Alexandria, July, 1842.

My dear Friend,

We find little to interest us in this place, excepting by association with bygone times; therefore our stay will not be long. But I will give you concisely an account of all that has excited our curiosity.

I am not disappointed in Alexandria (or, as it is called by the natives, El-Iskendereeyeh), for I did not imagine it could possess many attractions. It is built upon a narrow neck of land, which unites the peninsula of Pharos to the continent, and thus forms a double harbour, as did anciently the causeway, which, from its length of seven stadia, was called the Heptastadium.

The ground which is occupied by the modern town has been chiefly formed by a gradual deposit of sand on each side of the Heptastadium; and the present situation is more advantageous for a commercial city than the ancient site. The houses are generally built of white calcareous stone, with a profusion of mortar and plaster. Some have the foundation walls only of stone, and the superstructure of brick. They generally have plain or projecting windows of wooden lattice-work; but the windows of some houses, viz., those of Europeans, the palaces of the Pasha, the Governor of Alexandria, and a few others, are of glass. The roofs are flat and covered with cement. There is little to admire in the interior architecture of the houses, excepting that they have a substantial appearance. Many ancient columns of granite and marble have been used in the construction of the mosques and private dwellings.

The water here is far from good; the inhabitants receive their supply from the cisterns under the site of the ancient city (of which I must tell you by and by). These are filled by subterranean aqueducts from the canal during the time of the greatest height of the Nile; but in consequence of the saline nature of the soil through which it passes from the river, the water is not good. Almost every house has its cistern, which is filled by means of skins borne by camels or asses; and there are many wells of brackish water in the town.

As the northern coast of Egypt has no harbour, excepting those of Alexandria, it is a place of considerable importance as the emporium and key of Egypt; but otherwise it appears to me in no respect a desirable residence, and around it nothing but sea and desert meets the eye, excepting here and there the house of a rich man, and scattered in every direction extensive mounds of rubbish. Ancient writers have extolled the salubrity of the air of Alexandria. This quality of the air was attributed, according to Strabo, to the almost insular situation of the city, the sea being on one side, and the lake Mareotis on the other. The insalubrity of the climate, of later years, has been regarded as the result of the conversion of the lake into a salt marsh. The English army, in 1801, made a cut by which the water of the sea was admitted from the lake of Aboo-Keer into the bed of the lake Mareotis; and the operation was repeated by Mohammed ’Alee in 1803, and again by the English in 1807: on each occasion, as you will have supposed, military policy dictated the measure; and as soon as the object in view had been attained, the gap was speedily closed, as it cut off the supply of fresh water from Alexandria by interrupting the course of the canal. While the communication between the two lakes remained open, it was not found that the climate of Alexandria was at all improved; and the evaporation of the waters of the lake Mareotis afterwards must have had a pernicious effect. The damp and rain during the winter here, and the heavy dew at night throughout the year, have a particularly baneful influence. Cases of fever are very general; and it is always observed that this town is one of the places where the plague makes its appearance many days earlier than in the interior of Egypt. With all these objections to Alexandria as a place of residence, it is wonderful that any persons should prefer it, and consider the climate more agreeable than that of the valley of the Nile, which all allow to be so salubrious.

There is a series of telegraphs from Alexandria to the metropolis, a distance of more than a hundred and twenty British miles. The towers composing this series are nineteen in number; the first is on the peninsula of Pharos, and the last in the citadel of Cairo.

The wall which surrounds the site of the old Arab city was rebuilt not many years since. This work was commenced in 1811. Mohammed ’Alee, fearing another invasion of the French, deemed it necessary to strengthen this place; for the wall I have mentioned defends the town on the land side, and surrounds the cisterns from which the inhabitants derive their supply of fresh water. The wall has four gates, and I cannot describe to you the complete scene of desolation which presented itself on entering the enclosure by that gate, which is nearest to the modern town, the “sea-gate;” indeed, it can scarcely be conceived: for mounds of rubbish and drifted sand occupy nearly the whole site of the ancient city. Within the area surrounded by the present wall, besides some monuments of the ancient city, are two convents and a synagogue, several groups of houses and huts, with a few walled gardens containing chiefly palm-trees.

You will think it strange when I tell you that there are also two lofty hills of rubbish, each of which is surmounted by a fort, commanding an extensive view. It appears to me most extraordinary that any persons should choose such a foundation; but I understand it is far from remarkable, and that these accidental eminences are improved to advantage in this flat country, the face of which in a course of years has undergone important changes, from the habit of the people of leaving crumbling ruins to accumulate. Here the line of the principal street can be traced, extending in a straight direction from the shore of the old harbour to the Gate of Resheed,^[4] which is at the eastern extremity of the enclosure; and the direction of the other great street, which crossed the former at right angles, is observable.

It must have been an extensive city, but it is impossible to mark its precise limits. Certainly its remains alone convey an idea of its having been a flourishing town, and considerably more important than the Arab city which succeeded it.

Desiring to see the obelisks before the heat of the day, we set out early, and having passed the great square, we entered the field of ruins, and found a number of peasants loitering among miserable huts, while a few children, in a state of nudity, and extremely unsightly in form, were standing or sitting in the entrances of their dwellings. I was grieved to see that the bodies of these poor little children were distended to a most unnatural size; while their limbs, which were very thin and small, appeared, from the contrast, to be sadly emaciated.

Among the mounds we observed the mouths of some of the ancient cisterns; each, with few exceptions, having the hollowed marble base of an ancient column placed over it. The cisterns seem to have extended under a great part of the ancient city; and there remain a sufficient number of them open and in good repair for the supply of the modern town. They have arched or vaulted roofs, which are supported by columns or by square pillars, and some of them have two or three ranges of pillars and arches, one above another, and are very extensive.

We saw little worthy of remark until we reached the obelisks, which are situated at an angle of the enclosure, almost close to the shore of the new harbour; I mean those obelisks called Cleopatra’s Needles. Each is composed of a single block of red granite, nearly seventy feet in length, and seven feet and a half wide at the base. And here I wondered, as so many have done before me, that the ancient Egyptians contrived to raise such solid masses, and concluded that their knowledge of machinery, of which they have left such extraordinary proofs, must have been remarkable indeed.

Three lines of hieroglyphics adorn each of the four faces of either monument. My brother tells me that the central line bears the title and name of Thothmos the Third, who appears, from strong evidence, to have reigned shortly before the departure of the Israelites from Egypt: the lateral lines were sculptured at a later period; for they bear the name of Rameses the Great, or Sesostris. The inscriptions near the base of the erect obelisk seemed nearly obliterated, and the prostrate one is so encumbered with rubbish, that much of it is concealed. Pliny relates that Rameses erected four obelisks at Heliopolis: those of Alexandria are perhaps two of the four thus alluded to. Their antiquity being so much greater than that of Alexandria, suggests the probability of their having been taken from Heliopolis to adorn a temple or palace in the new city. The fact of the name of Rameses the Great being sculptured on them may have given rise to the tradition that they were erected by that king. An adjacent fort occupies the site of an old tower which belonged to the former wall (that is, to the old wall of the Arab city), and which was called by European travellers “the Tower of the Romans;” as it was apparently of Roman origin. Near this, standing on a mound of rubbish, we saw the shore of the new harbour, behind the wall on the left of the fort.

When the British army was in Alexandria in 1801, operations were commenced for transporting the fallen obelisk to England; but the commander-in-chief refusing to sanction the undertaking, it was abandoned, and nothing is said of its being resumed, although Mohammed ’Alee offered the monument to us some years ago.

After viewing the obelisks, we thankfully turned homewards, for the sun had risen, and the heat became intense.

Not far from the eastern gate (perhaps two miles and a half) is the field of the memorable battle of the 21st of March, 1801, in which Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who commanded our victorious army, received his mortal wound. At the spot where the battle raged most furiously, by the sea-shore, is a quadrangular enclosure, surrounded by substantial, but now ruined walls, constructed of calcareous stone and large bricks, in distinct layers, like many other Roman buildings. The ruin is called Kasr-el-KÁyasireh (or the Pavilion, or Palace, of the CÆsars). It marks the site of a small town, which received the name of Nicopolis, in commemoration of a famous victory obtained there by Octavius CÆsar over Antony.

The pillar called Pompey’s is undoubtedly a magnificent monument. The shaft of the column is a single block of red granite, sixty-eight feet in height, and nine feet in diameter at the bottom, according to my brother’s measurement. The capital is a block of the same kind of stone, and is ten feet high. The base, plinth, and pedestal are likewise of red granite, and each is a single block. The combined length of these three pieces is seventeen feet. The total height of this superb monument is therefore ninety-five feet; and the substructure, which is partly modern, is four feet in height. The shaft is beautifully wrought, but sadly disfigured by numerous names inscribed in very large characters, with black paint. They have mostly been written by persons who have ascended to the summit. This they have contrived by flying a large paper kite, and causing it to descend so that the cord rested on the top of the capital; by these means, they succeeded in drawing a stout rope over it; and having accomplished this (to use the naval term) they easily “rigged shrouds,” by which to ascend. This exploit has been performed several times, generally by naval officers, who have caused the name of their ship to be painted on the shaft.

Among the adventurers, an English lady once ascended to the summit. There is a Greek inscription on the pedestal, but it can only be faintly seen when the rays of the sun fall obliquely upon the surface of the stone. Every traveller who examined the Pillar since the time of Pococke believed the inscription to be entirely obliterated, until Colonel Squire again discovered it. That gentleman with Mr. Hamilton and Colonel Leake deciphered (with the exception of a few characters) the lines, four in number, which record the dedication, by a “Prefect of Egypt” (whose name is almost illegible), to the “most revered Emperor, the protecting divinity of Alexandria, Diocletian the Invincible.” The name of the “Prefect” also has since been deciphered by Sir Gardner Wilkinson—it is Publius. This inscription certainly proves that the column, or the building in which it stood, was dedicated to the Roman emperor whose name is thus recorded, but not that the column was erected in honour of that individual, any more than the lateral lines on the obelisks which I have described prove that they were erected in the reign of Sesostris.

I may here briefly give you the tradition respecting the burning of the Alexandrian library (deriving my information from my brother), which took place in the time of ’Omar, as it is connected with the history of the great pillar. ’Abd-el-Lateef and El-Makreezee affirm, that this pillar originally belonged to a magnificent building, containing a library, which ’Amr, the Arab general, burned by the command of ’Omar. A particular account of the burning of this library is given by Abu-l-Faraj; but the statement of that author has been disbelieved, because the story is related by few other writers; yet why should they record what they considered an event of scarcely any importance? It is evident from the slight manner in which ’Abd-el-Lateef and El-Makreezee mention the fact, that they regarded it as a very unimportant occurrence. They allude to it merely as connected with the history of the great Pillar. The former says, “Here was the library which ’Amr Ibn-el-’A’s burned by permission of ’Omar.” El-Makreezee says, “The Pillar is of a red speckled stone; hard and flinty. There were around it about four hundred columns which Karaja, Governor of Alexandria in the time of the SultÁn SalÁh-ed-Deen Yoosuf Ibn-Eiyoob (called by Europeans “Saladin”), broke, and threw them into the sea, near the shore, to prevent the vessels of an enemy from approaching the walls of the city. It is said (he adds) that this pillar is one of those which stood in the portico of Aristotle, who there taught philosophy; and that this academy contained a library, which ’Amr Ibn-el-’A’s burned by direction of ’Omar.” The Arab General ’Amr, having taken Alexandria, was solicited by one Johannes, surnamed “the Grammarian,” to spare the library above mentioned, and to suffer it to remain in the possession of its former owners. ’Amr, willing to oblige the philosopher, wrote to his sovereign, desiring to know his pleasure respecting these books, and received the following answer:—“As to the books which you have mentioned, if they contain what is agreeable with the book of God, in the book of God is sufficient without them; and if they contain what is contrary to the book of God, there is no need of them; so give orders for their destruction.” They were accordingly distributed about the city, to be used for heating the baths, and in the space of six months they were consumed. “Hear what happened,” writes Abu-l-Faraj, “and wonder!” The author here quoted does certainly speak of this event as one of lamentable importance; but he was a Christian writer. The Muslims, though they love and encourage many branches of literature, generally imagine that the books of the Christians are useless, or of an evil tendency.

I must now leave Alexandria and its environs, saying a few words respecting the ancient Necropolis, or “City of the Dead,” which I have not seen, being satisfied with my brother’s account of it, and being anxious to proceed to Cairo.

The name of Necropolis has been given to a tract of nearly two miles in length, on the southwest of the site of the ancient city, between the old harbour and the bed of the Lake Mareotis. The sepulchres are all excavated in the rock, which is calcareous, or rather soft. Those my brother saw were small and rudely cut, without painting or any other decorations. One of the catacombs is very spacious. It is the only one that is well worthy of being examined. The principal chamber is described as being of a circular form; and the roof is excavated like the interior of a dome. Around it are three recesses, which were doubtless receptacles for mummies; and around each of these are three troughs cut in the rock, designed to serve as sarcophagi. In other chambers are similar receptacles for the dead. The entrance of the principal, or circular, apartment being ornamented with pilasters and a pediment, it is evident that the period of the formation of the catacomb was posterior to the founding of Alexandria. Along the shore of the harbour are many other excavations, but of small dimensions, which are also sepulchres. Many of them, being partly below the level of the sea, are more or less filled with water; the part of the rock which intervened having crumbled away, and left the interior exposed to the waves. Some of these have been called “the baths of Cleopatra,” though evidently sepulchres like the rest.

And now, if my account of Alexandria and its monuments has been too brief, I must plead as my apology, my anxiety to pursue our route; but I must add, that although the modern Alexandria is the successor of one of the most illustrious cities of ancient times, it disappoints me, and occasions only melancholy reflections.

Truly history confers a deep interest on this spot, once the chief seat of Egyptian learning, the theatre of many wars and bloody tragedies, the scene of the martyrdom of St. Mark, the birth-place and residence of many of the most eminent fathers of the church, and the hot-bed of schisms and heresies. But it is only in retrospect we find that on which our minds can rest, and which can give rise to reflections which may be pursued to advantage.