About egypt

alexandria

When the 25-year-old Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great arrived in Egypt in 332 BC, he realized that he needed a capital for his newly conquered Egyptian kingdom and that, to link it with Macedonia, it would have to be located on the coast. At a small fishing village called Rhakotis, he founded his city, gave orders to build it and promptly departed. He never saw his new metropolis.

After Alexander's death in 323 BC, Egypt fell to a Macedonian general named Ptolemy who had been present at the foundation of Alexandria. He made it his new capital and founded a dynasty that lasted until 30 BC. The first Ptolemies busily set about adorning their city. They encouraged scholarship and under their rule Alexandria became a haven and refuge for intellectuals. They also built the lighthouse on the island of Pharos, one of the Seven Great Wonders of the ancient world.

Modern Alexandria really dates from the early 19th century and the reign of Muhammad Ali, who was responsible for introducing cotton and for building the Mahmudiyyah Canal. This once more linked Alexandria to the hinterland, forcing Egypt to look not only towards the Mediterranean again, &but beyond it, to Europe. The later 19th century witnessed the creation of extensive wealth in the cotton trade and a steady influx of Greeks, Italians, French and English, who turned Alexandria into a pseudo-European city, complete with wide, grid-planned streets, foreign schools, clubs, restaurants, casinos, businesses and banks.

Now, Alexandria is the second largest city in Egypt. Set on the shores of the Mediterranean, it has long been a popular holiday spot, a refuge from landlocked Cairo's searing summer heat...