ancient Alexandria

It’s strange that I didn’t do this much earlier, but I finally went and found a good general map of ancient Alexandria, and it differs in certain respects from the oral reports of guides that I took at face value for some reason.

My sense had always been that there was currently less land area to the city than there is now, but there is significantly more. The current shape of central Alexandria is a half-moon bay. But in fact, in ancient times the left-hand side of the half moon seems to have been an island, linked with the mainland by a narrow causeway. The lighthouse was just a few meters to the east of the island (where Fort Qaitbey is now).

The area where all my hotels are was right in the thick of things, and it’s amazing to think of what world-historic celebrities walked on that same ground.

It looks as though the Jewish Quarter was pretty close to where the current Library is (though oddly, no one seems to have any idea where the ancient Library of Alexandria was– the story I’ve heard is that when Nixon was President he visited Alexandria, asked where the Library used to be, and the Egyptians realized embarrassedly that nobody knew, hence the idea to build a new one).