ALEXANDRIA, a city and chief seaport of Egypt, and for over a thousand years from its foundation the capital of the coun try, situated on the Mediterranean in 31 ° I 2' N., 29° I 5' E., and 129m. by rail N.W. of Cairo. The ancient Canopic mouth of the Nile (now dry) was r 2m. east.
The customs house and chief warehouses are by the western harbour, but the principal buildings of the city are in the east and south-east quarters. The Place Mehemet Ali, or Grand square, which is the centre of the life of the city and the starting point of the electric tramways, is an oblong open space, tree lined, in the centre of which there is an equestrian statue of the prince after whom it is named. The square is faced with hand some buildings mainly in the Italian style, including the law courts, exchange, Ottoman bank, English church and the Abbas Hilmi theatre. A number of short streets lead from the square to the eastern harbour. Here a sea wall, completed in 1905, pro vides a magnificent drive and promenade along the shore for a distance of about 3 miles. From the south end of the square the Rue Sherif Pasha—in which are the principal shops—and the Rue Tewfik Pasha lead to the boulevard, or rue, de Rosette. In it are the Zizinia theatre and the municipal palace (containing the public library) ; the museum, containing an excellent collec tion of antiquities, lies up a short street to the north. The west ern end of the boulevard leads to the Place Ibrahim, often called Place Ste. Catherine, from the Roman Catholic church at its south-east side. In a street running south from the boulevard to the railway station is the mosque of Nebi Daniel, containing the tombs of Said Pasha and other members of the khedivial family.
The north quarter, thoroughly oriental in style, is mainly occu pied by Egyptians and Levantines. This Arab quarter is trav ersed by the Rue Ras et-Tin, leading to the promontory of that name. Here, overlooking the harbour, is the khedivial yacht club (built 1903) and the palace built by Mehemet Ali. In the dis trict between the Grand square and the western harbour, one of the poorest quarters of the city, is an open space with Fort Caffareli or Napoleon in the centre. This quarter has been pierced by several straight roads, one of which, crossing the Mahmudiya canal by the Pont Neuf, leads to Gabbari, the most westerly part of the city, and an industrial and manufacturing region, possess ing asphalt works and oil, rice and paper mills. On either side of the canal are the warehouses of wholesale dealers in cotton, wool, sugar, grain and other commodities. In the southern part of the city are the Arab cemetery, "Pompey's Pillar" and the cata combs. "Pompey's Pillar" (A.D. 302), which stands on the high est spot in Alexandria, is nearly 99f t. high, including the pedestal. The shaft is of red granite and is beautifully polished. The cata combs, a short distance south-west of the pillar, are hewn out of the rocky slope of a hill, and are an elaborate series of chambers adorned with pillars, statues, religious symbols and traces of painting.
The eastern bay is rocky, shallow and exposed, and is now used only by fishing craft, though a breakwater to protect its quays was completed in 1916. The harbour is on the west of Pharos and partly formed by a breakwater (built 1871-73 and prolonged 1906-07), 2m. long. The breakwater starts opposite the promontory of Ras et-Tin, on which is a lighthouse, i8oft. above the sea, built by Mehemet Ali. Another breakwater starts from the Gabbari side, the opening between the two works being about half a mile. A number of scattered rocks lie across the en trance, but through them two fairways have been made, and the enclosed water is divided into an outer and inner harbour by a mole, i,000yd. long, projecting north-west from the southern shore. The inner harbour covers 464 acres. It is lined for 23-m. by quays, affording accommodation for ships drawing up to 28f t. The outer harbour (1,400 acres water area) is furnished with a graving dock, 52oft. long, and with quays and jetties along the Gabbari foreshore.
Alexandria is linked by a network of railway and telegraph lines to the other towns of Egypt, and there is a trunk telephone line to Cairo. The city secured in 1906 a new and adequate water-supply, modern drainage works having been completed the previous year. Being the great entrepot for the trade of Egypt, the city is the headquarters of the British chamber of commerce and of most of the merchants and companies engaged in the de velopment of the Delta. Over 8o% of the total exports and im ports of the country pass through the port.
The population of the city, including the suburbs, in 1927 was The foreigners numbered over 1 oo,000, of whom the majority were Greeks, Italians, Syrians, Armenians and other Lev antines, though almost every European and Oriental nation iF. represented. The labouring population is mainly Egyptian ; the Greeks and Levantines are usually shopkeepers or petty traders, The Ancient City.—TheGreek Alexandria was divided into three regions: (I) the Jews' quarter, forming the north-east portion of the city; (2) Rhacotis, on the west, occupied chiefly by Egyptians; (3) Brucheum, the Royal or Greek quarter, form ing the most magnificent portion of the city. In Roman times Brucheum was enlarged by the addition of an official quarter, making up the number of four regiones in all. The city was laid out as a gridiron of parallel streets, each of which had an at tendant subterranean canal; and the two main streets, lined with colonnades and said to have been each about goof t. wide, inter sected in the centre of the city. The island of Pharos was joined to the mainland by a mole nearly a mile long and called the Hep tastadium. The end of this abutted on the land at the head of the present Grand square, where rose the "Moon Gate." All that now lies between that point and the modern Ras et-Tin quarter is built on the silt which gradually widened and obliterated this mole. The Ras et-Tin quarter represents all that is left of the island of Pharos, the site of the actual lighthouse having been weathered away by the sea. On the east of the mole was the great harbour, now an open bay; on the west lay the port of Eunostos, with its inner basin Kibotos, now vastly enlarged to form the modern harbour.
In Strabo's time (latter half of 1st century B.e.) the principal buildings were as follows, enumerated as they were to be seen from a ship entering the great harbour. (I) the royal palaces, filling the north-east angle of the town and occupying the promon tory 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 north Delta and indeed all the north-east coast of Africa; and on calm days the foundations of buildings may be seen, running out far under sea, near the Pharillon. (2) 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. (3) The Posei deion or temple of the sea-god, close to the theatre and in front of it. (4) the Timonium built by Antony. (5, 6, 7) The Em porium (exchange), Apostases (magazines) and Navalia (docks), lying west of (4), along the sea-front as far as the mole. Behind the Emporium rose (8) the great Caesareum, by which stood the two obelisks, later known as "Cleopatra's Needles," and now re moved to London and New York. 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. (9) The Gymnasium and (i o) the Palaestra are both inland, near the great Canopic street (Boulevard de Rosette) in the eastern half of the town, but on sites not determined. (I I) The temple of Saturn: site un known. (12) The Mausolea of Alexander (Soma) and the Ptol emies in one ring-fence, near the point of intersection of the two main streets. (13) The museum with its library and theatre in the same region; but on a site not identified. (14) The Serap eum, 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" (see above), which, how ever, was an independent monument erected to commemorate Diocletian's siege of the city. On the eastern point of the Pharos island stood the great lighthouse, one of the "Seven Wonders," reputed to be 400f t. high. The first Ptolemy began it, and the second completed it, at a total cost of Boo talents. It is the proto type of all lighthouses in the world. A temple of Hephaestus also stood on Pharos at the head of the mole.
History.—Foundedin 332 B.C. by Alexander the Great, Alexandria was intended to supersede Naucratis as a Greek centre in Egypt, and to be at once a secure naval base for his de signs on Persia and a link between Macedonia and the rich Nile valley. If such a city was to be on the Egyptian coast, there was only one possible site, behind the screen of the Pharos island and removed from the silt thrown out by Nile mouths. An Egyptian townlet, Rhacotis, already stood on the shore and was a resort of fishermen and pirates. Alexander occupied Pharos, and had a walled city marked out by Deinocrates on the mainland to in clude Rhacotis. A few months later he left Egypt for the East and never returned to his city; but his corpse was ultimately en tombed there. His viceroy, Cleomenes, continued the creation of Alexandria. The Heptastadium, however, and the mainland quar ters seem to have been mainly Ptolemaic work. Inheriting the trade of ruined Tyre and becoming the centre of the new com merce between Europe and the Arabian and Indian East, the city grew in less than a century to be larger than Carthage ; and for some centuries more it had to acknowledge no superior but Rome. It was a centre not only of Hellenism but of Semitism, and the greatest Jewish city in the world. There the Septuagint was pro duced. The early Ptolemies kept it in order and fostered the development of its museum into the leading Greek university; and as a free Greek city, it retained its own senate into Roman times. In 8o B.C., however, it passed formally under Roman juris diction according to the will of Ptolemy Alexander; though it had been under Roman influence for more than a hundred years pre viously. There Julius Caesar dallied with Cleopatra in 47 B.C. and was mobbed by the rabble ; there his example was followed by Antony, for whose favour the city paid dear to Octavian, who placed over it a prefect from the imperial household. Alexandria seems from this time to have regained its old prosperity, corn manding, as it did, an important granary of Rome; in the Augustan age, its free population was estimated at 300,00o in ad dition to an immense number of slaves. In A.D. 215 the emperor Caracalla visited the city; and, in order to repay some insulting satires that the inhabitants had made upon him, a general mas sacre was perpetrated. Notwithstanding this terrible disaster, Alexandria soon recovered its former splendour, and for some time longer was esteemed the first city of the world after Rome, while it now acquired fresh importance as a centre of Christian theology and church government. There Arianism was formulated and there Athanasius, the great opponent of both heresy and pagan reaction, worked and triumphed. As native influences, how ever, began to reassert themselves in the Nile valley, Alexandria gradually became an alien city, more and more detached from Egypt ; and, losing much of its commerce as the peace of the empire broke up during the 3rd century A.D., it declined fast in population and splendour. In 616 it was taken by Chosroes, king of Persia; and in 64o by the Arabians, under 'Amr, after a siege that lasted 14 months, during which Heraclius, the emperor of Constantinople, did not send a single ship to its assistance. Not withstanding the losses that the city had sustained, 'Amr was able to write to his master, the caliph Omar, that he had taken a city containing "4,00o palaces, 4,00o baths, 12,000 dealers in fresh oil, 12,000 gardeners, 40,00o Jews who pay tribute, 40o theatres or places of amusement." The well-known tale of how the famous library was used for six months to supply the furnaces of the public baths is now regarded as doubtful, in view of the many calamities which the collection had already suffered. About the year 646 'Amr was deprived of his government by the caliph Othman. The Egyptians, by whom 'Amr was greatly beloved, were so much dissatisfied by this act, and even showed such a tendency to revolt, that the Greek emperor determined to make an effort to reduce Alexandria. The attempt proved perfectly successful. The caliph, perceiving his mistake, immediately re stored 'Amr, who, on his arrival in Egypt, drove the Greeks within the walls of Alexandria, captured the city after a most obstinate resistance, and completely demolished its fortifications. Alexan dria now rapidly declined in importance. The building of Cairo in 969, and, above all, the discovery of the route to the East by the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, nearly ruined its commerce; the canal, which supplied it with Nile water, became blocked ; and although it remained a principal Egyptian port, it played no great part in history until Napoleon's Egyptian expedition thrust it into prominence.
Antiquities.—Persistentefforts have been made to ex plore the antiquities of Alexandria. The authorities of the mu seum have been enabled from time to time to carry out systematic excavations when opportunity offered; D. G. Hogarth made ten tative researches on behalf of the Egyptian Exploration Fund and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in 1895; and a German expedition worked for two years (1898-99). But the great and growing modern city stands right over the ancient one, making it almost impossible to find any considerable space in which to dig, except at enormous cost; and the general subsidence of the coast has sunk the lower-lying parts of the ancient town under water. Unfortunately the spaces still most open are the low grounds to north-east and south-west, 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. Hard by 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 lighted by electricity and shown to visitors. The objects found in these researches are in the museum, the most notable being a great ba salt bull, probably once an object of cult in the Serapeum. Other catacombs and tombs have been opened in Korn es-Shugafa Hadra (Roman) and Ras et-Tin (painted). The Germans found re mains 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 ed-Dik, which may have been part of the Paneum, the Mausolea or a Roman fbrtress. The making of the new foreshore led to the dredging up of re mains of the Patriarchal church; and the foundations of modern buildings are seldom laid without some objects of antiquity being discovered. The wealth underground is doubtless immense; but, despite all efforts, there is not much for antiquarians to see in Alexandria outside the museum and the neighbourhood of "Pom pey's Pillar."