Alexandria > Al-Iskandariyah Al-Iskandariyah Egypt

The Persian occupation of Egypt ends when Alexander the Great defeats the Persians at the Battle of Issus (near present-day Iskenderun in Turkey) in November 333 BCE.

The Egyptians, who despise the monotheistic Persians and chafe under Persian rule, welcome Alexander as a deliverer.

In the autumn of 332 BCE Alexander enters Memphis, where, like a true Hellene, he pays homage to the native gods and is apparently accepted without question as king of Egypt.

Also like a true Hellene, he celebrates the occasion with competitive games and a drama and music festival at which some of the leading artists of Greece are present.

From Memphis, Alexander marches down the western arm of the Nile and founds the city of Alexandria.

He next goes to the oasis of Siwa (present-day Siwah) to consult the oracle at the Temple of Amun, the Egyptian god whom the Greeks identify with their own Zeus.

After Alexander's death of malarial fever in 323 BCE, the Macedonian commander in Egypt, Ptolemy, who is the son of Lagos, one of Alexander's seven bodyguards, manages to secure for himself the satrapy (provincial governorship) of Egypt.

Another of Alexander's generals, Antigonus, citing the principle that the empire Alexander created should remain unified, takes the royal title in 306 BCE.

In reaction, his rivals for power, Ptolemy of Egypt, Cassander of Macedonia, and Seleucus of Syria, counter by declaring themselves kings of their respective dominions.

Thus comes into existence the three great monarchies that are to dominate the Hellenistic world until they are absorbed, one by one, into the Roman Empire.

The dynasty Ptolemy founds in Egypt is known as the line of Ptolemaic pharaohs and will endure until the suicide of Cleopatra in 30 BCE, at which time direct Roman control will be instituted.

The early Ptolemies are hardheaded administrators and business people, anxious to make the state that they have created stable, wealthy, and influential.

The Ptolemies have their eyes directed outward to the eastern Mediterranean world in which they seek to play a part.

Egypt is their basis of power, their granary, and the source of their wealth.

Under the early Ptolemies, the culture is exclusively Greek.

Greek is the language of the court, the army, and the administration.

The Ptolemies found the university, the museum, and the library at Alexandria and build the lighthouse at Pharos.

A canal to the Red Sea is opened, and Greek sailors explore new trade routes.

Whereas many Egyptians adopt Greek speech, dress, and much of Greek culture, the Greeks also borrow much from the Egyptians, particularly in religion.

In this way, a mixed culture is formed along with a hybrid art that combines Egyptian themes with elements of Hellenistic culture.

Examples of this are the grandiose temples built by the Ptolemies at Edfu (present-day Idfu) and Dendera (present-day Dandarah).

Alexander joins together a number of Egyptian villages to found the city of Alexandria near the westernmost arm of the Nile, on a fine site between the sea and Lake Mareotis, protected by the island of Pharos,

The choice of this site, which includes the ancient settlement of Raxcondah, called Rhacotis by the Greeks (and dating back to 1500 BCE), is determined by the abundance of water from Lake Maryut, at this time a spur of the Canopic Nile, and the good anchorage provided offshore by Pharos.

Alexander has the Rhodian architect Deinocrates lay out the city and supervises the religious ceremonies of its foundation, including Greek-style athletic and musical games (an indication of his intentions to Hellenize these foundations, at least as far as their cultural life is concerned).

Thinking the site excellent, he hopes for its commercial prosperity, as it is to be the capital of his new Egyptian dominion and a naval base that will control the Mediterranean.

Alexander is also said to have sent an expedition to discover the causes of the flooding of the Nile.

From Alexandria, …

Alexander employs Egyptian governors to organize the administration during the winter, and keeps the army under a separate Macedonian command.

He reportedly sends an expedition from Alexandria in 331 to discover the causes of the flooding of the Nile.

Leaving his viceroy, Cleomenes, to continue the creation of Alexandria, …

In the distribution of Alexander's empire after his death, Cleomenes, a Greek of Naucratis, had been left in Egypt as hyparch under Ptolemy, who puts him to death on the suspicion of his favoring Perdiccas.

The effect, if not also a cause, of this act is that Ptolemy comes into possession of the treasures of Cleomenes, which amount to eight thousand talents.

As satrap of Egypt, with the adjacent Libyan and Arabian regions, Ptolemy will methodically take advantage of the geographic isolation of the Nile territory to make it a great Hellenistic power.

He takes steps to improve internal administration.

Alexandria, which from its inception had been meant to embody its founder great idea of a fusion of races and cultures in his planned empire, seems to have included Jews among its earliest settlers.

The Jewish population will grow to be substantial, with an Jewish community well established in the city by the middle of the third century BCE.

Ptolemy, after the murder of Perdiccas by his own men, refuses to become the new regent and puts forward Peithon, the son of Agenor, an officer who plainly lacks the qualities to keep the empire together.

The rebel generals, considering this outrageous, gather at Triparadisus (near the sources of the Orontes in Syria) in 321 and condemn Eumenes to death.

Antipater makes a new division of Asia: Ptolemy is confirmed in possession of Egypt and Cyrene, “and all the vast waste beyond it, and whatever else had been acquired to the westward”; …

Ptolemy, confirmed in possession of Egypt and Cyrene, further strengthens his position by marrying Eurydice, the third daughter of Antipater, as part of a political agreement with her father.

He has found it necessary from the outset to pursue a conciliatory policy toward the Egyptians, since Egyptians must be recruited for his army, which initially numbered only four thousand men.

Ptolemy has won over the Egyptians through the establishment in Memphis of the Serapis cult, which fuses the Egyptian and Greek religions; through restoration of the temples of the pharaohs, which had been destroyed by the Persians; and through gifts to the ancient Egyptian gods and patronage of the Egyptian nobility and priesthood.

One Berenice had arrived in Egypt after the death of her first husband in the retinue of Eurydice, Ptolemy's second wife and queen, whom he had married as part of a political agreement with her father, Antipater of Macedonia.

Ptolemy in about 317 makes Berenice his third wife.

Seleucus, refusing Antigonus' demand that he give an accounting of the income from his satrapy, escapes capture by fleeing to Ptolemy in Egypt, where he remains in Ptolemy's service, taking the initiative in forging a coalition among Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassander.

Antigonus, in order to win the support of the Greek city-states, whose resistance to subjugation presents the chief obstacle to the formation of a Hellenistic monarchy, announces to his assembled army that all the Greeks shall be free, autonomous, and ungarrisoned.

This political slogan is to be sounded repeatedly—almost immediately by Ptolemy (and for a final time by the Romans in 196).

Seleucus in the resulting coalition war (315-311 BCE) is made one of Ptolemy's generals.

Euclid, working in Hellenistic Alexandria in about 300 BCE, establishes a set of axioms for geometry.

Around the same time, he writes a treatise entitled Optics and Catoptrics, in which he sets forth the correct law of reflection and applies the law to the study of plane and curved mirrors.

He also mentions the phenomenon of refraction.