Alexandria: city of knowledge and culture

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Hello, Greg here.

Just a reminder before we get going that episodes of You're Dead to Me are released on Fridays wherever you get your podcasts.

But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else, first on BBC Sounds.

Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously.

My name is Greg Jenner.

I'm a public historian, author, and broadcaster.

And today we are packing our travel guides and venturing back over 2,000 years as we trek all the way to Egypt to trace the cultural and intellectual history of the city of Alexandria.

And to help me do that, I'm joined by two very special guests in History Corner.

He's a multi-award winning author, broadcaster, curator, and academic.

He's a professor of literature and history at Birmingham City University and an expert in the cultural history of the Middle East.

He's also the author of the award-winning book, Alexandria, The City That Changed the World.

It's a brilliant book.

I highly recommend it.

It's Professor Islam Issa.

Welcome, Islam.

Thank you.

I'm excited and a little confused why we're not doing this recording in Alexandria.

The budget somewhere.

Yeah, the budget didn't quite stretch.

Sorry, Athena.

All the money was spent on me.

That's a lot of problems.

And in Comedy Corner, she's a comedian, writer, and podcaster.

You may have heard her on numerous Radio 4 shows or on her podcasts, Bust or Trust, a kid's mystery podcast, and Keeping Athena Company.

Perhaps you've seen her on Richard Osmond's House of Games and Mock the Week.

She's even written a funny history book for kids, history's most epic fibs.

But you'll know her best from past appearances on this very podcast.

It's Athena Caberni.

Welcome back, Athena.

Thanks for having me back.

Delighted to have you back.

We've had you on many times because you're very good at this.

Plus, you also write history books for kids.

I do, yes.

Do you know much about the history of Alexandria?

I know.

Very much like Stevenage is named after Stephen, Alexandria might be named after someone called Alexander.

Yeah?

That's a good start.

Yeah.

Halfway there.

Yeah.

And I know it had a library that burnt down loads.

It did, it did.

That's pretty good knowledge.

But yeah, I mean, today we are trying something quite ambitious.

We're going to try and do a cultural history of a city across two millennia.

So that's some good starting facts, but we'll do a lot more.

So what do you know?

This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, will know about today's subject.

And I think, like Athena, you will have heard of the city of Alexandria I think you will have heard of the library and the famous fire that burned it down Alexandria pops up quite a lot in pop culture it is in the Liz Taylor iconic movie Cleopatra of course more recently it was in the movie Agora with Rachel Weiss playing Hypatia the mathematician the famed Egyptian director Yusuf Shaheen set many of his films in the city including Alexandria Why?

Clues in the name.

And if gaming is more your thing, you may have roamed the streets of Ptolemaic Alexandria in Assassin's Creed Origins.

But how did a small fishing village become one of the greatest intellectual hubs of the world?

And how exactly do you smuggle a dead saint out of a city?

Let's find out.

Right, Professor Islam, let's start with the basics, please.

Where is Alexandria?

I know it's in Egypt, but like, you know, where?

What time period are we starting on?

I know we're doing like a big old history.

Why is Alexandria important?

Three big questions for you to start the show.

Well, you know, initially it was called Alexandria by Egypt when it was founded because it was seen as something something that connected Egypt with the Greek world.

So it's on the Mediterranean, on the Nile Delta.

So that's where the Nile River spreads into the Mediterranean.

So it's sort of south of Greece, but it's also in Africa, in the northeast of Africa.

In terms of time period,

how long do we have?

Radiocarbon dating of the seashells there tells us that there was a settlement as early as the 27th century BC.

So we're talking like 2600 BC.

It's originally a series of small fishing villages, and to the south of them, you had a lake, and it had marshlands around it, and so it was great for fishing on the villages and agriculture around those lakes.

And then Alexandria itself, the city, is founded in 331 BC.

It's founded by Alexander the Great.

King Stephen of Stephen is.

Yeah.

So, what was it called before he got there?

Did he just say, this isn't your name anymore?

This is my place now.

Well, there was a series of these sort of things, I think it was an underwhelming sight when he arrived.

I think it was just a few fishing villages.

There was an island there called Pharos, and it's thought that the main village there was called Rakotis,

which people have different theories about what it means.

Rakotis the Great.

Was it founded by him?

Well,

one thought is that it means the city that's been built up, but that wouldn't make sense because it wasn't built up.

Another is that it's the sound that sea lions make.

Oh, I love that.

I don't know if I've heard a sea lion say Rakotus before myself.

That's not a good way to name places because in the UK we just have pigeon noises.

You know, that pigeon like

fourth century BC, it's founded, and it quickly develops into the capital of Egypt, the capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Ptolemy I is Alexander's friend friend in general, and the Ptolemies go all the way to the famous Cleopatra, Cleopatra VII.

It becomes a global knowledge capital

and a trade capital, and it lives on today.

You know, by 1950, it's still got a million people in it, and today it has about six million people in it.

So

wow, I'm actually amazed at the site.

That's like London's like 8 million, right?

But I want to get back to the origins, actually.

You know, the fishing village into the city is an interesting story, and we'll sort of explore that.

But actually, the first sort of mentions in Greek literature involve a very glamorous couple from legend, Athena.

Which gorgeous power couple supposedly stopped off on Pharos, this island that Islam mentions?

Oh, gosh, I don't know.

Did Odysseus have a girlfriend?

Oh, it's not far off.

Right war.

Right war.

It's Trojan War.

Yeah.

So

it will be a human, not a god.

The most beautiful woman in the world, apparently.

Well, stop it, Islam.

Do you remember who we just met?

Aphrodite.

Oh, well, I mean, she's a god, yeah, she's a god, but who's the most beautiful woman in the world?

Her face launched.

Rihanna.

Her face launched a thousand ships.

I know that's because now I feel really stupid because I know who it is, but I can't remember her name.

Her name was Helen of Troy.

Helen.

Helen of Troy.

Helen of Troy.

Helen of Troy.

And her new boyfriend, Paris of Troy.

Now, Paris was also known as Alexander.

Oh, hang on.

That's very confusing.

Yeah, it was Alexandros, the defender of the people.

Right.

So that's the earlier mention of that name.

So why are they associated with Pharos Island, which later becomes Alexandria?

How does that story appear?

Well,

Paris and Helen elope.

Either they agree to elope or he kidnaps her.

We're not quite sure.

So she's already married, right?

She's already got a hubby.

Yes, exactly.

So that, I mean, you know, if we watch the movie with Brad Pitt in it, the Troy movie, Helen's behind the walls, Paris is behind the walls.

But in the actual Greek legends, she's in in Pharos.

They arrive at Pharos

when they run away, and Pharos is this little island that's just north of where those fishing villages were.

It's the place at which Alexander will found the city.

And in one version of the story, they're very bored there.

They just wait out the war.

In another version, the sort of protector king of the island evicts Paris because he's not happy that Paris has taken Helen.

He spares him death death because he's a guest.

And then he

exiles him and then he allows her to stay for the rest of the Trojan War on Pharos Island.

So already that region has good family values and hospitality.

Yeah, you know how they said there was bored.

I don't think there was bored, like two young lovers on an island.

What are you doing?

Nothing?

It was really good.

It was an ideal holiday, right?

It's just great.

We were just holding hands the whole time.

So Homer, of course, mentioned Pharos Island in his famous poem, The Odyssey, although Homer may not have existed.

The Odyssey, of course, seemed to be a movie.

And most important of all, The Odyssey inspired Alexander the Great to go to Pharos.

Athena, I was going to ask you if you'd like to have a city named after you, because obviously Alexander gives his name.

And then I realised Athens.

I've got one.

I know.

Thanks for the offer.

But I've already got one.

I'm awful up of city.

Yes, I do.

I mean, people like to say to me, actually, Athens predates you, Athena.

And I say, thank God, because even though I look younger than I am,

I am not that old.

But I do have that, I really think.

You do.

All right, so I'll do a different question then.

Let's talk construction.

Did you ever play SimCity?

I did, of course I did.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, no, it's one of my favourite ever games.

If you were playing Sim City Alexandria, how would you turn a fishing village into a city?

How are you laying out your city?

What's your

airport because

I used to like to watch the plane fly over the city?

So planning, you probably want

homes, I guess.

And then because it's like a fishing place, you want a fish and chip shop

to sell the fish that you've caught

they haven't got potatoes yet but sure no right so it would just be the fish shop okay fish and bread

okay very much the Atkins diet in my city just protein no carbs well how would I start build a city how would you plan the city how would I plan it so from the coast so from the coast towards the interior nice it would probably like you'd want to trade the fish right so you'd get like a fish market so you could sell your fish to people who wants to buy it and that's how you make your money this is these are good ideas

There's a really good fish market in modern-day Alexandria.

There you go.

There you go.

You've got a city planning future ahead of you.

Yeah, only thing is now I'm vegan.

So it'd probably be like, I'd probably have a little sign saying, please don't buy the fish.

You may not be in business that long.

Sorry.

Ethical, yes, but profitable, no.

Islam, Alexander supposedly sees Pharos and immediately he just visualizes the city in front of him, right?

And he plans it out with seeds.

Yeah, so he's already read about it in Homer.

And it's inspired him to go.

And he arrives, and he realizes that the location is great because it's at the intersection of three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe.

And obviously, his main goal is world domination.

So he thinks this will be a great place to build and carry on with his ventures.

It's like a place in the sun, button for like megalomaniacs.

Isn't that a great view of places you can invade?

It's like, yeah, great, I'll take it.

So he gets down on his knees, according to legend, and he puts with grain on the sand a map of the city as he imagines it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it has everything in it.

It has, you know, the market and the temples and the shrine to the muses, which will become the library.

It's probably also worth mentioning, though, that when he arrives there, he's halfway between us and the pyramids.

That's how long Egypt has already existed for.

Sure, of course.

And so there's already a canal system, for example, that the ancient Egyptians had built that will make transporting the grain easier.

There's access to the Nile that will make him have irrigation systems, sewage systems, and so on.

And then he leaves it to the most famous architect of the time, Denocrates, to build the city.

And there's a lovely story about Denocrates getting the job, Athena.

Do you want to guess how he died?

You know know the phrase dress for the job you want?

How does he dress in order to get the job you want?

I don't know.

Does he dress as a pyramid?

Some kind of sphinx.

You can have this all over the city.

He's like cosplaying as his own plans.

This is the city I'll build.

I'm wearing it.

Not quite.

Islam.

He goes.

He oils himself up, right?

Yep.

I beg your pardon.

Yeah.

You heard me.

It's literally literally a slick plan.

Yeah.

He decides to dress as Hercules in order to get Alexander's attention, because he goes to Alexander with all these references, you know, like letters of recommendation from Rhodes, but he can't get through to Alexander.

So he strips and oils his body, puts a wreath on his head.

lion's skin on his shoulder, holds a wooden club.

And Alexander is very curious and asks who this person is, and the slippery architect announces himself.

It's quite a bold move to show up dressed as Hercules, because Alexander claims descent from Zeus, so Hercules would be a relative, right?

Exactly, that's exactly why he did it.

Okay, I see.

Different times.

So after he designs the city, he leaves straight away to Siwa, further south in Egypt, because there's an oracle there where he wants to find out if he's divine.

And true enough, he finds out that he is divine.

What are the chances?

Yeah, you're divine, Alex.

Yeah.

Now, please let me live.

And actually, for for that reason, he never sees a building go up in Alexandria.

He never returns.

So he planned it, but he left before it was even, before a brick was laid.

Exactly.

And the interesting story, actually, is: you know, you mentioned the Ptolemaic dynasty, Islam, which obviously gives us Cleopatra much, much later on.

But it's the first Ptolemy, a man called Ptolemy, who founds the dynasty, who kind of puts Alexandria on the map in terms of its power and status.

He then uses Alexander's death to put himself on the map, too.

Do you want to know how?

Oh, does he

write a book?

He

a single, he sings a song like Candle in the Wind.

Is that not it?

I mean, that's a lovely idea.

You lived your life like

Candle in the Wind, never failing to conquer Egypt and India.

No, he literally stole Alexander's body.

Oh, okay, and just stuck it on his wall like a big antelope.

A lion.

Not quite.

No,

It's a heist, right?

He takes an army, he intercepts a funeral cortege, which is moving from Syria to...

It's around Babylon.

Right, okay.

And it's heading towards sort of Macedon, you know, where Alexander is originally from.

Alexander's request, apparently, was to be buried in Siwa, which is the oracle where he found out he was divine.

So he claims, Ptolemy, that he's taking him, you know, to Egypt because that's where Alexander would want to go.

But he realizes, actually, if I go to Alexandria then I can really legitimize it as a capital and as Alexander's city.

And so he takes the corpse to Alexandria and builds an amazing mausoleum there that actually became like a site of pilgrimage for Roman emperors, but is now lost.

Ptolemy puts Alexander on the map.

He's taken the corpse of Alexander to legitimate himself.

And what does he do for the city of Alexandria?

What has the city become under Ptolemy I?

He tries to develop like a very unique identity identity for the city that's Greco-Egyptian.

So he, for example, champions Serapis, who's an amalgamation of Greek and Egyptian gods, so that Alexandria's god can be good for both the Greeks who are there and the Egyptians.

He also continues to invite people from all around the region.

So we have people coming from like the Holy Land.

There's a lot of Jews who come to Alexandria and have freedom of worship in the Jewish quarter.

There's people from the Levant.

There's even evidence of people from as far as India

in the Ptolemaic days coming to Alexandria.

So there's jobs and there's freedom of worship.

The idea is that they can live in relative tolerance.

He also commissions important monuments.

We've mentioned Alexander's tomb.

There's big temples, public gardens.

You know, one of those, which is the Advent Garden in the center of Alexandria, is the oldest garden in the world at the moment.

And it becomes a very populous city.

It's thought by some to be the first city that reaches a million people.

But that sounds incredible, right?

Isn't that the model of the kind of cities you'd like to live in now?

Yeah, it's a 15-minute city.

What's the name of the garden again?

Because is it Eleusis?

It is, yeah, which means Advent.

And today in Alexandria, we call it Nuzha Park.

It's still there.

Yeah, you'll find a couple of plants.

Some of us have got pot plants that last for like two weeks.

And there's a 2,000-year-old garden in Egypt.

You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.

Come on.

Get some nice mango ice cream

and go and sit there.

Amazing.

Alexandria is now in its sort of Ptolemaic era.

We get these new building projects as well as the Garden of Eleusis.

We also get the Pharos Lighthouse, which is one of the seven wonders of the world.

Yes, and I know this because as well as SimCity, I used to play Civilization.

Yeah, there we go.

Another classic game for our elder millennial listeners.

And that was a big landmark when you built the lighthouse.

Yeah, a little graphic come up with the lighthouse.

Exactly, a little fanfare.

Yeah.

I mean, the Pharos Lighthouse is one of the seven wonders of of the world.

So it's incredibly important in the ancient world.

And it's still...

I mean, archaeologists were digging and diving down there like last month, I think, weren't they?

I mean, it's amazing, isn't it?

It is.

The remains are still there.

And that was on the Pharos Island.

So when Alexander arrived, he connected the fishing villages with Pharos Island with a causeway called the Hepta Stadion, so in the unit seven stadia.

And that's where the lighthouse was built.

And the lighthouse's remains are there.

And now there's a citadel there in modern Alexander.

That's very handy.

And of course, also at the same time, they build the famous library, the one you mentioned on the way in, Athena.

How many texts do you think were held in that library?

Oh, goodness.

Okay.

It's going to be silly.

10,000.

I mean, that's a lot of books, right?

Well, they had wouldn't they be like scrolls?

They would be scrolls.

I think 20,000.

Oh, you've gone bigger.

I've gone bigger.

Yeah, go on, hit me.

We don't really know.

Sure.

All right.

Ruin the tension.

Well, let me say this.

When Ptolemy hired Demetrius to found the library, he said to him to find every book in the world.

I'm quoting

from a letter that's been found.

The job description was every book in the world.

There's too many.

The estimates are sort of from 500,000 to a million.

So basically the internet.

To over a million.

There's the internet in here.

Yeah.

There are like letters from...

Ptolemy to the librarian saying, have you got all the books yet?

So

he's checking in.

Okay, and we get incredible scholars coming to the city, don't we?

I mean, maths fans will know Euclid of geometry fame.

Who else is showing up and plying their intellectual trade?

Eratosthenes said that the world's not flat.

Aristarchus said that the Earth goes around the sun, which was a very odd thing to say at the time.

They developed fields like alchemy.

Someone called Maria the Jewess was somebody who developed alchemy, and her main aim was basically turning anything into gold and living forever.

Two good aims.

There was

Heron or Hero of Alexandria who invented all sorts of things, like the first steam engine, also the first vending machine.

Oh, what a king.

Usually for holy water.

And there was the School of Medicine, which allowed women in, which wasn't the case in Athens,

where it was only men.

Different types of poetry were invented.

And we also get, you know, Ptolemy IV.

So, you know, once you've got Ptolemy I, you get two, three, and four.

He built a shrine to Homer, the great poet who gave us the Odyssey.

And well, he may not have existed, but you know, the idea of him.

What?

I think your partner.

He may not have been a real guy, but that's a different episode, Athena.

But there are also scammers, right?

There were people showing up pretending to be great intellectuals or pretending to have been taught by great intellectuals.

That's right.

Certainly, yeah, the library, all sorts of issues arose because, you know, getting every book in the world is not not very selective

and it's borderline obsessive.

Yeah.

Anyone who could write would write anything because they were guaranteed to sell it.

And then even better if you could scam

policy control.

No, is this what you're saying?

Eventually there was.

You could then scam the librarians by pretending you heard someone famous speak and that you're writing their speeches, for example.

Okay.

So it's like the kind of AI slop on Amazon where it's just like sort of dodgy knockoffs of famous books.

Exactly.

Okay, so let's talk about fines.

Let's say you take something out of the library, don't bring it back.

What do they do?

Because this feels like a pretty...

That is a great question, Athena, because actually

it's not the people borrowing the books who are doing the crimes, Islam, actually, because it's the librarians who are doing the borrowing crimes, right?

Tell us about that.

Well, I mean, first of all, you weren't allowed to take a book out of the city, let alone out of the library.

If a ship docked into the city, it would be searched, not for contraband, but for books.

Nice.

And if there was a book, it would be taken to the library, copied and the copy would probably be returned to the owner.

No way.

So the original the original goes into the library and the copy goes home.

Well they'll assess the situation and see whether the original is worth keeping.

If I do that with a rembrand I'm a criminal.

But apparently it's fine for librarians.

And they borrowed from other governments.

So for example they they borrowed from the Greeks

you know the works of the Tragedians which were you know something that the Greeks absolutely treasured.

They paid 15 talents, which is like more than £300,000 today.

Wow.

And they kept the books because they thought the deposit doesn't matter.

So they would actually weigh up whether keeping a book was worth ruining a diplomatic relationship.

Do you know something?

I've got so many books at home.

I've never felt so rich.

Like, literally, ever felt so rich.

I feel like, I feel like Liz Taylor.

So the original papyrus scrolls of the works by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, these great Athenian tragedians, these amazing playwrights, the original texts are stolen and put into the library, right?

Absolutely, yeah.

So the city was flourishing intellectually, apart from the shocking library etiquette of stealing other people's books.

We get a boom in poetry, and then obviously, as is the case with all libraries, was it sort of devastated by budget cuts?

Because that's what seems to be happening to modern libraries.

It's not far off.

I mean, a library is a good way of understanding the priorities of government.

And under later Ptolemy, so all the basically the Ptolemies were all called Ptolemy or Cleopatra, pretty much.

So by the time you get to Ptolemy VIII, Ptolemy the Ninth, they'd evicted some scholars,

they'd given the job of librarian to their allies, for example to an army general rather than a scholar.

And then of course you have the fire in the first century BC.

when Julius Caesar was at war with Cleopatra's brother.

And actually he writes about the fire.

His autobiography is in like the third person.

Caesar did this and Caesar did that.

Caesar set a fire in Alexandria.

So he's confessed to it.

Yeah, he does.

He thinks it was a great idea, but he set some ships on fire and it kind of spread into the city.

It didn't completely destroy the library, actually.

Yeah, one of the wings goes, I says.

It's kind of a partial, but there is also a book burning by the next Roman Emperor.

Well, the first Roman Emperor, Octavian, who becomes Augustus, and he orders the burning of books.

That's right.

And more of those occasions, actually, Caracola in the third century, he thinks that

Alexander was assassinated by Aristotle, who is his teacher.

So he burns all the Aristotelian books.

So this is something that would have happened hundreds of years ago, but he's like, time to get my vengeance.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, I mean, Caracalla's in the third century, so he's, what, 500 years, 600 years?

He thinks he's the new Alexander.

Oh, okay.

And then,

you know, Aurelian burns the Royal Quarter, which has the library in it.

You know, we've got the rise of Christianity that had some big burning.

In the fifth century, we have a Roman historian called Orosius who talks about empty shelves.

So we know it's still there in the fifth century, but there's a slow decline.

That's a shame.

I mean, you mentioned the rise of Christianity.

So the city had already been multi-ethnic, multicultural.

You talked about Jews coming and living there beforehand.

But the rise of Christianity is a really interesting and important story in the city's history.

Can you tell us more?

Yes, it's largely based on the fact that St.

Mark the Evangelist brought Christianity to Africa through Alexandria.

He arrived in Alexandria and

founded the church there and would end up being murdered there as well.

Alexandria was a kind of open-minded place traditionally.

You know, the Greeks of Alexandria were seen as very liberal compared to the Greeks of Athens.

The Jews of Alexandria, there's a quote about them that they're more interested in the theatre than the synagogue.

They were different different to the Jews of Jerusalem.

So it made sense for this new

faith to gravitate towards Alexandria and be influenced by all these other faiths as well that were already there.

So, if, like, so, what was they into then?

Because if you've got like Jewish people into the theater, what was that?

What was their thing?

Debate, I think.

Yeah.

Sorry, Ebena.

Coming back to the theater, guys.

I mean, that's interesting.

Actually, the funny thing, actually, we get quite a lot of saints from Alexandria, Christian saints who are, you know, martyred or whatever there or who are associated with the city.

Why do you think Alexandria was a particularly good place for Christian saints?

Oh, God, the weather, the climate.

Was it a cool, temperate climate?

Sunny?

Why was it a good place?

Were there lots of people to save?

Were there lots of people?

Were there heathens?

Heathens, they need to save in.

I mean, actually, that's a good guess, but it's kind of more fun than that.

It's kind of a place of temptation, right?

It's like the Las Vegas of North Africa.

It was, it was because you see you have to be tempted and to sin in order to be redeemed don't i know it yeah i was still in the first phase of that process but

it's very much a phase one

were there any sort of famous saints who lived at large yeah and and why is because there were things like aphrodisiacs so oysters were used aphrodisiacs they also had birth control i don't know if that worked but you know egyptian women would put um

honey into their vagina to block the semen.

There was actually a...

That's what they're saying.

There was actually a...

There was a pill as well.

It was apparently worth its weight in silver, and it was a plant called silphium.

Can I just say, it's still worth its weight in silver?

The problem with silphium is we don't actually know what it is.

Okay.

Because it was so popular the plant became extinct.

Because of all those Christian saints having animals.

Imagine, yeah, so which answers the questions: why were there so many saints?

The birth control ran out.

So, yeah, so you have, for example, Saint Thais was a prostitute in Alexandria who found Christianity.

Saint Mary of Egypt traveled to Alexandria, admittedly, to enjoy casual sex, and she did so for 17 years.

And then she decided

to get a job.

She decided to go on a pilgrimage.

Can I just write down enjoyed casual sex?

17 years.

17 years.

St.

Mary, yeah.

So important.

It was like an important fact.

And then there's the pilgrimage.

But her pilgrimage was basically, how many people can I seduce on my way to Jerusalem?

She sees an invisible force.

I don't know how you see an invisible force.

No, I don't know.

She feels an invisible force

in Jerusalem and repents and becomes a hermit.

Okay.

Even monks, there were monks in the nearby desert who would travel to the city, especially for the services.

So there's a fifth century text where it's recorded that a monk whose urges were on fire

returned from Alexandria.

There's a cream for that, I think.

Returned from Alexandria suffering from syphilis.

And it was a way of telling the other monks not to do what he did.

But of course, Christians were also persecuted by the Roman authorities and later on.

So can you tell us about that?

There is a lot of Christian activity.

You know, they translate key texts, they combine the Old and the New Testament there.

They're also persecuted, especially in the third century.

For example, there's a big pandemic.

Pandemics really hurt Alexandria because it's at the crossroads at the continent, and loads of people arrive from different parts of the world.

So it arrives in Alexandria before Europe.

And they blame the Christians for that.

Do you know what it was?

Well, they say that you don't even have to touch the other person and you get it.

That's what they used to say.

Ah, okay.

So it was airborne.

Yeah, okay, that's very predictable.

They blame the Christians for that, you know, and that was one time where they were persecuted.

The persecution does calm a little when Constantine transitions the Roman Empire to Christianity in the 300s.

We get the pagan worship being banned in 392, and we get the expulsion of the Jews in the 400s, which, I mean, that's interesting, the multicultural, multi-ethnic tradition of the city is being purged a little bit.

It does take a long time for Alexandria to have any ghettoization, and then it does take a long time for these kinds of things to happen as well.

But yeah, the Christians are persecuted by the Romans, and then the Christians begin to persecute those whom they termed as pagans, you know, the polytheistic Egyptians and Greeks.

As you say, in the 400s, there's big problems between the Jews and the Christians, and the Pope at the time expels the Jews.

He has huge tensions with Egypt's governor as a result, because they were still a very important part of the Egyptian culture and economy.

And we've mentioned Euclid and some of the sort of great thinkers of the ancient world, but there's also Hypatia.

Has anyone ever heard of Hypatia?

No.

Can you talk us through her contributions to learning?

I mean, she's a mathematician, philosopher?

She's probably the most famous pagan philosopher and mathematician.

She was a Neoplatonist, so she renewed the ideas of Plato, and she was very popular in Alexandria, so she was kind of like a public figure that Carol Waldeman.

What's different to Carol Voldeman is that

she was brutally murdered by a Christian mob.

Yes.

And

she's often considered, as a result, a kind of martyr to philosophy.

So were the Christians anti-intellectual?

Is that why they did it?

Or because she was a pagan?

No, I think it's more that she was having a lot of influence.

on the people of the city and on the governor of Egypt And the church wanted to be in a sort of more powerful position.

But it does mark

the climax of the conflict between Christian and pagan cultures in Alexandria.

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So, obviously, we've talked about pagans, we've talked about polytheistic people, we've talked about Jews and Christians, and now we need to talk about the arrival of the Arab Caliphate.

That's in the 7th century, is it?

Yeah, so that ends seven centuries of Roman rule.

The Arabs are led by somebody called Ahmed ibns, who's a commander who knew the Prophet Muhammad, and you know, he turns Egypt into part of the Caliphate.

What that does for Alexandria is that about a millennium after it's founded, it's no longer the capital of Egypt.

So they move the capital because Alexandria for the Arabs is too diverse.

They don't know how to deal with all these different groups.

And also, they don't have a navy.

They're desert people.

So it's a hard place to defend.

And so they move the capital.

To Cairo?

To what is now Old Cairo.

Old Cairo.

Okay, thank you.

So, what happens to the churches?

And in terms of the freedom of expression, this has been a kind of quite a melting pot city.

Do we get freedom of expression still?

The initial idea is: yes, there's still freedom of worship, there's still freedom of expression, but as far as buildings are concerned, know, we do see temples become churches and churches become mosques.

And even today, there are mosques that have gone through that journey.

Okay.

We start to get what's called the Islamic Golden Age.

We've mentioned before in a previous episode about medieval science, we talked about the Islamic Golden Age of science, that the Abbasid dynasty bring that about in Baghdad.

Does it spread out to Alexandria?

Does Alexandria sort of get its mojo back?

To some extent,

because of the texts and ideas that have come out of it.

So even though Baghdad has become the kind of knowledge capital of the Arabs,

they're still looking at texts that existed in Alexandria, ideas from Alexandrian scholarship, whether that's Homer, Aristotle, even Maria the Jewess, because they're very interested in alchemy.

I think lots of the Alexandrian scholarship wouldn't exist without the Islamic Golden Age and

the investment that the Abbasids put into that knowledge.

So, Alexandria was sort of coming back to its best.

We have to do, I mean, we must mention another famous heist.

So, we've had one heist where where they stole Alexander's body.

Now, we get another one.

Venetian travellers stole the body of St.

Mark out of Alexandria.

How do you think they pull this off?

Oh, how would you steal a body?

Yeah.

Well, what you'd do is you'd go to a fancy dress shop and you'd kind of like

you'd get a costume for it.

And then you'd be like, oh.

Don't mind my mate.

He's had too much.

You know, you know, when people have too much to drink and they pass that and they're just dead weight.

And so, and the costume would be, or they could be like the back end of a camel and you're the front end like a pantomime horse yeah basically so costumes

costume fancy dress i quite like that that's that's fun islam is that how they pulled it off

is it

i mean it's it's it's probably as eccentric or more eccentric isn't it

they covered it in pork

and then swapped it with the body of another saint so they just sort of hid it under a massive ham?

Yeah, in a basket.

In a basket.

Okay, so we've had the kind of Abbasids coming along and reviving learning a little bit.

Then we get the Fatimid dynasty.

But the big medieval crisis that listeners will know about would be the Crusades, right?

Everyone sort of is aware of the Crusades.

How does that impact the city of Alexandria?

Are Christian Crusaders marauding through?

Is it a trade hub?

They are arriving, and some of them are sort of

official crusaders, let's say, right?

And some of them decided that that it would be a nice individual crusade.

You have sort of big armies arriving, smaller armies arriving, and it becomes Alexandria defensive fort for quite a while because it has to deal with these attacks because it's in such a strategic location.

But we do need to say 1096, Alexandria had the world's first madrasa, which, I mean,

is that an Islamic university?

How would you define it?

Something along those lines, yeah, or like

a school of legal Islamic thinking, or something along those lines, like an Islamic law school where the religion is taught, different rules are taught.

So, Alexandria becomes a haven for Shia Muslims at one stage, and then these madrasas open, Saladin arrives, and it becomes a much more important Islamic hub from that time on.

But

is that a response to the Crusades?

Is it like there's all these Christians coming around with their Aji Baji?

We've got to like, you know, we've got to solidify, we've got to codify, we've got to just kind of find a more logical, not logical, but consistent way to spread our message and word.

To some extent, and interestingly, in Alexandria, because the Jews had been there for even longer than the Christians and Muslims, the Jews began to flourish again in that time.

So, you know, we have scholars who escape persecution to Alexandria in the 11th century.

You know, the only medieval work compiling all aspects of Jewish observance was written in Alexandria, you know, the Mishnah Torah.

Oh, really?

Okay, so it's becoming multicultural again.

So, Saladin famously was quite a tolerant guy, so it was sort of back to its best.

And then we get the Mamluk dynasty, and then the Mongols are marauding in Baghdad.

And so, there are sort of big, big kind of history changes happening throughout.

But the city is always diverse, it's always a trading hub, and it's also a place of learning throughout this.

But then the 14th century brings some disasters.

Athena, do you know what happens in the 1340s?

Black Death.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it reached all the way to Alexandria.

Yeah.

Because of the harbour, everything reached Alexandria.

Good stuff and bad stuff.

Yeah.

And there was an...

That was crazy to get to Alexandria first.

Right, exactly.

The coffee and chess and that kind of stuff.

To buy chocolate, yeah.

All of it.

So the good stuff, chess and chocolate, nice.

Plague, less so.

There's also the Alexandrian Crusade, which kills 4,000 people.

Some real tough times happening in the 1300s, the 14th century.

And then you get the city under new management again.

This time it's the Ottoman Turks Islam.

And this is where the city does actually decline quite visibly.

It does, I mean, late 18th century, we're talking.

I mean,

15th century Ottomans.

Yeah.

So 300 years.

So we're into the 1500s, yeah.

So we're into the 1500s.

And that's...

Yeah, so the Ottomans capture Egypt in 1517.

Okay.

And that's probably the least exciting part of Alexandria's history.

It does dwindle.

We know the population during the later Ottoman time, so sort of 18th centuries, is about 15,000.

So that's nothing like what it was before, which was always in the hundreds of thousands.

Yeah, you said a city of a million at one point.

Did they find the birth control again?

Is that what it was?

But there is, of course, a famously big guy.

Well, he's famously not big, of course, but he shows up in the late 1700s.

He's a Corsican.

He's a Frenchman.

Napoleon, Napoleon.

Yeah.

He arrives in Alexandria because he's a big fanboy of Alexander the Great.

And his trip to Egypt is famously violent.

He goes around, you know, attacking armies and whatnot.

But he also brings scholars, his famous savants, his artists, his archaeologists, right?

He arrives

at Pharos, you know, where Alexander was, because he wants to emulate him.

He does this wonderful speech to his soldiers about how they have to respect the locals and respect the faith of the locals, as Alexander did.

And then he literally blows up the synagogue,

which, by the way, has recently been renovated and very beautifully.

He kills 700 locals as he enters the city.

The locals, in turn, introduce the French to Hashish.

There's one source that suggests that Napoleon may have had his one and only gay encounter in Alexandria as a way of emulating Alexander.

Right.

Did someone come up dressed as Hercules?

Babe Royal.

And all they wanted to do was build something, but he got the wrong end of the stick.

As you say as well, they are serious about Egyptian archaeology.

They draw a lot of really nice pictures of Egypt at the time, but they also take or help themselves to lots of stuff from Egypt as well.

And I don't mean like little things, I mean things like obelisks.

Yeah.

They are transporting enormous statues, obelisks.

Famously later, the Rosetta Stone, which is not in Alexandria, but it

comes to it.

Rosetta is just about 30 miles east.

Rashid, is it?

Is that the?

Rashid, yeah, in Arabic, is about 30 miles east of Alexandria, which is where they stumble on the Rosetta Stone.

They also name things after Cleopatra that have nothing to do with her.

So, you know, for example, the obelisk, the Cleopatra's needle in London and the one in New York, you know, they're from the 15th century BC,

you know, dedicated to the sun god Ra.

Right.

And they called them Cleopatra's Needle.

And of course, the British are there too.

I mean, famously, you know, the Battle of the Nile, you've got Lord Nelson fighting against Napoleon.

In 1803, two British troops climbed onto Pompey's pillar and displayed a Union jack on top.

Well, but that would have just what they did, isn't it?

Standard, isn't it?

That sort of happens in most British cities on a Friday night.

They gave three cheers to the king.

There's a traffic cone on its head.

Do you know what they were called?

What the...

The two Brits.

No.

Steve.

Well, almost.

Keep going.

Dave.

They were both called John.

John.

John and John.

John and John.

John and John Johns.

And

they had a beefsteak dinner on top of

the kind of Pompey pillar, which is very British, isn't it?

It's also got nothing to do with Pompey.

Again, of course, again, right?

There's a Greek inscription at the bottom

that says Publius, Publius, governor of Egypt.

And the Crusaders, it was, who read Publius as Pompey.

The British presence in Alexandria did not last that long.

In 1817, they signed an agreement to leave Egypt, and in comes a guy called Muhammad Ali.

Not that one, not that one.

That'd have been amazing, but not that one.

He's ruling with Ottoman support, Islam.

What's his sort of situation?

Well, I mean, he's originally from what's today in Greece, but he's got Albanian heritage.

He doesn't really want to rule with the Ottomans, but he begins to develop so much power that they eventually agree that he can kind of represent them,

but rather autonomously.

He's somebody who really works on reconnecting Alexandria to the rest of the world.

He begins, for example, the cotton trade,

which is massive, you know, Egyptian cotton.

Hugely involved.

There's a cotton exchange in Alexandria.

He builds the trams and trains and does a lot of stuff for the infrastructure and he welcomes Europeans in as well.

And there are French and Arabic newspapers being printed in printing presses.

So it's again, it's a city of culture and learning and multicultural, multi-language, multi-faith and again the sort of city's revived not necessarily the full glory days but it's it's coming back alive after the the kind of um ottoman decline and also importantly officials you know civil officials and religious officials and military officials have to wear a fez from then on oh really everybody so i mean i have no objections i mean i don't know why we don't do that all over the world everywhere i'm not sure why we're not all wearing fezes right now.

Sorry, I forgot mine.

And the city becomes interesting and culturally again.

In 1897, 1897, the Lumiere brothers shot a film there in the city.

So it's, you know, the Egyptian cinema industry is famous, like they're great filmmakers, but it starts so early, 1897.

Sorry to bring you back, but I think Athena will like this.

Muhammad Ali, he's known as the father of Egypt, and he died, leaving behind 95 children.

I mean,

again, ran out of birth control.

95 children, how many wives did he have?

I don't know.

Oh, they are.

He probably didn't know either.

He probably ran out.

I don't know.

12, 13, I have lost games.

So we get something called the Nada, the Arab Enlightenment.

Have I mispronounced that?

Nahada, yeah.

Thank you.

Yeah, so as you said, the Lumier brothers go to Alexandria.

Everyone's excited.

You know, we have E.M.

Forster, among others, who writes a history of the city.

He writes about losing his virginity to

a young...

There's something in the water, mate.

To a young tram conductor.

Oh.

Actually, by the water.

And then as you say we have the egyptian cultural renaissance as well because don't forget that the europeans are there and and you know we said egyptology the european egyptology has begun well you know there's lots of stuff being plundered reports of you know tomb findings being used as decor for homes and and they use mummy cases for cooking fuel and things like that so egyptians want to have some autonomy and one way of doing that is through this what's called this kind of arab cultural awakening yeah the Nahada, which is a way of sort of creating cultural autonomy as a way of countering the European influence at the time.

Does it work?

Arguably it does, because of course Britain had ruled Egypt from 1882 until the revolution of 1919 and then in 1922 there is an independence granted, a partial independence granted, but certainly it's an important date, isn't it, in Egyptian history?

Absolutely, yeah.

It works in the sense that people realize they have an autonomous identity, that their culture is capable of creating amazing things, just like English and French culture is, and also simply the subject matter of the things being written was calling for people to realize their independence.

So, you know, to give an example, you have an operetta called Cleopatra and Antony, where Cleopatra is the hero and it's played by, you know, Alexandrian artists and actors, that kind of use of Egyptian instruments, all of of these things that suggest autonomy and independence.

Yeah, of course.

So they did Alexandra and Cleopatra the musical before like Tina the musical, before Back to the Future.

They were like on it.

That's very ahead of their time.

And of course, 1922 is when Sudan Khamun was discovered.

So again, another hugely important moment in terms of Egyptian pride and its history and heritage.

So the same year as independence.

By the mid-20th century, so the...

40s, 50s, 60s, Alexandria is the home of anti-monarchical revolution and radicalism as well, isn't it?

It's a city of politics.

Yeah, and it's interesting because the king was often residing in Alexandria, in the palace there.

And then when he's kicked out of Egypt, he's kicked out from Alexandria.

It's King Farouk, is it?

King Farouk, exactly.

And, you know,

he was popular with many, but out of touch with many as well.

You know, there are recurring rumours that he was eating 600 oysters a week.

Yeah, maybe he needed a zinc.

Okay, maybe he was deficient, guys.

Or maybe he was trying to, you know, population boom, it's just him.

He was just like, come on.

There's also a famous rumor that his breakfast was delivered by air from Paris.

Oh, my word.

That's great.

Kwasa, all the way from Paris, please.

So he's replaced in 1952 by Nasser, the Prime Minister, who sort of becomes a president figure, doesn't he?

He does.

I mean, Nasser doesn't become the first president.

He's sort of the deputy to Naguib who becomes first president, but Nasser becomes the famous president from a few months later.

It's a time of rising Arab nationalism.

Okay, so there is a sort of sense of the city becoming an Arab cultural centre?

It's interesting because I wouldn't say it's an exodus of non-Egyptians because they were all Egyptians.

Right.

So, you know, the Jews were Egyptians.

You know, in 1947, there's still over 20,000 Jews in Alexandria.

I found statistics that

4% of them married non-Jews in the 10 years preceding.

So there was intermarriage and so on.

In 1948, with the founding of Israel and so on, many of them leave.

Then with the Arab nationalism, many more are expelled.

And if that includes the Jews, it also includes some Europeans as well who leave in the 50s and 60s.

And of course, there's the war in 1967 conflict again in 73.

There are kind of the sort of geopolitical situation then, obviously, between Israel and Egypt.

Yeah, three wars essentially, 67, 70, and 1973.

That war with Israel leads to an intensification of both Arab and Muslim identities in Egypt.

And that affects Alexandria more than it affects other cities because Alexandria is so diverse.

Yeah.

And today Alexandria is a beautiful city and is still linked back to its history.

I mean, it's an extraordinary story, Athena, isn't it?

It's sort of weird how it kind of goes around in circles as well.

Like it's kind of like multiculturalism, liberalism, and then something else, and then back to that, and then back to that, and back to that.

So it's a city that's always fighting to be a certain place.

The nuance window!

Time now for the nuance window.

This is where Athena and I sit in the quiet section of the library for two minutes while Professor Islam tells us something we need to know about Alexandria.

So take it away, Professor Issa.

I want to say something obvious.

that there's much to gain when Egypt is studied by an Egyptian, or in this case, an Alexandrian.

Like me, Alexandrians today are the 100th generation to carry that name.

Even as a child, darting across the promenade, Cleopatra-embossed pocket money clinking in my pocket, I felt the city's magnitude, its history in the air.

History is not just dates, wars and figures.

Here there were ideas, inventions, dreams, love, hate, and the occasional miracle.

To capture this tapestry, scholarship alone isn't enough.

I discovered and translated 9th century Islamic poetry about Alexander, and 11th century letters from Alexandrian Jews.

I took in folk tales and oral histories.

I drank tea with family elders and friendly strangers.

I chatted with librarians and eccentric vagabonds.

Being a flannel became as vital as pouring over dusty archives.

Coffee reached Alexandria before Italy and a century before England, so cafes fittingly became central to my experience.

In one, the barista wrote my name on the cup in beautiful Arabic and I almost wept, overwhelmed by its sheer normality.

In another, I paused at a portrait of Alexander blowing a big pink bubble.

In cafes I heard a dozen theories about his tomb's location.

It confirmed, impossible to a non native speaker or cultural outsider, that Alexander lives on in the city's collective consciousness.

Armed with linguistic and colloquial fluency, with cultural knowledge and memory, I roamed Alexandria's streets, unravelling the threads woven into its soul, the invisible stories hidden in plain sight.

With its universal appeal, Egypt continues to be explored, even claimed, by scholars whose narratives at best miss the nuances of its culture and history, and at worst undermine or erase the people for whom that history isn't a mere curiosity or day job, but a defining, enduring identity.

People often ask what Alexandria means to me, expecting facts and figures about an ancient city.

But for me, it's people watching from the balcony.

It's cats weaving around my feet.

It's the sound of a classical Egyptian melody echoing in a moonlit cafe.

Thank you so much, that's beautiful.

Athena, any thoughts?

I've done a few You're Dead to Me's, which is a real honour.

This is probably the one that makes me want to go and book a holiday, like right now.

Like, what a lovely way to contextualize history as something that it's here today and it's inherited by the people who are present there and the diversity of it.

And I think that's a wonderful advertisement.

What a lovely way to position it rather than in 1066.

It's more like, come and have a coffee.

We'll write your name in Arabic on it.

It's lovely.

So, what do you know now?

It's time now for the so what do you know now, which is our quick fire quiz for Archimedean Athena.

Athena, your notes have been pretty extensive.

I've heard you scribbling away.

I know, my handwriting's so bad though.

Oh no.

Okay.

We've got 10 questions for you.

Here we go.

Question one, which wonder of the world was built on Pharos in Ptolemaic Alexandria?

Lighthouse.

It was the lighthouse.

Question two, Alexandria is named after which ancient ruler?

Alexander the Great.

Yeah, that's an easy one, isn't it?

Question three, how did librarians in Alexandria expand their book collections?

They stole books.

They nicked books.

When ships were leaving, they were like, give me your book, and they'd nick the book and give back a counterfeit.

That's right, amazing.

Hand back a copy.

Question four: Why was Alexandria popular for wannabe saints?

Because you could get laid.

Lots of sex.

And yeah, basically, lots of sex.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's a city of temptations.

Question five, which Alexandrian mathematician killed by Christians has been described as a martyr to philosophy?

Um

H.

Yeah?

I wrote it down.

I wrote it down.

I've got Hypatia.

Yeah, Hypatia.

Well done.

Yeah, very good.

Excellent.

Question six.

In 828, how did Venetian merchants smuggle out St.

Mark's body from Alexandria?

They covered him in bacon.

Another pork product.

Salam.

Turn him into a BLT.

I think it was a pickle.

A pickle up.

Pickled.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Handy pickles.

A perfect sandwich.

Question seven.

Name one of the factors which led to social and economic decline in Alexandria in the 14th century.

Oh, Black Death.

Yeah, big old plague and earthquakes and all sorts of things.

Question eight.

By 1096, Alexandria had the world's first madrasa.

What is a madrasa?

A school of Islamic teaching.

Yeah, and law, yeah, absolutely.

Question nine, name the most famous artifact plundered from near to Alexandria during Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt.

Was that a stone?

It was, yeah, about 30 miles away from the city.

And question 10, for a perfect 10 out of 10, in the late 19th and 20th century, what was the Nada movement?

The cultural renaissance.

very good amazing darker yeah never in doubt 10 out of 10 athena so good relieved question 11 uh saint mary enjoyed casual sex for 17 years

yeah they should have been in there shouldn't they come on let's be honest all right 11 out of 10 well then athena um thank you so much athena and listener if you want more from athena check out our past episodes on haitian revolution we did madam cj walker we did injinga river dono and matamba If cities you a thing, have a listen to our episode on Istanbul in the Ottoman Golden Age with Sue Perkins and Professor Ebru Boyar plus we did episodes on Saladin and Young Napoleon both mentioned today we've got lots of bad catalogue to go and enjoy remember if you've enjoyed the podcast please share the show with friends subscribe to your dead to me on bbc sounds in the uk to get episodes 28 days earlier than in any other app and switch on your notifications so you never miss an episode I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests.

In History Corner, we have the wonderful Professor Islam Issa from Birmingham City University.

Thank you, Islam.

Thank you, Greg.

I take my figurative fez off to you.

And in Comedy Corner, we have the awesome Athena Completion.

Thank you, Athena.

Thank you for having me.

And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we explore another historical hotspot.

But for now, I'm off to go and smuggle out my favorite library books, hiding them inside a ham sandwich.

Bye!

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