ALEXANDRIA (called Skanderi'eli by the Turks and Arabs) was founded by Alexan der the great in the autumn of the year 332 13.C. It was situated originally on the low tract of land which separates the lake Mareotis from the Mediterranean, about 14 m.w. of the Canopic month of the Nile. Before the city, in the Mediterranean, lay the island of Pharos, upon the n.e. point of which stood the famous light-house (Pharos), and which was connected with the mainland by a mole, called, from its length, the heptastadimn, or "seven furlong" mole, thus forming the two harbors. The plan of A. was designed by the architect Dinocrates, and its original extent is said to have been about 4 m. in length, with a circumference of 15 m. It was intersected by two straight main streets, crossing each other at right angles in the middle of the city. Colonnades adorned the whole length of these streets, which wore in general very regularly built. The most magnificent quarter of the city was that called the Brucheium, which was situated on the eastern harbor. This quarter of the city contained the palaces of the Ptolemies, with the museum and the old library; the soma or mausoleum of Alexander the great and of the Ptolemies. the poseidonum, and the great theater. Further w. was the emporium or exchange. The Serapeion, or temple of Serapis, stood in the western division of the city, which formed the Egyptian quarter, and was called RhacOtis; a small town of that name had occupied the site before the foundation of A. To the w. of the city lay the great necropolis, and to the e. the race-course, beyond which was the suburb of Nicop olis. The greater part of the space under the houses was occupied by vaulted subter ranean cisterns, which were capable of containing a sufficient quantity of water to sup ply the whole population of the city for a year. From the time of its foundation, A. was the Greek capital of Egypt. Its pop. in the time of its prosperity is said by Dio dorus to have amounted to about 300,000 free citizens, and if we take into account the slaves and strangers, that number must be more than doubled. This population con sisted mostly of Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians, together with settlers from all nations of the known world. After the death of Alexander the great, A. became the residence of the Ptolemies. They made it, next to Rome and Antioch, the most magnificent city of antiquity, as well as the chief seat of Grecian learning and literature, which spread hence over the greater part of the ancient world. The situation of the city, at the point of junction between the e. and w. rendered it the center of the commerce of the world, and raised it to the highest degree of prosperity.
A. had reached its greatest splendor when it came into possession of the Romans, about 30 D. C. From this moment its prosperity began to decline—at first almost imperceptibly, but afterwards more rapidly, in consequence of the removal of the works of art to Rome, the massacres of Caracalla, the laying waste of the Brucheium by Aurelian, the siege and pillage of the city by Diocletian, and lastly the rising prosperity of the rival city of Constantinople. All these causes combined to destroy A. so speedily that in the 4th c.
no building of any importance was left in it except the temple of Serapis. The strife between Christianity and heathenism gave rise to bloody contests in A. The Serapeion, the last seat of heathen theology and learning, was stormed by the Christians in 389 A.D., and converted into a Christian church This put an end to heathenism, and A.became henceforward a chief seat of Christian theology, and continued to be so till it was taken by the Arabs, under Amru, in June, 638 A.D. This siege, and still more its conquest by the Turks in 868 A.D., completed the destruction of the city. It revived, indeed, in some degree under the Egyptian caliphs, and continued during the middle ages to be the most important emporium of trade between the east and west ; but the discovery of America, and of the passage to India by the cape of Good Hope, very much diminished the trade of A.; and the dominion of the idamelukes, and the conquest of Osmanli, anni hilated even the little which the Arabs had restored. The result was that in 1778 A.D., A. contained no more than 6000 inhabitants. After the conquest of Egypt by the French in the end of the 18th c., A. once more began to revive ; and under Ali, who resided in it a part of every year, it prospered to such a degree that it may now be reck oned one of the most important commercial places on the Mediterranean. It is specially important as the center of steam-communication between Europe and India.
The present city is not situated exactly on the site of the old one, but is chiefly built on the mole called the lieptastadium, which has been increased by alluvial deposits till it has become a broad neck of land between the two harbors, of which the eastern is called the new port, and the western the old port. A. is connected with Cairo by rail (contin ued to Suez) and by the canal of Mahmoudieh. Although originally, like other oriental cities, dirty and ill-built, it is in this respect rapidly improving. In 1871, 4068 vessels, of 2,524,983 tons, entered and cleared. In 1870, the population was 238,888—Arabians, Turks, Jews, Copts, Greeks, and Franks. Of the few remains of antiquity still to be seen in A., the most prominent is Pompey's pillar, as it is erroneously called, the shaft of which, of red granite, is 73 ft. long. According to the Greek inscription on the base, which is still legible, this pillar was erected by the Egyptian prefect Publius, in honor of the emperor Diocletian, There are also the so-called Cleopatra's needles, two obe lisks of the time of Kid; Thothmes III., who lived in the 16th c. B.('. One of the needles, a monolith 72 feet high, is still standing ; the other was brought to England and erected on the Thames embankment in 1878. The other antiquities of A. are some catacombs of the ancient city of the dead, and some of the cisterns below the city, which are almost entirely filled up.