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| The Lighthouse of Pharos, Alexandria |
Alexander the Great was a Macedonian King who at a young age,
conquered the Persian Empire and lands that included Asia Minor, the Levant,
Persia and parts of India. In his conquest in military campaigns he named several
places after him- Alexandria. Over time, through changes in rulers, demography,
cultures and religions some of these places vanished off the maps or changed
its names such as Kandahar in present day Afghanistan while others retained the
name of the legendary king. One that stands out from the rest is Alexandria in
Egypt which Alexander founded in 331 BC. He envisioned the place to be the finest
seaport in the ancient world.
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| statue of Alexander the Great |
Cleomenes, Alexander’s viceroy in Egypt, continued the
development and expansion of the city when Alexander pursued further military
expeditions to the southwest. In 322 BC, in India, after a lengthy campaign,
Alexander’s battle weary troops mutinied and refused to march further.
Alexander acceded to his troops’ desire and returned to Babylonia where he was
afflicted with a fever and died after a few days. He was just 32 years
old. Alexander’s generals then fought among themselves for the division and
rule of the vast empire that he had left. Ptolemy or Ptolemy I Soter, one of
the generals took hold of Egypt and made himself as king or pharaoh with
Alexandria as his capital.
During the funerary procession of Alexander to Macedonia,
Ptolemy hijacked the remains in Damascus, Syria and brought it to Memphis in
Egypt. He believed that whoever had the remains of the legendary king
would become powerful. Ptolemy Philadelphus, a successor of Ptolemy I later
transferred the remains from Memphis to Alexandria where later a communal mausoleum
for Alexander and the members of the Ptolemaic dynasty was built. In Egypt,
Ptolemy I and his descendants succeeded in firmly establishing the Greek
Ptolemaic dynasty and made themselves the heirs of the original Egyptian
pharaohs.
Because of its strategic location in the Mediterranean coast,
Alexandria in ancient times was a major city of Egypt. It is situated north in
the Nile River Delta. During the reign of the Ptolemies some of the significant
structures and places of interest were the Brucheium or the royal Greek quarter
in the east, the Jewish quarter in the northeast. There was also the Lighthouse
on the island of Pharos which was considered as one of the seven wonders of the
ancient world. There were also the Soma or mausoleum; the emporium or the exchange;
the poseidonium or the temple of Poseidon, the god of the sea; the museum; the
Greek theater and the Serapheion or the temple of the Egyptian diety Serapis.
The population of the city during the Ptolemaic era was about 300,000 composed of
native Egyptians, Greeks and Jews as free citizens exclusive of slaves and
strangers.
Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire and its vast
territory paved the way for the introduction of Hellenism or Greek culture to
the people of the lands that were east of Europe and south of Greece. The
Greco-Macedonian rule and the settlement of the Greeks to the empire made Greek
became the lingua franca of the ancient world. During the rule of the Ptolemies
Alexandria was the center of Hellenism and the literary center of the ancient
world. It was also the center of commerce and science. There was the famous
library of Alexandria and influential schools of philosophy, rhetoric and other
branch of learning were established. In its heyday, Alexandria rivaled or even surpassed
Athens as the ancient world’s center of culture and learning. Overtime, the Greeks’ contact with the Jews influenced
their religious thought which would then eventually replace their polytheistic
belief into a monotheistic one. There was a translation of the Old Testament
from Hebrew into Greek before AD 100.
During the rise of Rome, Cleopatra the queen of Egypt and a
descendant of Ptolemy I allied herself with the Roman Mark Anthony, her lover, who was an
adversary of Octavian, a legal heir of Julius Caesar. Octavian defeated the
forces of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony in the battle of Actium in 31 BC. She and
Mark Anthony then committed suicide and Octavian who later became Roman Emperor
Augustus Caesar made Egypt as a Roman province and assigned a prefect under
him.
The Romans quelled a Jewish revolt and annihilated the
Jewish population and destroyed a large portion of Alexandria in 116 AD. In 215
AD, the Roman emperor Caracalla ordered his troops to massacre male inhabitants
of the city with age that was already capable of bearing arms over an insulting
satire directed at him. On the other side of those brutalities, the reign of
the Romans made Alexandria the second most powerful city after Rome. The
position of the city made it a center of trade and commerce between east and
west and fleets of grain ships sailed from Alexandria to Italy year after year.
The rise and fall of empires and military and economic
fortunes of other nations affected the significance of Alexandria as a city
that resulted to its decline. Constantinople was founded and became the seat of
the Byzantine Empire thus diminishing the importance of Alexandria as a major
city in the Roman Empire. In 638 AD Muslims under Amr Ibn-al-as sacked the city
after a siege lasting 14 months. The rule of the Arabs and the making of Cairo
as the capital of Egypt contributed more to Alexandria’s decline. The rise of
the Ottoman Empire was not any better. In 1798 Napoleon Bonaparte held and captured the
city and remained there until the arrival of the British expedition in 1801. Europeans
began leaving the city following the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956 that led to the
outburst of Arab nationalism.
Modern Alexandria is a major and second largest city of
Egypt with a 2013 population of 4,546,231 of diverse ethnicity and religion
such as Judaism, Islam and Christianity. As the country’s main port city,
Alexandria handles about 80% of the imports and exports of Egypt such as cottons,
grains, sugar and other goods. The city also boasts of modern amenities in
airports, highways, railways, buses, taxis, ports, theaters and museums to
cater to its local residents and visitors. Those infrastructures and facilities
benefit the city being an important tourist resort of the country.
The rise and fall of world empires, the wars, the change of
culture and the change in demographic composition of Alexandria have had little
effect to its splendor as one of the world’s most historic and greatest cities
of all time. The name of the city is a fitting tribute to its founder,
Alexander the Great, who in life and in death, was admired by people around the
world for his strong leadership, military genius and exceptional exploits that
made him establish the largest empire the ancient world had ever known.
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