This is the famous section from the 28. book of the "Res Gestae", the history written by Roman historian Ammianus who lived from around 330 - 400 CE. It describes the earthquake and tsunami of July 21. 365 CE which shook the whole Mediterranean. The scene described by...
The city of Alexandria once had an extensive network of water cisterns below ground that distributed drinking water from a channel connecting the river Nile south-east of the city with the city’s harbor in the west. This was vital for the survival of the population as...
The "Palestrina Mosaic" or "Nile mosaic of Palestrina", a town near Italy's capital Rome, is a late Hellenistic floor mosaic depicting the Nile in its passage from the Blue Nile to the Mediterranean. Around 100 BCE, Nile landscapes were quite a fashion in Roman art....
The God Abandons Antony by C.P. Cafavy When suddenly, at midnight, you hearan invisible procession going bywith exquisite music, voices,don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,work gone wrong, your plansall proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.As one long...
This is the introduction to "Pharos and Pharillon" a book by British writer and literary critic E.M. Forster about Alexandria. The book was published in 1923. Forster was stationed in Alexandria during his service in the British military and wrote two books about the...
This famous poem is by the poet Constantinos Petrou Cafavy who was born and died in the ancient port city Alexandria. He lived from 1863 to 1933 and was a member of the large Greek community in Alexandria. His poems were also written in Greek.The City You said: “I’ll...
In an effort to protect the city of Alexandria against coastal erosion, the local government plants thousands of concrete tetrapods along the remaining beach. This creates a bizarre, futuristic urban landscpae, unlike anything we know: The images are from a German TV...