What was alexandria

No one knows exactly what the Pharos looked like. Literary references and sketches from ancient times describe a structure that rose from a vast rectangular base—itself a virtual skyscraper—topped by a smaller octagonal section, then a cylindrical section, culminating in a huge statue, probably of Poseidon or Zeus. Scholars say the Pharos, completed about B.

It survived an astonishing 17 centuries before collapsing in the mids. It was a calm spring day when Empereur and cinematographer Asma el-Bakri, carrying a bulky millimeter camera, slipped beneath the waters near the fort, which had been seldom explored because the military had put the area off limits. Empereur was stunned as he swam amid hundreds of building stones and shapes that looked like statues and columns. The sight, he recalls, made him dizzy. But after coming out of the water, he and el-Bakri watched in horror as a barge crane lowered ton concrete blocks into the waters just off Qait Bey to reinforce the breakwater near where they had been filming.

El-Bakri pestered government officials until they agreed to halt the work, but not before some 3, tons of concrete had been unloaded, crushing many artifacts.

One column had a diameter of 7. Corinthian capitals, obelisks and huge stone sphinxes littered the seafloor. Curiously, half a dozen columns carved in the Egyptian style had markings dating back to Ramses II, nearly a millennium before Alexandria was founded. The Greek rulers who built Alexandria had taken ancient Egyptian monuments from along the Nile to provide gravitas for their nouveau riche city. Empereur and his team also found a colossal statue, obviously of a pharaoh, similar to one the Egyptian Navy had raised in He believes the pair represent Ptolemy I and his wife, Berenice I, presiding over a nominally Greek city.

With their bases, the statues would have stood 40 feet tall. Over the years, Empereur and his co-workers have photographed, mapped and cataloged more than 3, surviving pieces on the seafloor, including many columns, 30 sphinxes and five obelisks. He estimates that another 2, objects still need cataloging. Most will remain safely underwater, Egyptian officials say. Franck Goddio is an urbane diver who travels the world examining shipwrecks, from a French slave ship to a Spanish galleon.

In , Goddio and his team located the remains of a monumental structure, feet long and feet wide, as well as a finger from a bronze statue that Goddio estimates would have stood 13 feet tall.

Perhaps most significant, he has found that much of ancient Alexandria sank beneath the waves and remains remarkably intact. The new maps reveal foundations of wharves, storehouses and temples as well as the royal palaces that formed the core of the city, now buried under Alexandrian sand.

Radiocarbon dating of wooden planks and other excavated material shows evidence of human activity from the fourth century B. At a recent meeting of scholars at Oxford University, the detailed topographical map Goddio projected of the harbor floor drew gasps.

But how had the city sunk? He determined that the edge of the ancient city had slid into the sea over the course of centuries because of a deadly combination of earthquakes, a tsunami and slow subsidence.

On August 21, in A. Townspeople wandered into the weirdly emptied space. That disaster, which may have killed 50, people in Alexandria alone, ushered in a two-century period of seismic activity and rising sea levels that radically altered the Egyptian coastline.

Ongoing investigation of sediment cores, conducted by Stanley and his colleagues, has shed new light on the chronology of human settlement here. Shortly after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, in A.

Christian mobs played some part in the destruction of the Library of Alexandria; the exact causes and dates of assaults on the library are still hotly disputed. And in A. This is not the site of the Mouseion but a later institution unknown until now. One warm November day, Grzegorz Majcherek, of Warsaw University, directs a power shovel that is expanding an earthen ramp into a pit. To understand the ancient city, archaeologists have had to peel back the modern one — along with deep and often contradictory layers of myth and folklore.

But as quick as his surveyors could calculate the relevant angles and his labourers could scatter the requisite lines of grain, flocks of sea birds swooped down and snaffled this life-size blueprint for themselves.

And so work continued, and before long those sea birds were gazing down at a frenzy of construction. Canals were cut from the Nile, with rivulets diverted under the main streets to supply the homes of the rich with a steady provision of fresh water. Dinocrates was a student of Hippodamus , the man responsible for building the great Athenian harbour at Piraeus and often referred to as the father of urban planning. Hippodamus and his school believed that designing cities meant more than just sketching out the boundaries of the relevant site; planners had to think about how the town was going to function, not only logistically but politically and culturally as well.

In the eyes of Hippodamus, streets were not just by-products of houses and shops but centre-points in their own right: a showpiece of efficient urban governance. But Alexander himself would never live to see these marvels, or indeed the city which he founded. Ptolemy wanted Alexander in death because it helped legitimise his own authority in life. The first person blamed for the destruction of the Library is none other than Julius Caesar himself. Greatly outnumbered and in enemy territory, Caesar ordered the ships in the harbor to be set on fire.

The fire spread and destroyed the Egyptian fleet. Unfortunately, it also burned down part of the city - the area where the great Library stood. Caesar wrote of starting the fire in the harbor but neglected to mention the burning of the Library. Such an omission proves little since he was not in the habit of including unflattering facts while writing his own history.

But Caesar was not without public detractors. If he was solely to blame for the disappearance of the Library it is very likely significant documentation on the affair would exist today. But the story is also a tad more complex. Theophilus was Patriarch of Alexandria from to AD. During his reign the Temple of Serapis was converted into a Christian Church probably around AD and it is likely that many documents were destroyed then. The Temple of Serapis was estimated to hold about ten percent of the overall Library of Alexandria's holdings.

After his death, his nephew Cyril became Patriarch. Shortly after that, riots broke out when Hierax, a Christian monk, was publicly killed by order of Orestes the city Prefect.

Orestes was said to be under the influence of Hypatia, a female philosopher and daughter of the "last member of the Library of Alexandria". Although it should be noted that some count Hypatia herself as the last Head Librarian. Alexandria had long been known for its violent and volatile politics. Christians, Jews and Pagans all lived together in the city.