Day 12 Ms.Sarah In Egypt

Day 12–Alexandria

We set off for Alexandria this morning. Our first stop was the Catacombs of Kom ash-Shuqqafa (Mound of Shards) which date from the 2nd century AD and is the largest Graeco-Roman necropolis in Egypt. It is 115 feet deep and has three levels. The catacombs are reached by a spiral staircase encircling a shaft down which bodies of the deceased were lowered. Lots of reliefs with a mixture of Greek, Roman and Egyptian styles. There are more than 300 small chambers for bodies.

We caught a glimpse of Pompey’s Pillar. Made of red granite from Aswan, it is 89 feet tall and erected around 297 AD in tribute to Emperor Diocletian. The name Pompey’s Pillar may have come from medieval travelers who thought that Pompey (General Gnaeus Pompeius) who was murdered in 48 BC was buried there, but in fact it came from the Temple of Serapis which was built in the mid-third century BC and was once an important repository of religious texts.

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is now 20 years old and contains more than just books. It is built on the same site as the old one founded in the 3rd century BC by Ptolemy I and continued by the Ptolemaic line. It was destroyed by fire and along with it, thousands of ancient manuscripts. The new library contains a planetarium and four museums.

Our last stop was Fort Qaitbey which was built in the 1480s by Sultan Qaitbey on the site of the Pharos Lighthouse using stones from it. The lighthouse was one of the seven ancient wonders and stood 492 feet high. It was built by the architect Sosigines and destroyed in the 12th and 14th centuries by a series of earthquakes.

We fly home tomorrow!