish Greeks, heavy-browed Armenians, unkempt, unmasked Maltese ragamuffins, Albanians and Europeans of every shade of respectability, from lordly consuls down to refugee quacks, swindlers, and criminals, who here get whitewashed and established anew. Here you see a Frank lady in the last Parisian bonnet, there Egyptian women enveloped to the eyes in shapeless black wrappers, while dirty Christian monks, sallow Moslem dervishes, sore-eyed beggars, and naked children covered with flies, present a shifting and everlasting kaleidoscope of the most undignified phases of Eastern and Western existence.
The great square, or Grande Place, is the chief place of business and resort. It is a quarter of a mile long, and 150 feet wide, paved on each side, with a railed garden in the centre, planted with lime-trees, and having a fountain at each end. Here are the principal shops and hotels, the English consulate and church, banks, offices of companies, &c. The buildings are all in the Italian style, spacious and handsome, or, rather, were when I visited it. Most of the ancient landmarks are fast disappearing. The site of Cleopatra’s Palace is now occupied by a railway station for the line to Ramleh, seven miles distant, overlooking the bay of Abaukir, the scene of Nelson’s victory over the French fleet in 1798. Of course, I could not be in Alexandria without paying a visit to Pompey’s pillar, or, more properly, Diocletian’s pillar. It is a grand column, and occupies an eminence 1,800 feet to the south of the present walls; its total height is 98 feet 9 inches. It is a single block of red granite on the mounds overlooking the lake Mareotis and the modern city.
An account of the ancient and modern history of Alexandria would fill a volume of the most stirring interest. I, however, will be content with giving to my readers a very small portion of a volume on Alexandria, as I shall have a good deal yet to say on Cairo and neighbourhood, and still more to say on the Soudan.
It was to Alexandria that science, fostered by the munificence of the Ptolemies, retired from her ancient seat at Heliopolis. “The sages of the Museum, who lodged in that part of the palace of the Lagides, might there be said to live as the priests of the Muses, taking the word in its wide sense, as the patronesses of knowledge. They had gardens, and alleys, and galleries where they walked and conversed, a common hall where they made their repasts, and public rooms where they gave instruction to the youth who crowded from all parts of the world to hear their lectures.” This museum, a unique establishment in literary history, was founded by Ptolemy Soter, King of Egypt, who died B.C. 283, and was greatly enlarged by his son Ptolemy Philadelphus and the succeeding Ptolemies. In connection with the museum was the Alexandrian Library, the most famous and the largest collections of books in the world, and the glory of Alexandria. Demetrius Phalereus, after his banishment from Athens, is said to have been its first superintendent, when the number of volumes, or rolls, amounted to 50,000.
If the other Ptolemies were as unscrupulous in obtaining books as Energetes is said to have been, it is no wonder that the library increased in magnitude or value. We are told that he refused to sell corn to the Athenians during a famine unless he received in pledge the original manuscripts of Aschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These were carefully copied, and the copies returned to the owners, while the King retained the originals. Various accounts are given of the number of books contained in the library at its most flourishing period, when Zenodotus, Callimachus, the poet Eratosthenes, of Cyrene, and Appolinius Rhodius were its librarians. Seneca states the number at 400,000; Aulus Gellius makes it 700,000. Some reconcile the discrepancy by making the statements refer to different periods, while others believe that the larger figure includes more than one collection. That there were more than one collection is known. The original, or Alexandrian library par excellence, was situated in the Brucheion, a quarter of the city in which the royal palace stood; and besides this there was a large collection in the Serapeion, or temple of Jupiter Serapis, but when or by whom this was founded we do not know. The former was accidentally burned during the Julius Cæsar’s siege of the city, but was replaced by the library of Pergamus, which was sent by Antony as a present to Cleopatra. The Serapeion library, which probably included the Pergamean collection, existed to the time of the Emperor Theodosius the Great. At the general destruction of the heathen temples, which took place under this emperor, the splendid temple of Jupiter Serapis was set upon and gutted (A.D. 391) by a fanatical crowd of Christians at the instigation of the Archbishop Theophilus, when its literary treasures were destroyed or scattered. The historian Orosius relates that in the beginning of the fifth century only the empty shelves were to be seen.
A valuable collection was again accumulated in Alexandria, but was doomed to suffer the same fate, being burned by the Arabs when they captured the city under the Caliph Omar in 641. Amru, the captain of the Caliph’s army, would have been willing to spare the library, but the fanatical Omar disposed of the matter in the famous words:—“If these writings of the Greeks agree with the Koran, there could be no need of them; if they disagree, they are pernicious,
