Alexandria is a city of turning points. When it was founded by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E., near an existing Egyptian settlement, the port city represented Egypt’s absorption into Greco-Roman culture. It’s no coincidence that the city’s patron god was Serapis, a syncretic deity representing the fusion of Greek and Egyptian paganism. Likewise, the city’s later fall to the Arab conqueror ‘Amr ibn al-ʿĀṣ in 642 C.E. made Islam dominant in Egypt, as it has remained since.
Unfortunately, ancient Alexandria’s most important sites have not survived. Its Lighthouse, or Pharos, was one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, towering an estimated 350 feet above Alexandria’s busy harbor, but it no longer stands. Nor does its Great Library, once the most extensive in the ancient world and part of a larger learning center called the Mouseion, or Alexandrian Museum. Upper estimates place the number of texts at the Great Library at around 400,000.
Today tourists can visit the Citadel of Qāʾit Bey, a 15th-century fort whose builders repurposed some of the material from the Lighthouse. The modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina is near where the ancient Library once stood. A few kilometers south, sightseers can also visit the ruins of the Serapeum, a temple that hosted a “daughter” branch of the Great Library.
What makes Alexandria special?
The city replaced Memphis as the capital of Egypt upon its founding. That, plus its prime position on the Nile Delta, made it an important city for commerce throughout the Mediterranean world and Middle East. It swiftly grew in wealth and diversity (both religious and ethnic), as reflected by the massive holdings at the Great Library. At its height, the library contained Greek, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Buddhist texts, among others.
Among them was the Septuagint, the first Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible—essential for Alexandria’s large Jewish population, who spoke Greek rather than Hebrew. According to legend, the Septuagint was commissioned and created at the Library of Alexandria.
Unsurprisingly, Alexandria became a magnet for scholars. Euclid, Archimedes, and Ptolemy (the scientist, not the many kings) all studied at the Mouseion.
What caused the decline of ancient Alexandria?
For centuries, historians have pinned the decline of Alexandra’s most important historical sites on its Arab conquerors: the Persians in 616 C.E., then ‘Amr ibn al-ʿĀṣ in 642. However, that claim originates from 13th-century histories now believed to have been based on fabricated information. No contemporary accounts describe the destruction of the Great Library or Lighthouse under Arab rule. Historians now believe that the Lighthouse fell into ruin on its own and that the Library—and a subsequent iteration—were destroyed long before ‘Amr ibn al-ʿĀṣ’s conquest of the city.
Quite to the contrary, Alexandria remained a key commercial and military center for centuries after the conquest. The Fāṭimids and Mamlūks, among others, kept a naval base there, just as their predecessors had, and the city was enriched by the trade of textiles, luxury goods, and, later, spices.
The city’s shrinkage can more accurately be attributed to two things: the ravages of the bubonic plague in the 14th century and the loss of its trade primacy once the Portuguese established a route to India. By the time Napoleon invaded Egypt, in 1798, Alexandria had become a humble Ottoman port.
Fort Qait Bey, the only Mamluk fort spared in the British bombardment of 1888, sits on the site of the ancient Pharos lighthouse in Alexandria, Egypt.
Corbis via Getty Images
How was the Great Library of Alexandria destroyed?
Of all the Library’s possible fates, the truth is perhaps the most tragic: It was collateral damage in a civil war. The empire split between Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy XIII. When Julius Caesar sided with Cleopatra in 48 B.C.E., Ptolemy’s forces laid siege to Alexandria. According to Plutarch, Caesar set fire to the enemy fleet, but the fire raged out of control from the nearby dockyards and swallowed the Great Library.
We don’t know if the entire Library was razed as a result of the conflagration, or if it “merely” lost a substantial chunk of its collection. Either way, another library existed on the same site until the 260s C.E., at which point its membership petered out. But the Library’s decline had begun much earlier, starting with anti-intellectual purges by Ptolemy VIII that predated even the first fire.
A daughter library was established at the Serapeum temple, dedicated to the god Serapis, when it was built in the late 200s B.C.E. The Serapeum library may have outlived the original Great Library, but it, too, was closed in the fourth century C.E., likely on orders of the anti-pagan emperor Theodosius I.
What about the Lighthouse?
Eyewitness accounts attest that the Pharos of Alexandria was still standing in the 12th century, but, like much of the ancient city, it was severely damaged by earthquakes, tsunamis, and gradual shore erosion. It had fallen into severe disrepair by 1477, when Sultan Qāʾit Bey used material from its ruins to construct the Citadel of Qāʾit Bey on the site. The citadel still stands.
Additional material from the ancient Lighthouse was discovered underwater by several expeditions in the 20th century. It has been an active archaeological site ever since. In 2015 the Egyptian government announced an ambitious plan to build an underwater museum around the ruins, though ground has not yet broken on the project.
