Alexandria: the Site and the History

Alexandria: the Site and the History

Alexandria. Bride of Cities. Mistress of the Sea. Fabled city of Alexander the Great. In this remarkable volume, expert scholars and a master photographer capture a lasting impression of the capital and seaport founded by Alexander on Egypt's Mediterranean shore three centuries before the birth of Christ. Morsi Saad El-Din's essay is an homage to Alexandria as well as an overview of the city and the book. He provides pithy, colloquial observations and a wealth of little-known facts and anecdotes, and he undertakes to provide an answer to the elusive whereabouts of Alexander's tomb. Gamal Mokhtar traces the origins of relations between Egypt and Greece that provide the context for Alexander's founding of his immortal city. He peels back little-known layers of cultural, historical, political and economic circumstance from which the city evolved.

Soon after its founding, Alexander moved the capital of Egypt from Memphis to Alexandria. Mostafa El-Abbadi provides a rare description of the ancient city plan and illuminates the dynamics that shaped the city for the next millennium. Under the patronage of Alexander's successors, the Ptolemies, Alexandria became a center of world scholarship and trade. Like the Great Lighthouse, the Great Library of Alexandria was one of the most spectacular the world has ever seen. The library was the largest in antiquity and sparked a renaissance of human culture. El-Abbadi traces the physicality, growth, contributions and fate of the Great Library and its research center, the Mouseion. He tackles the question of its destruction and offers evidence that it was Christian fanatics who ransacked and burned it in 391 A.D. rather than the Arabs, later, as commonly accepted.

Abdel/Azim Ramadan traces Alexandria's growth and evolution during the last 300 years, from the Moody French Expedition to the revival under Mohammed Ali to the modern age. He shows us a city rife with intrigue - one that is an ethnic melting pot and a crucible of cultural and political ferment. Araldo De Luca's photographs transform this volume, which was awarded the Plate of the President of the Republic of Italy in the Lunigiana-Silvestri Competition, into a spectacular portfolio of Alexandrian, Ptolemaic and Graeco-Roman art and artifacts. Full-color plates reveal, in exquisite detail and astonishing clarity, every nuance of the breathtaking sculpture, monuments, pottery, frescoes, mosaics and coins that reflect Alexandria's immortality.

Essays by Morsi Saad El-Din [and others] ; edited by Gareth L. Steen ; photographs by Araldo De Luca

Introduction / Morsi Saad El-Din -- Pre-Alexandria : keys to the rise of an immortal city / Gamal Mokhtar -- Alexandria : thousand-year capital of Egypt ; The Great Library and Mouseion : intellectual center of the world / Mostafa El-Abbadi -- Alexandria : French expedition to the modern age / Abdel/Azim Ramadan.

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