Beneath the Sands of Time ~ Antonia's Travel Journal

Journal entry ~ The Environs of Alexandria

Today I walked along the shore, where the obelisks are situated to the promontory which stretches towards the Little Pharos. I looked for remains of the Timonium of Antony, the Caesarium, and the Posidium; but a few fragments of stone, and masses of brick and mortar are the only existing relics of those celebrated buildings. It appears not improbable that their demise was hastened by an earthquake, and portions of their crumbling walls thus thrown into the sea, for ancient ruins are visible beneath the water near the shore.

Cleopatra had built great palaces in Alexandria as well as a temple dedicated to Isis, and there is a palatial summer house Antony had built known as the Timonium. I am drawn to find the Timonium for some strange reason. I dreamt about it last night, most likely in anticipation of my travel plans today.

According to Strabo, writing six years after Cleopatra's suicide, the now sunken area had included stunningly beautiful public precincts and royal palaces which occupied as much as one third of the entire circuit of the city. It was under Aelius Gallus, the third prefect, that Egypt was visited by Strabo, a most careful and judicious of all the ancient travelers. He had come to study mathematics, astronomy, and geography in the Museum of Alexandria under the successors of Euclid, Eratosthenes and Hipparchus. He accompanied the prefect in a march to Syene, the border town, and he has left us a most valuable account of the state of the country at that time.

Alexandria was the chief object that engaged Strabo's attention. Its two harbors held more ships than were to be seen in any other port in the world, and its export trade was thought greater than that of all Italy. The docks on each side of the causeway, and the ship canal from the harbor of Eunostus to the Mareotic lake, were full of bustle and activity; and this has not changed at the time of my visit. The palace or citadel on the promontory of Lochias, on one side of the great harbor, is as striking an object as the lighthouse on the other. The temples and palaces cover a space of ground equal to more than one fourth part of the city, and the suburbs reach even beyond the Mareotic Lake. Among the chief buildings are the Sema, which house the bodies of Alexander and of the Ptolemies; the court of justice; the Museum of Philosophy, which had been rebuilt since the burning by Caesar's soldiers; the Exchange, crowded with merchants; the Temple of Neptune; and Marc Antony's haunting fortress called the Timonium, on a point of land which juts into the harbor; the Caesarium, or new palace; and the great temple of Serapis, which was on the western side of the city and was the largest and most ornamented of all these building.

Further off, I found the beautiful Gymnasium for wrestlers and boxers, with its porticoes a stadium in length. This is where the citizens meet in public assembly. From the top of the Temple of Pan, which rose like a sugar-loaf in the middle of the city and was mounted by winding staircase, the whole of this remarkable capital can be seen, spread out in a beautiful panorama before my eyes.

Tomorrow, I venture to the east side of the city and the Hippodrome, and on the west side the public gardens and pale green palm-groves; the Necropoplis ornamenting the roadside with tombs for miles along the sea-shore awaits me.