The City of Alexandria - Egypt

The City of Alexandria - Egypt

Alexandria, the city created by Alexander the Great in 333BCE and with a history very alexandriadifferent from any of the other cities in Egypt. When this famous Macedonian (the Greek state, not the former Yugoslav country) was en route to visit the Oracle Temple of Amun at the Siwa oasis he stopped overnight at the village of "Re-qdt” (its Greek name is “Racotis”) between the Mediterranean Sea and the Lake of Mariott (its location today is the area of Tel Bab Sadrah or Karmouz). Alexander decided that this was to be the spot where a great city would be built and charged one of his architects, Dinocratis, to build it.

He continued on to Siwa, to consult the oracle about his destiny and then left Egypt to fight the Persians in Asia. Sadly it is not known what the Oracle told Alexander, but it is generally believed that he was told he was to be a great leader. After his triumphal campaigns, Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC without ever seeing the city that bears his name: in fact it was not until the reigns of Ptolemy I, (Soter - the Saviour), and his successor Ptolemy II (Philadelphus) that the building of the city was completed and it became the main capital.

Dinocratis planned the city in squares, like a chessboard with two main streets interlaced vertically and horizontally extending from east to west as well as from north to south. Alexandria had 5 districts, each one named after a letter of the first five letters in the Greek Alphabet: A (Alpha); B (Beta); G (Gamma); D (Delta) and E (Epsilon). These 5 letters represent the initial letters of the text: "Alexander the king, the descendent of the gods, erected the city".

Alpha was the royal district where the royal palaces, the main Temple, the museum, the libraries, and the gardens were built,

Beta was the district of the Greek aristocracy.

Gamma was dedicated to the settlement of the Greek commoners.

Delta was the district of the foreign minorities such as the Syrians, the Persians, and the Jews. Epsilon was the district for the native Egyptians.

 

Drinking water was supplied by a canal starting from the western Canopic branch of the Nile, at a point called "Shedia" about 27 km to the south of Alexandria. The water was stored in Cisterns; some of which remain into modern times.

At the beginning of the Roman period, about 30 BC, a new city was built here by the Romans, bearing the name of "Nicopolis" which means the city of Victory, in order to commemorate the victory of Octavian over Mark Anthony in Aktium in 31 BC. Most of it was destroyed or vanished for several reasons, including disturbances, civil wars, revolts, natural disasters, subsoil water and unplanned urbanization etc. 

Among the fabulous monuments mentioned by ancient Greek books are the Enclosure Walls and the Gates of the City, the Lighthouse, the Great Library, the Royal Necropolis including the Tomb of Alexander and the Museums. Today the remaining monuments of ancient Alexandria are different cemeteries scattered in many various locations, some of which date back to the Ptolemaic period: El-Shatby, Moustafa Kamel, El-Anfoushy, and El-Wardain. Others date back to the Roman period: the tombs of Kom El-Shouqafa (the Catacombs), the tomb of Tigran, Pompeii’s pillar, Tomb of Silvago and the cemetery of El-Qabbary which was only recently discovered. There are other important monuments in the city that date back to various periods, such as the Serapium, the Roman Theatre, the Temple of El-Ras El-Souda, Citadel of Quaitbay, the Jewellery Museum, Mosque of El-Naby Daniel, Mosque of El-Moursi Abou El-Abbas and the Memorial of the unknown soldier.

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About Egypt (Egypt – An Introduction)

Few places on earth capture the imagination of both young and old the way Egypt does with its parched desert landscape dissected by its one eternal river. The Nile flows from beyond Egypt’s southern border some 1500km through high cliffs and plains before the river valley splits into the many tributaries of the Delta. To either side of the river are baked stretches of desert – the ‘Red Land’ or ‘deshret’ of the ancient Egyptians which formed a natural barrier against invasion for thousands of years. The ‘Black Land’ ‘kemet’ is the river valley itself, a life-giving ribbon of cultivated land which never extends more than a few kilometres from the river and was fertilised by each year’s inundation until the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s.

Because the Nile Valley was the most populated area in ancient times, this is where the bulk of remaining Egyptian monuments are situated and where most tourists visit. The popular way to get to Egypt is to fly into one of the main cities – Cairo, Luxor or Aswan, whose airports have recently been modernised and extended. For those who want a more leisurely holiday the Red Sea coast is becoming increasingly popular, a diver’s paradise with its coral reefs and wide sandy beaches in resorts such as Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada. There are package tours to suit every taste and every pocket. It has to be said that the Nile Valley is by no means the only monumental area and ‘specialist trips’ are now being organised to the Oases of the Western Desert as well as the Eastern Desert and Sinai.

Many visitors opt for a cruise. These flat-bottomed riverboats, ‘floating palaces’ which may be merely luxurious or blatantly ostentatious, ply the Nile from Luxor to Aswan and back weekly. The long cruise from Cairo to Aswan is no longer available at the present time for security reasons, but on the shorter cruises the visitor has the opportunity to pack about three weeks worth of holiday into a week. Cruises are usually accompanied by Egyptologists who will guide you around the sites in a whirlwind tour of knowledge and wit. While catching your breath between visiting monuments and eating huge meals there is time to just relax and watch the banks of the Nile, hardly changed since ancient times, silently float by. There are now also cruises available on Lake Nasser which take in the Nubian monuments.

For those who prefer to travel alone or with friends, there are many small Egyptian-owned hotels at extremely reasonable prices as well as the large five star tourist hotels. Travel from one city to another is comfortable by either air, train or air-conditioned coach.

Climate

A hot, dry country, the temperature of Egypt varies from North to South. Most tourists visit the country in its ‘high season’ – October to March. Summers are extremely hot, especially in Upper Egypt, where temperatures can easily reach up to 50 C (122 F) in June and July. The average midwinter temperature in Aswan is usually around 25 C (77 F) and 10 C (50 F) in Cairo. In the winter as soon as the sun has set it can feel very cold because of the contrast in temperature. Rainfall is quite rare in Upper Egypt, but you can expect a little rain in the winter months in Cairo and the Delta. A strong dry wind known as the Khamsin (literally ‘fifty’) blows in March or April for around 50 days from the Western desert, spreading fine particles of sand over everything it touches.

For current weather conditions in Egypt see Weather Online

Time Zone and DST

Egypt is two hours in advance of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT +2) and operates Daylight Saving Time (+1 hour) from the last Friday in April until the last Friday in September.
Language

Arabic is the official language in Egypt and the majority of the population are of Muslim faith. Egyptian Arabic is a separate dialect from the language spoken in other Arab countries with standard Arabic as the written form used for newspapers and literature. This will usually be understood in most places but there is a colloquial dialect or ‘street Arabic’ which varies throughout Egypt. The difference in speech between Cairo and Luxor is very noticeable. It has been said that the three most useful words in Egyptian are:

I : insha’allah (if it is the will of God)
B : bukra (tomorrow)
M : ma’lesh (it doesn’t matter)

These three words illustrate the pace of life in Egypt – where nothing is important enough to need to be done quickly!

But don’t worry. Egyptians have an amazing ear for languages and most people who come into contact with tourists will speak English and/or several other European languages. Even before you speak your nationality will be accurately guessed by the way you dress and walk. In the most denselypopulated tourist areas children from two years old will know how to say ‘welcome to Egypt’, ‘what’s your name’, ‘baksheesh’, ‘pen’, and ‘give me money/sweets/cigarette’ in lots of languages! The government is now encouraging foreign languages to be taught in schools and older children love to practice their skills

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Introduction to Giza

The Giza Plateau is the northern extension of the necropolis of Memphis, situated on the west bank of the Nile and is today part of the suburbs of modern Cairo. When visiting the Giza pyramids for the first time the traveller anticipates the experience of standing before these magnificent structures rising out of the desert sands in a kind of time-warp, but the greatest surprise is when you turn around and feel the skyscrapers of the rapidly growing city closing in, as if they were trying to outshine their ancient neighbours.

Abydos had been the royal cemetery for the rulers of the earliest dynasties, but Dynasty I high officials had chosen to site their tombs at Saqqara which was close to the capital, Memphis. It would seem that even in those times Giza had also been used as a cemetery – the earliest known tomb is Mastaba V, which is thought to date to the reign of Dynasty I king Djet, and is surrounded by graves of fifty-six retainers. The mastaba’s owner is un-named but the presence of the surrounding graves suggests that he was an important official. A tomb of Dynasty II date has also been found at Giza and contained early dynastic jar sealings naming King Nynetjer.

Saqqara was the main Memphite necropolis which Djoser-Netjerikhet immortalised with the first royal tomb built in steps in the shape of a pyramid. When this city of the dead became overpopulated the kings and high officials began to look for other burial grounds, siting their tombs at Zawyet el-Aryan, Meidum and Dashur. The Dynasty IV king Khufu (Greek, Cheops) was the first to construct his pyramid at Giza – the monument we now call the ‘Great Pyramid’ – the only surviving structure of the seven ancient wonders of the world. Khufu’s pyramid was the tallest building in the world until the early part of the 20th century AD.

The Giza Plateau is famous for three pyramids. Khufu’s son, Khafre (Greek, Chephren) also constructed a pyramid next to his father’s monument. From a distance Khafre’s pyramid looks higher than Khufu’s, but this illusion is due to the structure being built on rising ground. The third pyramid belongs to Menkaure (Greek, Mycerinus) and is the smallest of the three. When they were built they were encased in thousands of blocks of white limestone from the Tura quarries across the river and must have presented an imposing sight, shining from a great distance in the scorching sunlight of the desert. Now most of the casing stones

 have gone, robbed in ancient times, but some can still be seen on the apex of Khafre’s pyramid.

The pyramids of Giza have always fascinated mankind and a great many mysteries have been built around them. Napoleon Bonaparte himself was greatly impressed by the structures when he conquered Egypt in 1798, at the time when they were truly out in the desert. They have been given many names – the ‘Granaries of Joseph’, the ‘Mountains of the Pharaohs’ – and there are numerous theories about their origins, including their construction by long-lost civilisations such as Atlanteans or even extra-terrestrials. There is great speculation on exactly how they were built, using the primitive construction methods of the time and whether their orientation was cosmic or religious.

Each pyramid had its own associated structures which included satellite pyramids, mortuary temple, causeway and valley temple, though not all of these can be seen clearly today. Khufu and Khafre’s pyramids had boat-pits alongside, in which full-sized wooden boats in kit form were buried. Khufu’s ‘solar boat’ was discovered in over 1200 pieces in 1954 and was instantly claimed as the oldest wooden boat in the world. The boat has now been expertly reassembled over a period of many years and is housed in its own museum on the south side of the pyramid.

The pyramid complexes are surrounded by vast cemeteries of mastaba tombs, similar in size and originally laid out in street-like rows, but these have been disrupted by the intrusion of later burials. Mastaba is the name given to a large rectangular superstructure built over a deep burial shaft and comes from the Arabic word for ‘bench’. There are hundreds of mastaba tombs at Giza where the Old Kingdom elite were buried close to their pharaohs. The earliest and most extensive cemeteries are to the east and west of Khufu’s pyramid. There are also many private tombs cut into the rock-faces of quarries surrounding the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure. Many of the Old Kingdom tombs at Giza can be visited, but it is difficult to predict exactly which ones are open at any given time. Some of them have spectacular reliefs with beautifully carved hieroglyphs and engaged statues of their owners – the Old Kingdom was possibly the finest period of art in the history of Egypt.

The Giza Plateau’s other claim to fame is for the Great Sphinx, which is situated next to Khafre’s causeway and valley temple. One of the world’s greatest monuments and the first colossal royal statue of ancient Egypt, the Sphinx was known as ‘Abu Hol’ (Father of Terror) to the Arabic people. It is fashioned out of a natural limestone outcrop left over from the quarrying of stone by the builders of the Great Pyramid. We do not know who first shaped the statue, completing it with mudbrick. Some say the original face was that of Khafre, others claim it has the features of Djedefre, Khafre’s predecessor, who may have used the quarry for his pyramid at Abu Roash. The Sphinx is carved in the shape of a crouching lion with a human head, 73m long and over 20m high. In the New Kingdom many kings built temples and erected stelae in the vicinity of the Sphinx Temple, including the famous ‘Dream Stela’ set up by Tuthmose IV between the Sphinx’s paws. Many enigmas surround the Sphinx, including the legend of a lost Hall of Records which is supposed to be hidden beneath the statue, although there is no evidence at all for this, and its true purpose remains a mystery.

There were also settlements associated with the pyramids where the builders, priesthood and functionaries lived. It has long been supposed that there must have been large pyramid towns at Giza, but it is only recently that excavators with the benefit of modern scientific methods have slowly begun to uncover the ruins of bakeries, breweries, houses and burial places of the population who sustained the building and maintaining of the pyramids. There must also have been royal palaces nearby, but these have eluded discovery so far. Another interesting feature of the plateau is a huge stone structure known today as the ‘Wall of the Crow’ with its colossal entrance gate which archaeologists think may have been the ancient entrance to the Giza necropolis. The remains of the ‘Wall of the Crow’ can be seen to the east of the site of Menkaure’s valley temple.

The Giza Plateau is an ongoing excavation site. There are new tombs and structures being discovered with amazing regularity and yet there must be so much still to uncover. Today the whole plateau is a vast tourist complex which could take the visitor weeks to see properly. The area is currently being re-developed to provide even more facilities, with many plans afoot to make the area more ‘tourist friendly’. The new Grand Egyptian Museum will also be built close to the pyramids. There is a Sound and Light Show each evening, presented in Arabic, English, French, Japanese and German, which uses the three pyramids as an impressive backdrop.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts have an excellent site about the Giza Plateau. See Giza Archives Project website.

How to get there

The main road to Giza Pyramids ends just in front of the Great Pyramid. Alternately there is another entrance to the plateau near the Sphinx Temple. Entrance to the newly restored Great Pyramid is now restricted to 150 visitors each day. The Giza Plateau can be reached easily from Cairo by a bus which goes from the Midan Tahrir (near the Nile Hilton) and takes around 20 minutes. If you prefer to take a taxi, this may be hired either for a single journey or for the day. Giza Plateau is open daily from 8.00am to 5.00pm. Ticket for the pyramids are limited in mumber and are on sale at 8.00am and 1.00pm each day. Prices as follows:

The archaeological site (the Giza Plateau): EGP 120
The Great Pyramid of Khufu: EGP 150
The Pyramid of Khafre: EGP 60

The Pyramid of Menkaure: EGP 50

Solar Boat Museum: EGP 100
Tombs may require separate tickets

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