But, to return to the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Among its other treasures – from its Pharos Lighthouse (the last of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World and, for centuries, the tallest man-made building), to the lavish, and now lost, tomb for Alexander – ancient Alexandria is often most remembered for its Great Library. Alexander had included a “library dedicated to the Muses” in his initial barley-plan, but it was his successor, Ptolemy I, who started the project. He gave his son’s tutor, Demetrius, money to collect, as one letter records it, “all the books in the world”.
It was a grand pursuit of knowledge, but one that had amusing and unintended consequences. While Ptolemy I angered foreign powers by “borrowing” their valuable scrolls and never returning them, his grandson, Ptolemy III, instigated a practice whereby every visitor to the city was searched for whatever papery knowledge they might have on them, and paid for whatever they carried. Not unsurprisingly, a roaring trade in forgeries of ancient texts quickly sprung up.
But, as much as Alexandria was the home to fake knowledge (one wit, “Cratippus”, pretended he’d been a confidant of the historian Thucydides, and wrote Everything Thucydides Left Unsaid), it was also the home to reams of real learning. It was in Alexandria where, in the third century BC, it was discovered that the Earth moved round the Sun, an idea that wasn’t revived until the Renaissance, with the writings of Copernicus. It was Alexandria where alphabetisation as an organisational system was first used; where pneumatics were first developed; where the world’s circumference was calculated; and where leaps were made with early medical sciences. Ancient Alexandria, a melting pot of knowledge, culture and religion, was also remarkable for its gender dynamics: unlike the rest of the ancient world, its medical school was open to women.
It is an understandable side-effect of the scope of Issa’s book that, from the drama of ancient Alexandria – generations and generations of Ptolemy pharaohs; incestuous marriages; Antony and Cleopatra – he skips lightly through some of the medieval and early modern years (the Ottoman years are the “three quietest centuries” in the city’s history). But his story picks up pace again in the late 18th century, as Alexandria’s prime geographical position placed it in successive battles.
Issa is adept on military and political history – the 20th century’s domino-sequence of wars and revolutions – but he is at his best on the cultural background: from Alexandria’s sultry reputation (belly dancers and sex workers) to Lawrence Durrell, EM Forster and the Alexandrian poet CP Cavafy, whose brazenly homoerotic poetry, Issa maintains, could not have been written anywhere else.
Issa’s Alexandria arrives at 2011’s Arab Spring having covered more than two millennia in just over 400 pages – no mean feat. But his real success is the book’s sense of personality. It ends with Issa walking through the modern city that now stands on the ancient site, passing its markets and Art Deco cinemas (“I’ve just stopped at a street vendor”). He writes about the present as vividly as the storied past. This book is a fitting tribute to a city that has survived, changed and grown for so many centuries.
Francesca Peacock is the author of Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish. Alexandria: The City that Changed the World is published by Sceptre at £30. To order your copy for £25 call 0844 871 1514 or visit Books
