Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Alexandria

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

In the year 331 BC, fresh from his conquest of Egypt, Alexander the Great established a new city in Egypt named after himself. This new city, situated on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, at the end of the Nile Delta, would go on to become one of the most important cities in the world, and Alexander’s city is still alive and vibrant today. Learn more about Alexandria, the "Bride of the Mediterranean" on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the year 331 BC, fresh from his conquest of Egypt, Alexander the Great established a new city in Egypt named after himself. This new city, situated on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea at the end of the Nile Delta, would go on to become one of the most important cities in the world, and Alexander City is still alive and vibrant today. Learn more about Alexandria, the bride of the Mediterranean, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nicolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely.

Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday.

This episode is sponsored by Audible.com. My audiobook recommendation today is The Rise and Fall of Alexandria, birthplace of the modern mind by Justin Pollard and Howard Reed. Founded by Alexander the Great and built by self-styled Greek pharaohs, the city of Alexandria at its height dwarfed both Athens and Rome. It was a marvel of its age, legendary for its vast palaces, safe harbors, and magnificent lighthouse. But it was most famous for the astonishing intellectual atmosphere

it fostered and the library it produced. It was here that mankind first discovered that the earth was not flat, originated atomic theory, invented geometry, systematized grammar, translated the Old Testament into Greek, built the steam engine, and passed their discoveries onto future generations via the written word. You can get a free one-month trial to Audible, and two free audiobooks by going to Audibletrial.com slash everything everywhere, or by clicking on the link in the show notes. To understand

Alexandria, we first need to understand Egypt. If you look at a map of Egypt today, it's like a rectangular postage stamp in the upper right corner of Africa. However, most of the land which constitutes Egypt is totally empty. It's a desert. If you look at a nighttime satellite image

of Egypt, all of the lights in the country are located along a line going down the Nile River. This is where everyone lives, and this fact about Egypt hasn't really changed over thousands of years. Historically, everything about Egypt was centered around the Nile. The deserts to the east and the west of the Nile protected Egypt from invasion. There was some threat from Nubia in the south and what is today modern-day Sudan, but it wasn't huge. Almost every threat that Egypt faced always came from the north. Almost all of the invasions of Egypt came from the Levant. Babylon, Persia,

and Greece all invaded Egypt from pretty much the same direction. It's surprising then that so much of the infrastructure built in ancient Egypt was built further south. While Egypt did have some settlements on the Mediterranean, they didn't have anything resembling something like Alexandria. When Alexander the Great began its conquest of the known world, he came through Egypt and established the city in 331 BC. He named the city Alexandria after himself, which was pretty much something he did in every place that he conquered. There were cities named after Alexander all throughout the Middle East all the way to India. There was already a small town located nearby called Rakotus. According to legend, Alexander didn't have any chalk, so when he laid out the outline of the city with grain, it was quickly eaten by seagulls.

The reason why the location was selected was that it had the potential for a harbor. There really weren't any good harbors along the Mediterranean and the Nile Delta, which is one of the reasons why ancient Egyptians never had a major city there. The harbor of Alexandria would have to be built, but Alexander had the foresight to see how it could be done. When Alexander left Egypt, he left Alexandria never to return again. Well, he wouldn't return again while he was alive. More on that in a bit. The person who was left to actually lay out the city was his chief architect, Dinochrates of Rhodes. Dynocrates designed Alexandria to be a pretty typical Greek settlement.

However, there were some major differences. For starters, there was hydraulic engineering involved, which was done to bring fresh water from the Nile right into the city. Secondly, right from the outset, he planned for something. called the Heptostadion. The Heptastadion, which got its name from being seven Greek stadia long, was a 600-foot-long land bridge that connected the mainland of Alexandria to the island of Ferros, which was right off the coast. The Heptadion was the basis of the two harbors of Alexandria, and once it was built, the then-former island of Ferros became the location of the famous lighthouse of Alexandria. And I should note here that right from its very founding, Alexandria might have been

located in Egypt, but it was fundamentally a Greek city. When Alexander died, he left no successor, so his top generals split up the empire and went to war with each other. One of his top generals, Ptolemy, raced back to Egypt after the death of Alexander and took Alexander's body with him. It was there that he established himself as the first pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty, the last dynasty of Egypt. Ptolemy set up the capital of his new dynasty in Alexandria. This is the dynasty that Cleopatra belonged to, and the dynasty was pretty much all Macedonian. In fact, the name Cleopatra isn't even an Egyptian name. It's a Macedonian name. I'll be doing a future episode on Cleopatra, and maybe one on her sister as well, who was fascinating in her own right.

One of the first things that Ptolemy created was an elaborate tomb for Alexander. It was having the tomb of Alexander, which gave him and his dynasty legitimacy. In fact, the tomb of Alexander became a popular tourist attraction for centuries, and it was visited by Julius Caesar and Augustus. The body and tomb of Alexander will also be the subject of a future episode. In fact, one of the reasons I'm doing an episode on the city of Alexandria now is that there are so many future episodes that are going to reference Alexandria. I figured it was better to do this episode first. Alexandria, as the new capital of Egypt, grew quickly. Within a generation, it was bigger than Carthage. It quickly became one of the most important trading cities in the world.

Goods from the Arab world in India, Nubia, and Ethiopia would pass through on their way to the rest of the Mediterranean and vice versa. Within a hundred years of being founded, it became the biggest city in the world. After the death of Ptolemy in 283 BC, his son, Ptolemy the second Philadelphias, built the other structure which defined the city, the great lighthouse of Alexandria. This was listed as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and it signified not only the importance of the city, but the importance of trade and commerce in the city as well. The lighthouse actually stood for a surprisingly long time. It was destroyed by earthquakes in the early 14th century. Believe it or not, you can actually still see the ruins of the lighthouse of Alexandria underwater. I went scuba diving in Alexandria back in 2009 in the harbor, and you can easily see the massive stones as well as some sphinx statues beneath the waves.

The library of Alexandria was started under Ptolemy I, and it grew over the centuries. It wasn't an architectural wonder like the tomb or the lighthouse, but it did culturally define the city, perhaps more than anything else. It wasn't the first library in the ancient world, but it was almost certainly the largest. This was due to its status as a major trading hub, and the standing rule of the city that any ship which arrived in port was to have any books on board taken to the library where they would be copied. While the library has gotten all the attention was part of a larger complex called the Museum, which is Greek for the Institute of the Muses. It is the origin of the Greek word for museum. The museum was the ancient equivalent

of a university. This was the real intellectual center of the city where scholars would come to study anatomy, astronomy, poetry, languages, music, and more. And this, of course, will all be dealt with in more detail in a future episode. Alexandria became sucked into Roman politics when the Roman general Pompey was defeated by Julius Caesar and fled there. Caesar followed only to find Pompey killed, and he met the young queen of Egypt Cleopatra. This was when the great fire at the Library of Alexandria occurred. The result was that Egypt became a protector of Rome, and years later, Mark Anthony went there to take Cleopatra as a wife, and they were defeated by Octavius, and Egypt became a Roman province, and the dynasty ended. Under the Romans, initially, Alexandria didn't

lose any of its importance. It was still the capital of Egypt, and arguably more important than Rome in some respects. It was certainly richer and culturally more vibrant. Over time, the museum became less important as a center for learning, and Alexandria became a center for Christian theology. With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, Alexandria remained the second most important city in the Byzantine Empire after Constantinople. It became the center of the Coptic Church, which is a distinction it still has today. Byzantine rule wasn't to last very long, however. By 641, the city was conquered by the Arabs. This began a long decline for the city.

Cairo became a much more important city as a center for Islamic learning and the new Egyptian capital city. A new Islamic port city called Rosetta, located just 40 miles east of Alexandria, lessened Alexandria's importance as a center of commerce as well. Over the centuries, the city changed hand several times with brief periods of pirate or crusader rule, but it was mostly under Arab control until the year 1517 when it was conquered by the Turkish Ottoman Empire. By the end of the 18th century, Alexandria had become a small town. However, it still had a part to play in world affairs. Napoleon invaded in 1798 as part of his

Egyptian campaign, and the British fought the French there at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801. The French estimated the population of the city at this time as being between 8,000 and 15,000 people. The city began growing again in the 19th and 20th centuries. The British kicked out the Ottomans in 1914 as part of the First World War. It was the primary objective of both the Germans and the British and the North Africa campaign of the Second World War. Egypt became independent in 1952 after a massive uprising against the British in Alexandria and the overthrow of Egyptian King Farouk at his palace in the city. Today, Alexandria is again one of the largest cities in the world. It's the largest city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and the seventh largest city in Africa, with a

population of 5.2 million people. In 2002, a new library of Alexandria was opened, known as the Biblioteca Alexandria. It is an architectural centerpiece of the modern city, and it's located right next to the coast. Even though Alexandria was one of the most important cities in the ancient world, there aren't a lot of ancient ruins to see. It doesn't have anything like the Acropolis in Athens or the Coliseum in Rome. There are some things that are visible, but most of the iconic structures were destroyed or have been buried under the city. centuries of urban development. Nonetheless, Alexandria is a great place to visit, and it's often overlooked in favor of cities

with ancient Egyptian temples and tombs. It's seaside as dozens of great restaurants, and there are still some ancient ruins you can visit. And, of course, if you scuba dive, you can actually see one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The associate producers of Everything Everywhere Daily are Peter Bennett and Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please join the list of patrons over at patreon.com. And also remember, if you leave a review or send me a question, you too can have it read on the show.