A Greek city in Egypt
Alexandria stands on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt’s Nile Delta, but it was not an Egyptian foundation. Alexander the Great founded it in 331 BCE, shortly after taking Egypt from Persian control and the same year as his victory over Darius at Gaugamela, the clash described as Alexander versus Darius. Several cities took his name, and this one proved by far the most lasting.
Alexander left Egypt not long after the founding and never saw the finished city. He died in 323 BCE, and the Ptolemaic dynasty that took over Egypt afterwards made Alexandria its capital. What follows concerns the city itself: where it was put, how it was laid out, and the buildings that made it famous.
Choosing the site
The location was a strip of land between the sea and Lake Mareotis, west of the Nile’s main mouths. A modest Egyptian settlement called Rhakotis already existed there. Opposite lay the small island of Pharos. The coast offered shelter, access to inland waterways through the lake, and a position facing the wider Mediterranean, so goods from the Egyptian interior could reach ships easily.
According to Plutarch, writing centuries later, Alexander marked out the outline of the city with barley meal, and flocks of birds ate it. Seers read this as a sign of future abundance. It is a colourful story, probably embroidered, but it shows that later Greeks associated the city’s planning with the king himself. Ancient sources traditionally credit the architect Deinocrates of Rhodes with the design, although how much he personally did is uncertain.
The grid plan
Greek planners had used regular street grids in colonies and some older cities for generations, and Alexandria applied the idea at large scale. The geographer Strabo, who visited around the end of the first century BCE, describes broad main streets crossing at right angles, with the main avenues wide enough for wheeled traffic. The city was divided into districts, including a royal quarter near the harbour with palaces and gardens.
A long causeway, called the Heptastadion because its length was traditionally seven stadia, linked the mainland to Pharos Island. It divided the waterfront into two harbours, one facing east and one west. Together with the canal links to the lake, this arrangement served both sea and river trade, and it is one reason historians pair the city with studies of ancient harbours. Much of the ancient grid lies below the modern city, so archaeologists rely on scattered excavations, on later descriptions and on the line of the main streets that survived into the Roman period.
The Pharos lighthouse
The best-known building was the lighthouse on the eastern tip of Pharos Island. It was built in the early third century BCE, during the reign of Ptolemy I or Ptolemy II, and an architect named Sostratus of Cnidus is traditionally associated with it. Ancient and medieval descriptions say it had a square base, an octagonal middle stage and a round top, with a fire burning at the summit and a statue above. Estimates of its height vary, but most suggest well over 100 metres, which made it among the tallest structures of its time.
The Pharos gave its name to lighthouses in several languages, including the French phare and Spanish faro. For travellers in ancient seafaring, the tower marked a low, featureless coast and a harbour entrance with dangerous reefs. The Greeks counted it among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
The lighthouse survived for many centuries but was damaged by earthquakes, especially those recorded in the tenth and fourteenth centuries CE. By the late fifteenth century a fort built by the Mamluk sultan Qaitbay stood on the site, reusing fallen stone. Divers and archaeologists have since documented large blocks on the seabed near the fort, and some are thought to come from the lighthouse, although identifying them with certainty is difficult.
The Museum and the Library
Alexandria was also a centre of scholarship. The Museum, or Mouseion, was a research institution linked to the royal palace, where scholars were supported by the crown. The Library, associated with it, aimed to collect Greek writing and works from other cultures. Later sources give very large numbers of scrolls, but these figures are unreliable and should not be repeated as fact. The papyrus scroll collection declined gradually rather than in one fire, and the Serapeum, a temple of Serapis, was destroyed around 391 CE.
What the sources do support is that the city drew serious scholars. Callimachus compiled a catalogue of authors, Eratosthenes is credited with an estimate of the Earth’s circumference, and Euclid is traditionally said to have worked in Alexandria. In medicine, Herophilus and Erasistratus are linked to early dissection, an important chapter in Greco-Roman medicine. Because the Museum was part of the palace complex, its prestige also served the rulers.
Mixed population, Greek frame
The city was Greek in its institutions, language and architecture, but its people were mixed, with Greeks, Egyptians and a large Jewish community living there. Over time Egyptian religious ideas mixed with Greek forms, as in the cult of Serapis, whose temple, the Serapeum, was a landmark.
Alexander was reportedly buried in the city after his body was taken to Egypt, and a tomb became a visited site, but its exact location was lost long ago. Much of the Hellenistic city was destroyed or built over, which is why the Pharos, the grid and the scholars are known largely from texts and partial excavations.
Why it matters
Alexandria combined three features that made later Greek cities influential: a planned street layout, a harbour built for trade and a state-supported centre of learning. It is less a single monument than an experiment in urban design on a very large scale, much of it known to us only indirectly.