Alexander in Egypt and Foundation of Alexandria
Alexander entered Egypt in 332 BC without fighting and left it as a pharaoh. The Persian satrap surrendered the country, which had been under Achaemenid rule for two centuries and had revolted repeatedly, and the population received the Macedonians as liberators. He sacrificed to the Apis bull at Memphis, which the previous Persian king was said to have insulted, and was crowned in the traditional forms. The foundation of Alexandria followed in the spring of 331 BC, on a strip between the sea and Lake Mareotis with an island offshore that would make two harbours — the plan reportedly laid out in barley meal when the chalk ran out, and the birds that ate it interpreted as a sign that the city would feed the world. It became the largest city in the Mediterranean, with a library and a museum, a lighthouse, and a Jewish community that produced the Greek Old Testament. He then made a journey nobody has satisfactorily explained: some 500 kilometres across the desert to the oracle of Ammon at Siwa, with a sandstorm and two ravens in the story. He went into the shrine alone and never said what he was told. What was reported afterwards was that the priest had addressed him as son of the god, which the Egyptians meant as a formula for a pharaoh and which Greeks heard differently. He was increasingly difficult about it for the rest of his life. The city he founded outlived every other thing he made. Alexandria was the intellectual capital of the Mediterranean for six centuries, and by the time the Ptolemies fell it had a population approaching half a million and a library that had catalogued everything anyone had written in Greek.
- Year: 331 BCE
- Category: Cultural
