Monday, March 26, 2007

Alexandria, the Eternal Melting Pot

Like today, the city of Alexander was always gathering the elite of the cosmopolitans from every country.

A strange destiny followed the city that was founded by the Macedonian conqueror after his initiation in the mysteries of Ammon Ra at Siwah. The city was not truly Egyptian; it was neither Greek, nor Roman, nor Jewish, despite the fact that they all were present here along with Persians, Phoenicians, Aramaeans, Carians, Yemenites, Meroites from Ancient Sudan, Arabs and Indians. The Romans were correct to call the city Alexandria ad Aegyptum, next to Egypt, not of Egypt!

Many thought of the selection of the location as a marvel; not without reason to some extent. At the very gates of Egypt, standing in the area Ramses III had fought and vanquished the Sea Peoples almost 800 years before Alexander founded it, Alexandria seems to be the crossing point between East and the West par excellence. It all came to happen however within a context of historical continuity. Darius, the Achaemenidian Shah of Iran, while ruling as a Pharaoh, after his predecessor, Cambyses, invaded Egypt 525 BCE, reopened the famous Suez Canal of the Antiquity that assured the linkage between the fluvial and the maritime navigation. This way he made easy the aquatic transportation from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

Despite the taxes collected by the Qataban Yemenites at the area of the Red Sea straits, the notorious Bab al Mandeb, the trade with the East was developed, because the Yemenites, legendary Oriental seafarers, discovered the monsoons and the other meteorological and oceanographic secrets of the Indian Ocean, assuring therefore contacts with the Eastern coast of Africa and India. Octavian sent a maritime expedition as far as Yemen to assure low taxes and to have the trade increased.

At the other side, Phoenicians and Anatolians, Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans, Jews and Aramaeans were assuring trade links in the Wadj Ur, the Great Green, as the Egyptians were calling the Mediterranean Sea. Where would they all meet, if not in Alexandria? If we now add the Africans, mostly represented by the people of Meroe, we get the picture.

Many came to Egypt to study and investigate the heights of the Ancient Egyptian Civilisation, as well as the exotic character of the African nature. In an expanding world, Alexandria became easily a faraway basis for even further adventures; Eratosthenes worked here to move to Syene/Aswan and specify that the Equator crossed that city. Strabo followed the Roman expedition to Meroe reporting about the Mountain of the Moon (Kilimanjaro?) as source of the Nile! And the Palmyrene merchants, who were crossing the land route through Persia, Bactriana (Afghanistan) and Sogdiana (Uzbekistan) to China, came to Alexandria and the city served as basis for them to expand business in Upper Egypt, where the founded Kaine Polis, the "New City", Qena.

All crossed Alexandria and all changed their minds here; the exchange of ideas made the city a cradle of religions and philosophies; Philo of Alexandria attempted to place the entire Ancient Hebrew religion within a Greek philosophical frame and to diffuse it among the Greeks and the Romans. Poimandres, the Holy Book of the Hermetic Gnosticism, was also written here; so Alexandria, and not Makkah, is the first place were people believed that a book was written by God Himself, in this case named Hermes Trismegistus, as an unbelievable phenomenon of syncretism between the Egyptian Djhawty (Thot) and the Greek Hermes.

The anonymous Alexandrian author of the Periplus of the Red Sea traveled a lot and wrote here, during the reign of Nero, offering to posterity a perfect sample of the then guides of navigation and reporting on the trade down to the coast of today's Tanzania, and further on to India, Palaisimundu (Sri Lanka), Chryse (the "Golden": Indochina and Indonesia) and China.

Cosmas Indicopleustes, the Syrian Aramaean Monophysite Christian of the 6th century came to Alexandria, after traveling to Soqotra and to Sri Lanka, and wrote his Christian Topography. And the largest saved Manichaeist text, Pistis Sophia, was also written here, in Coptic, despite the fact that Mani lived in Iran and his followers, the Manawiyah, were powerful in other countries and places, like Tunisia, Central Asia and China!

Alexandria was just one of the 33 synonymous cities Alexander the Great allegedly founded; but before 100 years passed after his death, it was already sure that this Alexandria was the Unique. The story of its unique radiation continued in the Islamic times. Have you got any doubt that Gawhar al Siqilli saw first Alexandria, when coming to Egypt? Jewish philosophers and travelers, like Ibn Maimoun and Benjamin of Tudela, so friendly to the Muslims at those days, spent time and thought in Alexandria, before reaching the philosophical schools of al Qahira….

The story brings us back to our times with Napoleon and his Savants who came to study the Greatness that it was and the Splendour that it has been. We can still see Europeans moving around the now lost Needle of Cleopatra. Lepsius, the famous Prussian scholar who climbed up to the Khufu Pyramid and then moved down to Karima in Sudan and transported colossal Meroitic statues to Berlin in the 1840s, crossed Alexandria too. We still hear Italian, Turkish, Greek, Armenian and French words in the streets of Alexandria. Not only around Amoud el Sawari, Qom al Shukafa, or in Anfushi. We grasp the whispers of Cavafy in the Corniche. They are like the voice of History, the voices of all of us. Who is not willing to answer that he, too, was there, in Alexandria?

BEST DESTINATION
When it comes to luxurious royal environment, all routes lead to as Salamlek Montaza. With the wall and ceiling paintings, the vicinity of the Montaza Palace itself, the royal railway station, the beauty of the gardens and the rocks of the beach, Salamlek is definitely a must. Undoubtedly, the best way to feel as a king in the Arab Republic of Egypt.

BEST FISH
For the traditional fish fans, those whose justify their culinary culture thanks to Gamber (shrimps), Barbun (Redfish), Caboria (crabs) and lobsters, the Fish Market looks like Tarabya in Istanbul, Tourkolimano in Athens, Positano in Naples and Cassis in Marseille. This is the place of the international jet set, a fish restaurant with magnificent service, nostalgic music and the most dramatic view over the infinite Corniche of Alexandria.

BEST MEMORIES
Athineos
The name of the patisserie, coffee shop and restaurant on the Corniche, near the Italian Consulate, signifies the origin of the owner: Athenian. A Greek has contributed like this in the Alexandrian art of life of the 30s and 40s. We still find here an extravagant service and exquisite decorative items that may give us a furtive memory of the Alexandrian bourgeoisie of the 30s; are we sure of what we hear as gossip and whisper from the next table? The prices of the cotton, the Stock Market, the maritime news, the New Deal! And the Carter Carnarvon excavations of the Tutankhamun's tomb! Old, vain and arrogant……

BEST ROOF
Cecil
What do you admire from this roof? Turn to the west: Qaytbey castle, the place of the Lighthouse in the Antiquity. Then check the other side: the end of the Eastern Harbour and further on. The Chinese roof garden restaurant is definitely one of the most innovative and recent attractions of the historical hotel that served as British military headquarters during the Second World War. From here Montgomery directed all the North African battle and stopped Rommel in El Alamein. Before climbing to the roof garden, admire and enjoy the traditional artwork lift; not many like this are left by now

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